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Why Don’t You Ever See Swordfish Sashimi or Sushi? | Image by the author
In Japan, Swordfish sashimi is available at supermarkets.
I have never had swordfish sashimi in Japan, but there must be some sushi restaurants that serve swordfish in Japan if I have to guess.
We do use swordfish and make nigiri or sashimi, as well as swordfish tartare (fantastic). Swordfish belly is an excellent alternative to toro.
I am unsure why swordfish is not a popular fish for sushi or sashimi, but if I have to guess, the followings are some of the reasons I can think of.
Ammonia smell
I have noticed swordfish meat starts to produce an ammonia smell after two to three days (not when it is caught, but after receiving it from our supplier). Though the fish itself tastes fine, the ammonia smell may not be pleasant to some. Some people may think the fish is old. All this makes swordfish’s shell life shorter, which could be why many chefs choose other fish over swordfish.
It’s a big fish, so it was not a choice for Edo-Mae (Tokyo style) sushi neta (ingredients)
It was only 150 years ago or so when Tuna was introduced as sushi neta in Tokyo. Toro was introduced much later. One of the reasons was that Tuna is a big fish to catch, and they lacked a transportation system to carry it fresh, which made Tuna not an ideal fish to eat raw, so they stuck with smaller locally sourced fish.
The same can be said (I am only assuming) about the swordfish; Why bother going all the way out to the Pacific Ocean, risking one’s life and catch, bring back such fish? My guess is it’s only in the last 60, 70, 80 years or so fresh swordfish becomes available as sushi neta. But by then, enough fish were already used for sushi, and chefs simply did not bother using swordfish.
Kaz Matsune is a founder of Breakthrough Sushi, Two Places Technologies, investor, entrepreneur, and author of four books, including How I Became A Sushi Chef.
If you enjoy this story, here is another story you may like.
Subscribe to my weekly summary newsletter to get a free copy of my latest book, The How of Sushi. | https://medium.com/the-cookbook-for-all/why-dont-you-ever-see-swordfish-sashimi-or-sushi-c2bd7b008d40 | ['Kaz Matsune'] | 2020-10-26 05:52:24.439000+00:00 | ['Seafood', 'Cooking', 'Japanese Food', 'Food', 'Knowledge'] |
A simple online B2B export strategy | Here’s a quick guide for B2B firms that want to export, using digital tools and digital sales people.
If your export plan involves selling to other business, rather than directly to consumers, you should consider a B2B eCommerce strategy.
By selling to businesses, we mean distributors, wholesalers, partners, and stockists, not the end user.
This article also covers who to hire to help grow your B2B ecommerce exports. We also go through the basics of how digital sales and B2B eCommerce works.
Find your customers, close the sale and deliver
Exporting can be tricky. From a physical distance, you need to find new customers. You then have to market your products to them and prove the value of your offering. You must close sales, deliver the product and ensure you get paid.
Things have got a lot easier with the advent of the Internet. You can email, phone and even video-chat with prospective customers. You can use your website to promote your company and products. There’s a range of online portals and eCommerce sites offering you the ability to sell your goods and identify potential customers.
With a good online strategy, you can advertise products, generate leads and research customers. This is invaluable and a low-cost/high return activity (once you go easy on the advertising until you know the returns it generates for you).
Furthermore, with a good B2B ecommerce strategy, you can make large volume sales, and collect payments all at an extremely low/zero cost per transaction. Any business that is planning to grow sales to businesses overseas should strong consider B2B eCommerce as a vital ingredient to success.
Who to hire?
Creating a digital sales team with the primary responsibility of growing sales online and overseas should be at the core of your B2B eCommerce strategy. The people you need to manage your eCommerce success might be slightly different to traditional hires.
A digital sales executive has quite a different day-to-day routine to a field sales executive. You will start to see returns when you give at least one of your sales team the task of focusing just on digital sales. From there, once you have positive cash flow on your digital sales efforts, the real results will come when you’ve got a team dedicated to digital sales, as two heads are better than one.
What do they need to do digital sales?
With B2B eCommerce, you typically set up a digital sales executive with a desk, a (comfy) chair, a decent computer, fast internet access, and a nice monitor (or two). They are going to need an email address, phone number, access to your CRM, and access to your B2B eCommerce content management system (CMS). It’s worth expanding on a couple of points here:
Decent computer and fast internet: plays a major role in productivity. Digital sales people work with computers all of the time. The computer should be able to keep all of the programs they need open at the same time. It should not freeze. Possibly even more important is a fast internet. Slow internet will make your team slow and make the work more frustrating, which is not good since they need to talk to customers.
plays a major role in productivity. Digital sales people work with computers all of the time. The computer should be able to keep all of the programs they need open at the same time. It should not freeze. Possibly even more important is a fast internet. Slow internet will make your team slow and make the work more frustrating, which is not good since they need to talk to customers. Desk and comfy chair: your digital sales team will be sitting all day, every day. There are lots of good ergonomic chairs available at reasonable prices. If new chairs are too expensive, there are suppliers of second-hand heavy duty, designer office chairs built for office work which sell at the same prices as cheap, new chairs. My advice — don’t let your digital sales team develop back pain. Having them feeling good and comfortable in their work environment will help their productivity too.
your digital sales team will be sitting all day, every day. There are lots of good ergonomic chairs available at reasonable prices. If new chairs are too expensive, there are suppliers of second-hand heavy duty, designer office chairs built for office work which sell at the same prices as cheap, new chairs. My advice — don’t let your digital sales team develop back pain. Having them feeling good and comfortable in their work environment will help their productivity too. Email, phone, and communications: alongside an email and direct line, it may be worth considering how instant messaging, video-conferencing and screen sharing tools, social media, CRM, and marketing tools fit into how you talk with prospective customers. A tip: keep things simple and avoid using too many different communication tools. You’ll get more results by focusing on using a bare minimum of instruments effectively than having lots of tools which people take time to learn and setup and seldom use.
alongside an email and direct line, it may be worth considering how instant messaging, video-conferencing and screen sharing tools, social media, CRM, and marketing tools fit into how you talk with prospective customers. A tip: keep things simple and avoid using too many different communication tools. You’ll get more results by focusing on using a bare minimum of instruments effectively than having lots of tools which people take time to learn and setup and seldom use. CRM: having a good customer database which the team can use for tracking leads, opportunities, tasks, and other important sales related information is very important.
having a good customer database which the team can use for tracking leads, opportunities, tasks, and other important sales related information is very important. B2B eCommerce: when your business needs to market and promote products to other businesses, there’s no better tool than the ability to provide private, tailored product catalogs to your prospective customers. It’s like having a storefront, especially presented for their needs, available for them to browse when they need to.
In a nutshell, give your digital sales team a good environment, productive tools and the ability to showcase your products, and you can sell to the world from a (comfy) office chair.
A greater chance to grow with digital sales
Needless to say, there’s a massive saving in infrastructure versus field sales. The cost of all of the above is minimal in comparison. You don’t need to buy a car/van etc., mileage, travel expenses, and the digital sales executive doesn’t need to invest in fancy suits.
What’s more, there’s a much greater opportunity to grow sales with digital sales. Your digital sales exec is not geographically restricted. Once you have the right fulfillment strategy in place, you can do business anywhere. With a digital sales team based in Ireland, you might find that in the morning, your sales team works on opportunities in Asia. In the late afternoon of that same day, they might be working on deals to the Americas.
Because the opportunities are greater, your best digital sales people are likely to outperform your best field sales team in the medium term. Please visit our website to see more. | https://medium.com/@ExporterChat.com/a-simple-online-b2b-export-strategy-112764d4ad78 | [] | 2021-10-16 11:27:52.183000+00:00 | ['B2c', 'Export', 'Chat', 'B2B', 'Import'] |
We’re Waiting For A Ghost | We’re Waiting For A Ghost
A short story
“You want to do a line?” Kai passed the plate to Emmanuel. Emmanuel looked down at the four even lines of white powder lying next to a rolled up hundred. Because with Kai it always had to be a hundred.
“I think I need to feel it,” Emmanuel replied, passing the plate back.
“Is that the type of shit you’re learning in your groups?”
“Yeah.”
“But sometimes you have to give your mind and spirit a break though, don’t you? Get recharged so you can work even harder?”
“Are you my friend or are you the fucking devil?”
Kai laughed.
“It’s the coke. Sorry, man. I just want you to feel better. And this makes us feel better. Voila, problem solved.”
“And then morning rolls around and I’m anxious and depressed and paranoid and my jaw is sore from all the teeth grinding.”
“True, true. But just one line to get you right. It hurts me to see you like this.”
“Fine.”
Emmanuel walked over to where Kai was sitting, stuck the bill so far up his right nostril that he was touching the back of his eye, then leaned over and snorted two lines.
“Better, right?”
“Yeah, I feel better. But she still ended it, and that reality is waiting for me just outside this fog.”
Kai shook his head and did the other two lines.
“You’re a real buzz kill, you know that?”
“I appreciate that you want to make me feel better, but I’ve been wounded, man, and no amount of powders or pills can touch that wound.”
“That’s deep.”
“It is deep.”
Kai jumped off the couch and started pacing back and forth, scratching his head with both hands.
“So what can we do? How can we make the healing happen? Because it’s going to happen tonight, dude, one way or the other.”
Emmanuel leaned back in his chair. Cocaine never amped him up for reasons no one could explain. This had almost caused deals to go drastically wrong in the past. He had gone to a guy’s house with his cousin to pick up an eight ball and his cousin wanted him to test a line. Emmanuel went ahead and blew a line and felt…relaxed. His cousin had pulled out his 9mm and pointed it at the bemused dealer.
“Trying to fuck us over bro? What’s in there? Is it fent?”
The dealer swore it was just coke and powdered milk. But mostly coke.
“If I snort a line and it doesn’t rock me then I’m going to put one in your dome, you hear me?”
“Yeah, yeah, I hear you.”
“Good. Here, Em, hold this.” He passed his pistol to Emmanuel who took it in shaking hands.
His cousin snorted a line and then pressed one nostril closed while he sucked up as much as he could. He let out a grown.
“Give me that fucking gun, Em.” He grabbed his piece back from a stunned Emmanuel.
“No, please. Please don’t. You can have an extra eight ball. On the house.”
“Fuck that. I’m in the clouds right now. This shit is for real. Emmanuel, what the fuck is wrong with you, man?”
He had no idea. He just knew that cocaine relaxed him. He could snort a couple lines and then hop in bed and go to sleep. This had actually happened. It didn’t mean he found cocaine unpleasant. He rather enjoyed its warmth and its clarity, but he looked at the energy others got from it with envy.
Natalie had told him that he was a frivolous person. That cut deep, because he knew exactly what she meant and he knew she was right.
“I don’t take you seriously, Emmanuel,” she had said, “because you don’t take yourself seriously. I was willing to put up with the shyness and the self-deprecation for a while because I saw all these other bright and shiny qualities in you, but you squandered those so you could remain a child in an adult world. I’m ending it, Emmanuel.”
“No, Natalie. Please. We can work through this.”
“Would you change for me?”
“Should I have to?”
“I suppose not. And that’s why I have to go.”
Emmanuel looked up and saw that Kai’s face was inches away from his own. His pupils were dilated, his cheeks were flushed and he was chewing on the inside of his cheeks.
“Taking a trip down memory lane?”
“Yeah. Could you give me some space, man?”
“Sure, sure.”
Kai backed up and stood with his hands in his pockets, rocking back and forth on his heels.
“Kai, do you think I’m a frivolous person?”
“Frivolous?”
“Shallow. Not serious. Without value.”
“No fucking way. Is that what she said to you?”
“Yep. And it stings, man. It really stings.”
“But you know yourself better than she knows you. Maybe she was, what do they call it, projecting, that it’s it, maybe she was projecting her own shit onto you.”
“Unlikely, but possible.”
“Coke makes me a genius.”
Emmanuel chuckled and leaned back in his chair.
“Nah, nah, don’t do that. No more bad memories. Let’s go out and create some new ones. You got a mask with you?”
He checked the pocket of his jeans.
“Got one.”
“Cool. Let’s go.”
Unfortunately there weren’t many places to go. It was past 9 pm and no one was out in the bitter cold. Kai drove them around for a while, pulling over every now and again to snort a line.
“Keep your eyes open,” he said.
“Will do,” replied Emmanuel.
Kai stayed on the sideroads and eventually they happened upon a group of five or six guys without masks standing on the corner by a playground, laughing and pushing each other playfully as they passed two joints around. Kai rolled down the window and Emmanuel slunk down in his chair so he couldn’t be seen.
“Hey. A little fucking cold, isn’t it fellas?”
“Shut your stupid ass up and move along.”
“Snort a line. This shit’ll change your life.”
“You five oh?”
Kai took out the plate and blew two lines.
“Nope.”
“Yo, cut a few of those up for me and the boys.”
“I will. But first tell me what you guys are doing out here when its zero fucking degrees.”
“We’re waiting for a ghost. Isn’t that right fellas?”
They all nodded.
Kai shrugged and cut seven neat lines. One by one the guys approached the window and snorted a line. Then they wanted more. The de facto leader held them back.
“That was just to keep us straight. We need to be ready for when it comes. Hey who you got with you in there?”
Emmanuel raised his head and gave a half-hearted wave.
“I thought you were going to kill us, so I was hiding.”
The man laughed.
“At least you’re honest, pal.”
“Alright, good luck with everything,” Kai said.
“Yeah, yeah, good looking out my man.”
They shook hands and Kai pulled off.
“What. The. Fuck. Was. That.”
Kai shrugged. “This is what you need to learn, Em. You can’t go around being afraid of the world. You have to engage with it. It’s not as scary as you think it is. Most of the time.”
“I miss Natalie.”
“She was a cool chick. Are you still friends on Facebook?”
“No idea. Haven’t check it in weeks.”
“Time to accept and move on.”
“What did they mean about the ghost?”
“None of our damn business. This is why you would get killed in prison. You can’t stand up for yourself and you’re too nosey. Let it be, brother. Sometimes you just gotta let it be.”
They drove on in silence until they saw a young woman pushing a stroller crossing the street ahead of them. Kai rolled his window down again.
“You’re going to kill that kid, lady!”
“She’s all wrapped up. She’s fine, thanks for your concern, though.”
Kai shook his head reprovingly and rolled his window back up.
“What happened to letting it be?”
“It’s different with kids. Adults do adult shit and you leave them alone. Kids are everyone’s responsibility.”
“That’s a dangerous thought.”
“Just how I see it. Could give a flying fuck if it’s dangerous. We live in a community, after all, don’t we?”
Kai had a point, but it still didn’t sit right with Emmanuel for some reason. He wouldn’t want every adult parenting his child. If he had a child. Was that sensible or was that territorial? He shook it free from his mind. They had made it to the highway.
“North or south?”
“North. I want to see some mountains.”
“Good man.”
It took them two hours, but eventually they hit the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The heater was on, but Emmanuel imagined himself breathing in their rich, earthy smell. He had grown up in a small town in New Hampshire and couldn’t go more than six months without visiting the mountains. They were a lifeline when everything else in his life was falling apart. They were tall, broad, sober and majestic. Strong and stoic. They radiated age and wisdom and were the closest to permanence this world would ever get. The mountains were here before him and they would be here after he moved on. There was peace in that.
They drove until they hit Mount Washington and then they pulled over. Kai did two more lines. Emmanuel did one more to stay focused on what was in front of him.
“It’s closed,” Emmanuel said.
“Yeah no shit. We’re just going to take a peek though.”
“Really?”
“Come on.”
They trudged through the snow and found a break in the gate where they could slip through undetected. This was more exercise than Emmanuel had gotten in months. He felt like his lungs were going to freeze up on him.
They walked to the base of the mountain and stared up.
“Shit,” Kai muttered.
“It’s beautiful.”
“I want to climb it.”
“We don’t have enough coke.”
Kai leaned over and kissed the rock.
“I’m coming back for you, baby.”
Emmanuel looked up at the clear sky free of light pollution and was amazed at the sheer volume of stars shining down on him. The glittering dome of heaven had never looked so bright. Then he looked at the mountain and put his hand against the rock and tried to pick up on its vibrations.
“What are you telling me?”
Let go
“Yo man, you mind driving us back? I’m starting to come down and I’m freaking out a little bit.”
“Yeah definitely. Do you want to stop and grab a drink or anything?”
“Nah, I just need to get back to my place and pop a couple Valium and crash hard.”
“Is this shit worth it?”
“It all depends. If you can stand to do it once in a blue moon and you can sleep it off and get back to your old self then props to you. Go for it. If you have it once and then keep chasing it you’re in for a bad fucking time. Especially if you’ve already got depression or anxiety. Shit will fuck with your head.”
Kai lied down in the back seat and started cracking his knuckles and rapping along to music only he could hear.
It was 5 am by the time Emmanuel had arrived at his own house.
“We’re here,” he announced. “You good to drive home?”
Kai got out on unsteady legs and patted Emmanuel on the shoulder.
“I got this.”
Emmanuel maneuvered around him and Kai hopped into the driver’s seat.
“Thanks for coming by, Kai. I had a good night, tonight.”
“No problem, my man. Just don’t mention her name to me ever again, okay?”
“Deal.”
“Good man. Good man.”
“Text me when you get back.”
“Really?”
“Please?”
“Alright, alright. Catch you later, Em.”
Emmanuel made his way into his house, closing the door gingerly behind him He slipped up the stairs and made a B line to his bedroom. He took out his phone and waited for Kai to text him. He saw that he had one new message. It was from Natalie. His heart skipped a beat. He opened it.
Hey. Can we talk?
He replied:
When?
His phone rang. He covered the ringer with his thumb and pressed ANSWER.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Emmanuel.”
“It’s early, Natalie.”
“I can’t sleep. I’ve been thinking about us.”
Kai’s message came through.
Safe and sound, brother. Enjoy your nap.
“Either choose me or lose me, Emmanuel.”
“That’s blackmail. That’s manipulation. I won’t be bullied by you, Natalie. My cats show me more affection than you ever did.”
“You’re so angry. Why are you so angry?”
“Because you’re a bright girl who says stupid things and expects the world to nod along with her.”
“Ouch, Emmanuel.”
“What were you expecting from this call?”
“I was in pain, I am in pain, and I was hoping to hear from a friend. But I guess we’re not friends.”
“I lack a moral compass. I’m selfish. I’m angry. My monkey mind has control over me. I’m purely guided by my desires and my whims. I’m a frivolous person.”
“It wasn’t my place to judge you.”
“And it still isn’t.”
“I hurt you and now you want to hurt me. But I don’t take it personally. I know you’re upset.”
Emmanuel took the phone away from his ear and set it down on his lap. He took a couple deep breaths to compose himself and then responded with the words that would change his life forever.
“I thought you loved me, but you loved your image of me. That was emasculating. I love you, Natalie, I always will, but I am no friend of yours. You didn’t choose me so you’ve lost me. Forever.”
He could hear her crying.
“Too much. Too much.”
“Jesus, Natalie, I didn’t mean-”
“Too much, Emmanuel.”
“I could come see you.”
She laughed a bitter laugh.
“No. I wouldn’t want to emasculate you again.”
“We both have to move on. There are plenty of other people out there for both of us.”
“That’s your folly, Emmanuel. You always thought it was about finding the right person.”
“It’s not?”
“No. It’s about finding someone you can work with. Someone who respects you. Someone who is willing to rub your back after an argument. Someone who is humble enough to admit when they’re wrong. Someone who can help you up the mountain, not because your movements sync up, but because you share the same goal and work just as hard as each other. I wanted to see if you were willing to work, Emmanuel. Willing to change. I should have taken ‘no’ for an answer.”
“We don’t share the same goal. You want romance. I want a best friend.”
“And I can’t be that?”
“No.”
“Goodbye, Emmanuel.”
“Goodbye, Natalie.”
He tapped END and hooked his phone up to the charger. He had thought he could get a couple hours of sleep before he had to get up, but now he was too wound up.
Choose me or lose me. Who says that? How do you go about demonstrating that you had indeed made that choice? Did the other party get to be the sole arbiter? It was strange. Very strange.
All of a sudden he wanted another line of coke very badly. He lay back in bed and tried to rest his eyes.
One line from the night kept ringing in his ear:
We’re waiting for a ghost | https://medium.com/grab-a-slice/were-waiting-for-a-ghost-b2538e18e4f7 | ["Timothy O'Neill"] | 2020-12-19 20:59:48.024000+00:00 | ['Short Story', 'Fiction', 'Pain', 'Drugs', 'Relationships'] |
Major threats to your business: human factor | The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the toughest privacy and security law in the world. Though it was drafted and passed by the European Union (EU), it imposes obligations onto organizations anywhere, so long as they target or collect data related to people in the EU. GDPR is a regulation that requires businesses to protect the personal data and privacy of EU citizens for transactions that occur within EU member states. And non-compliance could cost companies dearly.
Two tiers of GDPR fines
The GDPR states explicitly that some violations are more severe than others. The less severe infringements could result in a fine of up to €10 million, or 2% of the firm’s worldwide annual revenue from the preceding financial year, whichever amount is higher.
The more serious infringements go against the very principles of the right to privacy and the right to be forgotten that are at the heart of the GDPR. These types of infringements could result in a fine of up to €20 million, or 4% of the firm’s worldwide annual revenue from the preceding financial year, whichever amount is higher.
And these are just the administrative fines. Article 82 gives data subjects the right to seek compensation from organizations that cause them material or non-material damage as a result of a GDPR infringement. You can find more details related to fines on EU official GDPR page: https://gdpr.eu/fines/
How much can a GDPR breach cost you?
Image above shows the sum of GDPR fines as of November 2020, with total amount of €261M resulted from 419 GDPR fines, with smallest penalty being issued to a hospital in Hungary with amount as small as €90 all the way up to the famous €50M case of Google, LLC. The French court dismissed Google’s appeal on June 19th 2019, making it clear to everyone that enforcing GDPR laws will be one of the top EU priorities in years to come.
As mentioned above, total amount of issued GDPR fines was €261M for 419 cases, which makes average penalty of €624,068 — over half a million EUR per incident.
Web page called GDPR Enforcement Tracker gives quite a good insight on GDPR fines, such as summary of all fines, per country, per month and more. Image above shows the course of overall sum of fines over the years. As you can see, since July 2018, graph shows significant growth in total amount as well as the number of cases that confirms GDPR being a high priority for regulators in EU.
The price of GDPR penalties (2020)
The list of GDPR penalties is growing each day and 2020 has been “the most expensive” year since GDPR was implemented. Let me just remind you on some of the top cases and the costs affected.
H&M fined record €35 million for illegal surveillance of employees
German data protection authorities fined clothing chain H&M with €35.3 million ($41.4 million) over illegal surveillance of employees, as the Swedish firm delved deeply into the private lives of its staff members. The amount is the highest financial penalty for such breaches in Germany since the 2018 European Union legislation — General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — came into force and the second highest of its kind throughout the continent after French regulators fined Google €50 million last year for a GDPR violation.
€27,8 million GDPR fine for Italian Telecom -TIM
On January 15, 2020, Italian Data Protection Authority (Garante) issued a €27,8 million fine to TIM (telecommunications operator). The fine was issued for violation of the GDPR, with emphasis on unlawful data processing, non-compliant aggressive marketing strategy, invalid collection of consents and excessive data retention period.
ICO fines British Airways £20m for data breach affecting more than 400,000 customers
The breach took place in 2018 and affected both personal and credit card data. The fine is considerably smaller than the £183m that the ICO originally said it intended to issue back in 2019. It said “the economic impact of Covid-19” had been taken into account.
ICO fines Marriott International Inc £18.4million for failing to keep customers’ personal data secure
The ICO has fined Marriott International Inc £18.4million for failing to keep millions of customers’ personal data secure. Marriott estimates that 339 million guest records worldwide were affected following a cyber-attack in 2014 on Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide Inc. The attack, from an unknown source, remained undetected until September 2018, by which time the company had been acquired by Marriott.
Carrefour Group fined with €3.05 Million for GDPR breach in France
On November 26, 2020, the French Data Protection Authority (the “CNIL”), fines two companies of the Carrefour Group with €3.05 Million — €2.25 million on Carrefour France and a fine of €800,000 on Carrefour Banque for various violations of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) and Article 82 of the French Data Protection Act governing the use of cookies.
There are no exceptions
Ok, so you’ve probably reading the article so far and thinking: “Yeah, those are big players and just marketing names. I’m an SMB owner, it doesn’t really affect me. No one is interested in my small piece of personal data and low penalties.”
Well, sorry to tell you, but, You are WRONG. There are really no exceptions and penalties are issued from as low as €30 up to €50M. Whether you are a cafe, hospital, college, private person or company — rules apply to everyone. See below some smaller local cases and penalties issued for violating GDPR.
Spain: AEPD fines Café B.B.B. with €900 for breach of Article 83(5) of the GDPR
The City Council of Antequera filed a complaint against Café due to the installation of a camera on the facade of the premises oriented towards a public space, ignoring the recommendations of the local police. In addition, the AEPD fined Café €1500, which was subsequently reduced to €900.
Cyprus: Commissioner fines Grant Ideas Ltd €1,000 for sending unsolicited emails
The Office of the Commissioner for Personal Data Protection (‘the Commissioner’) announced, on 19 October 2020, its decision to fine Grant Ideas Ltd €1,000 for sending emails without the consent of recipients.
The Romanian National Supervisory Authority sanctions Nicola Medical Team 17 SRL with 2,000 EURO
On the 2nd of December 2019, in the exercise of its investigative powers, the National Supervisory Authority sanctioned the controller Nicola Medical Team 17 SRL with a fine in the amount of 9,555.4 lei, equivalent to the amount of 2000 euros, for the deed provided by Article 83 paragraphs (5) and (6) of Regulation (EU) 2016/679, related to Article 58 paragraph (1) letter a) and letter e) and in conjunction with Article 8 of Government Ordinance no. 2/2001.
Greece: HDPA fines New York College €5,000 for breach of GDPR accountability obligation
The Hellenic Data Protection Authority (‘HDPA’) issued, on 29 June 2020, a decision fining New York College S.A. €5,000 for breaching the accountability obligation under Article 5 of the General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) (‘GDPR’). In particular, following a complaint in relation to New York College directly contacting the complainant by telephone about an education programme, as well as subsequently failing to adequately respond to the complainant’s request for information and access to their personal data, the HDPA found that New York College was a data controller as they had processed information relating to the employment status of the complainant.
Denmark: Datatilsynet fines JobTeam with 7.000€ for GDPR violation
The Danish data protection authority (‘Datatilsynet’) announced, on 15 May 2020, its decision to fine JobTeam A/S DKK 50,000 (approx. €6,700) for its failure to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) (‘GDPR’) requirement that personal data must be processed legally and transparently. In particular, the Datatilsynet highlighted that JobTeam deleted personal data covered by a subject access request (‘SAR’) during the period after the SAR was made, and before responding to the SAR.
Italy: Garante fines Merlini €200,000 for GDPR violations
The Italian data protection authority (‘Garante’) announced, on 13 July 2020, that it had issued a decision (‘the Decision’) fining Merlini s.r.l. €200,000 for violation of Articles 5, 6, 7, 28, and 29 of the General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) (‘GDPR’), as well as Article 130 of the Personal Data Protection Code, Containing Provisions to Adapt the National Legislation to GDPR (‘the Code’). In particular, the Garante outlined that Merlini carried out, through a third-party provider, telemarketing activities on behalf of Wind Tre S.p.A.
Some more interesting cases include:
How is the GDPR fine amount calculated?
Under the GDPR, fines are administered by the data protection regulator in each EU country. That authority will determine whether an infringement has occurred and the severity of the penalty.
They will use the following 10 criteria to determine whether a fine will be assessed and in what amount:
Gravity and nature: The overall picture of the infringement. What happened, how it happened, why it happened, the number of people affected, the damage they suffered, and how long it took to resolve. Intention: Whether the infringement was intentional or the result of negligence. Mitigation: Whether the firm took any actions to mitigate the damage suffered by people affected by the infringement. Precautionary measures: The amount of technical and organizational preparation the firm had previously implemented to be in compliance with the GDPR. History: Any relevant previous infringements, including infringements under the Data Protection Directive (not just the GDPR), as well as compliance with past administrative corrective actions under the GDPR. Cooperation: Whether the firm cooperated with the supervisory authority to discover and remedy the infringement. Data category: What type of personal data the infringement affects. Notification: Whether the firm, or a designated third party, proactively reported the infringement to the supervisory authority. Certification: Whether the firm followed approved codes of conduct or was previously certified. Aggravating/mitigating factors: Any other issues arising from circumstances of the case, including financial benefits gained or losses avoided as a result of the infringement.
If regulators determine an organization has multiple GDPR violations, it will only be penalized for the most severe one, provided all the infringements are part of the same processing operation.
Conclusion
The GDPR leaves much to interpretation. It says that companies must provide a “reasonable” level of protection for personal data, for example, but does not define what constitutes “reasonable”. This gives the GDPR governing body a lot of leeway when it comes to assessing fines for data breaches and non-compliance.
It really depends on the regulator on how high the fine for breach will be, mostly considering whether it was intentional or unintentional, at least thats what we learned from recent cases. Companies which did it on purpose (such as H&M) had significantly higher penalty with even less amount of data affected than others, which got their original penalties significantly reduced after proving that it was unintentional or that their systems were breached by outside hacks. | https://medium.com/major-threats-to-your-business-human-factor/how-much-gdpr-breach-can-cost-you-394a5ce3a2bb | ['Alex Parfentiev'] | 2020-12-17 11:01:21.996000+00:00 | ['Money', 'Gdpr', 'Personal Data', 'Compliance', 'Law'] |
How to Write Perfect Python Command-line Interfaces | Let’s take a simple example
Let’s try to apply these rules to a concrete simple example: a script to encrypt and decrypt messages using Caesar cipher.
Imagine that you have an already written encrypt function (implemented as below), and you want to create a simple script which allows to encrypt and decrypt messages. We want to let the user choose the mode between encryption (by default) and decryption, and choose the key (1 by default) with command line arguments.
The first thing our script needs to do is to get the values of command line arguments. And when I google “python command line arguments”, the first result I get is about sys.argv . So let’s try to use this method…
The “beginners” method
sys.argv is a list containing all the arguments typed by the user when running your script (including the script name itself).
For example, if I type:
> python caesar_script.py --key 23 --decrypt my secret message pb vhfuhw phvvdjh
the list contains:
['caesar_script.py', '--key', '23', '--decrypt', 'my', 'secret', 'message']
So we would loop on this arguments list, looking for a '--key' (or '-k' ) to know the key value, and looking for a '--decrypt' to use the decryption mode (actually by simply using the opposite of the key as the key).
Our script would finally look like this piece of code:
This script more or less respects the recommendations stated above:
There are a default key value and a default mode Basic error cases are handled (no input text provided or unknown arguments) A succinct documentation is printed in these error cases, and when calling the script with no argument:
> python caesar_script_using_sys_argv.py Usage: python caesar.py [ --key <key> ] [ --encrypt|decrypt ] <text>
However, this version of the Caesar script is quite long (39 lines, which doesn’t even include the logic of the encryption itself) and ugly.
There has to be a better way to parse command line arguments…
What about argparse?
argparse is the Python standard library module for parsing command-line arguments.
Let us see how would our Caesar script look like using argparse :
… Read the full article on Sicara’s blog here. | https://medium.com/sicara/perfect-python-command-line-interfaces-7d5d4efad6a2 | ['Yannick Wolff'] | 2020-01-30 13:55:10.965000+00:00 | ['Python', 'Command Line', 'Interfaces', 'Machine Learning', 'Productivity'] |
To Blockchain, Or Not To Blockchain, That is The Question | Blockchain is one of the hottest topics in tech right now, and certainly will find its place in the ecosystem. With Bitcoin hitting all-time-highs of nearly $20,000 as recently as yesterday (17/12/2017), and with documentaries such as “Banking on Bitcoin” gaining substantial traction on Netflix, it’s safe to say that Bitcoin is now mainstream.
However, do people in general actually understand what blockchain is?
It was recently reported (October 28th 2017) by Bloomberg that a British company “On-Line Plc” added Blockchain to their name and saw a 394% increase in stock price. In light of this it is fair to ask “Why did TicketChain move away from blockchain?”.
“It’s simple, we want to deliver the best product possible, that concentrates on eradicating ticket fraud and touting.” (Kevin Murray, COO)
Ticket fraud and secondary market touting are genuine issues in the entertainment industry right now. These are tough problems to tackle, and we have given them careful consideration before jumping into a solution.
We discovered that retrofitting the novel concept of blockchain to fit these problems wasn’t the correct approach. In search of the best path for our company and our customers, we decided to re-brand as Evopass.
Evopass reflects the fresh direction for the business, and still maintains the original levels of security, transparency and streamlined digital offering. The focus is now on creating an accessible and scalable system using the best technology available. More can be found on the re-brand here.
The Path to Self-Reflection
Previously, we asked ourselves: “Are we creating this using blockchain because it’s the best solution, or because we wanted a blockchain solution?”. We came to realise that even though we started off with the belief it was best from a product perspective to incorporate blockchain, it was actually only effective (for us) purely on a promotional basis.
Therefore, in reaction to this discovery we choose to build using secure and centralised systems where we had full control of the data. This is not to say that blockchain ticketing cannot be achieved in other realms of transactions. GUTS, Aventus and Crypto.Tickets have all seen huge success in product development and fundraising stages.
However, we felt when it comes to product delivery we wanted to provide the best service for our customers, and although interested in blockchain, they weren’t looking to adopt it.
Blockchain Suitability?
Blockchain is suitable when one requires a transaction between trustless sources, or a permanent historical record. In our specific case, we require a trusted centralised overview of the system and its data. Trustless scenarios are when the ‘community’ cannot depend on a centrally controlling organisation.
In regards to ticketing, our customers do indeed trust us to issue and deploy valid digital tickets onto the market. Thus, blockchain features can be described as somewhat unnecessarily over-complicated for this scenario.
We have looked to incorporating a capacity management tool into our system, and for best results in this regard trust is essential.
Receiving External Feedback
We presented the original premise of TicketChain to the Irish Blockchain Expert Group, and feedback from this was invaluable. It helped us paint a clearer image of our goals and how to best get there.
An number of contention points for a blockchain solution began to appear, highlighting that we have indeed made the correct decision in transitioning away.
The primary five issues that kept cropping up were as follows.
Block time and transaction latency
Cryptocurrency price fluctuations
Steep learning curve for customers
Cryptocurrency bubble or fad mentality
Lack of tried and tested commercial products
A major point to note is that our primary product benefits can replicated more cheaply, and in a more energy conservative manner when done through regular databases. The energy requirements by miners (validation mechanisms for the blockchain) are extremely intensive and can often, if used incorrectly cost more to run than they will yield.
Other areas of potential concern with ticketing on the blockchain were user acceptance and education hurdles. Would event goers, i.e. the entire general public, be happy to use, and understand how to use a blockchain orientated system?
The Future for Evopass
Evopass represents the past challenges overcome, while maintaining our focus on delivering the most secure digital ticket offering possible. It can be licensed as an API to existing ticketing providers, or to organisers for hosting events through their own brand. Evopass is exempt from the adversity of blockchain while ensuring delivery of the core features we’ve always prided ourselves upon.
That being said, we still have team members with significant expertise in the blockchain field. During our journey, we have gained substantial experience in Solidity development, blockchain use-case research and cryptocurrency investment strategies.
Therefore, we will be primed to launch a blockchain solution if it indeed becomes more applicable for our operations in the future. It is often quoted that right now “Blockchain is a solution looking for a problem”.
Right now we believe there are more appropriate use-cases out there, but overall what the future holds for blockchain and Bitcoin is still uncertain.
One thing is for sure, watch this space.
Evopass Team | https://medium.com/evopass/to-blockchain-or-not-to-blockchain-that-is-the-question-4a2afa15ebe8 | [] | 2017-12-19 11:27:42.554000+00:00 | ['Ticketchain', 'Evopass', 'Bitcoin', 'Tickets', 'Blockchain'] |
How to Write a Pre-Nup for Your Partnership | How to Write a Pre-Nup for Your Partnership
Sure, everything seems rosy now. But when you and your co-founder no longer see eye-to-eye, you’ll be glad you did the paperwork early on. Laura McCann of ADORAtherapy helps you prepare for the challenges of partnership.
Entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart. Many of us, understandably, want a partner or co-founder at our side. But after 20 years, four companies, and six partners, I’ve learned that partnering doesn’t solve everything, and often introduces its own difficulties. Here are six rules that will help you set the groundwork for a great partnership — and a decent breakup, should you need one.
Imagine “The End”
Don’t agree to partner with anyone, or take on a partner, until you are clear in your own mind and on paper about how you would choose to end your business. The partnership agreement is going to be the equivalent of your business pre-nup, and now is the time to think about what happens in the event of a separation or divorce. Your buy-sell and partnership agreements should clearly spell out every potential scenario.
Just having this conversation will reveal more about your potential partner then you could ever imagine — or maybe more than you want to know. The best partnerships are built around clear and specific roles, operational guidelines and legal contracts.
Tough Talk, Not Love Talk
At the beginning, it’s great to be in love with your partner. They will undoubtedly be the person you spend the most time with, share secrets with and grow your business with — unless you grow to hate them. Have tough conversations before committing, and explore every possible relationship and business outcome you can think of: What if you work harder? What if they work smarter? What if they bring in the money? What if it was your idea? What if he/she wants to leave? What if the investors want only one of you to stay? Good partnerships set the foundation for a better break-up with honest, open communication. No scenario is too uncomfortable to consider. Anything can happen, and it probably will.
Who’s The Boss?
Don’t gloss over your job descriptions. Think of the contingencies: you swap roles, one of you steps away, or a family matter takes all your attention. Can your buy-sell agreement handle all of these?
Review your job descriptions every six months, and keep them updated. Working on your partnership is part of your job. Make it part of your mission statement.
The Paper Trail
Every partnership should be built document at a time. Don’t skip over any details, even if they seem like a pain in the neck at the time. And put it all in writing, especially your concerns. Keep a paper trail. Print everything important and relevant to the pulse of your relationship and put these documents in a file. You might not like to think about it now, but when you most need this information, you may not have have access to your computer or company email.
My Attorney
If you and your partner get into a dispute, your company’s attorney can’t take sides and shouldn’t. So when things get tense, your partner’s attorney will be sitting across the table. You need your own personal attorney. You need someone who not only understands how to build businesses, but has experience closing them down.
When you meet with your attorney, skip the storytelling — you’re paying by the hour. Just get clear on your legal standing, and what you can and can’t do to get your partnership on track or end it.
The Partnership Advisory Board
While the ultimate decision about who to take on as a partner is yours alone, you still need a personal set of advisors. These can be your attorney, entrepreneurs who have been through partnerships themselves, or a life partner — who probably knows more about your partnership than anyone else. These are the folks who will watch your back and can help you decide whether to love, mediate, or leave your partnership.
Ultimately, you are accountable for everything about your business, even picking your partner. So choose wisely and prepare that pre-nup.
Laura Mccann is a well-rounded senior executive with a proven record of success in Beauty, Fashion and Technology. She is currently the Co-Founder and CEO of ADORAtherapy, a vertical manager of organic aromatherapy products. She leads and has led global business strategy and delivery including software implementation and integration, product management, web and enterprise application development, marketing and product development. Laura has 20+ years experience in high tech, fashion, consumer products, design, sourcing and marketing. | https://medium.com/been-there-run-that/how-to-write-a-pre-nup-for-your-partnership-1359461cc8d7 | ['Springboard Enterprises'] | 2018-07-03 18:01:01.876000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Partnerships', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Women Entrepreneurs'] |
100 Numpy Exercises for Data Science! | NumPy is an extension library for Python language, supporting operations of many high-dimensional arrays and matrices. In addition, it also provides many mathematical function libraries for array operations. Machine learning involves a lot of transformations and operations on arrays, which makes NumPy one of the essential tools.
All the below 100 exercises have been collected from the numpy mailing list, on stack overflow and in the numpy documentation. The goal of these numpy exercises is to serve as a reference as well as to get you to apply numpy beyond the basics.
1. Import the numpy package under the name np (★☆☆)
import numpy as np
2. Print the numpy version and the configuration (★☆☆)
print(np.__version__)
np.show_config()
3. Create a null vector of size 10 (★☆☆)
Z = np.zeros(10)
print(Z)
4. How to find the memory size of any array (★☆☆)
Z = np.zeros((10,10))
print("%d bytes" % (Z.size * Z.itemsize))
5. How to get the documentation of the numpy add function from the command line? (★☆☆)
%run `python -c "import numpy; numpy.info(numpy.add)"`
6. Create a null vector of size 10 but the fifth value which is 1 (★☆☆)
Z = np.zeros(10)
Z[4] = 1
print(Z)
7. Create a vector with values ranging from 10 to 49 (★☆☆)
Z = np.arange(10,50)
print(Z)
8. Reverse a vector (first element becomes last) (★☆☆)
Z = np.arange(50)
Z = Z[::-1]
print(Z)
9. Create a 3x3 matrix with values ranging from 0 to 8 (★☆☆)
nz = np.nonzero([1,2,0,0,4,0])
print(nz)
10. Find indices of non-zero elements from [1,2,0,0,4,0] (★☆☆)
nz = np.nonzero([1,2,0,0,4,0])
print(nz)
11. Create a 3x3 identity matrix (★☆☆)
Z = np.eye(3)
print(Z)
12. Create a 3x3x3 array with random values (★☆☆)
Z = np.random.random((3,3,3))
print(Z)
13. Create a 10x10 array with random values and find the minimum and maximum values (★☆☆)
Z = np.random.random((10,10))
Zmin, Zmax = Z.min(), Z.max()
print(Zmin, Zmax)
14. Create a random vector of size 30 and find the mean value (★☆☆)
Z = np.random.random(30)
m = Z.mean()
print(m)
15. Create a 2d array with 1 on the border and 0 inside (★☆☆)
Z = np.ones((10,10))
Z[1:-1,1:-1] = 0
print(Z)
16. How to add a border (filled with 0’s) around an existing array? (★☆☆)
Z = np.ones((5,5))
Z = np.pad(Z, pad_width=1, mode='constant', constant_values=0)
print(Z)
17. What is the result of the following expression? (★☆☆)
0 * np.nan
np.nan == np.nan
np.inf > np.nan
np.nan - np.nan
np.nan in set([np.nan])
0.3 == 3 * 0.1 print(0 * np.nan)
print(np.nan == np.nan)
print(np.inf > np.nan)
print(np.nan - np.nan)
print(np.nan in set([np.nan]))
print(0.3 == 3 * 0.1)
18. Create a 5x5 matrix with values 1,2,3,4 just below the diagonal (★☆☆)
Z = np.diag(1+np.arange(4),k=-1)
print(Z)
19. Create a 8x8 matrix and fill it with a checkerboard pattern (★☆☆)
Z = np.zeros((8,8),dtype=int)
Z[1::2,::2] = 1
Z[::2,1::2] = 1
print(Z)
20. Consider a (6,7,8) shape array, what is the index (x,y,z) of the 100th element?
print(np.unravel_index(99,(6,7,8)))
21. Create a checkerboard 8x8 matrix using the tile function (★☆☆)
Z = np.tile( np.array([[0,1],[1,0]]), (4,4))
print(Z)
22. Normalize a 5x5 random matrix (★☆☆)
Z = np.random.random((5,5))
Z = (Z - np.mean (Z)) / (np.std (Z))
print(Z)
23. Create a custom dtype that describes a color as four unsigned bytes (RGBA) (★☆☆)
color = np.dtype([("r", np.ubyte, 1),
("g", np.ubyte, 1),
("b", np.ubyte, 1),
("a", np.ubyte, 1)])
24. Multiply a 5x3 matrix by a 3x2 matrix (real matrix product) (★☆☆)
Z = np.dot(np.ones((5,3)), np.ones((3,2)))
print(Z) # Alternative solution, in Python 3.5 and above
Z = np.ones((5,3)) @ np.ones((3,2))
print(Z)
25. Given a 1D array, negate all elements which are between 3 and 8, in place. (★☆☆)
# Author: Evgeni Burovski Z = np.arange(11)
Z[(3 < Z) & (Z < 8)] *= -1
print(Z)
26. What is the output of the following script? (★☆☆)
# Author: Jake VanderPlas print(sum(range(5),-1))
from numpy import *
print(sum(range(5),-1)) # Author: Jake VanderPlas print(sum(range(5),-1))
from numpy import *
print(sum(range(5),-1))
27. Consider an integer vector Z, which of these expressions are legal? (★☆☆)
Z**Z
2 << Z >> 2
Z <- Z
1j*Z
Z/1/1
Z<Z>Z Z**Z
2 << Z >> 2
Z <- Z
1j*Z
Z/1/1
Z<Z>Z
28. What are the result of the following expressions?
np.array(0) / np.array(0)
np.array(0) // np.array(0)
np.array([np.nan]).astype(int).astype(float) print(np.array(0) / np.array(0))
print(np.array(0) // np.array(0))
print(np.array([np.nan]).astype(int).astype(float))
29. How to round away from zero a float array ? (★☆☆)
# Author: Charles R Harris Z = np.random.uniform(-10,+10,10)
print (np.copysign(np.ceil(np.abs(Z)), Z))
30. How to find common values between two arrays? (★☆☆)
Z1 = np.random.randint(0,10,10)
Z2 = np.random.randint(0,10,10)
print(np.intersect1d(Z1,Z2))
31. How to ignore all numpy warnings (not recommended)? (★☆☆)
# Suicide mode on
defaults = np.seterr(all="ignore")
Z = np.ones(1) / 0 # Back to sanity
_ = np.seterr(**defaults) # Equivalently with a context manager
nz = np.nonzero([1,2,0,0,4,0])
print(nz)
32. Is the following expressions true? (★☆☆)
np.sqrt(-1) == np.emath.sqrt(-1) np.sqrt(-1) == np.emath.sqrt(-1)
33. How to get the dates of yesterday, today and tomorrow? (★☆☆)
yesterday = np.datetime64('today', 'D') - np.timedelta64(1, 'D')
today = np.datetime64('today', 'D')
tomorrow = np.datetime64('today', 'D') + np.timedelta64(1, 'D')
34. How to get all the dates corresponding to the month of July 2016? (★★☆)
Z = np.arange('2016-07', '2016-08', dtype='datetime64[D]')
print(Z)
35. How to compute ((A+B)*(-A/2)) in place (without copy)? (★★☆)
A = np.ones(3)*1
B = np.ones(3)*2
C = np.ones(3)*3
np.add(A,B,out=B)
np.divide(A,2,out=A)
np.negative(A,out=A)
np.multiply(A,B,out=A)
36. Extract the integer part of a random array using 5 different methods (★★☆)
Z = np.random.uniform(0,10,10) print (Z - Z%1)
print (np.floor(Z))
print (np.ceil(Z)-1)
print (Z.astype(int))
print (np.trunc(Z))
37. Create a 5x5 matrix with row values ranging from 0 to 4 (★★☆)
Z = np.zeros((5,5))
Z += np.arange(5)
print(Z)
38. Consider a generator function that generates 10 integers and use it to build an array (★☆☆)
def generate():
for x in range(10):
yield x
Z = np.fromiter(generate(),dtype=float,count=-1)
print(Z)
39. Create a vector of size 10 with values ranging from 0 to 1, both excluded (★★☆)
Z = np.linspace(0,1,11,endpoint=False)[1:]
print(Z)
40. Create a random vector of size 10 and sort it (★★☆)
Z = np.random.random(10)
Z.sort()
print(Z)
41. How to sum a small array faster than np.sum? (★★☆)
# Author: Evgeni Burovski Z = np.arange(10)
np.add.reduce(Z)
42. Consider two random array A and B, check if they are equal (★★☆)
A = np.random.randint(0,2,5)
B = np.random.randint(0,2,5) # Assuming identical shape of the arrays and a tolerance for the comparison of values
equal = np.allclose(A,B)
print(equal) # Checking both the shape and the element values, no tolerance (values have to be exactly equal)
equal = np.array_equal(A,B)
print(equal)
43. Make an array immutable (read-only) (★★☆)
Z = np.zeros(10)
Z.flags.writeable = False
Z[0] = 1
44. Consider a random 10x2 matrix representing cartesian coordinates, convert them to polar coordinates (★★☆)
Z = np.random.random((10,2))
X,Y = Z[:,0], Z[:,1]
R = np.sqrt(X**2+Y**2)
T = np.arctan2(Y,X)
print(R)
print(T)
45. Create random vector of size 10 and replace the maximum value by 0 (★★☆)
Z = np.random.random(10)
Z[Z.argmax()] = 0
print(Z)
46. Create a structured array with x and y coordinates covering the [0,1]x[0,1] area (★★☆)
Z = np.zeros((5,5), [('x',float),('y',float)])
Z['x'], Z['y'] = np.meshgrid(np.linspace(0,1,5),
np.linspace(0,1,5))
print(Z)
47. Given two arrays, X and Y, construct the Cauchy matrix C (Cij =1/(xi — yj))
# Author: Evgeni Burovski X = np.arange(8)
Y = X + 0.5
C = 1.0 / np.subtract.outer(X, Y)
print(np.linalg.det(C))
48. Print the minimum and maximum representable value for each numpy scalar type (★★☆)
for dtype in [np.int8, np.int32, np.int64]:
print(np.iinfo(dtype).min)
print(np.iinfo(dtype).max)
for dtype in [np.float32, np.float64]:
print(np.finfo(dtype).min)
print(np.finfo(dtype).max)
print(np.finfo(dtype).eps)
49. How to print all the values of an array? (★★☆)
np.set_printoptions(threshold=np.nan)
Z = np.zeros((16,16))
print(Z)
50. How to find the closest value (to a given scalar) in a vector? (★★☆)
Z = np.arange(100)
v = np.random.uniform(0,100)
index = (np.abs(Z-v)).argmin()
print(Z[index])
51. Create a structured array representing a position (x,y) and a color (r,g,b) (★★☆)
Z = np.zeros(10, [ ('position', [ ('x', float, 1),
('y', float, 1)]),
('color', [ ('r', float, 1),
('g', float, 1),
('b', float, 1)])])
print(Z)
52. Consider a random vector with shape (100,2) representing coordinates, find point by point distances (★★☆)
Z = np.random.random((10,2))
X,Y = np.atleast_2d(Z[:,0], Z[:,1])
D = np.sqrt( (X-X.T)**2 + (Y-Y.T)**2)
print(D) # Much faster with scipy
import scipy
# Thanks Gavin Heverly-Coulson (#issue 1)
import scipy.spatial Z = np.random.random((10,2))
D = scipy.spatial.distance.cdist(Z,Z)
print(D)
53. How to convert a float (32 bits) array into an integer (32 bits) in place?
# Thanks Vikas (https://stackoverflow.com/a/10622758/5989906)
# & unutbu (https://stackoverflow.com/a/4396247/5989906)
Z = (np.random.rand(10)*100).astype(np.float32)
Y = Z.view(np.int32)
Y[:] = Z
print(Y)
54. How to read the following file? (★★☆)
1, 2, 3, 4, 5
6, , , 7, 8
, , 9,10,11 from io import StringIO # Fake file
s = StringIO('''1, 2, 3, 4, 5 6, , , 7, 8 , , 9,10,11
''')
Z = np.genfromtxt(s, delimiter=",", dtype=np.int)
print(Z)
55. What is the equivalent of enumerate for numpy arrays? (★★☆)
Z = np.arange(9).reshape(3,3)
for index, value in np.ndenumerate(Z):
print(index, value)
for index in np.ndindex(Z.shape):
print(index, Z[index])
56. Generate a generic 2D Gaussian-like array (★★☆)
X, Y = np.meshgrid(np.linspace(-1,1,10), np.linspace(-1,1,10))
D = np.sqrt(X*X+Y*Y)
sigma, mu = 1.0, 0.0
G = np.exp(-( (D-mu)**2 / ( 2.0 * sigma**2 ) ) )
print(G)
57. How to randomly place p elements in a 2D array? (★★☆)
# Author: Divakar n = 10
p = 3
Z = np.zeros((n,n))
np.put(Z, np.random.choice(range(n*n), p, replace=False),1)
print(Z)
58. Subtract the mean of each row of a matrix (★★☆)
# Author: Warren Weckesser X = np.random.rand(5, 10) # Recent versions of numpy
Y = X - X.mean(axis=1, keepdims=True) # Older versions of numpy
Y = X - X.mean(axis=1).reshape(-1, 1) print(Y)
59. How to sort an array by the nth column? (★★☆)
# Author: Steve Tjoa Z = np.random.randint(0,10,(3,3))
print(Z)
print(Z[Z[:,1].argsort()])
60. How to tell if a given 2D array has null columns? (★★☆)
# Author: Warren Weckesser Z = np.random.randint(0,3,(3,10))
print((~Z.any(axis=0)).any())
61. Find the nearest value from a given value in an array (★★☆)
Z = np.random.uniform(0,1,10)
z = 0.5
m = Z.flat[np.abs(Z - z).argmin()]
print(m)
62. Considering two arrays with shape (1,3) and (3,1), how to compute their sum using an iterator? (★★☆)
A = np.arange(3).reshape(3,1)
B = np.arange(3).reshape(1,3)
it = np.nditer([A,B,None])
for x,y,z in it: z[...] = x + y
print(it.operands[2])
63. Create an array class that has a name attribute (★★☆)
class NamedArray(np.ndarray):
def __new__(cls, array, name="no name"):
obj = np.asarray(array).view(cls)
obj.name = name
return obj
def __array_finalize__(self, obj):
if obj is None: return
self.info = getattr(obj, 'name', "no name") Z = NamedArray(np.arange(10), "range_10")
print (Z.name)
64. Consider a given vector, how to add 1 to each element indexed by a second vector (be careful with repeated indices)? (★★★)
# Author: Brett Olsen Z = np.ones(10)
I = np.random.randint(0,len(Z),20)
Z += np.bincount(I, minlength=len(Z))
print(Z) # Another solution
# Author: Bartosz Telenczuk
np.add.at(Z, I, 1)
print(Z)
65. How to accumulate elements of a vector (X) to an array (F) based on an index list (I)? (★★★)
# Author: Alan G Isaac X = [1,2,3,4,5,6]
I = [1,3,9,3,4,1]
F = np.bincount(I,X)
print(F)
66. Considering a (w,h,3) image of (dtype=ubyte), compute the number of unique colors (★★★)
# Author: Nadav Horesh w,h = 16,16
I = np.random.randint(0,2,(h,w,3)).astype(np.ubyte)
F = I[...,0]*256*256 + I[...,1]*256 +I[...,2]
n = len(np.unique(F))
print(np.unique(I))
67. Considering a four dimensions array, how to get sum over the last two axis at once? (★★★)
A = np.random.randint(0,10,(3,4,3,4))
# solution by passing a tuple of axes (introduced in numpy 1.7.0)
sum = A.sum(axis=(-2,-1))
print(sum)
# solution by flattening the last two dimensions into one
# (useful for functions that don't accept tuples for axis argument)
sum = A.reshape(A.shape[:-2] + (-1,)).sum(axis=-1)
print(sum)
68. Considering a one-dimensional vector D, how to compute means of subsets of D using a vector S of same size describing subset indices? (★★★)
# Author: Jaime Fernández del Río D = np.random.uniform(0,1,100)
S = np.random.randint(0,10,100)
D_sums = np.bincount(S, weights=D)
D_counts = np.bincount(S)
D_means = D_sums / D_counts
print(D_means) # Pandas solution as a reference due to more intuitive code
import pandas as pd
print(pd.Series(D).groupby(S).mean())
69. How to get the diagonal of a dot product? (★★★)
# Author: Mathieu Blondel A = np.random.uniform(0,1,(5,5))
B = np.random.uniform(0,1,(5,5)) # Slow version
np.diag(np.dot(A, B)) # Fast version
np.sum(A * B.T, axis=1) # Faster version
np.einsum("ij,ji->i", A, B)
70. Consider the vector [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], how to build a new vector with 3 consecutive zeros interleaved between each value? (★★★)
# Author: Warren Weckesser Z = np.array([1,2,3,4,5])
nz = 3
Z0 = np.zeros(len(Z) + (len(Z)-1)*(nz))
Z0[::nz+1] = Z
print(Z0)
71. Consider an array of dimension (5,5,3), how to mulitply it by an array with dimensions (5,5)? (★★★)
A = np.ones((5,5,3))
B = 2*np.ones((5,5))
print(A * B[:,:,None])
72. How to swap two rows of an array? (★★★)
# Author: Eelco Hoogendoorn A = np.arange(25).reshape(5,5)
A[[0,1]] = A[[1,0]]
print(A)
73. Consider a set of 10 triplets describing 10 triangles (with shared vertices), find the set of unique line segments composing all the triangles (★★★)
# Author: Nicolas P. Rougier faces = np.random.randint(0,100,(10,3))
F = np.roll(faces.repeat(2,axis=1),-1,axis=1)
F = F.reshape(len(F)*3,2)
F = np.sort(F,axis=1)
G = F.view( dtype=[('p0',F.dtype),('p1',F.dtype)] )
G = np.unique(G)
print(G)
74. Given an array C that is a bincount, how to produce an array A such that np.bincount(A) == C? (★★★)
# Author: Jaime Fernández del Río C = np.bincount([1,1,2,3,4,4,6])
A = np.repeat(np.arange(len(C)), C)
print(A)
75. How to compute averages using a sliding window over an array? (★★★)
# Author: Jaime Fernández del Río def moving_average(a, n=3) :
ret = np.cumsum(a, dtype=float)
ret[n:] = ret[n:] - ret[:-n]
return ret[n - 1:] / n
Z = np.arange(20)
print(moving_average(Z, n=3))
76. Consider a one-dimensional array Z, build a two-dimensional array whose first row is (Z[0],Z[1],Z[2]) and each subsequent row is shifted by 1 (last row should be (Z[-3],Z[-2],Z[-1]) (★★★)
# Author: Joe Kington / Erik Rigtorp
from numpy.lib import stride_tricks def rolling(a, window):
shape = (a.size - window + 1, window)
strides = (a.itemsize, a.itemsize)
return stride_tricks.as_strided(a, shape=shape, strides=strides)
Z = rolling(np.arange(10), 3)
print(Z)
77. How to negate a boolean, or to change the sign of a float inplace? (★★★)
# Author: Nathaniel J. Smith Z = np.random.randint(0,2,100)
np.logical_not(Z, out=Z) Z = np.random.uniform(-1.0,1.0,100)
np.negative(Z, out=Z)
78. Consider 2 sets of points P0,P1 describing lines (2d) and a point p, how to compute distance from p to each line i (P0[i],P1[i])? (★★★)
def distance(P0, P1, p):
T = P1 - P0
L = (T**2).sum(axis=1)
U = -((P0[:,0]-p[...,0])*T[:,0] + (P0[:,1]-p[...,1])*T[:,1]) / L
U = U.reshape(len(U),1)
D = P0 + U*T - p
return np.sqrt((D**2).sum(axis=1)) P0 = np.random.uniform(-10,10,(10,2))
P1 = np.random.uniform(-10,10,(10,2))
p = np.random.uniform(-10,10,( 1,2))
print(distance(P0, P1, p))
79. Consider 2 sets of points P0,P1 describing lines (2d) and a set of points P, how to compute distance from each point j (P[j]) to each line i (P0[i],P1[i])? (★★★)
# Author: Italmassov Kuanysh # based on distance function from previous question
P0 = np.random.uniform(-10, 10, (10,2))
P1 = np.random.uniform(-10,10,(10,2))
p = np.random.uniform(-10, 10, (10,2))
print(np.array([distance(P0,P1,p_i) for p_i in p]))
80. Consider an arbitrary array, write a function that extract a subpart with a fixed shape and centered on a given element (pad with a fill value when necessary) (★★★)
# Author: Nicolas Rougier Z = np.random.randint(0,10,(10,10))
shape = (5,5)
fill = 0
position = (1,1) R = np.ones(shape, dtype=Z.dtype)*fill
P = np.array(list(position)).astype(int)
Rs = np.array(list(R.shape)).astype(int)
Zs = np.array(list(Z.shape)).astype(int) R_start = np.zeros((len(shape),)).astype(int)
R_stop = np.array(list(shape)).astype(int)
Z_start = (P-Rs//2)
Z_stop = (P+Rs//2)+Rs%2 R_start = (R_start - np.minimum(Z_start,0)).tolist()
Z_start = (np.maximum(Z_start,0)).tolist()
R_stop = np.maximum(R_start, (R_stop - np.maximum(Z_stop-Zs,0))).tolist()
Z_stop = (np.minimum(Z_stop,Zs)).tolist() r = [slice(start,stop) for start,stop in zip(R_start,R_stop)]
z = [slice(start,stop) for start,stop in zip(Z_start,Z_stop)]
R[r] = Z[z]
print(Z)
print(R)
81. Consider an array Z = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14], how to generate an array R = [[1,2,3,4], [2,3,4,5], [3,4,5,6], …, [11,12,13,14]]? (★★★)
# Author: Stefan van der Walt Z = np.arange(1,15,dtype=np.uint32)
R = stride_tricks.as_strided(Z,(11,4),(4,4))
print(R)
82. Compute a matrix rank (★★★)
# Author: Stefan van der Walt Z = np.random.uniform(0,1,(10,10))
U, S, V = np.linalg.svd(Z) # Singular Value Decomposition
rank = np.sum(S > 1e-10)
print(rank)
83. How to find the most frequent value in an array?
Z = np.random.randint(0,10,50)
print(np.bincount(Z).argmax())
84. Extract all the contiguous 3x3 blocks from a random 10x10 matrix (★★★)
# Author: Chris Barker Z = np.random.randint(0,5,(10,10))
n = 3
i = 1 + (Z.shape[0]-3)
j = 1 + (Z.shape[1]-3)
C = stride_tricks.as_strided(Z, shape=(i, j, n, n), strides=Z.strides + Z.strides)
print(C)
85. Create a 2D array subclass such that Z[i,j] == Z[j,i] (★★★)
# Author: Eric O. Lebigot
# Note: only works for 2d array and value setting using indices class Symetric(np.ndarray):
def __setitem__(self, index, value):
i,j = index
super(Symetric, self).__setitem__((i,j), value)
super(Symetric, self).__setitem__((j,i), value) def symetric(Z):
return np.asarray(Z + Z.T - np.diag(Z.diagonal())).view(Symetric) S = symetric(np.random.randint(0,10,(5,5)))
S[2,3] = 42
print(S)
86. Consider a set of p matrices wich shape (n,n) and a set of p vectors with shape (n,1). How to compute the sum of of the p matrix products at once? (result has shape (n,1)) (★★★)
# Author: Stefan van der Walt p, n = 10, 20
M = np.ones((p,n,n))
V = np.ones((p,n,1))
S = np.tensordot(M, V, axes=[[0, 2], [0, 1]])
print(S) # It works, because:
# M is (p,n,n)
# V is (p,n,1)
# Thus, summing over the paired axes 0 and 0 (of M and V independently),
# and 2 and 1, to remain with a (n,1) vector.
87. Consider a 16x16 array, how to get the block-sum (block size is 4x4)? (★★★)
# Author: Robert Kern Z = np.ones((16,16))
k = 4
S = np.add.reduceat(np.add.reduceat(Z, np.arange(0, Z.shape[0], k), axis=0),
np.arange(0, Z.shape[1], k), axis=1)
print(S)
88. How to implement the Game of Life using numpy arrays? (★★★)
# Author: Nicolas Rougier def iterate(Z):
# Count neighbours
N = (Z[0:-2,0:-2] + Z[0:-2,1:-1] + Z[0:-2,2:] +
Z[1:-1,0:-2] + Z[1:-1,2:] +
Z[2: ,0:-2] + Z[2: ,1:-1] + Z[2: ,2:]) # Apply rules
birth = (N==3) & (Z[1:-1,1:-1]==0)
survive = ((N==2) | (N==3)) & (Z[1:-1,1:-1]==1)
Z[...] = 0
Z[1:-1,1:-1][birth | survive] = 1
return Z Z = np.random.randint(0,2,(50,50))
for i in range(100): Z = iterate(Z)
print(Z)
89. How to get the n largest values of an array (★★★)
Z = np.arange(10000)
np.random.shuffle(Z)
n = 5 # Slow
print (Z[np.argsort(Z)[-n:]]) # Fast
print (Z[np.argpartition(-Z,n)[:n]])
90. Given an arbitrary number of vectors, build the cartesian product (every combinations of every item) (★★★)
# Author: Stefan Van der Walt def cartesian(arrays):
arrays = [np.asarray(a) for a in arrays]
shape = (len(x) for x in arrays) ix = np.indices(shape, dtype=int)
ix = ix.reshape(len(arrays), -1).T for n, arr in enumerate(arrays):
ix[:, n] = arrays[n][ix[:, n]] return ix print (cartesian(([1, 2, 3], [4, 5], [6, 7])))
91. How to create a record array from a regular array? (★★★)
Z = np.array([("Hello", 2.5, 3),
("World", 3.6, 2)])
R = np.core.records.fromarrays(Z.T,
names='col1, col2, col3',
formats = 'S8, f8, i8')
print(R)
92. Consider a large vector Z, compute Z to the power of 3 using 3 different methods (★★★)
# Author: Ryan G. x = np.random.rand(int(5e7)) %timeit np.power(x,3)
%timeit x*x*x
%timeit np.einsum('i,i,i->i',x,x,x)
93. Consider two arrays A and B of shape (8,3) and (2,2). How to find rows of A that contain elements of each row of B regardless of the order of the elements in B? (★★★)
# Author: Gabe Schwartz A = np.random.randint(0,5,(8,3))
B = np.random.randint(0,5,(2,2)) C = (A[..., np.newaxis, np.newaxis] == B)
rows = np.where(C.any((3,1)).all(1))[0]
print(rows)
94. Considering a 10x3 matrix, extract rows with unequal values (e.g. [2,2,3]) (★★★)
# Author: Robert Kern Z = np.random.randint(0,5,(10,3))
print(Z)
# solution for arrays of all dtypes (including string arrays and record arrays)
E = np.all(Z[:,1:] == Z[:,:-1], axis=1)
U = Z[~E]
print(U)
# soluiton for numerical arrays only, will work for any number of columns in Z
U = Z[Z.max(axis=1) != Z.min(axis=1),:]
print(U)
95. Convert a vector of ints into a matrix binary representation (★★★)
# Author: Warren Weckesser I = np.array([0, 1, 2, 3, 15, 16, 32, 64, 128])
B = ((I.reshape(-1,1) & (2**np.arange(8))) != 0).astype(int)
print(B[:,::-1]) # Author: Daniel T. McDonald I = np.array([0, 1, 2, 3, 15, 16, 32, 64, 128], dtype=np.uint8)
print(np.unpackbits(I[:, np.newaxis], axis=1))
96. Given a two dimensional array, how to extract unique rows? (★★★)
# Author: Jaime Fernández del Río Z = np.random.randint(0,2,(6,3))
T = np.ascontiguousarray(Z).view(np.dtype((np.void, Z.dtype.itemsize * Z.shape[1])))
_, idx = np.unique(T, return_index=True)
uZ = Z[idx]
print(uZ) # Author: Andreas Kouzelis
# NumPy >= 1.13
uZ = np.unique(Z, axis=0)
print(uZ)
97. Considering 2 vectors A & B, write the einsum equivalent of inner, outer, sum, and mul function (★★★)
# Make sure to read: # Author: Alex Riley# Make sure to read: http://ajcr.net/Basic-guide-to-einsum/ A = np.random.uniform(0,1,10)
B = np.random.uniform(0,1,10) np.einsum('i->', A) # np.sum(A)
np.einsum('i,i->i', A, B) # A * B
np.einsum('i,i', A, B) # np.inner(A, B)
np.einsum('i,j->ij', A, B) # np.outer(A, B)
98. Considering a path described by two vectors (X,Y), how to sample it using equidistant samples (★★★)?
# Author: Bas Swinckels phi = np.arange(0, 10*np.pi, 0.1)
a = 1
x = a*phi*np.cos(phi)
y = a*phi*np.sin(phi) dr = (np.diff(x)**2 + np.diff(y)**2)**.5 # segment lengths
r = np.zeros_like(x)
r[1:] = np.cumsum(dr) # integrate path
r_int = np.linspace(0, r.max(), 200) # regular spaced path
x_int = np.interp(r_int, r, x) # integrate path
y_int = np.interp(r_int, r, y)
99. Given an integer n and a 2D array X, select from X the rows which can be interpreted as draws from a multinomial distribution with n degrees, i.e., the rows which only contain integers and which sum to n. (★★★)
# Author: Evgeni Burovski X = np.asarray([[1.0, 0.0, 3.0, 8.0],
[2.0, 0.0, 1.0, 1.0],
[1.5, 2.5, 1.0, 0.0]])
n = 4
M = np.logical_and.reduce(np.mod(X, 1) == 0, axis=-1)
M &= (X.sum(axis=-1) == n)
print(X[M])
100. Compute bootstrapped 95% confidence intervals for the mean of a 1D array X (i.e., resample the elements of an array with replacement N times, compute the mean of each sample, and then compute percentiles over the means). (★★★)
# Author: Jessica B. Hamrick X = np.random.randn(100) # random 1D array
N = 1000 # number of bootstrap samples
idx = np.random.randint(0, X.size, (N, X.size))
means = X[idx].mean(axis=1)
confint = np.percentile(means, [2.5, 97.5])
print(confint)
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Responding to Tom Cotton’s 1619 Project Legislation: Ursula Le Guin Teaches us How to Walk Away from America’s Brutal History | Responding to Tom Cotton’s 1619 Project Legislation: Ursula Le Guin Teaches us How to Walk Away from America’s Brutal History Tim Libretti, PhD Follow Aug 17 · 6 min read
Ursula Le Guin offers us a way to respond to Tom Cotton’s proposed legislation regarding the New York Times; 1619 project. Commons.wikimedia.org
In a previous piece I wrote responding to Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton’s proposed legislation regarding schools’ use of The New York Times’ 1619 Project, I drew on my study of U.S. literary history, invoking the writings of Frederick Douglass to let his thinking do the work of presenting an analysis of U.S. history and political economy that provides a rather stringent critique of Cotton’s ignorance.
Cotton, remember, proposed legislation to deny federal funding to any school that implemented in its curriculum The New York Times 1619 project, a series exploring U.S. history through the lens of slavery. Cotton, seemingly, wanted children to see the smiling side of slavery and come to terms with it as a “necessary evil” in U.S. national development.
In this installment, I want to invite the late great American writer Ursula Le Guin into the conversation and to draw on her capacious imagination and intellect — and exquisite sense of social justice — to develop further critique of Cotton’s position, asking us to think, in decidedly human terms, about what it means to sanction “necessary evils.” I also want to look at the way Le Guin, in her story “The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas,” offers to Americans struggling with how to relate and even atone for the brutal elements of our history and their contemporary manifestations, a way to begin to imagine a way forward that helps us at once confront and address, and yet also transcend, this burdensome past.
In this 1973 philosophical short story, Le Guin describes a rather idyllic, even utopian world, where people enjoy lives of quiet joy and peace. There is no autocracy or repression, no antagonistic relationships or fighting over resources.
But there is just one little thing readers need to learn about this joyful community of Omelas. It has a condition.
Le Guin explains that joy of this community depends on the suffering of a child, living under a beautiful building in a basement in a dirty room full of mops. She writes:
“In the room a child is sitting. It could be a boy or a girl. It looks about six, but actually is nearly ten. It is feeble-minded. Perhaps it was born defective, or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect. It picks its nose and occasionally fumbles vaguely with its toes or genitals . . . It is so thin there are no calves to its legs; its belly protrudes; it lives on a half-bowl of corn meal and grease a day. It is naked. Its buttocks and thighs are a mass of festered sores, as it sits in its own excrement continually.”
Le Guin explains in the story that in Omelas children are brought to see the child some time between the ages of eight and twelve, and they learn that what is joyful and wonderful about Omelas would all disappear if the child were to be released from his suffering and set free from his imprisonment in the room. Omelas’ success is dependent on that child’s suffering.
Those exposed through this ritual to the child, learning the truth of Omelas. Often have a reaction of horror, shock, outrage, and disgust.
The people who process this experience tend to fall into two groups.
The first group Le Guin describes as coming to reconcile the life they enjoy in Omelas with this child’s suffering. The abject degradation is in some sense, to borrow Tom Cotton’s view of slavery, a “necessary evil.”
She writes of them:
“Often the young people go home in tears, or in a tearless rage, when they have seen the child and faced this terrible paradox. They may brood over it for weeks or years. But as time goes on they begin to realize that even if the child could be released, it would not get much good of its freedom: a little vague pleasure of warmth and food, no doubt, but little more. It is too degraded and imbecile to know any real joy.”
They reason that this “necessary evil” is precisely what endows their civilization with meaning: “It is the existence of the child, and their knowledge of its existence, that makes possible the nobility of their architecture, the poignancy of their music, the profundity of their science. It is because of the child that they are so gentle with children.”
Another group of people tend to respond another way.
Le Guin concludes the story describing them, as follows:
“At times one of the adolescent girls or boys who go to see the child does not go home to weep or rage, does not, in fact, go home at all. Sometimes also a man or woman much older falls silent for a day or two, and then leaves home. These people go out into the street, and walk down the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas, through the beautiful gates. They keep walking across the farmlands of Omelas. Each one goes alone, youth or girl, man or woman. Night falls; the traveler must pass down village streets, between the houses with yellow-lit windows, and on out into the darkness of the fields. Each alone, they go west or north, towards the mountains. They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.”
These people choose not to be complicit in accepting this necessary evil, which is not just an element of their past, but an ongoing condition of possibility in their lives.
They realize what Cotton doesn’t — or what Cotton doesn’t care about: that accepting a necessary evil doesn’t just become a matter of history but a deeply embedded cultural principle.
The next thing might be caging children in order to protect our borders. It might be mandating workers return to dangerous meat-processing plants during a pandemic with no guarantee of safety — because our civilization must be fed. It might be putting the lives of our elderly at risk so our beautiful and civilized economy might re-open.
It doesn’t stop once we start making exemptions for necessary evils to make possible our so-called civilization.
How does it stop?
When people, like those who walk away from Omelas, confront the reality of suffering, of evil, and decide it cannot be supported.
Confronting the reality of the suffering we sanction means not engaging in abstract terms for Le Guin but in deeply human, sensuous, and individual terms. If we say slavery was a necessary evil, are we prepared to witness another human being lashed and mutilated repeatedly, or to be subject to rape, terror, and violence without recourse, so we can enjoy clothing made from cotton fabric?
Le Guin in this tale re-orients our sensibility so we cannot understand the larger structures organizing violence in our lives in abstract and distant ways but must understand the consequences of the structures we sanction in the most immediate individual ways.
So what does it mean to walk away from Omelas, from structural violence?
I think we in America can read the story figuratively, and see that it teaches us not to walk away literally to another place, but to confront and address our history so we can walk away from the practices, attitudes, and structures of the past into a new future we have not yet fully imagined because we have yet to live as Americans in a land without brutality and exploitation. Such action is the alternative to reconciling ourselves to others’ suffering as a necessary evil.
We face it, not to reconcile ourselves to it, as Cotton does, but to stand against it and walk beyond it, making America a new place. | https://medium.com/discourse/responding-to-tom-cottons-1619-project-legislation-ursula-le-guin-teaches-us-how-to-walk-away-c4f28ae5e31c | ['Tim Libretti'] | 2020-08-17 18:43:03.843000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Literature', 'Culture', 'Race', 'History'] |
7 Dash Apps Bringing AI & ML to Sports Analytics | 7 Dash Apps Bringing AI & ML to Sports Analytics plotly Follow Apr 1 · 18 min read
📌 To learn more about how to use Dash for AI/ML Applications in Sports Analytics, view our webinar recorded on April 21st, 2021 with Sebastian, Plotly’s Product Marketing Coordinator
Author: Sebastian Leighton Cooper
As a sports fan, can you imagine this moment?
It’s the bottom of the ninth, two outs, 3–2 count, the batter focuses as he wags his bat over the plate…
Countless hours and pure devotion by the athletes, coaches, and trainers lead up to the unfolding of these epic sports dramas.
Here’s a secret: the real heroes at the end of these contests… are often Data Scientists!
2017 Finals — Credit…Kelley L Cox Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports
That secret is spreading more every year: If you want the trophy at the end of your season, you must leverage Data Science, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence in your organization’s approach — you must grow beyond the “eye-test.” The Golden State Warriors, powerhouses of the 2010’s after 40 years of futility, built a numbers strategy that is being emulated across the league. The NFL even hosts $100k-prize Kaggle competitions! From attaching harnesses to Rugby players for analyzing positioning and mitigating injury to the first ever Sports Analytics academic major, experts, enthusiasts, and educators alike are learning to use cutting-edge tools to help their teams win and follow their favorite games.
Brad Pitt in “Moneyball.” — Credit…Melinda Sue Gordon
Plotly’s Dash Enterprise data visualization platform makes it easy to build these tools. We’re arriving at the next frontier for both front-offices and practice floors. As we lean into Moneyball, let’s take a look at 7 apps covering Baseball, Soccer, Formula 1, and Basketball — all built with Dash that demonstrate just how innovative your team’s strategy can become:
⚾ MLB History Explorer
Author: @cursesincode
Link to app: https://dash-gallery.plotly.host/dash-baseball-statistics/
Reach out for the source code!
Statistics seem integrated into the (inter)national pastime. All eyes will be fixed on Hyun Jin Ryu of the Toronto Blue Jays and Gerrit Cole of the New York Yankees when they take the mound for the first game of the season — and their hits, strikeouts, and pitch counts. Many major league stadiums still hand out scorecards so fans can even keep track themselves!
Baseball features a mature (and at times dizzying) nomenclature and is likely the most mature of all sports analytics. In 2015, Major League Baseball (MLB) installed a state-of-the-art sensor and camera array called “Statcast”, collecting and analyzing a massive amount of data for front offices, broadcasters and fans. While vanguard tools like Statcast quantify the raw skills of players today, let’s take a look at baseball’s statistical history, dating back as far as the early 20th century.
Born of curiosity, this MLB history explorer uses historical statistics retrieved from Sean Lahman’s baseball database. Start by selecting between Team, Batter and Pitcher/Fielding Analysis and choosing a baseball era. Use the sliders to further focus your view dating from the first World Series in 1903 to the COVID-shortened 2020.
(Feel free to hum Take Me Out to the Ballgame to yourself.)
Team Analysis
For this example, we’ll select, arguably, the most successful sports dynasty in history, the ‘19-’41 New York Yankees who won 9 titles during the span. Each team’s championships won are listed, followed by their win/loss performance within the set time range.
The team’s batting performance is measured using the team’s Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABIP) and Slugging average (SLG). On the same page, the fielding performance of the selected team is illustrated by stacking together the teams total Errors and Double Plays. We can see that peaks in their team batting stats corresponding strongly (but not perfectly) with their WS wins.
The Earned Run Average (ERA) has historically been one of the most common measurements of a team’s pitching staff, averaging the number of runs allowed by the team’s pitching staff over a 9 inning period while the Strikeout-to-walk Ratio K/BB displays the team’s rate of strikeouts for each walk. Examining these Yankees, it’s no surprise they were so often victorious with a minuscule team ERA of 3.2 in ’27 and a scorching K/BB ratio of 1.39 in ‘32.
Batting Analysis
While Babe Ruth or Ted Williams aren’t slouches, Jackie Roosevelt Robinson might be the most famous and iconic baseball player to have lived. Let’s look at his on-field contributions because not only was he a trailblazer, he was really good at baseball.
Select an era, then a team, then a player, and view their basic personal profile along with statistics and an individual analysis breaking down their On-Base-Percentage(OBP), Slugging Percentage(SLG), and On-base Plus Slugging (OPS) percentage is displayed. The OBP determines how frequently a batter reaches base per plate appearance. Slugging represents the total number of bases a player records per at-bat. OPS is a combination of a player’s On-base percentage (OBP) and Slugging average to illustrate how well a player can hit for average and for power.
Dizzy yet? Like we said, Analytics in Baseball is mature. To prevent the graphs from becoming too overwhelming, players’ At-bats were omitted as well as stats that weren’t official during the selected era (like the Sacrifice Fly).
Pitching/Fielding Analysis
While just about every athlete plays a position, except Designated Hitters (DH), it is important to consider a player’s contributions on the field. The third and final page of this application evaluates a player’s Fielding as well as Pitching (if applicable) ability. Life before, select an era, team, and player to see their defensive statistics. We’ll continue with Jackie Robinson’s tremendous impact at 2B.
For many, analyzing the Fielding percentage (FLD/FPCT) is the only way to determine a player’s value at a given position. This calculates a player’s tendency to make an expected out whenever they field, throw, or receive the ball without making an error. Now pitchers, while their FLD is important, are judged by another slate of robust record-keeping.
For pitchers, let’s examine another titan: Bob Gibson.
For this application, a player is evaluated as a pitcher using Walks And Hits Per Inning Pitched (WHIP), Winning Percentage (WPCT), along with their Earned Run Average (ERA) and Strikeout-to-walk Ratio (K/BB). As it suggests, the WHIP is a modern method of tracking a pitcher’s effectiveness in preventing base runners. Similar to the team pitching evaluation, the app illustrates the selected players ERA and K/BB. Gibson’s 1968 season leading to a World Series appearance and Cy Young award, may very well remain one of the best pitching performances ever!
From the first World Series to today, understanding how a player affects a teams’ performance is essential. The MLB History explorer will allow any nostalgic fan and analyst to discover their favorite team’s past and uncover the players that contributed to the team’s success!
2. ⚽ Match Data Analysis
Author: @douglashagey1
Tech used: Snapshot Engine, Design Kit, Job Queue
Link to app: https://dash-gallery.plotly.host/soccer-match-analytics/
Reach out for the source code!
From pitching to the pitch we go. Soccer is notoriously difficult to analyze being such a low-“event” sport, compared to, say, baseball, (goals are few, balls go out of play often, even stoppage time can seem unspecific) but the availability of tracking data and development of technical language has revolutionized the way that teams are able to focus on actionable insights. Watching the beautiful game on the telly rarely captures the whole story.
Douglas Hagey’s app analyzes the performance of any team’s collective movements and assists with the assessment of individual players. Dash Enterprise’s Snapshot Engine empowers users to capture, archive, and share point-in-time revelations — no matter where in the match they reveal themselves. Using such analysis (without the hindrance or distortion of simple video feedback), coaches and managers can recreate match action in order to evaluate unique activities including:
Players’ individual on-ball activity and off-ball positions and movements
Team formations (on attack and defense and offense)
Selecting for whole team movement or portions of players
Animating this tracking data to better understand game-flow, and more!
Knowing where an opposing team takes the majority of their shots could have a significant impact on your preparation for the match. Tendencies related to set plays, crosses, assists to shots, corner kicks, goal kicks, etc. gives a team a distinct edge. The below snapshot diagrams set plays and each player’s action (identified by jersey number).
One particular metric of interest is “progressive passes”. A recent series of articles from the Where Goals Come From Project details how progressive passes are key to scoring goals in a sport where goals are a relative rarity in comparison to other sports. As such, calculating and assessing progressive passes is key to understanding threats coming from the opposition as well as advantages inherent in your own team’s ability to produce these kinds of passes. Additionally, graphing progressive passes allows a team to visually assess whether there are distinct, habitual patterns and actions performed by opposition teams.
The use of highly targeted terms like “expected goals” (xG: the probability for any shot to turn into a goal or the cumulative probabilities of such events at the end of each match) and “passes per defensive action” (PPDA: the quantity of offensive passes before defensive challenges are made adjusted by number of possessions) has proliferated. They aren’t perfect indicators, but they greatly expand how scientists can help teams to study opposing teams, players, and goalies, assess their own team’s performance, fitness, and adherence to the match plan and even serve as a tool in player recruitment. Smart teams will capitalize on Data Science’s advancements in this realm.
The selected data, courtesy of Metrica Sports, really scratches the surface of just how revolutionary this data could become.
For a larger sample of what apps like this can do, check out Doug Hagey’s twitter for glimpses of how access to larger pools of data can be focused into serious advantages!
3. 🏎️ NASCAR Spoiler Design Optimization
Author: @peterdsharpe
Tech used: AeroBox
Link to app: https://dash-gallery.plotly.host/dash-airfoil-design/
Reach out for the source code!
The history of airfoils is an interesting one. In 1967, Lotus made its Formula One debut with the Lotus 49. In 1968, it became the first F1 car to use aerofoil wings to increase its traction navigating hairpin turns. In planes, airfoils add lift and reduce drag, producing flight! In cars, it’s actually the reverse: at high speeds, the increased drag and downward-force are trade-offs against pure speed to increase the tires’ grip on the road.
The future of airfoils is bright and getting faster! Peter Sharpe studies aircraft design, multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO), and applied aerodynamics in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He made this Dash app to help MIT student racing teams optimize their vehicle performance:
“I’m envisioning an app that lets automotive engineers interactively design spoiler airfoils to maximize downforce during turns. I occasionally advise automotive student teams here at MIT about aerodynamics, and questions about this topic always seem to come up.”
In case you’re not, yourself, a PhD in Automotive Physics and Design, below are some helpful hints to navigate this app:
The app starts by displaying an airfoil that shares a lot of features with the DAE51 airfoil used on the Daedalus human-powered airplane. (An MIT-built plane that still holds FAI flight records)
The Daedalus Aircraft 1988 — Credit… John McIntyre
Toggle the first salmon-colored modifier button on the left side to find a dropdown menu with interactive sliders.
Angle of Attack rotates the airfoil relative to the oncoming air. A negative value here generates downforce like a car’s spoiler and positive values generate lift like an airplane’s wing.
Height adjusts the vertical location of the airfoil compared to the ground.
Ground Effect modifies the aerodynamics engine to treat the bottom boundary of the flow field as a “wall”. As an airfoil approaches this wall, lift can be massively altered — this effect is key in automotive aerodynamics.
Streamline Density modifies the number of streamlines that are drawn. (As density increases, calculations become more complex, so be patient as the callback renders on the screen.)
Next, we can also directly modify the shape of the airfoil using Kulfan (CST) parameters (“class function/shape function transformation”: a popular classification method where a design’s physical features and geometries could be represented exactly by analytically smooth and consistent mathematical functions). An app like this cannot account for the full possibility of all design choices, so it was defaulted to three degrees of freedom for each side. However, adding back the complexity here actually requires changes to just one line of code.
Approximately speaking, on both the top surface and the bottom, the three Parameters correspond to: nose curvature, middle thickness, and trailing edge angle (in descending order). Adjust these levels and watch the shape reform itself.
Finally, a text output of the airfoil’s Raw Coordinates (using the *.dat file format convention that is universally used in aerospace design) is provided to the user, so that they can take airfoils they’ve designed in the app and use them in other applications.
Putting all these tools together, we can create everything from the airplane airfoils shown above to automotive airfoils in the following screenshot below. Throughout the entire design process, the engineering figure of merit (lift coefficient, or equivalently, downforce) is given in the bottom left!
Next, after all those numbers have been crunched, calculations made, and design choices executed, let’s examine what happens when the rubber meets the road…
4. 🏎️ Formula 1 Stats Explorer
Author: @christopherjeon
Tech used: Design Kit
Link to app: https://dash-gallery.plotly.host/formula1stats/
Reach out for the source code!
I have to admit, Lewis Hamilton is my favorite Formula 1 driver. He is the first black driver to race in the sport. He’s cool. He’s suave. He’s even got nice hair. But is he good at racing?
Actually, Hamilton is arguably the greatest! Let’s see his and his all-time competitors’ stats with Chris Jeon’s awesome app using Dash Enterprise’s Design Kit!
Parsing data from the Ergast Developer API, this web application easily reproduces thousands of race results, driver and constructor rankings, up-to-date timetables, circuit layouts, and comparisons of Formula 1 seasons from 1950 to present. Ergast’s vast database makes it easy for motorsport fans to visualize and interact with F1 data.
This app goes full throttle and conveniently assembles information not only spanning decades but also scraping current news feeds as they update today!
Seasons
Ever wondered how each driver accumulated points for each race in a given year? The Seasons page visualizes the points progression of any driver in any given year using Dash and a line chart produced with Plotly’s graphing library.
Drivers
With Ergast’s vast database, you’re also able to access the biography and race results of every single Formula 1 driver that has competed in the motorsport since 1950. This page takes advantage of Dash’s DataTable components as well as information from Wikipedia.
Constructors
While Formula 1 may seem like an individual sport, there is also a team/constructor aspect to it as well. This page shows the percentage of points earned by team in any given year.
Circuits
Formula 1 offers a diverse range of circuits located everywhere across the globe -until you’re lucky enough to visit each one, we can access a bird’s eye-view. On this page you will be able to see who has won the most, who secured the most pole positions, and who has the fastest lap time in history at this circuit.
Now, Lewis Hamilton may be fast… But I think this crew might even be faster! Honestly, everything about Formula One racing impresses me. And we can conveniently collect that information all in one place! Let’s speed on to our first of three basketball apps!
5. 🏀 Shot Chart Explorer
Author: JP Hwang
Tech used: Snapshot Engine, Design Kit, Job Queue
Link to app: https://dash-gallery.plotly.host/bball-shot-explorer/
Reach out for the source code!
One of the defining trends in the last decade of the NBA has been its growing emphasis on efficiency. It saw the rise of Moreyball and shot charts becoming fashionable parts of mainstream basketball coverage. The Shot Chart Explorer app maps the league, teams’ tendencies, strengths, and weaknesses and adds context utilizing AI.
The example below breaks down Brooklyn’s offense to separate its tactic-based (shot location) and execution-based (shotmaking) prowess. It shows Brooklyn’s outstanding shotmaking talent despite a 10th best location-based efficiency.
The app also identifies teams’ similarities based on location or accuracy profiles. Minnesota may be a dead ringer for Brooklyn for its shot locations, but they have a dramatically different accuracy profile, as confirmed by the shot charts.
Another look at the shot efficiencies chart above confirms that Minnesota lies about “fifty feet of crap” below Brooklyn, despite making similar shot location choices.
For those looking to understand impacts of situational variables such as number of dribbles or defender distance, a sensitivity analysis lays out an overview for each variable, and how it impacts the shot distance as well as accuracy, for each team, as well as for the NBA as a whole. Does the team get much of its points from catch & shoots? Are they, on average, more open than other teams? You can see it here:
And finally, filtered, in-depth shot charts allow the analyst to get down to the weeds in any data subset as they would like.
This data includes all regular season shots from 2016–17. Follow the links to see what you can find about your team, or configure the constraints to test your basketball hypotheses!
6. 🏀 NBA Player Performance and Scouting Explorer
Author: @_jphwang
Tech used: Snapshot Engine, Design Kit, Job Queue
Link to app: https://dash-gallery.plotly.host/bball-player-explorer/
Reach out for the source code!
In just a single season, the league’s player list is 500-strong. Looking over its history, that number swells to over 4,500. Given all that, it’s no surprise to see endless debates about who player X reminds us of, and whether player Y is more like a center or a power forward. As for the scouts, evaluating and projecting players is not any easier.
That’s where the NBA Player Performance and Scouting Explorer app comes in. It aims to provide an unbiased, structured, interactive way to trawl through what can be an overwhelming list of players and metrics.
The Player Finder is designed to help place a player in the context of the league in its history. The Player Finder arranges all players in the database according to a combination of physical and statistical similarities. Select your favorites, and adjust the weighting of physical or statistical similarities to see what happens.
That’s just the start of what this app can do. Frustrated by the limitations of grouping players by one of five traditional positions? Try the player grouping tool as demonstrated below.
This tool uses machine learning to cluster players by similar attributes and/or statistics, into any number of groups. In the above example, players are grouped by what might be typical metrics for point guards. Once the groups are derived, you can explore each group’s details further by seeing what positions make up the group, and how their statistics compare against the rest of the league.
Here, the AI has identified two clearly different groups (1 & 3). Even though their three point attempt rates are similar, their assist numbers are clearly differentiating factors. Here is group 1:
And now group 3:
And each group’s physical attributes can be put into the context of the league as a whole (see below: left: group 1, right: group 3), and any physical outliers identified. (You may notice a certain 221cm man who likes to hoist up three-pointers from Texas.)
This app can help to take player evaluations, comparisons and projections to the next level through its clever groupings and structured, unbiased outputs.
7. 🏀 Player Video Computer Vision Analysis
Author: JP Hwang
Tech used: Snapshot Engine, Design Kit, Job Queue
Try the demo on Dash Enterprise
Reach out for the source code!
Our last app… returns in earnest to the “eye-test”. Fans can see a lot watching a game on TV. On the court, basketball is a fast game. Even for seasoned scouts and evaluators, it’s not easy to spot differences when limbs are flying on the hardwood, let alone to quantify minute changes in kinetic motion.
The Player Video Computer Vision Analysis app solves that problem by providing pose analysis outputs to any video. Take a look at the clip below, where the app analyses this YouTube video in real-time and adds landmarks to the figure of two-time MVP Steve Nash’s free throw form.
The outputs can be quantified, displayed, and analyzed, to learn how the best do what they do, or to identify your own players’ potential sources for improvement.
If you’re looking to identify the perfect free throw form from another two-time league MVP, see how we can map Elena Delle Donne’s form.
Steph Curry is quantifiably the best three-point shooter in NBA history. Sometimes, the “eye-test” doesn’t lie. Case-in-point: this legendary practice session.
The same app can easily be adapted to utilize videos from a webcam, or to compare two videos. The real-time nature of these outputs makes it ideal for training sessions, or to see if a player’s in-game mechanics start to falter under pressure or fatigue.
Maybe it could even be used to help quantify degrees of difficulties in dunk contests. (Aaron Gordon was robbed, for the record.)
Click the above links to see analysis in action! Or enter a YouTube URL on the app to track your favorite player’s kinesthetics!
Conclusion
1% of humans can dunk a basketball. 1% of humans can race a car at 200 mph. 1% can throw a 95 mph fastball. 1% can hit that fastball 425 ft for a homerun. You and I may only be able to imagine these feats of athletic prowess. Yet it is the power of our mind’s eye that allows us to create tools like the ones we just examined!
Sports Analytics combined with Data Visualization and powered by Plotly’s Dash Enterprise takes what our coaches, players, trainers, and executives can imagine, and transforms it into science. That science can help us achieve victory!
Maybe one day you’ll be able to visualize yourself lifting your team’s championship trophy high above your head for the world to see.
If you have any questions about Dash and what it can do, get in touch with us!
Also if you have more questions about these apps and want a demo, come see our webinar on April 21st. 2021! We’ll talk sports and meet some of the apps’ creators! | https://medium.com/plotly/7-dash-apps-bringing-ai-ml-to-sports-analytics-cb6e7c993064 | [] | 2021-06-28 01:25:12.600000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Basketball', 'Data Visualization', 'Dash', 'Baseball'] |
Six Things We Learned at the End of 2020 | Every year, PACE hosts a series of gatherings for its members and we save one meeting for the end of the year. It provides a way for the PACE community of funders to reflect on the year, assess the state of civic engagement, and begin to put shape around priorities for the year ahead.
We convened our membership in early December, and after a year like 2020, this year-end meeting was unlike any other. We decided the best use of our time together as a community was to engage with this guiding thematic question: With the backdrop of all the crises this year revealed, the 2020 Election provided the latest stress-test for our country. What sense do we make of the health of our democracy and civil society? What can be celebrated? What should be further understood?
We tackled these questions with a listening and learning posture, and over two days, we hosted four sessions with the goal of deepening our understanding in key areas. The first session concentrated on the civic bright spots and the areas of celebration coming out of 2020, with a particular focus on unpacking the electorate that led to historic voter turnout through the lenses of generation, race, faith, and other demographics. The second session helped us be honest about the long-standing challenges that re-emerged this year by diving deep into understanding the influence of toxic polarization/hyperpartisanship and understanding anti-democratic tendencies such as disinformation, interference, suppression, and disenfranchisement. Next, we looked to a panel of experts to help us consider the philanthropic strategies and investments that made the biggest differences this year and what should not fall away as we move beyond 2020. Our last session took that conversation one step further by engaging PACE Members in a discussion about how we evaluate momentum for democracy-related work and how we sustain philanthropy’s interest and involvement in democracy over time, especially as we move away from the urgency created by the election season.
The speakers were provocative and the discussions were rich. As we reflect on this member meeting, many, many insights emerge. In no particular order, these are the six learnings from our member meeting that are sticking with us as we prepare to wrap up 2020 and look ahead to 2021: | https://medium.com/office-of-citizen/six-things-we-learned-at-the-end-of-2020-c71e3517b4c1 | ['Philanthropy For Active Civic Engagement', 'Pace'] | 2020-12-15 15:07:07.510000+00:00 | ['Philanthropy', 'Learning', 'Civic Engagement', 'Pace Updates', 'Democracy'] |
4 Types of Toxic People to Avoid Like the Plague | The Pampered Prince/Princess
I used to befriend a rich kid in my high school who couldn’t understand how people live on a budget. I don’t come from a wealthy family, but I live frugally; aware that I was spending my parents’ hard-earned money.
Our group hung out a lot at the rich kid’s insistence, but she liked to dine at expensive places, and no one dared to say “no”.
When I suggested that I was more comfortable having my meals somewhere cheaper, she pouted and insisted that I stay. So, I said I wouldn’t mind staying if she could foot the bill on my behalf, but she declined anyway.
I then went on to explain the financial concerns I had, hoping she’d get a clearer picture without misunderstanding my intention. Even though we went on to dine at a much affordable place, she continued to show discontent on her face and didn’t stop pouting.
The pampered prince/princess often appear confident and destined to wear a crown. They express the need to be taken care of and are masters at getting others to pamper them or appeal to their needs.
To explain why we might find ourselves doing a favour for them without really understanding why, Greene said, “As children, their parents indulged them in their slightest whim, and protected them from any kind of harsh intrusion from the outside world.”
Over time, the spoilt prince/princess remain lost in paradise. It can be quite maddening to always be on their terms.
A tip that Greene suggested was to spot for signs of guilt in ourselves — If we feel guilty for not helping them, it means we’re hooked to the addiction of playing a pampering role to their desires.
The Rebel
Have you ever met or work with someone who has every reason to complain about their superiors behind their backs, but when they’re around those who are in a higher social status, they sing praises?
Yep, the rebels love the underdog and dislike authority.
More often than not, this type of personality has a biting sense of humour, which is part of who they are, but they might turn on you because they need to deflate everyone.
It’s not that they want to be this way; it’s not some higher moral quality, it’s a compulsion to feel superior — to have the upper hand and feel loved.
Quoting from Greene, he explained, “In their childhood, a parent or father figure probably disappointed them. They came to mistrust and hated all those in power. In the end, they cannot accept any criticism from others because that reeks of authority. They cannot be told what to do. Everything must be on their terms.”
The rebels are famous for gaining attention with their vicious humour when you cross them in some way.
The Drama Mama
Have you ever met someone so cheerful, so optimistic, louder than most people, and have a wit to their humour that gets your laughing over the top?
They are fun to be around, and we often find ourselves drawn into their exciting presence until the drama turns ugly. A person who’s a drama magnet loves to embroil you in their drama to the extent you’ll feel guilty for disengaging.
“As children, they had learned that the only way to get love and attention that lasted was to enmesh their parents in their troubles and problems, which had to be large enough to engage the parents emotionally over time,” explained Greene.
The tale of the boy who cried wolf is a starring example that emphasised the principle behind a drama mama and their need to position themselves as the victim as a way of feeling alive and wanted.
A shepherd boy repeatedly tricks neighbouring villagers into thinking a wolf is attacking his town’s flock when in reality, there’s none. Yet time and again, the villagers still went to the boy’s aid.
The Perfectionist
These are the people who’re good at luring us into their circle by how hard they work and how dedicated they are to making the best of whatever it is they produce.
In reality, they’re wolves in sheep’s clothing, wizards with tricks up their sleeves masked as a normal person.
I once arrived late for a lesson where my professor was splitting the class up into groups of five. Being the latecomer, I was assigned to a group with only one space left to fill.
Among us, however, was a member who spoke with flair, dressed smartly, and knew the outline of our group project ahead of us.
She briefed us on deliverables that our professor had expected of us and even penned down a list of ideas we could go with for our project. Naturally, her leadership-like abilities gathered our trust to elect her as our team’s leader.
Despite our leader’s eye for details and quick-wittedness, she couldn't delegate tasks and had to oversee everything. Over time, I realised it was less about high standards and dedication to the group than about power and control.
Maybe it was because we weren’t as outspoken with our ideas as she was, but I felt like I was micro-managed continuously. It’s as if whatever ideas I’ve proposed were quick to be disregarded too.
Everyone in our group was also compelled to agree with whatever solution our leader thought was the best.
As Greene once said, “(Perfectionists) have patterns of initial success followed by burnout and spectacular failures.”
It’s best to recognise these patterns before getting ourselves enmeshed on any level. | https://medium.com/the-innovation/4-types-of-toxic-people-to-avoid-like-the-plague-7eacddb5f549 | ['Charlene Annabel'] | 2020-12-22 11:01:49.458000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Psychology', 'Personality Types', 'Life'] |
Creating a Force Graph using React and D3 | Creating The Example App
We’ll start by creating a new React app using create-react-app bootstraper. If you have Node.js installed on your machine, just run the following command:
npx create-react-app react-d3-force
This command will generate a new React project. After the project was created, get into the app folder and add D3 and Font Awesome libraries to it by using the following command:
npm i d3 @fortawesome/fontawesome-free
Now that all the libraries we need are in the project, it’s time to move forward and create the project structure:
Project Structure
A few things to notice here:
Under the components folder, we have two components: forceGraph and forceGraphGenerator . The ForceGraph component will be the container for the generated force graph and ForceGraphGenerator will generate the graph using D3 .
folder, we have two components: and . The component will be the container for the generated force graph and will generate the graph using . Under the data folder, we will find a JSON file with the graph data. Of course this data should be retrieved from the server, but for simplicity of the example, I use it inside the project.
Building the Force Graph Container
The force graph container will contain the graph and will be responsible to things like data manipulation or business logic functionality. For simplicity in the project, we are creating it with a reference to the div which will wrap the generate graph and nothing more.
Here is the code for the ForceGraph component container:
The only interesting thing that happens here is the usage of a React ref to reference the container element. Another thing is the destroy function that we will get from the runForceGraph, which will handle the clean up if the component is removed from the DOM.
Building the Force Graph Generator
The force graph generator will be a function that will be responsible to generate the graph. Here is the declaration of the function which gets the containing div, the data for links and nodes and a function to generate a node tooltip:
Now let’s implement it.
The first lines of code will be to copy the data and to get the container’s width and height:
Then, we’ll add a few helper functions:
The 3 functions will retrieve the color, icon, and CSS class for a given node. The last function will add the option to drag the force graph nodes as part of its simulation.
After the previous part we will generate the code that will handle the node tooltip generation:
The addTooltip and removeTooltip are helper functions to show/hide the tooltip with it’s relevant content.
Now that we have everything in place, we will add the D3 code to generate the graph:
The code creates force simulation and adds to it the nodes and the links. It is also responsible to add for each node an icon (this is why we added Font Awesome) and color.
When the graph is ready we will add a few event handlers to handle what is going to happen when the tick is happening or when the tooltip is needed to be shown:
Last but not least we will return the destroy function that the graph container is going to use:
The whole function source code:
And here you can find the force graph CSS module:
The Data Used in the Example
The data.json file we load:
The App Implementation
The App component will run the entire graph. Here is its source code:
Now that everything is set in place you can run the app and look at your fancy force graph. | https://levelup.gitconnected.com/creating-a-force-graph-using-react-and-d3-6579bcd9628c | ['Gil Fink'] | 2020-05-14 13:25:55.028000+00:00 | ['Web Development', 'D3js', 'React', 'Font Awesome'] |
Happy Christmas, To You, From Google Image Search | All we want for Christmas is weird Christmas images. Vantage plumbed the depths of the Internet (spent a coupla hours on Google Images) to deliver you this incoherent message of festive confusion and, in some cases, just straight up festive wrong.
If you’ve got some especially weird holiday photos you think we missed, share them in the Responses field at the foot of this God-awful pile.
Merry festivenesss to one and all! | https://medium.com/vantage/happy-christmas-to-you-from-google-image-search-ee6803bc41cd | ['Pete Brook'] | 2015-12-25 14:44:41.482000+00:00 | ['Google', 'Christmas', 'Photography'] |
Fairy lights. | Fairy Lights.
The most beautiful time of the year is here again. The time which reminds me of the time gone by.
Diwali has been the most festive time at the Garg household, always. And now that the clan has moved on to the individual nuclear setups and each nucleus has its own little stream of week-long festivities, the onset of Diwali always takes me back to the time when the entire family stayed together, ate together and celebrated together.
Fresh flowers would adorn the house, and each member of the family was supposed to dress up in the traditional fineries. The sweet smell of rosewater, cardamom and cinnamon would waft through the kitchens, and the traditional feast of no less than eighteen dishes was prepared on the big night. Evenings were characterized by designing rangolis in every courtyard and corridor of the sprawling mansion. The two-hour long pooja session would be orchestrated by the family pundit, where the cousins retreated in the background playing pranks on each other. Pointing and laughing games would ensue when the mantras and shlokas had someone’s name embedded in them. The girls and women of the family would receive cash and gifts and status of goddesses, even if just for a day; and the little boys would stand in a corner, sulking.
Festivities would continue till late, with everyone assembling on the terrace, lighting up the night sky with an array of fireworks. And standing in a corner, far away from the maddening crowd jostling for their turn to light another sparkler, my heart would swell up with the sight of my own little piece of the glimmering sky, brought alive in my balcony by the little fairy lights.
Times have changed, people have moved on, and that balcony doesn’t exist anymore. But the swinging pretty lights are still the same — the only continuing part of the tradition. Every year, they recreate that magical time when life was a fairy tale, bringing me my own little piece of the glimmering sky all over again. | https://medium.com/a-drop-of-ink/fairy-lights-b623434404c | ['Neha Garg'] | 2017-02-09 08:57:50.764000+00:00 | ['Memoir', 'Diwali', 'Personal Histories', 'India'] |
40 Years of Unethical Human Experimentation in the United States — The Tuskegee Study | 40 Years of Unethical Human Experimentation in the United States — The Tuskegee Study
Remembering the clinical trial that transformed US ethical laws for protecting vulnerable humans. Or did it?
Photograph of Participants in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, Source: National Archives; Identifier — 956126
Two of the most crucial turning points in the development of global ideas on the ethics of human experimenting were the Nazi human experimentations and the Tuskegee study. These happened in different parts of the world. However, their context remains the same, that is: dismissive attitudes towards the fundamental worth of research subjects as humans and exploiting individuals from the weaker sections and lower socioeconomic statuses in society by running grossly unethical experiments on them.
Officially known as “the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male,” the Tuskegee study was initiated in 1932 in the Tuskegee Institute and sponsored by the US Public Health Services. As part of the study, 600 African American men — 399 men with Syphilis and 201 men without Syphilis were recruited. The administrators of this study used vague jargon to educate participants about this trial. For example, some were told that they were getting treated for “bad blood,” which could mean any ailment. Also, some of the participants were not informed that they had Syphilis. The participants were manipulated into believing that the study will do them good, and they must “volunteer.”
The study, which started with an intention to justify treatment programs for African American males, gradually evolved into a project to study the progression of Syphilis in the human body. A study that was supposed to last for six months got prolonged to forty years!
Photograph of Participants in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, Image Source: National Archives; Identifier- 956117
In the 1940s, Penicillin became a widely accepted treatment for Syphilis. But, the participants of the Tuskegee study were neither informed nor provided with access to the treatment. In some cases, they were denied treatment, and their participation was incentivized with free medical exams, free hot meals, and burial insurance. Also, as a “treatment” for Syphilis, many participants underwent invasive procedures such as lumbar punctures, which sometimes led to paralysis. The later investigations also revealed that although some participants were verbally informed, they did not comprehend that they had a highly contagious sexually transmitted disease. As a result, many women contracted Syphilis and transferred it to their offsprings.
United States’ regulations on protecting research participants came into effect after the Tuskegee study. The fierce public outcry following this study eventually led to the formation of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) and the drafting of the Belmont Report. The Belmont Report summarizes ethical principles and guidelines for research involving human subjects, and it has become the guiding principle for informed consent for clinical trials. The IRB is an independent research committee regulated by the United States Health and Human Services (HHS). Its members periodically review and approve proposals for research on human subjects. The IRB requires a signed consent form by all the participants of a research study.
The Tuskegee Study and Its Relevance Today
Clinical Trial Volunteer Signs Informed Consent Form. From NIAID on Flickr
More recently, despite IRB’s existence, there have been studies that ask research subjects to participate in trials when they do not have other treatment alternatives. Some studies offer desperate humans money to take health risks. Although such studies are officially approved, they are as grossly unethical as the Tuskegee study. While informed consent intends to eliminate power dynamics between the influential and the vulnerable, the mere existence of codes and guidelines does not automatically protect people. Nor do they prevent the IRB’s approval for potentially coercive and exploitative studies.
Understanding the context and the history of informed consent is all the more relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic. Like Syphilis in the early 1930s, there is still so much we don’t know about COVID-19. Researchers around the world are trying to comprehend this virus’ behavior in various conditions. And its severity is causing a sense of helplessness and desperation among people. The fluidity in information about COVID-19, medications, and disease progression has created uncertainty and panic among researchers, policymakers, the pharmaceutical sector, and the general public.
When an approved drug is used as an unapproved treatment for COVID-19, it is “experimental” and is called “off-label” use. Off-label drugs are deregulated and left to the physician to administer and monitor. In addition to the use of off-label drugs, pharmaceutical companies are competing with each other to develop new medicines and vaccines for COVID-19. The rush to discover a treatment, deregulation of many potentially harmful drugs, and loopholes in IRB and informed consent guidelines have left room for bypassing consent protocols and exploiting research participants.
Human clinical trials are integral to drug and vaccine development. In addition to the current wave of trials for COVID-19 drugs, more and more human trials are getting registered every year. So it is essential to educate ourselves and each other about developments in diseases and drugs, and also spread awareness about the side effects of off-label and new medical procedures. We should learn from some of the most horrific human experiments in the history of humanity and make sure that this history does not repeat itself. | https://medium.com/history-of-yesterday/40-years-of-unethical-human-experimentation-in-the-united-states-the-tuskegee-study-ca9b94486a33 | ['Sohani Sirdeshmukh'] | 2020-06-21 06:35:12.464000+00:00 | ['Medicine', 'History', 'Health', 'Covid 19', 'Clinical Trials'] |
Data Breach | Photo by NASA on Unsplash
A data breach is the unlawful access of an organization’s or person’s data. Such breaches can have considerable consequences of a financial, legal, and reputational nature. Data breach is one of the three top threats that organizations and individuals should be aware of and protect against (the others are email based funds transfer frauds and ransomware).
Certain cybercriminals devote their efforts to committing data breaches. Data breaches are serious crimes under federal law and the law of every state. Indeed, even an unsuccessful attempt to commit a data breach is a crime. But when these cybercriminals are successful, the stolen data can be used to commit more crimes: theft, identity theft, and more. Our government needs to improve its criminal investigation into cybercrime to bring more offenders to justice and deter this rampant crime, but that is the subject of my book on cybercrime investigations, not this article.
Every person and organization wants to prevent a breach of their data, especially any information that is confidential, sensitive, or personal. And yet some fail to appreciate the cybercrime threats we all face, nor the potential consequences. But now there are increasing legal duties to protect against such crimes, recognizing that many organizations hold sensitive personal information relating to customers, clients, employees, and more. There are also legal duties to report certain data breaches to affected parties (those whose information was breached) and to the government. Every state now has these data breach reporting laws, and the purpose is to ensure the government and consumers are notified when their personal information is stolen. Without such requirements, many breached companies would simply keep it quiet.
Many states (and regulators) require “reasonable security”. That may be a vague requirement, but who can argue with the “reasonableness” of it? Indeed, what organization would ever want to proclaim that their security was below that standard — and risk being called “negligent”? Thus, organizations should focus on attaining and exceeding a level of reasonable cybersecurity, and resolve to continually improve their security program.
If there is a cybersecurity incident or data breach, certain things need to happen. There needs to be a reasonable investigation into what happened, to determine the facts. This can be time consuming, stressful, and costly. As in all areas, facts matter. Was data breached, which data, when, and how to prevent it from happening again. Based upon the facts, applicable laws need to be evaluated. Notification to affected parties and reporting to government might be required. That is a difficult position to be in, notifying others that your security was breached, and personal information compromised.
Summing up the above in simple terms, organizations need to achieve reasonable security, investigate a potential data breach, and then comply with any reporting obligations.
Each state and regulator has their own rules, and that can create some confusion. Terminology may vary, but remember that any rule can impost the above obligations, even if it is titled as a law relating to cybersecurity, information security, data breach, security breach, privacy, and more. Within each rule are sets of definitions and triggers for reporting. At their heart, they protect information which can be used to assume a victim’s identity, but they may call it it “Personal Identifying Information”, “Personal Information”, “Personal Data” or other term, and the definitions will vary.
How does an organization attain and exceed “reasonable security”? I recommend following (my) Bandler’s Four Pillars of Cybersecurity, having a cybersecurity policy, an incident response plan, following them, and looking for continual improvement.
This is a brief summary with some simplifications, attempting to bring complex subject matter to all readers in an understandable and accessible manner. I cite to this article and it is for myself, students, clients, potential clients, and others in need of information. It is not legal advice nor consulting advice, and is not tailored to your circumstances.
This article, plus some additional links and references, is also available on my website at https://johnbandler.com/data-breach.
Posted 11/2020. | https://medium.com/@johnbandler/data-breach-74f8e02dd758 | ['John Bandler'] | 2020-11-23 19:31:47.677000+00:00 | ['Cybercrime', 'Regulation', 'Data Breach', 'Law', 'Cybersecurity'] |
FlightPredict II: The Sequel | FlightPredict II: The Sequel
Predict flight delays (now with PixieDust)
A couple months ago, David Taieb put together a tutorial on how to Predict Flight Delays with Apache Spark MLLib, FlightStats, and Weather Data. For the sequel, we sprinkle some PixieDust onto his original solution and the result is pure magic.
PixieDust is an open source Python helper library that extends the usability of notebooks. Using PixieDust’s visualization and apps features, we provide a customized, interactive, and more pleasing experience than you’ll find in a regular notebook.
Pre-flight checklist
Before you follow the steps in this post, run through the Predict Flight Delays with Apache Spark MLLib, FlightStats, and Weather Data tutorial. At a minimum, you must complete the following steps from that tutorial:
✓ Set up a FlightStats account (REQUIRED! In the first tutorial, you could skip this step, but you need these credentials to run this notebook.)
✓ Provision the Weather Company Data service
✓ Obtain or build the training and test data sets
Once you’ve done that, you can tackle this tutorial, which is a run-through of my Flight Predict with PixieDust notebook, which you can run from the IBM Data Science Experience (DSX) or from a local Jupyter Notebook environment (with Spark 1.6.x and Python 2.x).
Cleared for take-off
While you can run the application from any Jupyter Notebook environment, I used IBM’s Data Science Experience. The first step is to get the Flight Predict with PixieDust notebook into DSX:
Note: For best results, use the latest version of either Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome.
Sign into DSX. Create a new project (or select an existing project). On the upper right of the screen, click the + plus sign and choose Create project.
Add a new notebook (From URL) within the project
Click add notebooks Click From URL Enter notebook name Enter the notebook URL: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ibm-cds-labs/simple-data-pipe-connector-flightstats/master/notebook/Flight%20Predict%20with%20Pixiedust.ipynb Select the Spark Service Click Create Notebook
If prompted, select a kernel for the notebook. The notebook should successfully import.
Fly through the notebook
Run through each cell of the notebook in order.
When you use a notebook in DSX, you can run a cell only by selecting it, then going to the toolbar and clicking on the Run Cell (▸) button. If you don’t see the Jupyter toolbar showing that run button and other notebook controls, you’re not in edit mode. Go to the dark blue toolbar above the notebook and click the edit (pencil) icon.
Go through the notebook, running each code cell.
Install PixieDust and its flightpredict plugin.
Run the first 2 cells, which install and update pixiedust and the pixiedust-flightpredict plugin. Restart the kernel.
From the menu, choose Kernel > Restart. Run the following cell to import the python package and launch the configuration dashboard:
import pixiedust_flightpredict pixiedust_flightpredict.configure()
The dashboard checks the current status of the app and guides you through setup. Add credentials and update incorrect or missing info (x icon) entries.
On the top right of the dashboard list, Click the Edit Configuration button. Enter the credentials you got completing the first tutorial.
To save, click the Save Configuration button. The dashboard updates to show completed data. To create a cell with code to load the training data, click on Generate Cell code to load trainingData.
The new cell appears under the dashboard. Go to the newly created cell and run the cell. The cell output is a PixieDust visualization of training data which you can view in various formats and also download or save into Cloudant or Object Store. Re-run the Configuration Dashboard cell you ran in Step 3 and it updates show you’ve loaded training data. Complete configuration.
Continue through the dashboard, clicking each Generate Cell code to load button then running the new cell that appears below the dashboard. Repeat for each remaining incomplete task, except for custom handler, which is optional. (You can use the custom handler cell to provide new classification and features. For example, you may want to include a day of departure feature.) To confirm that you completed all steps, you can run the dashboard cell again. All entries should show None under Action required (except the custom handler, which is optional)
Train and evaluate the models
Like the first flight tracker tutorial that you ran through, this notebook creates and runs four models (Logistic Regression, Naive Bayes, Decision Tree, and Random Forest) — this time using PixieDust to display data and the model evaluations.
Now that your data’s loaded, go to the Train multiple classification models section and run each of the four code cells. Run the display(testData) cell to evaluate the models.
The pixiedust-flightpredict plugin generates a custom airplane dropdown menu that lets you:
Measure accuracy via an accuracy table and confusion matrixes, which you read about in the first tutorial. Again, you can use this tool to judge performance and decide if more training data is needed or if the classes need to be changed.
See a histogram showing the probability distribution.
Visualize Features (results) in a scatterplot.
The airplane menu is a custom PixieDust plugin created for this notebook.
PixieDust provides an API that makes it easy for anyone to contribute a new visualization plugin, like that nifty plane menu. You too can extend PixieDust with custom features that serve your needs. Stay tuned for tutorials and docs explaining how to code your own plugin.
Run the models
The predictive models are now in place, and it’s time to launch the flight delay prediction application. In the Run the predictive model application section, run the cell. (You can change the initial airport code, LAS, to another city, if you want. You’ll also be able to do so in the app that launches.)
import pixiedust_flightpredict
from pixiedust_flightpredict import *
pixiedust_flightpredict.flightPredict("LAS")
Enter a flight information and click Continue.
You’ll see delay predictions from the models, the weather forecast for each airport, and a flight path map:
From here, you may Start Over to enter a new flight information or Go to Notebook to return to the notebook.
What you can make out of it
Run the last code cell in the notebook, which displays a map with an aggregated view of all the flights that the app has searched:
Click on an airport to see all outgoing flights
Click on a flight path to get a listing of the flights and number of passengers who searched the specific flight
You can return to the notebook and continue to play with the data. See what you can uncover or improve upon within the flight delay predictions.
You are now free to move about the cabin
Predicting flight delays based on weather using machine learning started out as a way of showcasing the flexibility of a notebook. However, with the inclusion of PixieDust, visualizing the data is now even easier. To take it all the way, you could build a user interface and make this a full-fledged application. You can load, manipulate, and present the data all within the notebook.
PixieDust is an open source project looking to improve the notebook experience. You’ll find lots of guidance in its GitHub repo wiki. All are invited to contribute and pull requests welcome! We can have a parade and serve hot hors d’oeuvres… | https://medium.com/ibm-watson-data-lab/flightpredict-ii-the-sequel-fb613afd6e91 | [] | 2017-02-09 17:09:32.669000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Cognitive Computing', 'Python', 'Apache Spark', 'Pixiedust'] |
Invisible Man | Task to the readers before reading through the article Find the invisible man on given 3 picture’s and comment below the article :-
CHINESE ARTIST LIU BOLIN USES ONLY PAINT AND A SETTING OF HIS CHOICE TO CREATE THESE STUNNING PIECES OF ART. KNOWN AS THE INVISIBLE MAN," LIU MANAGES TO CAMOUFLAGE HIMSELF COMPLETELY INTO THE BACKGROUND BY PAINTING THE PRECISE COLORS AND DETAILS THAT HE SEES ONTO HIS CLOTHES, WITHOUT ANY DIGITAL TRICKERY. USING HÜNDREDS OF DIFFERENT SETTINGS IN CITIES ALL OVER THE WORLD, LIU IS SO EXPERT AT CAMOUFLAGING HIMSELF THAT PASSERSBY NORMALLY DON’T EVEN NOTICE HE IS THERE. AN ASSISTANT HELPS LIU TO PAINT HIS BODY-HE MUST STAND COMPLETELY STILL THROUGHOUT-AND IT CAN TAKE UP TO TEN HOURS TO GET EACH IMAGE PERFECT.
Born :-7 January 1973 (age 47) Shandong, China Nationality :-Chinese Notable work :- Hiding in the city
Liu belongs to the generation that came of age in the early 1990s, when China emerged from the rubble of the Cultural Revolution and was beginning to enjoy rapid economic growth and relative political stability.
Since his first solo shows in Beijing in 1998, Liu’s work has received international recognition. Among other international venues, his distinctive photographs and sculptures have been shown at the major contemporary photography festival Les Rencontres d’Arles and he had solo shows at Dashanzi Art Zone in Beijing (2007), Galerie Bertin-Toublanc in Paris (2007), Klein Sun Gallery in New York (2008), Galerie Paris-Beijing in Paris and Brussels (2013), Boxart Gallery in Verona (2008), Forma Foundation for Photography in Milan (2010),
H. C. Andersen Museum in Rome (2012).
To celebrate US President Obama’s visit to China, he made an effigy of Obama in his honor.
He now lives and works Beijing, China.
In June 2011, Liu created his Hiding in New York series, in which he incorporated iconic New York sites into his work.
In January 2013, Liu created the artwork for New Jersey hard rock band Bon Jovi's 2013 album What About Now. | https://medium.com/@qualitydemanded1/invisible-man-6d6a83b86645 | ['Quality Demanded'] | 2020-12-26 08:44:03.112000+00:00 | ['News', 'World', 'Facts', 'China', 'Funny'] |
Why Gratitude is More Important Than Ever | “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.” — Melody Beattie
I’ve been been thinking about gratitude a lot lately. 2020 has been a rocky ride for most of us, and it seems there’s little to be thankful about.
After all, why should we feel grateful for a year that started with widespread bushfires (here in Australia), followed by a global pandemic, lockdowns, racial injustice, and civil unrest?
However, it’s when we feel least grateful that we are most in need of gratitude. Why? It gives us perspective. It’s easy to get lost in our pain, believing that we are the only one suffering, or that nothing good at all came out of our experiences.
However, by shifting our perspective — even just a little — we can start to feel better about what we went through or are still going through. Our circumstances may remain the same, but we are transformed to a more positive place mentally, emotionally, and energetically.
Perspective, Perspective, Perspective
Just in case I didn’t make myself clear before, perspective is the key word here.
However, being grateful isn’t about being a hopeless optimist or a Pollyanna. It’s about being a realist. While optimists pay more attention to the positive than the negative and pessimists focus more on the negative than the positive, realists take into account both. They have the most balanced perspective.
Negativity Bias
As human beings, we are biased towards the negative. It’s known as the “negativity bias”. Our brains are hardwired to pay more attention and react more strongly to negative than to positive news.
Good evolutionary reasons exist for this negativity bias, as negative events — pain, illness, injury, or even death — are much more costly in survival terms than positive events.
Therefore, when we’re going through a rough patch — individually or collectively — we need to work on shifting our perspective intentionally to take in the good, rather than focusing exclusively on the bad.
And gratitude is one of the quickest, easiest, and most powerful tools to help us do that. It allows us to see that something good that came out of our negative experiences.
Seeing Our Common Humanity
Another reason that we need gratitude more than ever is that being thankful promotes many other pro-social qualities — such as compassion, kindness, and generosity — towards ourselves and others.
And that’s exactly what we need in difficult and uncertain times like these. Rather of racing to the bottom, we rise to the top.
According to Dr Kristin Neff, a world-leading researcher on self-compassion, there are three key elements to self-compassion: self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness.
What’s most relevant here is the element of common humanity. As human beings, we are imperfect and prone to making mistakes. By focusing on the common humanity that connects us all rather than the differences that divide us, we feel we are not alone and our struggles are universal struggles.
In other words, everyone suffers, not just us. It then becomes easier to let go and accept ourselves and our situation as it is.
Pro-Social, Rather than Anti-Social
It gives us not only a broader perspective — yes, there’s the word again! — but also allows us to feel normal. It gives us permission to be ourselves, warts and all. We become more compassionate towards ourselves and other perfectly imperfect beings.
In addition to promoting compassion and kindness by focusing on our common humanity, gratitude also promotes generosity towards others.
Think about it, when we feel that we have enough and that our cup is full (or even overflows), then it becomes a lot easier to share what we have with others, no matter how little we have.
Try This Fun Gratitude Exercise
It’s a creative take on the regular gratitude exercise of writing down three things that we’re grateful for every day. I started out doing the regular exercise and it definitely helped, but I also got bored with it after a few months. So I came up with this exercise instead.
It’s basically going through the alphabet (A-Z), and think of a word that starts with each letter and what you’re grateful for about it. It can be anything or anyone.
For example, maybe A is for Apple and you’re thankful for the apple that you ate today, or the wonderful fact that you’re Alive. Or maybe it’s a person in your life whose name starts with A and you’re grateful for that person.
Getting Creative
Often I find I get into a theme without meaning to do it. For example, I went out for a walk when it was raining yesterday. And, surprise, surprise I came up with all the words that had to do with the rain. Apart from the obvious — R was for rain — G was for green (everything looked so green and lush), N was for nature (well, I was walking in nature), U was for umbrella (I was carrying one), and so on.
You can do this any time you want, and it only take a couple of minutes when you get familiar with it. I usually do it when I go for my daily walks, or when I’m in a funk and need something uplifting quickly.
One important note I would add is to stop for at least a few seconds after each word and really feel the feeling of gratitude and appreciation, rather than just rattling off a list of words quickly. The longer you stay with the feeling, the more you’ll get out of this exercise. Try it today!
Turning What We Have into Enough
“The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.” — Oprah Winfrey
Being grateful in times like these isn’t easy. But it’s when we least feel thankful that we are most in need of what gratitude can give us: perspective. It transforms our lives by turning what we have into enough, and more.
And by focusing on our common humanity instead of what divides us, we can rise above our circumstances and become someone we’re proud of — more compassionate, kinder, and more generous. | https://medium.com/change-your-mind/why-gratitude-is-more-important-than-ever-77974be1e96d | ['Annie Huang'] | 2020-12-20 22:51:07.093000+00:00 | ['2020', 'Personal Development', 'Compassion', 'Mindset', 'Gratitude'] |
Destructive Thoughts That I, and Most Women, Have Throughout the Day | Destructive Thoughts That I, and Most Women, Have Throughout the Day
Photo by Jennifer Burk on Unsplash
I hate my body.
I hate my body.
I hate my body.
Why am I so fat?
I’m eating healthy and exercising, why haven’t I lost tons of weight yet?
Does my husband still find my attractive?
Why don’t I look like I did in university?
I hate my body.
My hair looks like garbage.
This shirt makes me look mannish.
Fuck, I’m a fat piece of garbage.
Ew, my skin looks disgusting and puffy today.
Can I fit into that dress I love?
I don’t look like that ‘fat’ woman. I’m way bigger than she is. Does that mean I’m super fat?
Do people still think I look okay?
Do they even find me attractive?
Am I attractive?
Does it matter?
I love myself. I’m amazing!
Hell yah, feeling good.
Ugh, my fat rolls are out in full force.
All I’ll be able to wear from now until the end of time is sweatpants.
I hate my body.
I hate my body.
I hate my body. | https://medium.com/@mleeann/destructive-thoughts-that-i-and-most-women-have-throughout-the-day-d7cb700abb16 | ['Michelle Lee-Ann'] | 2020-12-03 22:54:34.414000+00:00 | ['Body Positive', 'Women', 'Love Yourself', 'Body Image', 'Self Love'] |
Creating empathy with Visualization | We spend hours and hours writing the code, cleaning the data and applying the best visual principles to communicate our stories with data but sometimes the best stories come with minimal code and yet making a deep emotional impact. Last week, I came across this visual “When Children Lack Nutrition” from Alberto Lucas Lopez published in National Geographic and gave me goosebumps. Here Alberto has done the infographic on Childhood Malnutrition and the size(circumference) of the pictures below actually depict the mid-upper arm circumference(MUAC) of kids in the respective regions. For example, you see the East Ghouta region in Syria the MUAC is just 8.7 cm and the circle circumference shown in the infographic is created that size of 8.7cm. While this in itself invokes lots of thinking and emotions what makes it more compelling is the scale on the right border.
Further, the below GIF makes it more real and does a great job in creating empathy for the topic touched here. Deservingly, It also won the Best of Show award in Malofiej27 Infographic Summit held recently.
Here’s another great visualization (created by some unknown artist) on the massacre that happened in Christchurch wherein around 50 people died when a gunmen killed while they were worshipping in a mosque. As you could see below, the graphic shows 50 men & women standing in worship and shown as a Fern Leaf which is represented as the symbol of New Zealand. It amazes me how you could create such a powerful story with a single image without any word — any annotation.
Mona Chalebi of The Guardian Newspaper is another great artist/Data Analyst who does these very creative projects — mostly with pen and paper and yet convey the issue in a very powerful way. Here, very creatively she has done the visual showing the pay gap for different races by using a dollar bill. Imagine how would have this looked like if this was a bar chart instead of these dollar bills. It would have been the same data but these dollar bills adds in creating the empathy for the subject.
I feel working day in and day out with the big data, churning millions of records and creating all those complicated visuals using R, Python, Power BI, excel and what not sometimes it’s good to take a break and take some inspiration from these acclaimed artists and their heart touching creations.
What would you create next? 😊 | https://medium.com/@deargulrez/creating-empathy-with-visualization-823cfabb3ebd | ['Gulrez Khan'] | 2019-04-06 16:58:22.380000+00:00 | ['Data Visualization', 'Dataviz', 'Visualization', 'Empathy'] |
UX Sketching | every surface becomes a sketchpad to jot out quick ideas. Sometimes it’s on the back of a sushi menu, the floor to glass ceilings at the Digitaria office, or the pages of a moleskin notebook.
In the beginning, It’s just about brainstorming. I list out a jumble of words and draw tiny sketches related to what I’m working on (and find the parallels later). Personally, I prefer paper with a grid so I can convey things responsively. Most of the time perfection isn’t an issue and the sketches are just for me.
Even a few plain white board will do, to help examine your project flow
Before I sketch out interactions
I’ll list them out to see what makes sense. At this point in your project, you’ll probably have defined a set of requirements. Use those for when you start to draw out your interactions, here’s what Smashing Magazine recommends:
Explore a variety of interactions and ideas in a single sketch using sticky notes.
Define multiple interactions on one sketch, and then strategically remove pieces one at a time before scanning them in or copying the sketch. Use different colors to represent different types of interaction. Is one sticky note not big enough for your modal window? Add another right next to it. Is one sticky note too big for your tooltip, user a ruler as a guide to quickly rip the note down to size.
Upon photocopying various versions of a sketch, each with different sticky notes, you’ll end up with various distinct sketches.
The more tools you have the better
Think of it as your designer arsenal. On my computer and in the cloud I have hundreds of thousands of resources to help streamline my digital process.
Just a small example of digital resources I’ve been collecting for years and could’t live without
When it comes to tools for sketching you have your typical drafting ruler (analog rulers are surprisingly tough to find in a digital art department!) Your array of pencils, Prismacolor markers and erasers. What do I like best?
My friends over at UI Stencils have released a multitude of drawing pads and stencils to help automate your UX (or UI) sketching workflow. I just picked up a few, here’s some of my favorites:
The All mighty iPhone Stencil
When I find myself going for a “mobile first” approach, I usually start with the iPhone stencils (don’t worry Android Phone , Android Tablet, Windows 8, and Windows Phone users — there are stencils for you as well)
Here’s some of the iPhone Stencils:
This is my favorite combo, paired with the iPhone sketch pad
Since we’re doing such a big responsive design push at the agency (and all over the web) this Responsive Design Notepad is my new favorite thing:
Look at those perfectly paper breakpoints
Low fidelity all the way
This allows your team to take a faster approach to rapid iteration. You may not need to move into Axure, Omnigraffle, or InDesign until you’re ready to present to your client alongside your functional specs.
When you start with low fidelity you have a greater chance of better conveying your storytelling process.
Paper Prototyping as well
The best quick and dirty prototyping is done with any and all materials around you, to help better convey an idea. The image below is showing a “paper pull through” method of a smart watch. Each screen can be threaded through the low-cost device to give the final stakeholder a better sense of flow.
Don’t be afraid to a hack apart kitchen utensils, old devices and shoeboxes (whatever works!)
Some other examples of UX Sketching. All credit goes to Pinterest, Flickr (and a few of my own)
What’s your process?
I’d love to hear how you start your design projects, let me know?
Drop me a line on twitter @moonshinedesign | https://uxplanet.org/ux-sketching-4deda906c915 | ['Adrienne Levin'] | 2019-01-30 17:10:38.629000+00:00 | ['User Experience', 'UX', 'Design'] |
App Clips in iOS14 — Mobile Apps Made Instant | App Clips in iOS14 — Mobile Apps Made Instant
A WWDC20 Swift session walkthrough
Illustration via the Apple Developer Documentation
This article is a short text summary of the WWDC20 session.
App clips were introduced in iOS 14, helping more people discover apps on the go by almost instantly downloading a part of the app to do some task.
Unlike apps, app clips can’t be opened from the home screen. They’re launched with app-clip URLs, which are handled via app clips instead of a browser. These URLs can be either embedded in NFC tags, processed into QR code/app-clip code(which can be scanned or tapped with the power of NFC , FYI), or just forwarded via iMessages.
App Store submissions enforce that app clips must be very small in size — <10 MB. Earlier, applications needed to be installed, signed in, and set up before usage. App clips make it possible for someone to, say, scan a QR code to almost instantly download your app clip to use it, making it an overall smoother experience.
For developers, app clips require the creation of a second application target in Xcode that contains all of the necessary code to handle the app-clip experience. This is native Swift code, written either in SwiftUI or UIKit, meaning you could use a part of your app’s existing code for your app clips.
App clips are an additive feature to apps — meaning you need an app to make an app clip. App clips can’t be submitted to the App Store on their own. They need to be submitted as part of the app review process.
App clips in iOS 14 and apps are mutually exclusive — it’s possible to download the app clip without downloading the entire app, which is the whole point. However, if the app is already installed, the app clip URL will open up the relevant part of the application instead of downloading the app clip.
One app can have only one app clip —the URLs can be configured to open up specific parts of the app. | https://medium.com/better-programming/app-clips-in-ios14-swift-wwdc20-e10bb4280259 | ['Akashlal Bathe'] | 2020-07-10 07:48:54.814000+00:00 | ['Swift', 'Programming', 'iOS', 'WWDC', 'App Development'] |
WhatsApp launches cryptocurrency payment service with Novi | WhatsApp has announced the introduction of a payment service based on the Novi wallet. Users will be able to send and receive USDP, a stablecoin from Paxos.
WhatsApp launches cryptocurrency payment service
As a reminder, WhatsApp is part of the Meta/Facebook group, so the integration of Novi is not particularly a surprise. The news was announced by Stephane Kasriel, the new CEO of Novi who replaces David Marcus, the latter having announced his departure a few days ago.
The Novi wallet, was developed in parallel with Diem, the cryptocurrency initially carried by Facebook. But it is the wallet that seems to have taken center stage: it was launched six weeks ago and is based on USDP: a stablecoin from Paxos backed by the dollar. It, too, has changed its name — it was once called PAX.
Payments in USDP directly from conversations
This is the payment solution that has just been integrated into WhatsApp, for users located in the United States. According to the official website of the project, they can now access the sending of funds directly from the conversation, as if they were sending an attachment.
Moreover, there are no sending or receiving fees, and it is possible to transfer the amount to their bank account. According to the release, payments are sent instantly from one participant to another.
Stephane Kasriel confirmed that the functionality would eventually be opened to other countries:
“The Novi pilot is still in its very early stages, so we made the decision to test this new entry point in one country to begin with, and we will expand it once we get feedback from users.”
Diem is fading?
The shift in the payment service is now particularly visible. The cryptocurrency, which until recently was called Libra, keeps running into limitations. The regulators show their teeth as soon as Diem takes a step in its development, and this despite a calculated distancing from Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg.
Before leaving the project, David Marcus had stated that the company intended to offer Diem eventually, and to integrate it with Novi. The choice of Paxos’ USDT had indeed been a way to rely on an existing cryptocurrency, and therefore less likely to trigger an outcry.
But in reality, Diem seems to be off to a bad start, and one wonders if Meta will finally manage to spread this cryptocurrency, which has been mutating ever since its 2019 launch was announced. | https://blog.cryptostars.is/whatsapp-launches-cryptocurrency-payment-service-with-novi-651988457a15 | ['Paul C.'] | 2021-12-31 11:34:10.001000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'WhatsApp', 'Ethereum', 'Crypto', 'Bitcoin'] |
What I Learned About The Blockchain While Helping To Bust An Elaborate Scam in Steemit | Software is eating the world, but blockchains are kicking the asses of scammers.
If you haven’t heard about the blockchain by now, you’re likely living under a rock. Blockchain ICOs make Silicon Valley bros wet their pants and it’s like a new religion has been created overnight.
Very few people understand what a blockchain is, let alone what a blockchain can do in the real world, but the story I’m about to tell you will hopefully illustrate it.
This is a crazy story I’m about to tell you.
It involves art, multiple identity thefts, the Ukraine, the Steem blockchain, myself and Sherlock Holmes. Well, it’s not the real Sherlock Holmes, but an account in Steemit named @sherlockholmes.
Here goes:
A number of weeks ago, a Steemit user named @elena2017 painted a very detailed portrait of myself. I didn’t know this user as she was not my friend at the time in Steemit. Here’s the portrait she painted of me (as my Steemicide Hotline character). It’s quite detailed and pretty good:
art by Elena Malva
I upvoted her post which resulted in her gaining some Steem, reputation score increases and also name recognition in the community. After she painted my portrait, I began supporting and sharing more of her posts in Steemit. She began attracting more followers because her artistic talent was pretty impressive. Here’s one of my favorites of hers:
art by Elena Malva
Fast forward several weeks…..
Yesterday, a user named appropriately, @sherlockholmes, revealed his shocking findings about the account, @elena2017: it was a total fake. And he had the evidence to prove it. @elena2017 had stolen the identity of a real artist from the Ukraine named Elena Malva and had been posting her photos, paintings and drawings on Steemit for months. But how was my portrait painted, and who painted it? Who was the person holding the portrait of me? Someone painted my portrait, but who?
This is where the story gets super weird.
The scammer had contacted the real Elena (Elena Malva) and paid her $15 to create a portrait of me. The scammer had also requested that the real Elena take photos of herself holding the portrait of me. Here is a photo of the real Elena holding the portrait of me:
Elena holds painting of me
After the scammer had paid the real Elena to paint a picture of me, she posted it on Steemit and milked this thing like no tomorrow. The scammer wrote several posts that glorified me as “Steemit’s Best Blogger” and other stuff like that, which I naturally upvoted.
A quick visit to the real Elena’s Facebook page reveals the disturbing reality of being smack in the middle of an identity theft. She clearly states that she has never joined Steemit, and that someone has stolen her identity and is posting her artwork for monetary gain on Steemit:
Sherlock Holmes had also posted another update to his earlier post about Elena. It revealed that Elena Malva was not the only artist who was being impersonated. The scam ring extended to 4 other Ukrainian artists, and Sherlock was untangling the story behind each one. All of the identity theft artist accounts were tied to @annart, which is a real person. Sherlock had reached out to @annart both on Steemit and on vk.com (Russian Facebook) https://vk.com/id57240151 but unlike the artists whose identities were stolen, this person never responded back to Sherlock.
You can read @sherlockholmes’ full story here:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@sherlockholmes/case-6-busting-annart-s-ukrainian-fake-artist-ring
It was at this time I decided to do a little searching on the blockchain, just to ensure that all this information was correct. Since I had never heard of @sherlockholmes until recently, I wanted to make sure his evidence was rock solid.
How Money Flows In And Out of Steemit
It’s important to know how money flows in and out of Steemit. In order to withdraw your Steem from Steemit, you need to set up an account at one of the cryptocurrency exchanges, like Bittrex.com. Since this scammer used Bittrex, let’s go over how that works.
Every Bittrex account for Steem has a memo identification associated with it. So, each time you withdraw Steem from Steemit into your Bittrex account, you have to use your memo id. If you don’t use it, Bittrex will not know where to send your Steem, and you will lose your money.
The memo id is like your personal address in Bittrex. It’s your identification. These memo id’s show up in everyone’s account, and because Steemit runs on a blockchain, this data is available for everyone to study. This also means that everyone can see everyone’s account, as all wallets and money transactions are transparent. In fact, you can see all activity on the Steem blockchain, even deleted comments.
So, I took a look at @annart’s transactions on the Steem blockchain in order to find a memo id connected to her withdrawal to Bittrex:
@annart’s Bittrex memo:
(notice the memo id: 462ccc1af1f64901aa8)
If you’ve never seen a blockchain before, here’s your chance:
And here’s even a more in-depth look at the blockchain structure, when we click on the raw block data:
Next, I wanted to find a Bittrex memo id from the other accounts which Sherlock had accused of being run by @annart. Here’s a transaction from @elena2017 and sure enough, the memo id is exactly the same as @annart’s.
(notice the memo id: 462ccc1af1f64901aa8)
This means the money from these two Steemit accounts is going into the same Bittrex account. In fact, all the fake accounts: @elena2017, @nellyhandmade, @katrinart and @juliyahandwork use the exact same memo id, 462ccc1af1f64901aa8, as @annart does. The money from all 5 Steemit accounts is going into 1 Bittrex account.
The expression, “Follow The Money” applies very well in this case.
Sherlock went the extra mile and hunted down all the artists on legacy social media sites (Facebook, Instagram, VK.com) whose identities were thought to be stolen to confirm that they were not on Steemit. All the artists in question told him they were not on Steemit. The @annart account was the only one which never replied to him.
It became crystal clear that an elaborate scam ring involving 4 identity thefts was being run by @annart.
I did a little extra investigating and discovered that all these accounts tended to upvote each other, too. This was to be expected since getting noticed in Steemit requires upvotes and comments.
After using the blockchain to confirm Sherlock’s evidence, I began flagging the posts made by these accounts, thereby taking away any monetary rewards they had made. I tend to avoid flagging people in Steemit unless it’s absolutely necessary, as in this case of an actual identity thief.
But my voting and flagging power doesn’t last forever. After flagging more than 15–20 different posts by @elena2017 on top of a regular day’s voting for authors, my voting strength was nearly wiped out. The algorithm that controls this voting strength behavior was created intentionally to prevent abuse from individuals.
In my case, because I’ve worked very hard for over a year in Steemit and gained the trust of many in the Steemit community, I wrote a post requesting the help of other whales (whales in steemit are those who have large accounts and the ability to remove monetary rewards plus lower the reputation of others.) After the news was spread that a scammer had been busted, others swooped in and began flagging the 5 accounts.
Without the blockchain, none of this fraudulent activity would be possible to know for certain. Having access to this immutable blockchain data makes it possible for ordinary citizens to investigate suspicious activity.
This is the real reason why everyone is wetting their pants about the blockchain right now.
This has never been possible before, because money transactions have always been hidden away from ordinary citizens……until now.
But make no mistake, the blockchain does not do the work of busting up a scam ring by itself.
The blockchain is only a tool.
The blockchain is a tool for humans.
The blockchain is a tool that can be utilized or ignored.
The blockchain is only as useful as the person using it.
If the world, and all the people in it stop giving a crap about deception, identity theft, scams, and corruption, guess what? Blockchains become useless. Moreover, if all of us don’t take responsibility for ourselves and society, and always think:
“Let someone else take care of it,”
blockchains will become useless.
One of my Facebook friends remarked after reading about the Ukrainian scam ring:
“Scammer from Ukraine? This stinks because there is no system there that will deal with her. Hope your Steem Team blast her!”
I answered:
“Scams exist everywhere but since all our transactions are transparent on the blockchain, frauds can easily be caught. There is a system: it’s called a passionate community.”
A passionate virtual community means people actually giving a shit what happens to people. I never had a tool like the blockchain before and I admit that this is a brand-new powerful combination:
Giving a shit + the blockchain = radical change to make society better.
It’s quite possible that someone like Trump wouldn’t even be able to coexist in the future world of blockchains.
The best part of this story is that Sherlock and I reached out to the real Elena to let her know that her scammer is being punished will soon become a non-entity in Steemit. Furthermore, I have personally invited Elena to Steemit, and hopefully, when she joins, I’ll introduce her to the Steemit community, so people will know that she’s the real deal. | https://medium.com/hackernoon/what-i-learned-about-the-blockchain-while-helping-to-bust-an-elaborate-scam-in-steemit-88d8580a5967 | [] | 2018-10-03 21:18:01.332000+00:00 | ['Scam', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Steemit', 'Bitcoin', 'Blockchain'] |
Handling Home Life As One Member of a Special Needs Family | On the off chance that your youngster — or, we should be forthright, your better half — has been as of late determined to have extraordinary needs, you may be worrying that life will be more diligently to manage now. In all actuality, it’s going to get a lot simpler. The analysis doesn’t transform anything about the issues you have today aside from that it gives you a substance to a fault — the incapacity — and it gives you an abundance of learning about how to change your present propensities to adjust. Here are some great models…Read More
Set Everything In motion — and in Public
Learning and consideration inabilities influence the two youngsters and grown-ups in one unsurprising manner: it makes their memory glitch, regularly in relation to things that they are the least keen on. You’ve likely heard the expression “particular memory” — for individuals with these inabilities, that is a repulsive truth, in light of the fact that their memory is really specific… it’s only not in their control! So posting tokens of what should be finished by whom (and by when) in a typical territory like the ice chest or the restroom mirror ought to turn into a propensity for everybody…Read More
Play to Each Person’s Strengths — and Admit Each Person’s Weaknesses
Each inability is somewhat extraordinary and drives the individual adapting to it to carry on marginally in an unexpected way. The huge test here is getting the handicapped individual to concede that no, they truly have no capacity to manage cash (or detail work like collapsing clothing, or continued exertion like redesigning the washroom, or whatever.) Once every individual can surrender authority over those territories they just aren’t outfitted to manage, undertakings can be reassigned dependent on qualities, and errands that have no ‘resilient’ individual can be relegated to the family overall to be directed by and large.
Empower Everyone to act naturally Reliant
Every individual in a unique needs family will require their own devices for taking as a lot of control as they’re capable. In a family with a hyperactive kid, a preoccupied dad, and a physically handicapped however officially solid mother, for instance:
• The kid may have a lot of ice chest magnets to move around demonstrating which errands are done and which stay to be handled.
• The dad may have a telephone or other gadget stacked up with a schedule application, a morning timer application, and a rundown keeping application that enables him to monitor everyday undertakings utilizing cautions, once assignments utilizing the schedule, and things like shopping records utilizing the rundown application.
• The mother may have a walker that can be utilized as a stool and a seat, to empower her to do essential work around the house while keeping up the capacity to sit when-and any place vital and get to the high retires for whatever requirements emerge.
At the point when every individual is given the instruments they have to work without consistent help, the desire for independence turns into the way of life and everybody benefits.
Try not to Take Anything Too Seriously
This is likely the absolute most significant suggestion for a family with various inabilities connecting on an everyday premise. Figuring out how to perceive when your incapacity has struck, call attention to out, and snicker about it is the most amazing asset to improve your long haul odds of achievement — whatever your meaning of accomplishment may be. | https://medium.com/@manishjamdagni93/handling-home-life-as-one-member-of-a-special-needs-family-d6ed94e6d0e1 | ['Manish Sharma'] | 2019-10-26 10:39:13.625000+00:00 | ['Hillary Clinton', 'Home Life As One Member', 'Special Needs Family', 'Needs Family', 'Home And Family'] |
32°N - Glasses that adapt to you. | 2-in-1 Smart Glasses Turn from Sunglasses Into Reading Glasses With a Swipe.
They were developed by Deep Optics, a company based in Israel, which claims the glasses are the first and only adaptive focus sunglasses on the market. What that means is that the 32ºN can change their focus to any distance, saving you the trouble of constantly switching from your sunglasses to your reading ones.
The sunglasses come with a classic design and weigh less than 1.7 oz (50 grams). Even though they look like your ordinary sunglasses for the untrained eye, they pack quite an impressive technology, which is proprietary to Deep Optics. The 32ºN have a tiny processor embedded in the temple, touch control, Bluetooth, and a rechargeable battery.
The way they work is by swiping the touch-sensitive arm of the glasses, which puts the processor at work to calculate the lens data for your specific magnification needs. It then sends that data to the liquid crystal dynamic lenses.
Another swipe will get them back to the “sunglasses” mode.
The Deep Optics glasses come with an app that lets you customize your glasses and adjust your magnification according to your needs.
The 32ºN sunglasses are equipped with a rechargeable battery that can run the glasses for a full day of use. If the battery is drained, the lenses switch off automatically, leaving the glasses in a clear state, focused on far distance.
more information click here . | https://medium.com/@Moricika05/32-n-glasses-that-adapt-to-you-add0a2a54b55 | [] | 2021-07-06 18:26:51.081000+00:00 | ['32n Sunglasses', 'Smart Sunglasses', 'Deep Optics', 'Reading Glasses', 'Kickstarter'] |
How to show compassion? | image credit Matt Collamer on Unsplash
Compassion means sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others.
In today’s world, materialism has taken us all in its grip. There are some ways I would like to share my compassion with everyone around you.
RESPECT EVERYONE
We have made different kinds of scales to give respect. We should know as human beings that all are equal. The idea of superiority and inferiority is ruining us. Black Lives Matter was born because of this kind of thinking. Suppose you start believing today that we all are equal. You will see tremendous results. This kind of deed bears its fruit very heavily.
HELP EVERYONE
Suppose you are a boss somewhere or in any shape a leader. You should help others to rise with you.
Even a little help of opening a door for someone is also a kind of compassion. Small acts can make significant changes. If we start helping each other, we will create a society of good habits. And our growth will increase at an excellent pace. Supporting also includes if you know you should help others. If you are helping others to learn what you know, and they do the same after learning from you, the result would be huge.
SAY THANKS AND SORRY
One thing I miss very much in our society is the use of the words sorry and thanks. Compression also is shown by the use of these words. Suppose you have done something wrong or made a mistake. You should have enough courage to say sorry. Your ego should become a hindrance; remember, we all humans make mistakes. But one who acknowledges it raises the chance of not repeating the error. You should thank everyone who helps you. This magic word will incite the helper to do the same again and allow the person to do the same to others.
PRAISE OTHERS
All of us know a human is always motivated by praise for his good deeds. If your subordinate does something well, you should acknowledge his work. If you do so, he will be further motivated to do it again. If you do it in front of others, it might also inspire someone else.
SHOW IT TO FAMILY MEMBERS
Some of our people do show compassion outside their house, but their houses are empty of it. Remember you are first to show your good traits at home. Compassion is much needed in our homes. Modern technology and social media have set us apart from those living in one house. It would help if you used compassion as a tool to reunite the unit of family and home. | https://medium.com/@sajjadwaseem274/how-to-show-compassion-e681bf1edb4 | ['Waseem Sajjad'] | 2021-09-14 09:45:27.824000+00:00 | ['Kindness', 'Smile', 'Helping Others', 'Compassion', 'Family'] |
How to Make A PWA With React? | How & why build Progressive Web Apps using React for your business.
Progressive Web Apps (PWA) have become quite popular among businesses of all types and scales. Here are a few stats on PWAs that will help you wrap your head around their popularity:
Progressive Web Apps witness a 36% higher conversion rate than native apps.
Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) have, on average, 50% higher consumer engagement.
Native Mobile Apps cost up to 3–4 more than Progressive Web Apps (PWAs).
Businesses are continuously adapting PWAs and for all the right reasons. React JS is one of the most popular web development frameworks of all time. In this end-to-end guide on how to make a PWA with React, we will talk about:
What Are Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)?
Why Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)?
Why Build PWA With React?
How To Make A PWA With React?
Let’s begin!
What Are Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)?
Progressive Web Apps are web applications that offer a browsing experience of native mobile apps using modern APIs, design concepts, and best practices using web platform capabilities.
One of the reasons why web apps have become quite popular among businesses is because they offer a native mobile experience without the inconvenience of mobile apps.
Studies show that most users find installing new apps taxing and frustrating. According to a study by Comscore, 65.5% of US mobile users don’t download any new apps per month.
Put this in perspective with another study by Quettra saying that almost 80% of apps are uninstalled within a week, and we are looking at quite a scary reality.
This is why PWAs become very relevant and necessary in today’s market.
When I say that PWAs offer a native app-like user experience, I mean:
They are super fast and have a very low loading time.
Your users can add them to their home screens in no time. In the GIF below, you can see how a user adds a PWA to their home screen within seconds.
You can add offline features to your PWAs just like mobile apps.
You can send push notifications to your users using a PWA as well.
Before we get on to how to make a PWA with React, let’s look at why build Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) for your business at all.
Why Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)?
If you already have a mobile app for your business, you understand that developing it is not a one-time affair. With emerging technologies and user behavior, you have to keep modifying and upgrading it to improve your app’s performance.
PWAs help you reduce this hassle for your business as well as your business. Here are a few other reasons why you should choose Progressive Web Apps for your business.
PWAs Are Cheaper
Unless you are planning to use a cross-platform framework like React Native for your business mobile app, you will need two different native apps for your iOS and Android users.
Getting two mobile apps developed is costly, but maintaining them is costlier! Since the content of PWAs has to be produced only once, it makes it cheaper against developing and creating content for two apps and (probably) a website.
PWAs Are More Reliable
You can rely on Progressive Web Apps for better performance and reliability, much more than your mobile apps. With access to offline features, PWAs make sure that your users have access to your business even when they are offline.
Using powerful APIs to significantly decrease page load of interactive metrics, PWAs make sure that your users don’t face problems like slow loading speed. This, in return, reduces the bounce rate and increases the trust of your users.
PWAs Drive Better Engagement
To redefine its users’ experience on mobile devices, Forbes launched its PWA. As a result, they witnessed an increase of 43% in user sessions and 100% improved engagement!
If you already have a mobile app/website for your business, you know all the pain points — high bounce rate, low average user session time, etc.
Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) help you to significantly eliminate these pain points and thus, increase the accessibility of your business’ services/products to your users.
Better engagement through Progressive Web Apps (PWAs), in a way, means more revenue for your business. Win, Win!
These were the top three reasons why you should use PWAs for your business. In this guide on how to make a PWA with React, let’s look at why build your PWA with React.
Why Build PWA With React?
React JS is definitely one of the most popular web development frameworks. According to Stack Overflow, 74.5% of developers use React to create web apps for businesses!
So, why build PWA with React and not other frameworks like Angular? Over the years in the development industry, we have observed PWAs using other web development frameworks don’t perform as powerful as a React PWA.
More than that, React offers a bunch of super helpful features that make it a perfect choice for your business’ PWA. Here are a few reasons why you should build PWA with React:
React PWA and SEO
If you are familiar with React JS, you know that it is best for SEO and discoverability of your content by search engine crawlers.
React can pre-render the contents of your web page on the server itself before sending it to a client. This allows crawlers to index your PWA which increases its ranking in the SERPs.
Besides this, React’s “React.renderToString()” converts the elements of PWA to HTML which makes it even more convenient for crawlers to index your business web app. To read more about React and SEO, you can visit this segment of my earlier blog.
Better Performance of React PWAs
Before we get into how to make a PWA with React, here’s how Pinterest used React & Redux to enhance its performance using PWA.
React has a modular structure. This means that you can develop and test the individual components of your React PWA to ensure its powerful performance. Besides this, the minimal code structure of React also helps you to further optimize the load time of your PWA even on a bad user network.
Building PWA with React also gives you the power to use a standardized API for cross-browser accessibility.
React PWA and App Bundle Size
One of the elements that can impact the overall size and loading time of your PWA is its bundle size.
The good news is React allows rendering elements of your Progressive Web Page as and when your users need it through Async Import. This reduces the loading time of your PWA and its effective bundle size.
Now that we know why building PWAs with React is an ideal choice for your business, let’s now look at how to make a PWA with React.
How To Make A PWA With React?
In this section on how to make a PWA with React, I am going to list down 5 steps to build PWAs using react without sounding too technical.
Progressive Web Apps use the ethos of “Progressive Enhancement”. In a way to look at it, there is nothing incredibly different about PWAs. You just take a normal web app and add features like responsiveness, offline accessibility, & push notifications to make it a “Progressive” Web App.
It is another initiative by Google to empower businesses and web developers to cater to their user requirements by making their services/product accessible irrespective of the device they use.
Three Core Ingredients of A Progressive Web App
Service Workers
A Service Worker essentially a script running in the background by your users’ browser. Service Workers work in the background to facilitate access to your web page elements that don’t need user interaction, such as background sync & push notifications.
HTTPS
HTTPS or Secure Contexts become crucial for Progressive Web Apps. When building PWA with React or any other framework, you have to make sure that your web page is served over a secured network.
Besides, HTTPS is a prerequisite for a Service Worker.
A Manifest File
Remember when I said that your users can install your Progressive Web App on their home screen? Well, a Manifest File is necessary to execute that. It is a JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) file that stores information like end URL, app name, and app icons.
Now that we know the essential components of a Progressive Web App, I am going to list a basic outline of how to make a PWA with React.
Create A Web App Using React: The first step of building a PWA with React is to create a web app using React. Use the create-react-app tool to get started with your React web application.
The first step of building a PWA with React is to create a web app using React. Use the tool to get started with your React web application. Fire up this code in your editor to get started with your React web app: npx create-react-app my-app –template cra-template-pwa.
From A Web App to Progressive Web App: The best part about the create-react-app tool uses something called Workbox. Workbox is nothing but “JavaScript Libraries for adding offline support to web apps”.This means that you can use the default service worker of the create-react-app tool for cache static assets. The next step in how to build a PWA with React is to cover the other two items from the PWA Checklist — Manifest File and HTTPS.
Since we know that the Manifest file only needs necessary information of your PWA, you can add references to elements like the app’s logo after adding them to the public folder.
For Secure Contexts or HTTPS, you can use Firebase Hosting which makes sure that your web app’s content is served over HTTPS.
Final Words — How to Build PWAs Using React?
If you are not talking about how to build a PWA with React for your business, you are missing out on something big. Over the past few years, the urgency of creating well-optimized web apps that offer a great user experience has significantly increased and this is why React PWAs come into the picture!
Now that you have a basic outline of how to build PWAs using React for your business, what are you waiting for? | https://medium.com/resourcifiinc/how-to-make-a-pwa-with-react-ca0921833025 | ['Praveen Mishra'] | 2020-12-22 12:23:02.020000+00:00 | ['Progressive Web App', 'React', 'Pwa', 'Reactjs', 'Web Apps'] |
How to Craft a Thrilling + Serene Vacation in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico | Tips for must-try activities in Cabo San Lucas that will provide the ideal balance of high-energy stimulation and blissful stretches of relaxation.
Ever gone on vacation and felt the need for another vacation after you returned home? Or maybe, you went away and felt like all you did was lay by the pool, missing out on opportunities to make exciting new memories? If you answered yes to both, Cabo San Lucas has an answer for your wanderlusting heart, as this sprawling coastal area offers a wondrous alchemy of relaxing and adventurous activities, sure to send you home soaked in serenity, yet also electric with the memory of thrilling endeavors.
The recipe for this vacation magic is made up of Cabo’s desert climate, warm waters, posh yet playful accommodations and a platter of activities in water, sand, sky or spa. So if you’re looking for a destination that will strip your inhibitions, and give you a seaside, deep-tissue massage between bursts of adventure, get on the next plane to this land of milk and honey (and tequila.)
Accommodations Tip
Before you book accommodations, think on what type of ambiance you want your hotel to exude. If you want a high-energy experience, search for hotels near Cabo’s harbor and Land’s End, like Playa Grande Resort. Most of the nightlife takes place in this area and is within walking distance to an assortment of accommodations.
For a peaceful environment, consider a boutique hotel or resort further out of town, as these tend to focus more on a culture like surfing or spa-ing. Our favorite is the Cabo Surf Hotel & Spa.
Once you’ve settled on the ideal oasis-away-from-home, use the following activities as a starting point for crafting your thrilling + serene itinerary, as they’re sure to help you and your Cabo getaway develop wonderful chemistry.
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Note: We’re not affiliated with any of the following businesses, we’ve just had good experiences with them. However, we recommend reading current reviews before booking.
Burst your comfort bubble right off the bat by saying yes to a UTV excursion that begins in the wild terrain of the desert, before rolling onto the pristine expanse of a white sand beach. Oh, and there’s a pit stop to visit rare white lions. No big deal.
If you’ve never driven a UTV, no worries, the expert staff at Margaritas will make sure you’re prepped and padded before putting your foot to the peddle. In addition, they’ll guide the tour ensuring you don’t get lost, and have technical support should you need it.
This is a dusty, exhilarating journey that will leave you feeling much more deserving of that poolside margarita and scalp massage.
Check off many Cabo-musts in one fell swoop with this comprehensive tour. Not only are the guides super entertaining and informative, but also allow you to enjoy this variety pack of experiences without having to barter for transport… or your safety. This tour picks you up from your hotel and takes you to a flea market full of local goodies not found in the airport gift shop. If needed, the guides can help you determine what’s a good deal, or if there’s a similar, nearby vendor offering a superior product.
After satiating your shopping bug you’ll be whisked off to a lavish tequila tasting that offers a fascinating education in this prime Mexican export. And yes, it facilitates that oh-so-giddy tequila buzz. (Hint: Prevent the tequila from turning into te-kill-ya by popping some hangover pills pre-tasting, and having three sips of water for every sip of tequila.) The tour culminates in a dreamy sunset catamaran dinner cruise to Cabo’s iconic Land’s End that is just as spectacular as they say. And don’t forget to tip your guide!
Now that you’ve loaded up on yummy toxins during that tequila tasting, cleanse your whole being with a seaside spa treatment package at the Sea Spa that really is perched over the sand and sea, and within a stone’s throw from Land’s End. The treatments you can choose from are just as lovely as their names, which include the Embracing Life Experience, Diamond Life Infusion Facial, and Moon Light to Remember for Two, to name a few. This spa is in the acclaimed Solmar Spa Collection family, and is their golden child — but don’t tell the others.
Yup, you have to. Fear of heights or not, soaring above Pacific waters in the arid desert air is the way to absorb the full essence of Cabo. Happy Flights offers solo or tandem parasailing and launches and lands you straight from the boat.
If you feel nervous about safety, ask them to give you a run down of the precautions they take to keep you safe, and how the set up works. Then, as you’re lifted into the air, keep taking deep breaths and reminding yourself that this experience is expanding your courage and serving up an unforgettable memory.
When Bailey lived in the Caribbean, snorkeling was her meditation, as the stellar visibility, buoyancy of her body in the salty water, and vibrant sea life soothed her mind into a gentle state of reverie. The experience is no different at Pelican Rock, so massage your mind with a mellow snorkel in the natural aquarium surrounding Pelican Rock. If you visit this aquatic wonderland with a private Cabo Sails tour, they will provide masks, fins, snorkels and guides who can ensure the water is free of dangerous tides.
Photo by Cabo San Lucas Beaches
If you’re not keen on the excitement of diving through waves, the clean, calm and clear waters of Playa Chileno will provide an optimal destination for peaceful floats in the ocean. To take full advantage of this awe-inspiring patch of coast, bring along towels and an umbrella so you can savor naps between your tide pool explorations, and snorkel sessions with meditative sea creatures. Be sure to bring snorkel gear.
Tip: To avoid crowds, shoot for arriving early-ish in the morning, and heading out mid-day when the hungover crews start rolling in.
After the tranquil ocean warm-ups offered in the last two activities, you’re ready for the big dog of adventure; a swim with the largest fish in the sea, that happen to be sharks. But wait! Come back! These sharks are known as “gentle giants” and are filter feeders, meaning they only eat plankton, krill and other non-human goods.
To ensure you actually get to see a whale shark, hop on a tour with a company like Cabo Adventures, as they know how to locate the whalesharks, and can instruct you as to the best way to swim with them. If you would like a private whaleshark swim, ask the concierge at your hotel if they can set up a private charter with a boat captain skilled in the fine art of whaleshark pinpointing.
And… DO NOT FORGET AN UNDERWATER CAMERA.
Note: Whaleshark season runs from October to April.
So let’s go! Last one there buys the first round of Modelos and has to sit below the mariachi trumpet. | https://medium.com/@baileygaddis88/how-to-craft-a-thrilling-serene-vacation-in-cabo-san-lucas-mexico-d219719c88a | ['Intrepid Travel Tribe'] | 2019-11-18 18:22:25.097000+00:00 | ['Travel', 'Cabo San Lucas', 'Travel Writing', 'Travel Tips', 'Mexico Travel'] |
First Week at AMAL | This is Ali Hadi, an undergraduate student. I joined the Amal Fellowship this week and since then i am enjoying every bit of it. So i came to know of this fellowship from Linkedin and decided to go for it. The motive behind joining this was to meet different talented people and learn from them. I really believe that learning from others is the best way to grow. I wanted to interact with many extraordinary people and when i went through this program’s description, i thought in my mind “Yes Ali, this is the place” and here i am today writing about my first week’s experience.
The first week was really up to my expectations. For the first time, i realised doing something for my own personal development rather than the professional one. The experience was like no other courses or online classes that we usually take. It had tons of activities and seeing such great brains at one place was just really fascinating.
So we had two sessions this week. In the first session, we had 3 to 4 fun activities. We were asked some questions in the beginning, this was followed by watching a mind blowing video and then a group task of making a figure with limited resources. These activities covered all the domains that my fellows were looking for. From motivation as a leader to team work, it covered a lot of things in such a unique way. We were told about some rules but that too did not become boring at all as our instructors would bring in a COOL activity before anyone gets bored.
The second session was a really interactive one. At first, we played a game sort of thing in which we had to guess names of our fellows. Hadi Bandial did a good job, I too was able to name just 4 to 5 fellows but I really hope we all will know each other after a few sessions. After this, we were given 3 different scenarios which we had to address, this too was quite unique and interactive. Now comes my favourite part of this session which was the debating part. There were two topics , “Amal” and “Khudi” to debate on. My team was given Khudi which we had to defend. It was a really interactive activity although time was a bit short but its understandable as our instructors had to manage all these activities in a very limited time. Such debating activities in future would be really interactive and fun (I personally love debating that’s why saying so 😜). The final activity was to make a life map. Oh man! this was just so much fun and encouraging. Looking back at things which we did in the past, the failures, overcoming those failures and turning them into success stories. The past achievements might be small but the struggle behind those small achievements is the real deal. Kudos to all my fellows for their struggles and achievements. More power to each one of you.
Last but obviously not the least, Thank You Sir Ahmad and Ma’am Iman for conducting such Wonderful Sessions. | https://medium.com/@ali-hadi166/first-week-at-amal-7ed1156dc55b | ['Ali Hadi'] | 2020-12-06 17:38:35.417000+00:00 | ['Amal Fellowship', 'Amal Academy', 'Career Development'] |
50 Cent Makes Millions in Bitcoin — Accidentally | 50 Cent Makes Millions in Bitcoin — Accidentally
The rapper accepted Bitcoin as payment for an album 4 years ago, and forgot about it
Image Credits: Wikimedia Commons
According to TMZ, In 2014, 50 Cent accepted Bitcoin as payment for his album, Animal Ambition. At the time, Bitcoin was trading at around $650, and the rapper ended up acquiring about 700 Bitcoin, worth just over $450,000.
50 Cent ended up forgetting about this investment, and since then, 50 Cent had filed for bankruptcy and was in a tough financial situation. But, as luck would have it, he realized he actually had 700 Bitcoin stashed away somewhere, now worth upwards of $7 million. | https://medium.com/newscuts/50-cent-makes-millions-in-bitcoin-accidentally-479e1dd0380d | ['Rig Saini'] | 2018-01-29 00:05:19.979000+00:00 | ['50 Cent', 'Money', 'Rap', 'Lifestyle', 'Bitcoin'] |
7-Figure Business With Nothing But Emails | Secret Email System Review
Scale or grow...
A digital business in 2020 and beyond...
Master online marketer, Matt Bacak, just revealed how he built a 7-figure online business using nothing but "ethical email marketing" to drive sales & commissions...
Plus, how he did it WITHOUT creating a product, without fulfilling services and without running ads. Ever.
The best part?
He only works 30 MINUTES PER DAY...
...AND he generates sales automatically!
Trust me, this is not like ANY email marketing course or method you've ever seen before...
Matt is known for challenging the status quo and testing everything -- even if it means going against the grain...
In fact, sometimes the best results are gotten when you do the OPPOSITE of what everybody else does...
The Secret Email System is a counterintuitive approach to creating and running an online business, specifically the freedom/lifestyle model, that allows you to build a profitable long term business that gives you the freedom, fun & adventure...
Check it out and grab your copy before the price goes up again...
(You'll SAVE $31.40 if you act quickly)
Get instant access and secure your savings
To your success,
Regina Winters. If you're looking to start...Scale or grow...A digital business in 2020 and beyond...Master online marketer, Matt Bacak, just revealed how he built a 7-figure online business using nothing but "ethical email marketing" to drive sales & commissions...Plus, how he did it WITHOUT creating a product, without fulfilling services and without running ads. Ever.The best part?He only works 30 MINUTES PER DAY......AND he generates sales automatically!Trust me, this is not like ANY email marketing course or method you've ever seen before...Matt is known for challenging the status quo and testing everything -- even if it means going against the grain...In fact, sometimes the best results are gotten when you do the OPPOSITE of what everybody else does...The Secret Email System is a counterintuitive approach to creating and running an online business, specifically the freedom/lifestyle model, that allows you to build a profitable long term business that gives you the freedom, fun & adventure...Check it out and grab your copy before the price goes up again...(You'll SAVE $31.40 if you act quickly)Get instant access and secure your savings HERE To your success,Regina Winters. | https://medium.com/@regwinters809/7-figure-business-with-nothing-but-emails-9498113238c8 | ['Regina Winters'] | 2020-12-22 21:20:33.092000+00:00 | ['Email Marketing', 'Online Marketing', 'Make Money Online', 'Online Business', 'Email Marketing Tips'] |
Mighty Morphin’ Power Morphism | We’re all great
Now, many years later looking at what junior designers create in Figma I’m happy to say that digital product design has gone forward in an incredible way. The resources, the sharing, feedbacking — we’re living in a world where you can always find some nice designers to share your work with. And that helps with your growth.
We’re doing amazing things. Building products used by thousands or millions of people. Stop and appreciate that! You deserved it!
Where did the fun go?
But there’s very little “fun” in it anymore. It’s like Material Design “consistency fiasco” all over again. Sure — it’s pretty accessible. But those MD apps are boring. They’re safe but uninspiring.
And in a way that’s good too — design should be useful first, beautiful second. But the problem with many of these super-high-contrast, useful interfaces is that they’re ugly.
So while they serve their purpose, they’re not something most people use with any joy.
Let’s explore! Neumorphism.
When I first noticed Skeuomorphic elements (in actual UI, not icons) coming back in 2019, I wanted to name that new style, because it was a great way to “open it to others”.
If it has a name, you can find it easier.
If it has a name, you can discuss it. And yes — also cry about the lack of accessibility.
Some called Neumorphism a “Dribbble only trend” with contempt in their voices. It’s almost as if it was a waste of time to try and recreate the look of a soft, extruded plastic in your UI.
Now, even if it doesn’t make much sense in real products (and it doesn’t) that wasn’t the point of it.
Nobody was pushing it at you, it was all about exploration. Because from these explorations great things emerge and we won’t get stuck with another safe-but-boring Material Design product.
The first viral design in this style by Alex Plyuto
We need to try new things and we need to have fun with them. That’s the whole point of exploration, design, and also it’s a cornerstone of loving what you do. Because that’s the only way to excel at it. And as a bonus, loving what you do makes you happy while doing it.
So don’t worry (about accessibility). Be happy. Explore. Make some extruded cards, post it online, and create a buzz! Then, on a real project find a way to combine what you’ve learned with good contrasts and readability.
And you — accessibility folks — chill out. The fact that people are making these is not an assault on accessibility. It’s them testing the limits of their imagination and having fun. So don’t be so grumpy and try it sometime!
Glassmorphism
The frosted glass effect has been around for a long time. Honorable mentions should include Mac OS X, Windows Vista, iOS 7, and Mac OS Big Sur. But the problem with this effect is that every company using it had a different name for it. Some didn’t even bother to name it.
The goal of naming it was the same as before. To create a trend, a hashtag, a way to find other designs done in this style. To have fun, experiment, grow, and try new things.
Smart Calendar App by Ghani Pradita
Glassmorphise!
Mix a frosted glass panel with a soft, blurred color splash and enjoy the way it looks. Chances are, that you’re not going to use any of this in your daily work after a while.
But knowing it and doing it at least once, opens you up to something new. Something exciting, even if flawed. And once again many designers took to Dribbble, Behance, and Twitter and shared their explorations on it.
They’re stepping outside their comfort zones and making cool things. That’s great! Let’s do more of this! | https://uxdesign.cc/mighty-morphin-power-morphism-93e1f2160022 | ['Michal Malewicz'] | 2020-12-20 22:07:50.625000+00:00 | ['Design Process', 'User Experience', 'UI Design', 'UX', 'Design'] |
Is It Bad That I Don’t Want to Come Out Until After Christmas? | Is It Bad That I Don’t Want to Come Out Until After Christmas?
Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash
Even before 2020, when real-life holiday gatherings became actual death sentences, this time of year could be rough for just about anyone. The happiest of families can still face some tension when members of all ages are all together at one table.
Holiday dinners have always been awful for me, even before I knew I was queer. I was routinely asked whether I had a boyfriend, and if I did, whether he lived up to my dad’s parents’ rigid, old-fashioned standards of how a gentleman should behave. I was also asked to comment on recent absurd trends that my grandparents had seen teenagers do in the news, even after I was no longer a teenager.
But that was nothing compared to how alienated I felt after realizing I wasn’t a heterosexual, cisgender girl.
After high school, I stopped dating boys for a few years. I think my grandparents got worried for a minute there. Their only daughter (my aunt) is a lesbian, and it took them years and years to begrudgingly accept her. Maybe they were worried I’d turn out to be gay too.
Then, a few weeks before Thanksgiving 2019, I started dating my partner. I thought she was a guy at first, but she soon revealed to me that she was a trans girl.
She hadn’t medically transitioned yet. In fact, she was only out to me and a few of her friends. To most people, she just looked like a “guy” with long hair. But she really wanted to meet my family, so she didn’t mind being introduced to them as my “boyfriend.”
The rest of my family was ecstatic that I was bringing home a “man” for Thanksgiving, something I hadn’t done since high school. My dad’s parents seemed particularly happy. Not only that, but everyone seemed to genuinely like my partner, certainly more than they had liked my high school sweetheart.
It just felt awful knowing that the person they all liked didn’t actually exist. I knew that if my partner showed her true self, many of my family members would no longer wish to associate with her.
That’s why I’m also hesitant to come out as trans to them.
At the time of this writing, the only people I’m out to in real life, besides my partner, are two of my closest friends. Fortunately, they took the news very well. I was overjoyed that they accepted me, although I’d suspected they would.
Even when you’re absolutely sure that someone will support you, it’s still nerve-wracking to come out to them. Even if someone says they’ll love you unconditionally, coming out to them will put that to the test. There’s always a chance that they’ll reject you for revealing who you truly are.
There’s no question that certain folks in my family, like most of my dad’s side, would refuse to accept me if I came out as trans. But I’m still terrified of coming out to even the more tolerant people in my family, like my mom’s side, my parents, and my two siblings.
I’m lucky that my younger brother and sister are very accepting of queer identities. And my parents are about as left-leaning as Gen X-ers come. We’ve had conversations about trans rights before. In fact, my girlfriend came out to my immediate family earlier this year. So far, none of them have messed up the switch to her new name and pronouns.
But all of that changes when I imagine myself coming out to them.
My parents have always known me as their eldest daughter. My siblings grew up seeing me as their big sister. Coming out as transmasculine would change their whole view of me as a person.
I’ve read stories by parents of trans kids who, although they accept their child’s identity, also experience a kind of grief over the loss of the child they thought they knew. On some level, I can understand that. But I’m worried that my parents would go through the same thing. I don’t want them to feel sad that they’re losing a daughter; I want them to feel happy that they’re gaining a son.
But I know that I’m going to have to tell them, along with everyone in my family, eventually. At some point, I plan on starting HRT and getting top surgery. The results of those treatments aren’t exactly easy to hide.
Plus, seeing my old name on all of my social media accounts has been bothering me more and more lately. Seeing a picture of myself next to a feminine name makes me increasingly dysphoric.
I plan on officially announcing my transition and changing my name on these sites, but I can’t do it just yet. Many of my less-than-tolerant family members are friends with me on Facebook. Telling them I’m trans would be one thing; having them find out through a Facebook post would be absolutely awful.
It’s bad enough that they know we don’t agree politically. About a month ago, I posted a status update that was essentially a shortened version of this story but without explicitly outing myself as being part of the LGBTQ+ community. Basically, I talked about how I simply can’t be friends with someone who sees basic human rights for certain groups of people as a minor political issue.
A conservative family member left this comment: “Wow. Ouch. Doesn’t sound very tolerant from someone who supposedly espouses tolerance.”
I didn’t even want to acknowledge that with a response.
It let me know that these people don’t genuinely care for LGBTQ+ folks. Well, they might tolerate the L and the G, but they probably think the B doesn’t exist and the T, along with the rest of the letters in the acronym, is a mental disorder.
So much for family members loving me unconditionally. | https://medium.com/prismnpen/is-it-bad-that-i-dont-want-to-come-out-until-after-christmas-5792169db098 | ['Danny Jackson H.'] | 2020-12-05 09:08:39.275000+00:00 | ['LGBTQ', 'Christmas', 'Transgender', 'Identity', 'Creative Non Fiction'] |
8 Real-Life Soft Skills Interview Questions Used By Hardware Engineering Managers | Most interview panels for engineers place a heavy emphasis on technical experience and ability. However, if employers want to retain their top technical talent, research shows they need to place just as much emphasis on soft skills and team fit.
“We hire for hard skills. We fire for soft skills.”
-Rick Stephens, Boeing SVP for Human Resources and Administration
In a 2020 SHRM Talent Conference, Talbots Director of Talent Acquisition and Employer Branding Susan Collins revealed that over 40% of the reason that new employees fail at their new job is due to soft skills issues. A survey published in Aviation Pros found this was just as true in the aviation and aerospace industry as 90% of the daily challenges reported in the workplace involved people issues, human interaction, and communication disconnects. Remote work is placing even more stress on soft skills, as infrequent interactions, glitchy audio on calls, and more slack and email conversations are an imperfect substitute for in-person communication.
We spoke with engineering managers at companies from Northrop Grumman, Tesla, Raytheon, and more to find out their best interview questions to evaluate candidates’ soft skills. Below are eight industry experts’ go-to interview questions and the soft skills crucial enough to be put to the test.
Problem-solving
“Draw out and explain in detail a system that you’ve previously worked on (hydraulics, for example).”
-Rupal Patel, Raytheon Technologies Aerospace Systems Engineer
Aerospace engineers are tasked with solving some of the most complex problems in aircraft, spacecraft, and unmanned vehicles. Asking a candidate to explain how they untangle engineering problems and resolve the different demands of a complex system is a helpful way to observe an individual’s problem-solving approach.
“The point is not to stump them or trick them,” says Patel, “Rather, I am evaluating how they approach the problem as well as their demeanor and communication skills. Are they rushing to the answer and therefore not listening to hints? Do they use a methodical approach, or are they unorganized in their thought process?” Good problem-solving techniques require a plethora of other soft skills as well, and this question helps bring several of them to light.
Creativity
“Say you’re given a large sheet of fabric and some supplies. How would you make yourself gloves that you needed immediately?”
-Markell Baldwin, Tesla Staff Engineer
The idea is to have the candidate be scrappy and think on their feet about a subject they likely know nothing about. “The goal is to see how they come up with a solution,” says Baldwin, “if they create the desired item (gloves and not mittens) and also how many supplies they require.”
While engineering is an extremely technical job, it’s also a highly creative one. Engineers often have to come up with ingenious alternatives (and then execute them) when solving a particular design problem.
Business acumen
“It’s Friday afternoon and you just received a new design but it’s not working. You have a meeting with a customer on Monday to update them. What’s going through your mind and what do you do next?”
-Jason Lachenmyer, Element Science Senior Electrical Engineer
Handling customers and stakeholders, whether they are internal or external, is an unavoidable part of every engineer’s role. Asking a question that includes some adversity, such as a failing component and a short deadline, is a great way to expose how people manage key relationships throughout your organization.
“I think one person might say ‘I’m going to work all weekend to solve the problem’ but there is no guarantee that you will be able to solve it,” says Lachenmyer, “You’re trying to gauge whether they understand that business relationships and how you shape the narrative is important.” Cross-collaborating with other departments, staying aligned with overarching business goals, and building strong relationships with customers are all a fundamental part of doing a good engineering job.
Organization and time management skills
“How do you manage your inbox on a daily basis?”
-Yung Wei, Northrop Grumman Director of System Test
In order to succeed on the team, a hardware engineer must be able to juggle multiple things at once while also knowing what to prioritize and what to set aside. It takes a certain level of organization to stay afloat when tasks are constantly being thrown in their direction. Getting a sense of how the candidate organizes their email inbox reveals how they may operate as a team member as a whole.
“From their answer, I can gauge how busy they are, perhaps how important they are in their organizations, how well they will be able to manage an overload of info when 200 emails hit their inbox each day, and what their mechanisms are to prioritize, constantly reprioritize, and organize/archive,” says Wei, “It also offers me a glimpse of their communication style.” This is one question that gives a lot of bang for your buck.
Coachability
“What was your greatest life or career failure so far, and what could you have done differently?”
-Steven Chung, ReJoule CEO
This question helps a hiring manager understand a couple of things: how the candidate defines failure (and success) and how humble they are. If an individual is self-aware enough to know their own shortcomings, they are more likely to not get in their own way once they’re hired.
These insights are directly related to the individual’s coachability potential. “If someone has never failed, it usually means they aren’t driven enough to take big risks, they aren’t humble enough to reflect, or they blame their own failures on others,” says Chung. “None are good in a startup.”
Leadership capabilities
“How do you define a good leader?”
-Ami Shah, Engineering Leader
How an individual defines good leadership often reflects the way he or she leads (or aspires to lead). Whether you are specifically looking for someone who can lead an engineering team or not, identifying leadership potential early on can lay out a career path for a junior engineer that will cut back on future recruiting needs.
Based on the answer, the hiring manager can assess how a candidate will influence their future engineering work environment and overall organizational culture. “I’m specifically looking to see if the person is a strong communicator, able to take the right steps even in the most difficult situations, and can lead by example,” says Shah.
Collaboration
“Tell me what your first steps would be if you were given a task that was completely undefined.”
-Laura Crabtree, SpaceX Senior Mission Operations Engineer
On the surface, this question seems like it’s assessing problem-solving abilities, and while there is some element of that, the main purpose of the posed scenario is to see who the candidate relies on to fix the problem. “My goal is finding out who they talk to, if they talk to anyone, or if they do it all alone,” says Crabtree.
To be as effective and efficient as possible, engineers must know how to work well together and have a team mentality. It’s easier for some to take on a project and do things on their own, but those who bring in other people as early as possible — especially if there are questions — are more primed for success.
Passion
“What was your last personal, not work related, engineering or technology project?”
-Oscar L. Martin, GKN Aerospace Director, Senior ETQ North America Transformation Lead
The best aerospace engineering hires are passionate about engineering, both inside and outside of work. They are constantly learning on their own due to their innate interest in the field. This question helps hiring managers uncover the candidate’s level of investment in engineering, among a variety of things.
“It gives me information about the candidate’s learning skills, creativity, drive, energy, and passion,” says Martin, “It also tells me whether or not an individual is enjoying their engineering role and their attitude towards challenging projects.” Genuine passion cannot be manufactured — candidates either have it or they don’t.
Your next best hire
If you want to hire engineers who perform better and retain longer, adding a robust slate of soft skills questions into your interview process will pay off. Since these questions don’t have definitive answers, it’s important to consider the values and characteristics that you want out of your future team, and to spend the time defining what answers would exemplify the values you desire.
At Cluster, team fit, manager fit and career fit are considerations we evaluate before matching employers with great talent. If you’re looking to grow your team, we can help you expedite your hiring process with interview-ready candidates who fit more than just your technical profile.
Hiring hardware engineers? Learn more about Cluster here. | https://medium.com/@clusterinc/8-real-life-soft-skills-interview-questions-used-by-hardware-engineering-managers-9a70b8b0def6 | [] | 2020-12-22 20:07:09.447000+00:00 | ['Hardware Engineering', 'Soft Skills', 'Hiring', 'Interview Questions', 'Hiring For Startup'] |
The global startup festival “COMEUP 2021” begins its three-day schedule event from its opening… | Photo by Comeup 2021 on Comeup 2021
The global startup festival “COMEUP 2021” begins its three-day schedule event from its opening ceremony on the 17th until the 19th. Under the theme of Meet the Future — Transformation, “COMEUP 2021” presents ways for startups to view changes in the market environment and prepare for the upcoming future in a post-COVID 19 setting.
On the first day of the event, Jeong Shin-a, CEO of Kakao Ventures, and Lee Ju-hwan, CEO of Swit Technology, took the lead in their presentation on “Remote Collaboration in the Post-Corona Era.” CEO Lee Ju-hwan shared his insights on the work environment during the peaks of the COVID-19 era epidemic, the corresponding changes in collaboration, and the future of remote work.
“As the working environment changes due to COVID-19, we need to create a transparent communicative environment that can increase work productivity and efficiency,” Lee Ju-hwan said. “In particular, In order for companies to continue to grow, there must be a focus on developing an open & collaborative communicative environment centred on people and their culture, an environment that machines cannot replace.”
He then mentioned timely changes in the work environment accelerated by the pandemic, such as remote work, hybrid work models with a mixture of both commuting and remote work, and asynchronous work due to changes in working locations places and the increasing number of companies working in one or multiple timezones.
Photo by Teemu Paananen on Unsplash
Swit Technology CEO Lee said,” Protocols have changed such that the personal efforts made during offline work are now replaced by online interactions. This will increase the efforts required by individuals to find answers as they spend more time actively working on how and whom to ask relevant questions.”
In particular, he predicted, “Companies that can take on new challenges without fear will lead the future,” adding, “How employees work with each other will redefine corporate productivity, and in the future, we will have to include ‘communication costs’ between employees in calculating productivity figures.” | https://medium.com/@firstventures/the-global-startup-festival-comeup-2021-begins-its-three-day-schedule-event-from-its-opening-3ed074953428 | ['First Ventures'] | 2021-11-18 07:23:20.738000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Events', 'Pitching', 'Korea', 'Festivals'] |
26 things from my first fit of legitimate nostalgia: a listicle, v.1 | It’s my #RodWoodsonYear, and I suppose I’m old enough now to slip into fits of convulsive nostalgia. Maybe not convulsive.
If this was not in your shop…
Here are some intentional run-ons that are evoked with each aromatic whiff of pie in the oven.
Merry CHRISTmas (if you know, you know).
I miss 5 disc CD changers with cassette players and an FM radio and having an early frustration with irrational numbers of stations I miss my grandmother’s abacus that she gave me IN THE 1990s along with her encyclopedia collection that was 3x my body weight I miss Zomba, Verity and Hosanna record labels and Black chords that disrupt music theory and how Kirk Franklin and the Family used to BUMP, especially during CHRISTmas I miss Alvin Slaughter singing on the same green set for the Mobile TBN station and running around my grandparent’s church after I tried to play the drums and then picking up pecans outside in Prichard, AL I miss Chuck E. Cheese not being a menacing but well-designed rodent and running away from the metal slide at the park I miss Springdale Mall, the Festival Center Theater and Toy Story. I miss ZOOM Kids (proto NPR), Puzzle Place, Captain Planet (really, all of those nations combined to make a Brad?), Nigel Thornberry (colonizers!), Arthur, The Magic School Bus and Bill Nye the Science Guy (proto NPR) I miss The Amazing Spiderman and the first iteration of Boomerang which featured the legendary but directionless Johnny Quest along with Talespin and the prescient Darkwing Duck I miss Batman: The Animated Series, Dexter’s Lab, PowerPuff Girls, Batman Beyond, WB Kids! and primordial CGI (Action Man), Buzz Lightyear and Super Mario on NES; and me loving Hanna-Barbera cartoons but being uncomfortable with the black foot in Tom & Jerry I miss Dollar Tree lightsabers and my Qui-Gon Jinn PREZ toy and my Mighty Ducks toys and NBA Jam/Shaq as #34 I miss my grandmomma’s driveway, which was as large as the Daytona 500 for my skateboard and wagon I miss the Lion King being played during church nursery and fallaciously connected to the story of Noah and the Lion of Judah but it was okay because I had animal crackers and later dominating toddler Sunday School, taking all of the crackers I miss the joy of Black cousins and my first snow fight at Ma Julie’s house for which I was heartlessly used as collateral damage I miss Super Solvers: Midnight Rescue, Windows 98 and being an activist to free CD-ROMs from their bondage in cereal boxes I miss Sounds of Blackness and Richard Smallwood in the purple suit and Donald Lawrence in a kufi and ambient Tupac albums in the background I miss sneaking to watch Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Dragonball Z people defeating Cell, and Samurai Jack I miss my paper bag puppet of MLK for my first Black History Month speech I miss life before I saw the TV set told me about two planes running into buildings and interrupting my story time I miss seeing the world from kid-scale height and my first part/fade combination (#5 on the above chart) I miss the 90’s graphic design aesthetic and baby grunge music on toy commercials on Cartoon Network I miss the last re-runs of Gumby being my cue to go to sleep I miss being entitled to lick the spoon of desserts, my grandmomma’s oatmeal and my grandmomma kitchen collabs feat. my momma I miss my homemade Zorro cape and VHS tape (Antonio Banderas), and my acrobatic skills fighting off invaders being realized off of beds and banisters and doing all of this in my Cordell Stewart jersey I miss my grandmomma’s den, “grannyhouse”, court shows, feeding the birds with my grandad and larger than life, incorruptible recliners I miss the last time, 20 years ago, everyone was together and Christmas tree ornaments being repurposed as invading alien spaceships for my toy battles I miss my grandmomma
*I do not miss Thomas the Train, he and the Claymation were creepy. Who talks to you while they run you over? | https://medium.com/@elijahedavis/26-things-i-miss-from-my-first-fit-of-legitimate-nostalgia-a-listicle-v-1-f0118ab845f1 | ['Elijah E. Davis'] | 2020-12-26 07:01:28.343000+00:00 | ['Mobile', 'Grandparents', 'Listicles', 'Christmas', 'Nostalgia'] |
What You Need To Know About The Telegram Open Network | By now, if you’ve spent any time researching and investing in ICOs you’ve probably heard of the upcoming Telegram ICO that had plans to raise a colossal amount of money. Referred to as “2018’s biggest token sale” by Coindesk, the ICO has gained a significant amount of attention from cryptocurrency media for several reasons:
Telegram already has existing network effects (e.g. they have a significant number of users)
The ICO has seemingly already raised a massive amount of money, more than any other ICO. Tech Crunch has reported that an estimated $1.7 billion has already been raised from private investors.
Telegram’s founder, Pavel Durov, already has a significant amount of credibility even before founding Telegram. He founded Russia’s largest social network VK and sold his stake in the company in 2014 for a significant sum of money.
With all the hubbub around the Telegram ICO, we thought it’d be best to provide people who are interested in learning more about the ICO an overview of it. There are several benefits and several limits to the ICO. This article will explore that in further detail.
To understand the Telegram ICO, however, it’s important to first understand what Telegram is in the first place so that you can understand why the ICO has gotten so much attention.
What is Telegram?
Telegram is the brainchild of Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov. Before Telegram, Durov created Russia’s most used social networking website VK before being ousted as CEO of the company in 2014. Durov then went on to create Telegram.
Telegram is an incredibly popular encrypted messenger app, which Durov refers to as “hack-proof”. Latest reports of Telegram estimate the number of users of the app to be around 180 million people, according to Bloomberg. 40 million of those users are from Iran alone — which makes sense, given the fact that the entire purpose of Telegram is to allow for secret communication between people. Telegram would probably be especially popular in countries with restrictive governments that punish dissent and dissidents.
For example, Russia has taken significant measures to block access to Telegram according to The Verge. This resulted in blocking 50 internet VPN services and blocking 15.8 million IPs on Amazon and Google cloud platforms.
Telegram is still seeing massive amounts of growth; the app is acquiring approximately half a million users a day. Durov appears to be steadfast in ensuring the privacy of many things surrounding Telegram. The locations of Telegram’s servers are unknown, as well as the names of many of Telegram’s employees. Durov also refuses to let Telegram to be bought out by a larger company. He told Bloomberg, “Even for $20 billion, [Telegram is] not for sale.”
What’s the Telegram ICO about?
Telegram has plans to build what it calls the TON — Telegram Open Network. According to Tech Crunch, TON would be a blockchain-based platform that extends its messaging app to include a number of different services including:
Distributed file storage akin to Filecoin
A proxy service for creating decentralized VPN services and TOR-like secure browsing environments based on the blockchain
Services for decentralized apps, smart contracts and decentralized web browsing experiences
Payments for micropayments and peer-to-peer transactions
As stated earlier, TON has already raised more money than any other ICO in 2018 ($1.7 billion) all from private investors alone. This is despite the fact that the original TON whitepaper stated that it planned to raise only $1.2 billion through both an invite-only private pre-sale and public ICO.
However, it seems as though Telegram has decided to cancel the public portion of the ICO completely. There are conflicting stories as to why this might’ve been the case, but one reason that stands out is that Telegram had already raised enough money for TON. Extending the ICO to the public would invite significant regulatory scrutiny from governing bodies such as the SEC.
So what does this mean for most investors who didn’t get access to the ICO? For one, it means that they won’t have access to Telegram’s Gram token until it gets released on cryptocurrency exchanges.
By the time the token gets released on exchanges, chances are it’ll have a significantly higher valuation than it currently does right now. According to Tech Crunch, a secondary market outside of cryptocurrency exchanges has already been created for buying and selling the token. For example, one investor who acquired a large batch of tokens at $0.37 is seeking those same tokens for $1.30. That’s an over 300% return for a token that hasn’t even been listed on exchanges yet! Considering that the current crytocurrency market is considered by many to be in a “bear” cycle, that sort of return is massive.
Although the Telegram team is aware of these secondary markets popping up to trade their token, they claim that there is nothing that they can do about it because the ICOs are not yet regulated and they are not violating any laws.
So what are the downside of TON?
Despite the hype surrounding the token sale for TON, it has also received some significant criticisms from institutional investors and analysts. Charles Noyes, principal at Pantera Capital, has referred to TON as “600 million TONs of crap”.
In an article, Noyes states “Telegram is a nice messenger app but it is neither as secure nor as trusted as Signal… Telegram/TON’s 132 page whitepaper says nothing substantial about the hard parts of designing a decentralized protocol. It is essentially a wishlist of things they want to have, and how it will work assuming that their wishlist doesn’t crash and burn.”
If that wasn’t bad enough, MIT Technology Review stated that “The encrypted messaging company’s plan is bold, but short on details… There are no details clarifying how tokens will be distributed, how the network will make decisions and handle disagreements, and how much control the company will maintain over those processes… although Telegram’s blockchain dream may make sense at first glance, many cryptocurrency experts will be skeptical until the company clarifies how it intends to solve some big technical and economic challenges.”
It seems that well-known VC funds are divided over the ICO. According to Recode, Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures decided not to invest in the Telegram ICO. In contrast, also well-known funds Sequoia and Benchmark decided to participate in the Telegram ICO.
Another potential downside to the Telegram ICO is that it has already seemingly raised a significant amount of money for TON. This means that the token will probably be at an inflated valuation by the time it reaches official exchanges. Many funds could decide to sell their tokens as soon as the token hits massive exchanges in order to realize a relatively safe profit, meaning that people who buy on the exchange would be left holding the metaphorical investment bag.
In Conclusion
There is an incredible amount of attention surrounding the Telegram ICO because of its founder, the amount of money it has raised, and the grand claims that the ICO whitepaper claims regarding what the TON platform will be able to do.
There are definitely some benefits that the Telegram ICO has over other ICOs, such as a founder who already has experience running a large company as well as the network effects that Telegram already has. The Telegram team definitely has credibility in running and managing successful projects.
At the same time, there are also some legitimate criticisms of the Telegram ICO. Critics say that the whitepaper is light on technical details and doesn’t explain how it’ll accomplish everything that it sets out to do. Furthermore, critics say that the Telegram team has raised much more money than necessary, and is taking advantage of the fact that people want to get involved with anything relating to Telegram. This could lead to an inflated valuation and cause retail investors to be left holding the bag
Ultimately, I’d recommend waiting until more information is released for the TON token to see if the team has a technical plan to implement everything that they’ve outlined in their whitepaper. | https://medium.com/blockchain-report/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-telegram-open-network-34edacb062bb | ['Shaun Newsum'] | 2018-05-15 00:03:53.911000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'Blockchain', 'ICO', 'Telegram', 'Insights'] |
We Need More Checks On Power And More Ways To Address Grievances | DISCLAIMER: This should not convince anyone to “go left” or “go right”.
We have a first amendment, and obviously it is great. It is meant to be a “check” on power.
However, one of the “checks on power” is also in bed with power, and drunk on their own power. The media companies with the largest reach and influence are also not trustworthy.
We know that the left leaning outlets are NBC, MSNBC, CNN, New York Times, Washington Post.
Fox leans right. Sinclair Broadcasting is known as a conservative media giant that has aggressively acquired televised local news.
In theory, a “free press” should help be an adversarial force to existing power. But our “free press” is on the side of the power that it is supposed to be monitoring.
The White House Correspondence Dinner Invites The President And White House Staff To Join The Event
In general, the press and the white house should have an adversarial relationship. This helps us know that the press is doing their job regardless of whether or not the White House will approves.
Correspondence can have a dinner. It is fine for the media to want to celebrate their job, and the hard work that job entails.
On the note of presidential attendance:
The last president to outright skip the event was Jimmy Carter, who did so twice — in 1980 and 1978. Richard Nixon also skipped it twice — in 1974 and 1972. Nixon warned the press he would do so and followed through… Nixon, told [his] chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “The press is your enemy.”
When Nixon told his Joint Chiefs Of Staff, “The press is your enemy.” that line could make anyone uncomfortable. “Enemy” is a fighting word.
To put it more lightly, Nixon was saying, “the press is not on our side”. And that is perfect. The media should not be on any “side” of the aisle. Unfortunately, that is what we see when your major networks clearly lean one direction and simultaneously claim that they don’t lean in any direction.
Additionally:
Former State Employees Are Paid Contributors To Media Narrative
In 2018, John Brennan, former CIA Director from 2013 to 2017, signed a contract to contribute to NBC News and MSNBC. He is still a contributor.
John Brennan has worked for the highest levels of power.
And the CIA even has experience planting agents inside of media companies to help control narratives produced by those media companies. Even former CIA officer Tom Braden directly talks about how the CIA did this, saying:
We had placed one agent in a Europe-based organization of intellectuals called the Congress for Cultural Freedom. Another agent became an editor of Encounter. The agents could not only propose anti-Communist programs to the official leaders of the organizations but they could also suggest ways and means to solve the inevitable budgetary problems.
To be clear, I am not saying the CIA-planted John Brennan “inside of NBC” to control a narrative. But also even if that was the case, that would be a secret that was protected.
In a separate case, CNN employs former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA Director Michael Hayden. These “contributors” can’t possibly have an adversarial relationship with the very organizations they gave their lives to, but a media grounded in principles of independence should have an adversarial relationship to government power.
What Is The Solution?
The first amendment and second amendment give power.
But clearly that power for the people is not enough.
But our first amendment has become compromised.
On the side of the first amendment, words are often unheard. Or the words that we use may be heard and nothing is done about it. Even protests don’t necessarily lead to any change.
On the extreme case of the second amendment, we have a right to form a militia, but that is an incredibly extreme remedy to addressing a grievance with the government.
At the time of this writing, I do not know what those are.
Additionally, we would need congress to literally approve us taking away power from them. | https://medium.com/@joe-miyaki/we-need-more-checks-on-power-and-more-ways-to-address-grievances-b54026986273 | ['Joe Miyaki'] | 2020-12-21 19:45:13.537000+00:00 | ['Congress', 'First Amendment Rights', 'First Amendment', 'Constitution', 'Mainstream Media'] |
RIP, caring about employees | Written before about employee loyalty, and now let’s tackle the other side of that same coin: company loyalty.
You can define this term in two ways: it’s either the loyalty of the company to the employee, or the loyalty of employees to the company. I’m going to define it in the first way here, since I think the term “employee loyalty” I linked above is the second definition.
So, are companies loyal to employees these days?
Good Lord no.
But we tend to over-generalize this whole narrative, so let’s walk through it quickly — and try not to over-generalize — and see where we land.
How did company loyalty die?
If you’re writing a shitty college term paper, the two easiest pieces of fruit to grasp at are:
Decline of unions
Generational shifts
There is truth to both of those, although you could choke every horse in South America with the amount of posts recently on generational differences. Hint: millennials right now are just like Boomers in 1968. The biggest difference there is technology. The second biggest difference is how we relate to work.
Here are some other things that happened that we don’t discuss as much:
The rise of stakeholders: Growth-focused cultures create a lot of pressure to please “stakeholders,” but in the 1960s “stakeholders” also included “employees.” That isn’t true anymore at most places.
2008 recession: This hit a lot of Boomers in the wallet, and probably kept them working longer than they wanted to. (As in, they’re still working.) The ones running companies thus became even more cost-averse. Your biggest cost is people. Time to cut them (look into automation) or stiff them (economic stagnation).
We should work better than we do. Want research around that? Articles? Quotes? Subscribe to this newsletter I do.
There’s no logical reason for companies to be loyal to people: Even though the U.S. legally has companies as people, companies don’t operate according to moral norms like reciprocity.
And now about that generational differences thing…
Rick Wartzman (historian, not business/econ guy) wrote this book The End of Loyalty, then went on Wharton’s XM Radio show to do an interview. This part pops:
Corporate culture is a kind of reflection of our national culture and societal norms. You had a generation that came through the Great Depression and World War II and there was definitely much more of a “we” mindset, we’re all in this together. I think there’s much more of an individualistic, “I” mindset that began to set in by the 1970s, 1980s and prevails today. That’s certainly part of what’s going on here.
Heard this framed up two ways myself:
Millennials never seen a World War. (Shit, that might change!)
The U.S. transition from Eisenhower (corn-fed, middle America, general) to Kennedy (slick, tied to mob, handsome, Cape Cod) was when we traded “we” for “I.”
Not sure either is true or massively important, but definitely with high-powered mobile, social media, etc … we’re very much focused now on putting our shit out into the universe, not necessarily chasing empathy.
What are the repercussions here?
Massive, and you could write a series of books about them. Let me hit a few quick ones:
There are more, but that’s a pretty heady start.
Here’s the bottom line: in a capitalism, you typically need a job (or jobs) to get by. More and more people are doing their own thing, which has some value. (Peer to peer economy!) But despite that narrative, increasingly many North American companies are actually becoming more bureaucratic and hiring more people in the middle. That’s good — people have jobs — but ultimately will not end well, because most middle managers have no ROI and, with company loyalty declining, they’ll eventually get sacked.
Hard to ignore the fact that we live in a world where five guys (Gates, Bloomberg, Buffett, etc.) own about as much as 4 billion other people. The game has always been about money and accruing it. It’s never really been about the people who help that process. And therein lies the death of company loyalty. | https://medium.com/@tedbauer2003/rip-caring-about-employees-a97ee6996b53 | ['Ted Bauer'] | 2020-12-15 11:33:12.787000+00:00 | ['Work', 'Future Of Work', 'Employee Engagement', 'Management And Leadership', 'Loyalty'] |
Learning Resources For Junior Developers | In this article, we are going to look into some of the best resources to get you started as a Junior Developer.
Being a developer you feel like you have a bunch of things to cover and learn and with so many technologies it is not quite easy to know it all.
This article will act as a guide and provide you with a background to get you started as a junior developer.
Know the basics of programming.
I would suggest to start with the basics and try out (HTML, CSS and JavaScript). Though you can start with any language of your choice if you are stuck in making a choice I would suggest that. This is my own sincere opinion though.
Decide on what you want to dive into (frontend/backend/Machine Learning/Data Science/Game Development).
Software engineering is a vast field ranging from frontend/backend/Full Stack/Machine Learning/Data Science/Game Development.
My humble opinion to any junior developer starting is to pick a specific niche rather than going all head. Pick a field that you feel comfortable with and kick start your journey.
Where to Start.
1. Boot camps
Programming Boot camps offer a good professional background to get you started with the right mentoring and coaching. It also ensures that you work on a real-life project that will help you understand what it takes to start and finish projects.
Most boot camps are paid but if you do not have the cash for it I would suggest some other best resources.
2. Internship Programs
Internship programs are great in kickstarting your developer journey. Most internships offer you with a senior mentor to guide you through and give you frequent progress checks.
On top of that, you will also be exposed to developing real-world projects and applications that will supercharge your development career. These programs may also offer you with potential job opportunities.
3. YouTube
YouTube has so many and vast video resources and tutorial guides to get you started pretty quick. Depending on your niche and technology stack there are thousands of tutorial guides at your disposal.
To ensure not being stuck in tutorial “hell” as I always term it, it is better to pick one tutorial and only after finishing it should you move to the next. This will help improve your productivity as well as your skills.
I have also benefited so much from “YouTube University” as I call it and much of what I know now is what I leant from there.
To help other junior developers out there I have a channel dedicated to junior out there where I share some guide and tutorials for junior developers.
There are some great YouTube channels for developers mentioned in this article by Sunil Sandhu — https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/5-great-youtube-channels-for-teaching-coding-concepts-ad0aab003d20
4. Freecodecamp
Freecodecamp is a free platform that offers you free programming lessons. What you need is to only create an account on the platform and start. What’s good about this platform is that they also give you projects at the end of every course to test and improve your skills.
With a dedicated person if you finish their curriculum I am sure you will be a better developer. On top of that, they also provide you with the best article and blog tutorials to help you on your way.
Upon completion of their curriculum, you will be provided by certificates after completion. They’re also a tone of other best websites that provide you with free coding classes and guides.
Conclusion
Starting as a junior can be a bit frustrating with so many things to learn and you can get stuck in choosing where to start. You can leverage and start with the above-mentioned resources.
Also to note that all these resources are a great way to start but the key to personal improvement is through practice. Remember they say practice makes perfect, yes that’s it.
Also to note that I have a YouTube channel dedicated entirely to junior developers, how about you check it out here.
Thank you for reading through this article is you found it helpful please share. | https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/learning-resources-for-junior-developers-991f562ec8fa | ['John Philip'] | 2020-12-08 14:11:26.015000+00:00 | ['Junior Developer', 'Learning To Code', 'Developer', 'Programming', 'Coding'] |
What Will Biden’s Win Mean for the LGBTQ+ Community in America? | On November 3rd, America went to the polls to vote for their 46th President. The race was tight between the top two contenders Biden and Trump. A few days later, Mr. Biden became the President Elect and it was clear that America had spoken in favor of love and empathy. As many come to terms with Biden’s win, the LGBTQ+ community is eager to see if the new President will keep his promises to them.
During his campaign, Biden had promised to make the Equality Act one of his top priorities in his first 100 days in office. Biden, who is a big champion of LGBTQ+ rights, has spoken countlessly on how he is not only an ally but a true advocate for equality. His devotion to change was seen when he chose Kamala Harris as his running mate back in October.
Kamala Harris is a well-known ally of the LGBTQ+ community and has a good record when it comes to championing human rights. She has spoken on the violence against trans women of color and has called for serious consequences and accountability as a way to combat the epidemic of violence against trans women.
During her career as a Californian Attorney General, she refused to defend the state’s ban on same-sex marriages. Once the Supreme Court struck the proposition down, she was the first to officiate a same-sex wedding. She also blocked the “kill the gays” initiative which called for lawful killing of LGBTQ+ people. She also silently worked with the California Department of Corrections to change its policy regarding trans inmates’ surgeries. As a Senator, she advocated for the trans-people rights to use their bathroom of choice and co-sponsored the Equality Act.
Biden has his own strong record when it comes to being an LGBTQ+ ally. In May 2012, he became the highest ranking Democrat to endorse the same-sex marriage. As the Vice President during Obama’s eight years in office, he helped Obama to lead a diverse administration which championed for LGBTQ+ equality globally. He was one of the first to support trans rights and for the past eight years, he has made LGBTQ+ equality one of the pillars of his public service. It is clear that he is intent on ensuring everyone is protected against discrimination and hate crimes.
Now, America has two LGBTQ+ allies in the top positions of government. How exactly will this historic move help the LGBTQ+ community? Many pray that it means that the LGBTQ+ community will finally stop looking anxiously back, but rather confidently forward. Many hope that LGBTQ+ people and all marginalised Americans will now begin the journey to safety, equality and acceptance. They expect that Biden will get to work immediately to undo some of the negative policies that Trump’s administration passed in regard to the LGBTQ+ community. Biden stated from the onset of his campaign that he will build on the Obama-Biden successes and repair the damage wrought by the Trump-Pence Administration’s treatment of LGBTQ+ Americans, which signals a tolerance for abuses by other countries, and its utter failure to defend American diplomats who speak out for LGBTQ+ rights abroad.
Biden also spoke on nominating and appointing federal judges who will work to protect LGBTQ+ civil rights, reverse the transgender military ban, and direct resources to end the epidemic of violence against transgender women of color. He is also intent on passing the Equality Act and ensuring that no future president can ever again roll back civil rights and protections for LGBTQ+ individuals, including when it comes to housing.
All this is great news for the LGBTQ+ community, which has suffered a lot in the past — especially during Trump’s administration. We hope that Biden will face little or no opposition when it comes to the new LGBTQ+ policies he intends to pass during his first 100 days in office. He and Kamala make a great team and their legacy as LGBTQ+ allies is one of the things that LGBTQ+ community across America will come to appreciate in the future. As Kamala said, their win is about more than them. It is about bringing America together and undoing the wrongs made in the past to create a haven for all. | https://medium.com/matthews-place/what-will-bidens-win-mean-for-the-lgbtq-community-in-america-f4c21030d200 | [] | 2020-11-10 17:42:35.884000+00:00 | ['LGBTQ', 'Joe Biden', 'Kamala Harris', 'Civil Rights', 'Election 2020'] |
Is SparkToro the Answer to Understanding Your Audience? | Is SparkToro the Answer to Understanding Your Audience?
A review of Rand Fishkin’s latest tool.
How well do you know your audience? Even in the best of times, marketers and sales teams are continually working to increase trust, conversions, and more. The core of doing this well is through audience understanding. Knowing your target audience’s pain points, needs, and online behavior fuels strategic plans to not only reach potential customers but provide them with a service or product that feels so needed that it no longer feels like a sales pitch. It feels meant for them. That is the power of aligning with your audience.
But how on earth do you get to that place? Social listening and audience research offer the opportunity to find out how your audience is talking about you, your competitors, industry, and more as well as getting information through social media as well as through surveys. The problem is that audience research has innate biases based on hoping that those who participate are honest in their survey answers, and that also doesn’t showcase a full breakdown of other correlations you might find interest.
As an advocate for social listening, I see the priceless nature of brands being able to dive into conversations, to hear directly from consumers — focusing efforts to ensure they are truly customer-centric and creating the best possible experience. Audience research is the perfect supplement to these efforts, offering the missing piece, so you have a complete audience POV. While social listening has advancing tools, metrics, and dashboards, market research feels more antiquated. Here comes SparkToro to the rescue with audience intelligence.
What does your audience do online?
A screenshot of the audience insights search dashboard in SparkToro.
Moz founder Rand Fishkin’s latest tool feels like the perfect progression project from the SEO thought leader. With his original work through Moz, he educated future SEOs through his White Board Friday series in addition to his tools to help aid optimization. This new tool takes the importance of data to improve the content and shifts it into how the consumers live online. When someone is talking about a specific keyword, or they follow a particular social media account, what do they have in common with others doing the same thing?
What hashtags are used most by those who talk about marketing?
SparkToro can supplement the information you gain from social listening and creates a full digital ecosystem view. Not only are you able to see what hashtags are used by those who are talking about specific keywords, but it also shares what social accounts, websites, podcasts, and YouTube channels are also followed.
Which YouTube channels are “marketing” audiences subscribing to?
What do I do with this?
With this information, you can have a better understanding of what keywords to use in content, who you could reach out to for partnerships or sponsored features. You can see your target customers through their digital touchpoints. Many marketers would argue that it is crucial to be where your target audience is, and they leave it at the social channel level. If your audience is on Twitter, you need to be on Twitter, etc. You need to go deeper. As more and more brands go digital, being there isn’t enough. You need to place your content on the platform strategically, so it isn’t just there, but it’s seen and engaged with. Knowing how and who your audience engages with provides the needed data to position your content where it is most likely to create impact.
While testing the tool, I searched for keywords as well as social accounts to dive into what exactly is provided. As a digital marketer, I immediately started with a search for “marketing” to see if other uses acted like me. Would I be surprised by the findings? The dashboard loaded quicky and offered a left menu where I could choose between an overview versus a social, websites, podcasts, and YouTube channels dashboards. In addition to the data, it offered quick spreadsheet downloads of findings for the channel-specific data.
Where are these “marketing” audiences?
For those wanting a tool that offers a clean interface with robust data options that don’t overwhelm, SparkToro offers an audience research option that gets that today’s consumers are online. Instead of administering tedious surveys, hoping you get enough nonbiased data, this tool crawls to find out what people are doing and talking about online. The data exists and creates the needed ingredients to inform future strategies.
Have multiple audiences? You can create lists and make sure you can see the data showcase how they live online. Want to compare? SparkToro lets you compare audiences to see just how different they are as well as provide the opportunity to find correlations if they exist.
How can marketers use this to improve their audience reach?
Create a list of keywords: What would your audience search for if they wanted your product or service? What are the topics you talk about in your marketing?
Use SparkToro to search for these keywords. Now look at the journalism questions: Who, what, why, when, and how. What can you learn about your audience based on their online behavior?
Look at the accounts they follow, the websites they visit, the podcasts they listen to, and the YouTube channels they subscribe to. Now you know where “they live” online.
Look for commonalities and opportunities. Do you have anything in common with the current accounts/brands they are engaging with? How is their content similar? Different? What value do they offer to the people who follow them?
Know your value. What do you offer for people who like and follow you? What do they gain? There is an obscene amount of content pushed out digitally. How are you different and able to provide value is crucial to maximizing not only your following and engagement but your relationship with each person who sees your content.
Collaborate and form strategic partnerships. Now that you know where your target audience is spending their time, see who could be a great collaborative partner. You could sponsor a podcast, guest write on their blog, collaborate on a webinar. Find opportunities to work and “share” awareness with each other.
You have to care. Optimization and research can take time but in the end you need to want to be better not just for the metrics but for your audience. They can tell when you want to grow with them vs just wanted a check.
We are making more and more decisions online, and that data is driving a more personalized experience. With tools like SparkToro, marketers are empowered to make future decisions based on the audience they want to reach. This tool takes out a lot of the guesswork as well as the tedious nature of traditional market and audience research. If you wish for your online audience to find you, you need to understand them first. SparkToro is a great place to start on that path towards deeper audience understanding.
It seems Rand has moved from search engine optimization to content marketing optimization. As a lover of data, I’m glad to see he’s leading the way.
Disclaimer: I received press review access to try out SparkToro for this review. | https://medium.com/digital-vault/is-sparktoro-the-answer-to-understanding-your-audience-ec5a6ea8722f | ['Christina Garnett'] | 2020-05-02 13:43:22.072000+00:00 | ['Social Listening', 'Marketing', 'Research', 'Digital Marketing', 'Social Media'] |
Combining React, Firebase and TypeScript with zero boilerplate. | The problem: mixing apples with oranges
Building full-stack applications with JavaScript in 2019 often requires integrating at least 3 or 4 pieces:
a framework to manage your visual components, e.g. React;
a framework to manage your application’s state, e.g. Redux;
a backend solution for your data and authentication, e.g. Firebase; and
if you like catching bugs at compile time, a type-system like TypeScript
A few solutions have been proposed to manage most of the above combination, such as the react-redux-firebase library on GitHub. But after 700+ commits from 80+ contributors (and even the much welcomed introduction of React Hooks), this library has not yet managed to provide a truly simple and intuitive developer experience, and we don’t think it can.
The core of the problem, in our opinion, is that a React/Redux/Firebase stack will always end up mixing very different patterns and computational paradigms for manipulating data:
🍏 React is processing data with synchronous functions , which are typically evaluated multiple times as the data is loaded and modified,
, which are typically as the data is loaded and modified, 🍊Redux doesn’t let you just call functions, but instead forces you to dispatch actions which modify data using reducers that are typically evaluated a single time.
which modify data using reducers that are typically 🍏 Because redux itself doesn’t have built-in support for asynchronous effects, you’ll probably introduce the concept of thunks (with redux-thunks) or sagas (with redux-sagas)
(with redux-thunks) or (with redux-sagas) 🍊Or you might have replaced redux by an alternative, thus introducing yet more concepts such as observables (e.g. MobX) or streams (e.g. Rx)
(e.g. MobX) or (e.g. Rx) 🍏 The interaction with Firebase relies on asynchronous functions , and the real-time data from Firestore is updated multiple times using subscriptions
, and the real-time data from Firestore is updated multiple times using 🍊React Hooks may then be used to try and simplify a lot of the above, but they rely on yet another paradigm. Hooks are intuitively a form of dependency injection, and they typically handle the asynchronous nature of side effects using callback functions.
This is a huge technical mess, and is a very typical example of “framework fatigue”, something that is only getting worse in the JavaScript world. It is not an intuitive way to build applications, and forces beginners to deal with a steep learning curve. And it’s also a real-world problem for experts; writing code takes longer because of the boilerplate, reviewing code takes longer because of the general awkwardness and inconsistency, and writing tests is very cumbersome — meaning that you probably won’t write that many. And on top of all that, getting useful feedback from TypeScript is hopeless because most of the data coming from Firestore won’t be typed.
The solution: rethinking state management
We believe the problem of inconsistent patterns and paradigms can only be tackled by changing the layer that ties every thing together: the state management layer. A lot of simplicity can be achieved by reinventing state management with the right priorities in mind. In particular, we think that a good solution should:
Provide (most of) the same benefits as Redux, without the boilerplate and unnecessary abstractions (we’ll typically rely on proxies and/or transpilation to achieve this). Drastically simplify the computational model to keep it in line with React (based on synchronous functions, evaluated multiple times). Allow users to integrate backend technologies like Firebase by adding a “plugin” (in contrast to Redux’s middleware system, which is very low-level). Enable maximal TypeScript inference by design (meaning that you define your schema once, and then TypeScript infers all your types, without requiring manual annotations).
Replacing Redux is quite an ambitious task — we’re talking about a library with 50k+ stars on GitHub, and more than 3M weekly downloads on npm. And we’re also not the first developers interested in replacing Redux (we found about ~100 related libraries on GitHub). But we haven’t found any attempt that followed the same priorities.
You might also have encountered dozens of “Redux is dead” blog posts on Medium in the last few months, often making the argument that GraphQL and/or React Hooks can help you get rid of Redux. But we found no real evidence of this outside of toy examples of apps. Hooks only provide a more convenient syntax to deal with React state or React context, but they’ve not drastically changed state management. Neither Hooks nor GraphQL have truly replaced Redux — they only let you reduce the amount of Redux needed in your application. That’s why we believe that state management remains a problem worth digging into.
Show me some code!
DISCLAIMER: We’re still experimenting with different options and invite you to check our repo to see what our framework looks like today. But we would also love your feedback (on Slack or in the comments below this article) on the syntax and architecture that we’re envisioning for the long term, which is outlined below.
Step 1: Define your data models
Prodo will give you a function dataModel parameterised by a type definition and a list of plugins. You’ll then be able to export variables such as state (the redux-state of your app), auth (the authentication data, automatically pulled from Firebase) and db (automatically synced with Firestore) which can be used directly in your action definitions. You’ll also be able to export a hook called useData to use (and watch changes in) the data in your React components.
Note in the above that we’re not exporting any type definition, because we won’t need any in the other files. That’s because we’ll be able to infer everything from the types of db, state, auth and useData.
Step 2: Define your actions
Prodo actions will be defined as plain old JavaScript functions and those function will be able to use mutation operations to modify data in your state and your database, as if they consisted of in-memory JSON objects. But this is obviously an abstraction.
Under the hood, we’ll use immer.js to implement copy-on-write semantics and keep track of data changes in a non-destructive way (thus making time travel debugging possible). We’ll also rely on dynamic binding to map state and db to the current execution context of each action. Intuitively, this means that an expression such as state.roomId will in fact evaluate to window.currentProdoContext.state.foo. This global variable currentProdoContext will then need to be to swapped when different actions start and terminate, by we’ll be able to do this in a reliable way as long as long as actions remain synchronous.
Note however that keeping actions syncrhonous doesn’t prevent us from using asynchronous effects, although this will also require special care. In particular, if the newId function in the above snippet was fetching some remote data, it would first need to throw an error saying “I’m not ready yet!”, and the action will need to be restarted from the top when the data does come in.
Those are only some of the technical details that will need to be addressed, but this was hopefully enough to give you an idea of how we want to bring the computational model closer to React’s model, using only synchronous functions, and allowing to re-evaluate these functions multiple times until all the data is ready and the computed patched can be applied.
Step 3: Using your data and actions from React
After defining our data models and our actions, we will then use them directly in React with the (typed) hooks that we have exported:
Here is what a Message component would look like:
Here is what a RoomSelector component (with a controlled input) would look like:
Here is what a PostMessage component would look like:
Finally, here is what our chat application will look like at the end, using a query function from Prodo’s plugin to pull and watch collections from Firestore:
A fair amount of non-trivial heuristics will be needed to ensure that the above components are re-rendered (efficiently) when the data is updated, but the experiments we’ve conducted so far suggest that we should be able to match Redux’s and MobX’s performances. You may also note that the above example — unlike most frameworks — are not requiring you to wrap every single component inside a “connect” functions. This is again something we’ve been able to achieve in our experiments (by dynamically redefining React’s createElement function to auto-connect all the relevant components), but the performance implications there will also require proper testing. And these are only some examples of the exciting challenges which we’re tackling now to achieve a truly simple, boilerplate-free experience for our users.
What now?
If you’ve liked what you’ve read so far, or just want to see where this is going, please consider starring our repository on GitHub, to let us know that you care. You can also stay up-to-date with upcoming features, and more importantly, join the discussion by joining our Slack Community.
If you want to jump right in, you can try Prodo today — our docs are online at https://docs.prodo.dev and you can quickly build your own example by following the tutorial here. | https://medium.com/prodo-ai/combining-react-firebase-and-typescript-with-zero-boilerplate-1194a24ee3c6 | ['Bruno Marnette'] | 2019-10-18 09:50:03.367000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'React', 'Firebase', 'Typescript', 'Redux'] |
Has War Changed the Way We Do Relationships? | Has War Changed the Way We Do Relationships?
A few interesting correlations with industrialization, war, and relationships.
Society and relationships changed furiously with the backdrop of industrialization and the move from agrarian society into a society with strict schedules. School prepares one for an industrial work schedule and removes the aspect of play in both relationships and physical activity. In the 30s there was 100 percent school enrollment except for some of the most underserved communities. This means many kids who might have learned a trade and worked with their parents and experienced many aspects of relationships modeled by their parents ended up in a sedentary setting for many hours a day over many years only interacting with each other during set aside times.
The growth and speculation which drove the stock market to crash in the 30s was only remedied with the plan for WWII. WWII sent many men overseas and split apart many families for 3 years. Kids born during the beginning of the war may have had an absent father during the first three years of their existence. When their parent came back, they might have suffered from PTSD (or “shell shock” as it was called). Five years later, we had the Korean War (1950–1953). Two years later we had the Vietnam War (1955–1975). Involvement in the Iran-Iraq war in 1988. Operation Desert Shield and Storm in 1990–1991. The Iraq war from 2003–2011 and the Afghanistan War started in 2001 and still going.
Divorce rates have spiked after wars. Divorce/marriage percentage rates have basically increased twofold or so since before WWII. Currently, that ratio is hovering right around 50%. There has been a greater decrease in marriages than divorces starting in 1984.
There’s a huge spike in divorce rates per 1000 people right after WWII. There’s another more gradual, but still suspiciously elevated increase right as people’s service terms from the Korean and Vietnam wars end and they came home. That increase continues right up through the no-fault divorce laws and through 1981. The data has a seeming linear trend in the data after accounting for the wars. A portion of that trend is the rise in divorce rates from 1870 through 1920. This period is also known as the Second Industrial Revolution, which was accompanied by a nearly 10x increase in the value of American goods.
The greatest increase in industrialization in the United States happened from just after 1860 through 1910. (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Industrialization_per_capita_1750-1900.svg)
What does that trend indicate? Is it merely that we value people less as population increases? Is it that industrialization has ruined us as people? Is it that we no longer know how to negotiate the realities of long term relationships? Is it both?
I don’t have answers, but I have many questions:
What would the impact be on kids learning to develop healthy attachments if their father went off to war for three years? How does PTSD impact relationships and parenting? What kind of examples of relationships do you remember your environment providing you? Did you have any examples of inter-generational platonic relationships? How much does the invention of the radio and television play into the examples of relationships we see and try to model? How do you remember being able to learn to navigate relationships? Was it just limited to recess time and when you weren’t doing homework or chores? How many relationships were originally put together on the basis of sex and lust and not based on practicality? When do we know when we’re ready to navigate a marriage? How much has the move towards equality impacted how women navigate marriage and determine when to leave (and can we actually ever know that at a quantitative level)? How does urbanization, commuting, and traffic impact one relationships? How does the population density impact your view of a relationship being expendable, just like the many homeless people you might pass by on a daily basis (i.e. “There’s plenty of fish in the sea.”)?
Sources | https://medium.com/jill-burrows/has-war-changed-the-way-we-do-relationships-26585cf1fa2a | ['Jillian Ada Burrows'] | 2018-01-30 08:19:09.989000+00:00 | ['Personal Development', 'War', 'Society', 'Love', 'Relationships'] |
Taking on young love across the class spectrum | Taking on young love across the class spectrum
Sally Rooney lets love overcome social class, at least sometimes.
Mullaghmore, County Sligo, Ireland. Photo Credit:Aonghus Flynn via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
I grew up in a small town. Bradenton is a town in the armpit of two idyllic places, the Gulf of Mexico and the slightly larger, more attractive city of Sarasota. It’s a town of highs and lows, short roads and multi-million dollar homes, private schools from trailers and chained up dogs.
There are elaborate beachfront properties, and a cost of living so high families struggle to afford rent or food. These same streets that host Saturday morning farmers’ markets are filled with homeless vagrants attempting to find shelter by night.
While thousands of miles of land and ocean separate them, Bradenton is not unlike the Irish county of Sligo in Dublin, the initial backdrop for Rooney’s Normal People.
Class-crossed lovers in County Sligo
In Sligo, we meet Marianne and Connell, two high school seniors attempting to navigate the turmoils of the adolescent experience. Marianne, the intellectual outcast of their teenage social world, and Connell, the well-liked, outgoing athlete.
Marianne retains a cool and calm demeanour in the face of vicious teenage apathy and vitriol. Marianne embraces her social outcast status knowing she is destined for life outside of this small town. However, she does have one friend, a secret friend: Connell, the son of the woman who cleans her family’s home.
Connell does not hold any thoughts of grandeur about his socioeconomic status, but it’s his social status that he clings to with the hopes he can befriend his way out of this reality. And, in Sligo, it works.
Normal People by Sally Rooney (2018) published by Hogarth (Penguin Random House)
Marianne and Connell are adolescent archetypes. They could’ve been my classmates. Hell, I think I sat behind a Connell for all of my sophomore year geometry class.
I knew these kids; I was these kids.
Growing up in a lower-middle-class family, I can identify with Connell’s need to overcompensate within his social circle. At the same time, Marianne’s dreams of escaping the social suffocation of small-town Sligo life were my dreams in Bradenton.
Rooney has written characters I can recognise as extensions of my own experiences. Her unique brand of witty dialogue and thoughtful character-building gives us two intensely relatable young adults.
Reaching across multiple social divides
Rooney illustrates rather smartly not only the social currency that is one’s reputation, but how a social class does not define morality.
While in high school, Connell fancies Marianne. However, as she fully embraces the role of socially-awkward outcast, admitting this infatuation to friends and family could jeopardise his fragile position within the high school social hierarchy. He allows this to hinder their relationship from the start.
Upon entering college, the reader witnesses the reversal this relationship. Marianne transitions from pariah to social butterfly, finds her social footing in the academic world. The previously quiet and self-conscious teenager transforms into an opinionated, knowledgeable, and sociable young woman.
The story centres on the ever-shifting power dynamic between Marianne and Connell.
The contrary is true for Connell, who finds himself struggling to relate and fit in with his peers. Losing his friend circle and social status puts Connell in the very unfamiliar territory of social isolation. An experience that’s as humbling to read as it is for Connell to endure.
This twist Rooney employs allows the reader a glimpse at the back-and-forth of the one constant within Marianne and Connell’s relationship: the ever-changing power dynamic between them.
The power dynamic between Marianne and Connell is what the story centres around: Who has the power in the relationship, and why? In the early chapters of the story, Connell’s ability to thrive socially is what draws in Marianne. This same power dynamic switches when the pair are later in college. Connell finds himself drowning in loneliness, and Marianne reaches down from her high social status to pull Connell back to the surface.
While Marianne and Connell’s story takes place across the pond from the hometown of my youth, the young adult experience is universally relatable. Wanting to stand out while also dying to fit in, I believe, is the universal teenage aesthetic, and Rooney’s writing has painted that picture gracefully.
The long-term consequences of family politics
Let us also consider Marianne and Connell’s family units.
Marianne is from a wealthy, upper-class family. Within the story, the reader encounters her brother and mother — both of whom are abusive, verbally, and physically. Every scene Marianne is at home, the reader can taste the tension seeping between the lines.
In society, to be wealthy means problems are inconsequential; it also means having the ability to control one’s life from every aspect. When someone has a substantial amount of wealth, certain human misgivings can be forgiven or glossed over. Rooney challenges these preconceived ideas with Marianne’s background. Marianne’s experience disputes the belief that wealth or class status always equals happiness.
Then we have Connell’s mam, raising a son on pennies and grace. Rooney does such an incredible job in creating Connell’s mother. A character who would be, in most situations, fairly dismissible, becomes a character of high moral fibre in Rooney’s creation. She is a character Connell and Marianne both confide in, seek advice from, and sometimes receive painful lessons in the form of motherly insight. There wasn’t a character in the book that I cheered on along the side of more than Lorraine. She was the morally-sound character both protagonists needed.
County Sligo, Ireland. Photo Credit: Steven Hylands from Pexels.
The nostalgia of young love
Despite their wildly different life experiences, Connell and Marianne find an authentic and deep love for one another. It is a gradual love told over many pages of heartbreak, anguish, loss, and the uniquely beautiful experience of finding another person that sees your inner being and loves you for it.
Her eyes fill up with tears again and she closes them. Even in memory she will find this moment unbearably intense, and she’s aware of this now, while it’s happening. She has never believed herself fit to be loved by any person. But now she has a new life, of which this is the first moment, and even after many years have passed she will still think: Yes, that was it, the beginning of my life. Normal People by Sally Rooney
As an adult, I still remember my first love. He was a red-haired, freckled mess of a boy named Justin. I was fifteen. I recall feeling that my life had just begun, that someone had chosen to love me without being obligated to do so. That’s the thing about first loves. Their flames sear so brightly you will always see their light, and the burns.
Rooney’s writing is introspective and affecting. This book will reach hearts and minds across generations. The story is the first work of Rooney’s I have read, and, as her sophomore novel, I am so incredibly enthralled with her writing ability. Her literary canon is one I cannot wait to read more of.
Pick up this story if the nostalgia of young love and flawed, realistic human relationships are your “cup of tea.” They are indeed a favourite of mine. | https://medium.com/the-open-bookshelf/taking-on-young-love-across-the-class-spectrum-3c69ff667b7b | ['Cassi Snyder'] | 2020-03-02 11:21:22.893000+00:00 | ['Book Recommendations', 'Sally Rooney', 'Class', 'Book Review', 'Books'] |
Бесконечные полки | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/ivanodigital/digitalretailrus-1d2345cb182c | ['Ivano Digital'] | 2021-03-22 22:47:00.502000+00:00 | ['Retail', 'Strategy', 'Digital', 'Transformation'] |
Is this Ancient Gear Mechanism the First Computer on Earth? | The Antikythera mechanism
The Antikythera mechanism, as it is known, is quite possibly earth’s first computer and the most ancient gear system ever found. Found in about 150ft of water off Point Glyphadia, near the island of Antikythera, the mechanical device is composed of ancient gears made mostly from bronze and wood. The remaining bronze pieces were so badly corroded that the entire machine appeared to be a blob of badly corroded metal. It was not until later, until the archaeologist Valerios Stais noticed a gear shape that the reality began to hit that this was no common piece of metal. Since then, the mystery has only deepened.
According to Wikipedia:
Generally referred to as the first known analogue computer, the quality and complexity of the mechanism’s manufacture suggests it has undiscovered predecessors made during the Hellenistic period. Its construction relied upon theories of astronomy and mathematics developed by Greek astronomers, and is estimated to have been created around the late second century BC.
At this point, no predecessors have been found. To put this in perspective, a device of this complexity would not be seen again for over 1500 years.
The Antikythera mechanism
What does the Antikythera Mechanism do?
For a long time, scientists and archaeologists had no idea. However, with modern day technology, much of the original mechanism has been reconstructed, virtually anyway. We now know that it was a very sophisticated ancient clock which calculated the Egyptian civil calendar, the Greek signs of the zodiac on the front. On the back, it calculated solar eclipse dates as well as the dates of the next Ancient Olympic Games as well as their respective locations. Keep in mind, this is the first instance of an ancient gear composed of metal.
Who Built this Out of Place Artifact?
There are many theories about who built the device, with most theories trying to link it to one of the more famous Greek scientists or philosophers that we know about. It is possible that it was built by someone whose name we will never know. However, one particular theory stands out which links the box to Archimedes or Hipparchus:
The tradition of making such mechanisms could be much older. Cicero wrote of a bronze device made by Archimedes in the third century B.C. And James Evans, a historian of astronomy at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington, thinks that the eclipse cycle represented is Babylonian in origin and begins in 205 B.C. Maybe it was Hipparchus, an astronomer in Rhodes around that time, who worked out the math behind the device. He is known for having blended the arithmetic-based predictions of Babylonians with geometric theories favored by the Greeks. — Via The Smithsonian
This would explain the esoteric nature of the device. What we do know, thanks to modern technology, is that the gears themselves were hand cut.
There does not appear to be any evidence of advanced manufacturing. In fact, the irregularities of the teeth indicate that the device may not have been incredibly accurate.
A Deeper Mystery
Despite all of that, the device raises a number of perplexing questions. This is the first known instance of using metal gears in this way and the gearing is astoundingly complex. The device contained over 30 gears with very complex gear ratios. This sophistication indicates that it was not the first device of its kind and may not even be the best device of its kind. It’s possible that, due to the Egyptian connection, it is an imitation of some other ancient device which is now lost to us, similar to the Dendera Light depicted in ancient Egyptian art. | https://medium.com/swlh/is-this-ancient-gear-mechanism-the-first-computer-on-earth-a96467a0f68a | ['Darian West'] | 2019-12-07 19:22:17.445000+00:00 | ['Greece', 'Ancient History', 'Science', 'Archimedes', 'Ancient'] |
Advantages And Disadvantages of working from Home 2021 | As Covid19 starting spreading on our planet Earth, there have been a lot of changes in the way we live, socialize, Eat and work. This is a huge impact on the economy and life at large.
A lot of companies were forced to close, some are forced to let some of their workers work from home and some companies have become completely remotely such as Twitter workers
(Twitter has told staff that they can work from home “forever” if they wish as the company looks towards the future after the covid19 pandemic.)
Well with all being said some people enjoy working from home and others don’t, some prefer at least to come in twice or thrice a week.
We have narrowed down for you the Pros and Cons of working from Home. Now let’s get started with the Pros.
Advantages of Working from Home:
Saves Time
Working from home saves you time in that you don’t have to wake so early to beat the traffic or rush for the bus or Train. This is a huge relief and it allows to sleep some extra few hours or an hour not worrying about the journey to work.
2. Saves you Money
As you don’t have to travel going to work , this can save you on petrol money or Bus transport and also spending money on coffee and lunch meals.
3. Family Time
You get to enjoy your family more and you can have your breaks or lunch with them . This improves bonding with your loved ones.
4. Less Supervision
Trust me people like it to work when no one is looking after their shoulder, well a lot of companies have some software to monitor their employees while working at but believe its way better than at work. This can boost you to be able to work without supervision and more disciplined.
5. Comfy clothes
It’s so much comforting wearing anything you like and you can still work. You can even work in your pajamas.
6. Flexibility
Another cool thing working from home is being flexible while planning your work day at home. You can plan to work around the family plans so as you don’t miss out with whatever going on in your family.
7.Enviromental friendly
Some people work in their beds, their couches and some find it comfortable working in their kitchens. Whatever comfortable place you find in your house to work . You can also create your own working office in the house.
However, it’s so comforting working from home , it also comes with it’s disadvantages. Let’s look at the cons of working from home.
Disadvantages of Working from Home:
Over Working
Since one is working from home, they tend to find it hard to switch off and end up working longer hours than usual. Sometimes they even end up eating cold foods and cold coffee because they’re swamped with a lot of work. If you happen to find yourself in a situation like this, try planning your work day and make a to do list. Take your breaks and lunch time. As for cold coffee, you can get yourself the Coffee mug Wormer it keeps your coffee hot at your desired temperature and Mug all day.
2. Family and Friends interruptions.
Since you’re working from home, family members and friends may think your available anytime say for a chat, or make some meals and this can make you lose focus at what you’re doing. This can be solved by letting people know that you’re working from home and also try to make yourself a home office that when they see you sitting there, they know you’re working. There’s these comfortable chairs suitable to work from home. You can check them out
3. Social Media Destruction
Since you’re working from home and no one is supervising you, you tend to be tempted to look at your phone all the time, having anxiety on what’s happening in the world, or check out your friends on Instagram, Facebook, twitter or making social calls. This is a huge destruction from your work. You solve this by putting your phone away or set time when to look at your phone.
4. Difficulty solving work problems
In terms of poor network connection or software installations. It can be difficult for some people working from home to resolve these issues especially if they don’t have much knowledge in the Tech industry. This can lead in running behind your deadline.
5. Hard to monitor
Now this goes on the side of the company(employer), It may be difficult to monitor workers while their working from home. Some companies have managed to develop some software’s to take care of this and others haven’t succeeded yet.
6. Social Life
Working from home can cut off your social life and also some people feel cut off from their colleagues and organization as a whole that an office environment naturally allows. This can be solved by using software’s to connect with your colleagues and friends in real time. such as Zoom and many more.
Working from home requires a lot of self-discipline and dedication. Everyone has different experience working from home and the employers should take survey with its workers to see what steps the company should take moving forward.
Please comment, I would like to hear your views and experience working from home. | https://medium.com/@afriturk/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-working-from-home-2021-a42066a9c289 | [] | 2021-05-22 17:20:34.201000+00:00 | ['Working Moms', 'Online Marketing', 'Working From Home', 'Digital Nomads', 'Digital Transformation'] |
The Balancing Act with Pandemic Fatigue | The Balancing Act with Pandemic Fatigue
By Rebekkah LaDyne
Pandemic fatigue is on the evening news, it infuses the moods of my Covid bubble buddies, and it’s easy to spot on the masked faces I pass on the sidewalk or the store. I’m hearing this from clients, colleagues, friends, family, and neighbors. Many of us are hitting a wall at this point in the pandemic, and it makes perfect sense that people are looking for a way out. It’s coming to my attention — possibly yours too — that our familiar standbys are falling short for pandemic-coping. While a lot of us have turned to excessive zoom-socializing or T.V watching to cope, many are working to excess, shopping to excess, or drinking to excess — each of those three activities can be followed by “oholism” for a reason — they pose a threat to our health and wellbeing. But even seemly healthy choices like cleaning and exercising can become destructive.
A client described herself up at 10 PM, intensely scrubbing the kitchen sink, unable to let it go and get to sleep, even though a solid night’s rest had been evading her for weeks. A friend mentioned the mountains of boxes she has had in her foyer for months, one pile for coming-in and one pile for going-back — her own little shipping and receiving department, she said — she’s caught in trying to find “just the right” things for her home. A neighbor has been riding his bike for hours every week; he’s clocking his rides on apps, tracking his time against other riders, distracted while at work and with friends, fantasizing about what his next ride will be.
But how shiny does the sink need to be in times like these? And are “just the right thing” fantasies for the house real? I mean, is there a thing that will finally make being at home for the better part of every 24-hour, 7-day cycle, actually feel good? And is exercise, or any self-care for that matter, adding stress as well as reducing it if we’re kind of…getting obsessed?
As a stress researcher and author, I know that coping strategies are essential for stressful situations — like a year-long (plus) pandemic, for example. And things like settling into the couch with a bowl of popcorn and several episodes of your favorite series, can be just what the doctor ordered, as they say. And yes, there can be a nice relief once the dishes are all done. For many, there is indeed joy in an epic cycle and satisfaction in finally finding a special new thing for the living room. I also know that when these things keep gnawing at us, and we find ourselves wanting more and more of them, whatever they are, this is your mind-body system trying to communicate with you. Trying to let us each know, this self-care or self-soothing we’re trying for here, it’s not fitting the bill.
I love the saying, “you can never get enough of what you don’t actually want.” You can keep going for another cookie, drink, sparkling-clean [fill in the blank], but does it lead to the relief, joy, or satisfaction, you’re hoping it will?
I know stress well, both as a researcher and as a human being. What I’ve come to understand is that we benefit from a balanced approach to stress-reduction; a little of this, a little of that — an array of ingredients. Add a bit more of what’s missing, take out some of what there’s too much of, and see if it helps bring about the relief you’re actually after.
My research has shown, for stress-reduction, less is more — we don’t want to create stress in our effort to lessen it. Take mini reset breaks; time to briefly, almost casually, lower your experience of stress. Ultimately this will decrease your total stress load, little by little, instead of the big bang for your buck that’s not so cost-effective after all. Add a few mini reset breaks into the midst of your day’s activities instead of the all-on all-off yo-yo we can find ourselves tangled up in.
Below are a few mini resets to lower stress throughout the days, weeks, and months ahead. With these in the mix, you won’t be as likely to have a huge ball of stress growing inside of you that is so desperate for relief it moves you toward excessive behaviors that aren’t really the serum you seek.
These mini resets don’t mean you can’t, or won’t want to, cycle on Saturday, find that perfect living room accouterment, put a shine on the stainless steel appliances, or whip up a batch of your favorite treat and enjoy a few; these mini resets do mean you probably won’t do these things: a) to excess, b) in a hypnotic-like trance that has you miss the enjoyment of them altogether, or c) feel ill-at-ease, grouchy, or even anxiously-depressed if you can’t find the time, or money, or ingredients, for those alluring activities each time you crave some relief.
The women that I studied using the same tips I’m sharing here, showed a significant reduction in cortisol levels and self-report stress after just a few weeks of including mini reset breaks into their day. So give it a try, test it for at least two to three weeks, and see for yourself how your stress levels respond.
You can do these one at a time (remember a little here and little there) or bundle them up in groups of two or more. Follow your instincts and remember these are mini-breaks; easy does it when it comes to stress-reduction.
Add these exercises into your day:
Start with a few long breaths out with gentle sighs like of “ahhhh,” as you release your exhales.
out with gentle sighs like of “ahhhh,” as you release your exhales. Stretch your neck side to side, or gently twist your torso clockwise and counterclockwise.
your neck side to side, or gently twist your torso clockwise and counterclockwise. Listen for soothing sounds around you: nature, music, pleasing quiet.
for soothing sounds around you: nature, music, pleasing quiet. Take a look around, see with a soft focus and let your eyes rest somewhere they like.
Add value to what you are already doing:
The next time you’re walking, cycling, and yes, even scrubbing the sink, you can take a moment to feel its positive impacts on you?
Small experiences of feeling a “yes” in your body are a big help to reducing stress. Perhaps there is a little lightness in your disposition, an ease in your jaw, a relief of tension, the pleasure of a deeper breath? It doesn’t have to be much. A moment of noticing any positive impact your activity is having on you can help your body and brain register the benefits. It’s like earning some extra money and then depositing some of it into your savings account…enjoy a little now and save a little for later too!
To learn more about these tools and understand how they help your mind and body to reset, check out The Mind-Body Stress Reset, which is full of tips, explanations, and grounded science.
Rebekkah LaDyne, MS, SEP, is a somatic therapist, researcher, and mind-body skills educator. Her book The Mind-Body Stress Reset: Somatic Practices to Reduce Overwhelm and Increase Well-Being, is available now. | https://medium.com/@rebekkahladyne/the-balancing-act-with-pandemic-fatigue-5ba46e1e4ffe | ['Rebekkah Ladyne', 'Ms'] | 2021-03-05 05:55:50.575000+00:00 | ['Pandemic', 'Pandemic Fatigue', 'Stress And Anxiety', 'Stress Management', 'Wellness'] |
Unwrapping the Online Presence of Manchester Open Mind Network | If you are a Manchester student with an interest in mental health, you may have come across new student society Manchester Open Mind Network, who assembled in response to the University’s building mental health crisis. It seems obvious that the success of any organisation online lies in their ability to meet their own goals. Manchester Open Mind Network have two explicit goals on their Facebook page:
1) Support those dealing with mental health issues, and
2) Educate students on how to create happy, healthy minds.
As an important component of building an online presence is to refer back to your goals, it makes sense to talk about “success” in these terms.
https://www.facebook.com/manchesteropenmindnetwork/photos/a.170319890077173.1073741825.170319230077239/170320023410493/?type=1&theater Author: Usman Khan
In terms of their first goal, there are a number of things Manchester Open Mind Network do to either provide support, or a supportive environment. On one particular post, they present as if having an informal chat, “hey guys,” appearing relaxed and personable.
This provides a safe environment for students who may be considering accessing support. Additionally, they champion the bravery of others sharing difficult stories and stress, “there is help out there,” targeted at their audience who may feel alone and without help.
The other type of post format is using quotes lifted from the article being posted. These are often relatable, humorous or emotive in content.
It’s clear that these are designed to be engaging, therefore reach more people, and there is evidence this can be successful. However it can also annoy people, so perhaps this should be used in moderation. Additionally online bloggers agree that an important component of an online presence is being sociable, and it seems simply using a quote isn’t engaging with your audience in the same way as writing a personalized message.
Similarly, they often don’t reply to comments on their posts, or simply like the comment. In doing this they have missed vital opportunities to support their followers, explore ideas in mental health and break down stigma. Instead they limit the support they offer to lists of other services such as Manchester Mind.
A few posts address their second goal. However I can’t help but feel that these posts are upstaged (at least recently) by the sheer quantity of other posts. I say upstaged, because one of these posts has zero engagement. This is likely due to posting borrowed content too frequently, causing people to switch off.
Additionally they do use social media successfully outside of these explicit goals. For example, they post a weekly blog with original, interesting stories and think pieces which has accumulated 225 followers in just a few months. This is a crucial platform as people are more likely to engage with original content.
Lastly, they successfully use pictures; which generates engagement. After all, human beings are immensely visual; and no matter how serious the organisation, people will engage with funny relatable images and memes.
Overall, although they are not consistently “on mission” in terms of their goals, there are a lot of ways in which Manchester Open Mind Network reach their audience. By capitalising on their warm friendly tone and original writing, they could help even more students, which is success in itself. | https://medium.com/digital-society/unwrapping-the-online-presence-of-manchester-open-mind-network-c11dbe09a4a5 | ['Laura Ariel Grant'] | 2017-02-12 20:53:50.506000+00:00 | ['Digital Marketing', 'Mental Health', 'Digisoc1'] |
Walking with Jesus this Christmas | By Hannah Rich
We are approaching such a special time of year, and to all of us, this Christmas season comes with a vast array of challenges: expectation, hope, fear, doubt, loneliness, anger and everything else in between. How do we prepare for the unknown? How do we keep our faith steady in the fog? How do we balance the everyday battle mixed with all the new and different that leads to soul exhaustion?
I’d love to journey through Christmas with capacity ever-increasing to meet the needs of those around me. I’d love to know that everything I do would be marked with love and grace and I’d float through this season with ease and positivity. It’d be so wonderful to have picture perfect food, be surrounded by perfectly loving family and that my children want to sponsor a tree or give their gifts to the homeless. But. I’ve been through times of depression. I’ve been hurt by words said in the heat of lockdown life. I’ve seen pain and injustice and ached with those who are broken. I’ve parented in a pandemic. Trying to teach my kids about patience and struggling myself to find patience for the toll I have in my own home. I’ve worried about work or lack thereof. Felt the panic and pinch of financial needs. I know life is messy and have come to learn that life is very real.
I can’t promise that Christmas this year will be full of perfect cheer for us all. I will probably shout at an inanimate object at some point. I may or may not have time to write my Christmas cards, pray for my children every night or bring peace, love and harmony to the moments that truly matter. I might be loving and sobbing and living and praying and surrendering through it all. I’ll be inviting others into the awkward — because this sacred place is what connects us to one another, and it’s what He has asked. And the journey, is our story.
It’s the leg work along the way. He promised to be beside me… and I found Him there. He promised to go before me… and I’ve know His closeness. He held up His end and then some. He went further. He loved deeper. He held harder. He pursued more. He allowed it all so that I could find rest in the knowing of Him.
And that is where the truth of it is — His promises lie in the rest of our KNOWING Him. Who He is. Who He (always) has been. Who He will continue to be. Because His promises still stand. His strength is dependable. And the hope I have in them hasn’t flickered or faded. It’s me that understands them differently now. Me that’s grown. Me that’s changed. Me that’s found His grace anew. And me… who gets to tell the story.
Steffany Gretzinger’s beautiful song No One Ever Cared For Me Like Jesus perfectly sums up my heart for all of us walking into this season:
‘If my heart could tell a story. If my life would sing a song. If I have a testimony. If I have anything at all. His faithful hand has held me all this way. Let it be known, in You alone, my joy was found.
Let my children tell their children. Let this be their memory. That all my treasure was in heaven. That You are everything to me.’
May the peace and deep rest of Jesus surround and sustain and surprise you as you walk in His strength. The story you tell, good, bad and ugly, can be wrapped up in the beautiful gift of Jesus if we allow that still small voice to whisper truth and hope daily. Invite him again to your story this Christmas. | https://medium.com/@christchurchlondon/walking-with-jesus-this-christmas-74c913bbac6b | ['Christ Church London'] | 2020-12-15 17:26:38.896000+00:00 | ['Christmas', 'Jesus', 'Christ Church London', 'Worship', 'Christian'] |
An extensible alternative to markdown | Markdown is so natural to use that I find myself using it even where it is not supported. I still don’t like some aspects of it like inline HTML, inconsistent rules and the fact that it’s not easily extensible.
I will try to present to you here an alternative that improves on those three points while still being simple to use, and maybe someday I’ll also write about how to implement a parser for it in rust .
I introduce to you Backslash Markup Language (BS Lang).
Skip directly to the CHEATSHEAT part to avoid reading unnecessary rules.
Tags:
Since a lot of people are familiar with HTML, I’ll use the notion tag for the language items.
All tags start with a backslash, followed by identifier of the element and a space. An element is closed with backslash followed by a dot. E.g. the following line is a heading 1: \h1 The title\. .
But.. Markdown has the benefit of not having to close some of the tags. For that case you can use the self-closing tags, which will close by the end of the line (or the parent tag). The opening tag for this begins with a backslash followed by identifier, another backslash after it and then a space. E.g. the following line is equivalent to the previous example.
\h1\ The title
There are also tags which need multiple parameters. An example would be a link element. That can be done using the \+ -sequence. If you wanted to add a URL for example you would add:
\a https://medium.com/\+ Link title\+ The text of the link\.
This would have a similar semantic to build_a("https://medium.com/", "Link title", "The text of the link") in a c-style language and to <a href="https://medium.com/" title="Link title">The text of the link</a> .
You could also use a self-closing tag for the last parameter on the tag like this:
\a https://medium.com/\+ Link title\+\ The text of the link
Some other syntactic helpers about the tags would be:
Use double backslash \\ if you want to just use backslash as a character
if you want to just use backslash as a character Backslash followed by a space can be used as closing tag followed by a space. e.g. \h1 Title\ text translates to <h1>Title</h1> text which avoids adding a . after the last backslash.
translates to which avoids adding a after the last backslash. Newlines are not manipulated in any way by default (e.g. translating to HTML every newline will be translated to <br> ). To escape a new line you can use \< as the last character in the line.
). To escape a new line you can use as the last character in the line. Use the following style to ignore backslashes and consider them the same as other characters \#custom-text#h2 This h2 can contain a \ which is not parsed. This is how it is actually closed\#custom-text#. . You can use this with the self-closing tag as well.
You can also specify which tags can be used inside of which other tags. For e.g. You wouldn’t want to use a h3 inside of an h5 or use anything except from text in an alt-text of img .
And that should be it. There should be no more rules to it.
How is this extensible
Well, if you wanted to add some additional element types in markdown, you would have to change some existing rules.
Say for example we want to add math formulas as a feature. After searching the internet we can notice that most of the implementation (I won’t name any, but there are plenty if you search for “math in markdown”).
Some of them will add additional syntax rules. You have to get used to these and make sure that you aren’t breaking any if you’re adding math to an old document.
Some others will use the ``` code block but specifying the plugin name. This is better, but you’re still using an existing feature for a different purpose. And you’d still need to break some rules for displaying formulas inline.
What BSLang offers is the ability to add new elements, so that if you want to use a library named BSMath, you would write everything inside the bsmath tag. E.g. \bsmath S = 2 * $PI * r \. .
Cheatsheat (Backslash -> HTML)
The following is an implementation of Backslash to HTML which could be used as an alternative to markdown. I used this as reference.
Normal text:
This is normal text.
This is a normal backslash \\ All this text is \<
in the same line
Headers:
\h1 This is a <h1>\.
\h2 This is a <h2>\.
\h6 You get the point\. \h3\ This is a self closing <h3>
Emphasis:
\b This is bold\.
\i This is italic\.
\b \i \u This is bold, italic and underscored\.\.\.
\~ This is scratched\. You can use \b bold\ in between the sentence without having to add a dot after closing backslash if it already has a space. Same goes for \i italic\., \u underscored\ and \~ scratched\ as well.
Lists:
\ol
\-\ This is an ordered list item
\-\ This is another ordered list item
\-\ You get the point
\. \ul
\-\ This is an unordered list item
\-\ This is another unordered list item
\- This is another item
\ul
\- This is a sub-item\.
\.
\.
\. \ol\ \-\ This is a single item ordered list, useful in sub-items
Links:
\a \a http://url-here.com\ \a http://url-here.com\+ This is the link text\+ This is the title\.
\a\
\a
\a Alternatively:\a\ http://url-here.com \a http://url-here.com\+ \ This is the link text\a http://url-here.com\+ This is the link text\+\ This is the title
Images:
Code:
We can use \` inline code\ \code Or we can use code blocks\ These might be the weirdest part of this markup language: \code rust\+
fn main() {
println!("We can also specify the language of the code block");
}
\ \##code rust\##+
fn main() {
print!("We don't have to escape the newline backslash
")
}
\##
Tables:
\table
\head Column 1 \+ Column 2 \.
\trow Some \+ text \.
\trow Some other \+ text \.
\trow \b Bold\ text \+ \i italic\ text \.
\.
Blockquotes: | https://codenoob.medium.com/an-extensible-alternative-to-markdown-b29c015cfc66 | ['Codigo Noob'] | 2020-09-27 21:18:01.945000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'HTML', 'Rust', 'Markdown', 'Programming Languages'] |
Why God’s Light Is for Absolutely Everyone | The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.
John 1:9–10
In elementary school during recess, two team captains allotted by the teacher would, one by one, pick members of the class for their team. The process was quite flattering for the more athletic kids, and quite excruciating for those always picked last. Having the best players made a team captain feel their win was absolute.
When they align with our belief system or reasoning, absolutes present the illusion of control. There’s something comforting about believing our way is the only right way, or that we know what’s right all the time — about being certain, even about the future.
Reality, however, is quite a different matter. There are fewer absolutes in life than many of us would like to admit. And the few that exist are likely to make us uncomfortable because they hold us to a standard.
For example, everyone is created in the image of God. Period.
If the lowliest among us matter — the ones always picked last —then how we treat them matters.
Everyone: it’s a word we may hear on a daily basis, but if we pause to consider its implications, we realize how absolute it is. It’s a word that provides no exceptions.
The light of Jesus is for everyone, not some. Light is given to the invisible and the entitled, to the humble and the arrogant, the rich and the poor. Light is given to the world by the one whose love created it, even though that world didn’t recognize him.
The God who was born, not in a state-of-the-art facility, but on the ground where animals defecate, is more easily recognized by those who are low enough to witness it. Those who are in proximity to that experience have a greater vantage point.
The lowly don’t seem to matter to us, but the fact that God became a lowly person ensures tells us otherwise. The world didn’t imagine God would enter the world as God did, and many hadn’t imagined a low-born Savior.
Light is given, but whether we receive or not, live in it or not, are changed by it or not, is dependent upon our ability to recognize God’s presence in the least, lost, and lowly.
This Advent the light is bright, but if we can’t see it, perhaps we’re limited by our ideas of where we believe the light should be.
Prophetic Practice:
Reflect on where in life you feel most in control. Is that a place God has been invited into? Take a moment and welcome the light of God and welcome the illumination. | https://medium.com/hush-harbor/why-gods-light-is-for-absolutely-everyone-e30e99c06980 | ['Donna C. Battle'] | 2020-12-14 22:02:27.672000+00:00 | ['Advent', 'Spirituality', 'Religion', 'BlackLivesMatter'] |
STEX SUPPORTS SPARK AIRDROP PROGRAM FOR XRP HOLDERS | No action needed by (XRP) Holders to claim tokens of the Flare Network
7 December 2020 — The global cryptocurrency exchange STEX announced today it will support the Flare Network token (Spark) airdrop program for Ripple (XRP) coin holders. The airdrop program will automatically delivery Spark tokens to all STEX Ripple (XRP) holders; no additional steps are necessary to claim the tokens at the Flare Network.
The Flare Network announced that a balance snapshot will be taken of all Ripple (XRP) holders on December 12, 2020. Spark tokens will then be apportioned to each remaining address according to their proportional XRP balance in the snapshot. Approximately 45 Billion Spark tokens are expected to be awarded to XRP holders when the Flare Network launches in 2021. The official date of the airdrop has not yet been announced.
STEX will subject the Flare Network (Spark) to its listing process and will determine at a future date if the token will be listed on its exchange.
For more information, visit STEX.com
About STEX
With more than 300,000 users worldwide, STEX is a powerful cryptocurrency exchange that makes it easy to buy, sell and invest digital currencies from one fast, and convenient platform at low competitive rates. Users can choose from more than 400+ trading pairs, purchase crypto with credit or bank cards, and exchange fiat to crypto or crypto to fiat with a few swipes on their mobile device. Founded in Estonia, STEX meets all EU regulations for cryptocurrency exchanges. For more information about STEX and its partners, visit:
Website: https://www.STEX.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/StexExchangeR
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stex.exchanger/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stex.crypto/
Telegram: https://t.me/stexcomtg
About Flare Network
Flare is the world’s first Turing Complete Federated Byzantine Agreement (FBA) network which enables customers to run smart contract services on XRP using a virtual machine powered by Ethereum.
Website: www.flare.xyz
Twitter: https://twitter.com/FlareNetworks
Telegram: https://t.me/FlareNetwork
Supporting exchanges: https://flare.xyz/supporting-exchanges/ | https://medium.com/@stex-exchange/stex-supports-spark-airdrop-program-for-xrp-holders-7e34a85796e3 | [] | 2020-12-08 12:38:27.924000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Press Release', 'Airdrop', 'Spark', 'Stex'] |
Micromobility Conference 2019 learnings | Last Thursday, I attended the Micromobility Conference in Richmond, CA, organized by Horace Dediu and James Gross. The event proved to be full of optimism, creativity and a few overly bold claims (Richmond is just across the bay from Silicon Valley after all :). Here are five of my takeaways.
For the uninitiated- what’s micromobility? It’s the unbundling of car trips using lightweight utility vehicles weighing less than 500 kg. To understand the motivations and values behind this, check out the Micromobility Manifesto.
Photographer: Sofia Hoflin/Wired
1/ To seriously expand micromobility, we must start to “cross the chasm” by converting inefficient car trips
There are many trips in cars that could be done more affordably and/or quickly with smaller vehicles. For example, NYC taxi cabs travel under two miles in an average trip (and at low speeds). Their data is shown on the chart below in green- right in between existing micromobility and cars/trucks. This shift will require new innovations around comfort, shelter/overhead protection, cargo capacity, and range.
Horace explaining one of his logarithmic charts on access and speed by mode. Micromobility trip datasets in blue, car data in yellow. Green in the middle is NYC taxi trips.
2/ Business model innovation is coming
Sanjay Dastoor, CEO of Skip Scooters, put it bluntly: “none of these business models are currently working”. Potential future directions were featured in several presentations. Pony Bikes explained how they offer the opportunity to invest in a bike that is shared on their app and revenue split between operator and partial-owner. Smide, a bike share firm from Zurich, reported its users are willing to both walk further to their bike (since their bikes are very high quality) and to reposition its fleet (with compensation). Beyond the conference, don’t forget JUMP’s email last summer about leasing a bike for $50/month or Bird’s Platform franchise model. There are drawbacks with each of these ideas, but experimentation is the right answer. | https://medium.com/@stephenlambe/micromobility-conference-2019-learnings-ccf63ae8522f | ['Stephen Lambe'] | 2019-02-07 19:24:22.387000+00:00 | ['Mobility', 'Transportation', 'Bikeshare', 'Micromobility'] |
How we’re building computers out of DNA and proteins | You read the title correctly. We’ve heard of classical and quantum computing, but promising research and work suggest that future supercomputers will consist of biological components.
Biocomputing, or organic computing, is an emerging field of computation that’s completely different from anything we’ve seen before the 21st century — and the area is still rapidly emerging.
So what specifically is biocomputing, and how does it work?
Biocomputing refers to computation using DNA or other organic structures.
The word biocomputing is pretty self-explanatory — computing systems that use biological materials. While computational biology means modeling biology on computers, with biocomputing, biology becomes building blocks for computers. We’re now entering the world of wetware.
This probably sounds pretty abstract and implausible, and while the technology is experimental and theoretical, we know it can work.
Three main sectors of biocomputing right now:
Nano-biological motors: natural/synthetic living materials in parallel computational circuits 🔌
DNA computing: design computational wetware from the genome 🧬
DNA-based data storage 🤯
Before we dive into each of these points, it’s important to internalize that computation has always existed on a cellular level. DNA stores the core data of who we are in the form of base pairs -> RNA inputs data -> ribosomes perform logic operations -> outputs are in the form of synthesized proteins.
In a way, our bodies function as computers — with biocomputing we extrapolate and model these processes physically, outside of nature.
Nano-biological motors are being leveraged for parallel computation.
Through leveraging molecular machines at the nanoscale, past experiments and research have shown how these ‘nano-biological’ motors are the future of parallel computation.
With ordinary computers (like the one you’re using now 😉), tasks are done sequentially. Multiple tasks done simultaneously are actually lightning-fast switches between tasks within your processor. To exponentially increase the capabilities of our computers, parallel computing is necessary — multiple tasks truly being done simultaneously.
Parallel computing through nano-biological motors could be our new approach. Not only is there the potential for more complex computation, but cost and energy efficiency are also possible. In fact, nano-biological motors use 1% of the energy consumed by modern electronic transistors.
So how do they actually work?
The key ingredients: proteins and artificial labyrinthine structures.
Extremely small maze structures are built out of artificial components, with pathways and exits representing answers to computational problems/tasks. Myosin guides protein filaments alongside artificial pathways — thus motors moving through a maze, with their solution representing the answer to a computational problem.
These biocomputers are the size of a book, with the same computational power for mathematical problems as a supercomputer. Additionally, this model was able to solve the ‘Subset Sum Problem’ faster than classical, sequential computers. The advantages are clear — all because of parallel computing!
Check it out!
finding multiple solutions in parallel
DNA also has the potential to solve computational tasks and problems.
Nano-biological molecular machines that move through computational mazes are cool, but DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) has also shown high potential for computation. With DNA computing, silicon chips are replaced with strands of DNA.
Quick refresh: in strands of DNA, the building blocks of all organisms, information is represented using A’s, G’s, C’s, and T’s -> Adenine, Guanine, Cytosine, and Thymine. These are called nucleotides or bases. Pairs of letters in double-helical DNA are referred to as base pairs.
DNA Computing with Algorithms
In DNA Computing, an algorithm’s input is represented as a sequence of DNA. Instructions are then carried out by lab procedures on DNA, like gene editing. The result (answer to the computational problem) is some property of the final DNA molecule.
The most prevalent example of DNA computing in action is Adleman’s Experiment — following the aforementioned process, DNA molecules were used to solve the Travelling Salesman problem.
Adleman’s experiment opened up the possibility of programmed biochemical reactions. However, this was only on a small scale -> as problem complexity increases, so will DNA volume. But most importantly, the idea of DNA for parallel computation checks out — biological components can act on DNA strands simultaneously, enabling parallel computing.
Self-Assembly and Programmability
Strands of DNA also show promise to become programmable in terms of self-assembly, structure, and behavior — like computer-based robotic systems. Programmable biochemical systems that can sense surroundings, act on decisions and more are being developed. That being said, this isn’t necessarily artificial intelligence. Instead, DNA molecules execute these functions based on reactions from stimuli/interaction.
A huge area in this field is DNA Origami -> the ability for single (1D) strands of DNA to form into 2D shapes and sheets, and then self-assemble into 3D scaffolds.
Biochips — DNA Computing through Self-Multiplication
In short, silicon transistors and chips are becoming obsolete. They’ve reached their maximum potential for optimal size and computational capabilities. Functionally, our silicon tech has met their atomic limit. Biocomputing to the rescue!
DNA sequences are the building blocks of ‘biochips’ — demonstrating their direct potential to replace silicon chips. Millions of DNA strands multiply themselves in number iteratively to perform calculations. With biochips, as opposed to Adleman’s experiment, DNA computes through self-multiplication instead of editing within a lab.
Think of a hydra — when you cut off one of their heads, two more grow back. By the same token, these genetic sequences expand as more computation is performed. Therefore, DNA computers expand as they solve computational problems and tasks.
In summary — DNA has the potential to pioneer small-scale and effective computation.
DNA is the future of digital data storage.
In my opinion, this is the cream of the crop when it comes to biocomputing. Not just because of coolness, but because of its potentially massive implications.
Technology is at the forefront of society — whether for education, finances, entertainment, or dating. While obviously providing several benefits, an issue is exponentially growing on a daily basis — data generation. With over 80% of America owning a smartphone (not to even mention the rest of the world), our tech usage rapidly generates and creates data. Despite controversy around topics of data collection, a key problem lies with this phenomenon — we don’t have enough storage.
In fact, conservative estimates predict that by 2025, data storage systems will only be able to store half of our generated data.
Twist Bioscience
Building more hard drives and expanding AWS aren’t the best solutions to the problem, economically and feasibly. Ideally, data needs to be densely stored at an extremely small scale.
If DNA already stores data in the form of nucleotides in organisms… and is very small… what better way to tackle this issue? Introducing DNA Data Storage.
DNA is extremely small, stable, and will never be obsolete — they’ve existed since the beginning of life.
A single nucleotide can take up four values, so they’re analogous to two binary bits:
A -> 01
G -> 10
C -> 00
T -> 11
A typical human cell has 6 billion base pairs in the form of a double helix, organized in chromosomes. Scientists estimate that a single cell of DNA can encode 1.6 gigabytes — which scales to 100 zettabytes in the entire human body. For context, 100 zettabytes are more than humans have collectively generated throughout time.
Meaning, by leveraging DNA — we could store all the data the world has generated throughout history. And it would take up the amount of space as a human body.
Digital DNA Data Storage is a 6-step Process
Encoding: the binary data that needs to be stored on the DNA sequence is converted to nucleotide values.
Synthesis: our encoded DNA sequence is actually designed and made through synthetic biology/gene engineering
Storage: the encoded DNA is stored for later usage
Retrieval: when it’s needed, DNA is retrieved
Sequencing: the DNA is sequenced or ‘read’, reading and writing the molecule’s nucleotide sequence
Decoding: the sequenced DNA (list of A’s, G’s, C’s and T’s) is converted back into binary and is readable by a classical computer.
The process for data storage may seem complex, but as sequencing and synthesis technologies continue to improve over time, this framework will eventually become very simple. Right now, Twist Bioscience uses silicon as a substrate for DNA synthesis. They own a novel platform for manufacturing synthetic DNA on a massive, parallel scale — leaving little boundaries for effective and efficient DNA data storage.
Most importantly, the advantages of DNA are clear and powerful:
high storage density
can be 3D, as opposed to 2D disks or chips
can last centuries/millennia before maintenance is required
large demand and economic impact
Material costs of less than a fraction of a penny per gigabyte of stored data, is estimated for the encoding and decoding for DNA. Compared to average USB costs of $3/gb, the overwhelming benefits are clear.
And that’s Biocomputing!
The race has just begun to discover and identify ways DNA + other molecular structure can revolutionize computation. Experimentation and research has been done, so we know ‘it works’ — but to truly build super-bio-computers we need exponentially more awareness and people working in this field.
While the theory in itself is awesome, there’s genuine massive potential economically and computationally through biology.
Biocomputing suggests several advantages over quantum and classical computation.
While the idea of futuristic computers made from cellular components is extremely interesting, there’s a genuine opportunity for biocomputing in the world of computation. DNA is highly stable and in contrast to quantum computing, doesn’t need to be stored at unnatural temperatures for functionality. In the case of digital DNA storage, we anticipate centuries before error-correction processes are necessary.
The overwhelming advantage is how better computation can be achieved on a radically smaller scale. As opposed to bulky classical supercomputers and quantum computers, at the size of a book or human body, we can satisfy the computational and storage needs of the entire world’s population.
Crazy. | https://medium.com/swlh/how-were-building-computers-out-of-dna-and-proteins-6d3f1e160fe8 | ['Joshua Payne'] | 2020-03-05 03:09:22.412000+00:00 | ['Data', 'Biocomputer', 'Computing', 'Future'] |
Wanna play? Can you commit? | “It was my tongue that swore; my heart is unsworn” — Euripides
We all have personally experienced, heard or seen examples where an individual or team accomplish goals that otherwise was seen hard to accomplish. It is the kind of stories that surprise people involved. You know about it when you experience it. And I am sure we all have our fair share of similar stories either in our personal life or professional life where we accomplish something that we thought was less probable. We revisit those glorious moment/period from time to time to cherish and renew our confidence on what we can accomplish.
So what set such moment/experience aside from the other ones? I believe it is how we get our head in the game and tackle our self-doubt. Doubting ourselves as we undertake a daunting journey is part of the commitment making process. And how we tackle those doubts leading up to making personal commitment towards accomplishing those goal differentiate the outcome — from winning or missing the mark.
Commitments are personal by nature and we have to go through our own intellectual and emotional journey as we commit ourselves to a cause. However once committed it propel us to take action. It gets the creative juices flowing opening up new paths on daily basis. It allows the right stuff to happen, breed determination and rally individual and team towards an unrelenting pursuit of that elusive goal/outcome. Once committed it also frees the mind from doubts and instead focus all energy towards progress and discovering creative approaches that can lead us to the goal. I have found time and again — a committed individual or team — is able to discover right path/approach necessary to accomplish the daunting goal that may have looked so hard to accomplish at the onset.
So want to play to win and accomplish seemingly daunting goals then let’s start with tackling our own doubts. Getting truly committed help accomplish those daunting goals and liberate mind from worries filled with self-fulfilling failure scenarios.
Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans. -Peter F. Drucker | https://medium.com/aloktyagi/wanna-play-can-you-commit-63261bde35d3 | ['Alok Tyagi'] | 2017-03-08 21:02:15.700000+00:00 | ['Personal', 'Software Development', 'Organization Development'] |
Bob Marley once said, Being vulnerable is the only way to make your heart feel true pleasure. | Bob Marley once said, Being vulnerable is the only way to make your heart feel true pleasure. Nothing ever hurt as bad as coming out of your shell, and being kicked right back in. Love. Love hurts. It is undeniably one of the best and worst things and it hurts. It hurts more than the first time you fall off your bike as a kid, it hurts more than the first black eye you get from being a stupid kid, and yet you still need to keep loving. The first feeling of rejection you ever feel will scar you, it will pain you just to hear their name, it will give you a headache just to even think about it. The first time you lose them, the first time you couldn’t keep them around, the first time the person you loved more than anything changes, Your heart will shatter, your lips will burn, your hands will shake. Not only the firsts, but every time after. Because even though you know it will hurt, you still try. Vulnerability, Hurts. It hurts to have to try not to be the shy kid who sticks to themself. It hurts to have to try not to shake when you talk, it’s hard and it’s truly a process to feel like you are at home with yourself, and not a strange place. It’ll hurt when you have to explain to your friends and loved ones that you’re feeling sad again, and that you can’t go a minute without feeling anxious and that feeling that you’re hurting them, that you’re worrying them, it hurts more than anything you’ve felt before. It all hurts. But in the wake of vulnerability, You have people who surround you with love, and warmth. Even when you can’t reciprocate any of it. It hurts to come out and say that you’re not the strong girl people used to look up to, it hurts for people to look at their funny friend with worry because she seems sad again. It will always feel like you can’t get the words out, that you can’t breathe, but sometimes it’s better not to be the strongest person in the room. It’s harder, and people look at you differently. But feeling doesn’t make you weak. It makes you human. It makes you stronger, it makes you tougher. You need to feel it all and not just hold it in. It’ll hurt, but it’ll be ok. It always will be. | https://medium.com/@mlw3259/bob-marley-once-said-being-vulnerable-is-the-only-way-to-make-your-heart-feel-true-pleasure-bc4bae9bbb39 | [] | 2020-12-18 09:30:20.277000+00:00 | ['Feelings', 'Anxiety', 'Heartbreak', 'Bpd'] |
The Return of False Balance on Climate Change | Until recently, media outlets, when running stories about global warming, often felt compelled to also include, often in the same article, scientifically groundless views denying the reality of human-caused climate change. Newspapers and other publications supposedly acknowledged these views in the name of journalistic balance. However, airing such denialism made as much sense as publishing the rants of 9/11 Truthers and the Anti-vaxxers. Researchers Max and Jules Boykoff found that such so-called balance actually violated another journalistic value, objectivity, as publicizing groundless climate denialism presented a distorted picture of the state of climate science. Media balance obscured the fact that there has been a decades-long consensus that human beings are heating the planet. In the case of climate change, balance effectively became bias. This biased balance has receded, as the media now generally reports the reality of climate change without including unscientific rebuttal.
However, it seems that so-called balance on climate change has once again reared its ugly head. Earlier this week, a number of newspapers around the nation published a piece on climate change by James Taylor. Taylor is President of the Heartland Institute, a notorious source of climate denialism. One newspaper labeled the piece as “counterpoint,” as if to offer the other side of a lively debate. Another used the term “forum.” Yet the piece is so riddled with inaccuracies and falsehoods as to not merit publication in any newspaper. It does not offer a legitimate counterpoint in any forum. More importantly, this piece is a case study in how attempts at media balance on climate change only distort the reality of climate science and hamper efforts to address the climate emergency.
First of all, Taylor utterly misrepresents the climate crisis when he says that climate change will replace a cold climate with a more desirable warm one. In fact, global warming ending the 10,000 years of climatic stability — an epoch scientists call the Holocene — that enabled human civilization to arise and flourish. Global warming is not a matter of turning a switch from colder to warmer conditions. Rather, climate change means decades and decades of climatic instability coupled with massively destructive weather extremes and rising sea levels. These changes will seriously endanger the built environment, essential infrastructure, food and water supplies, public health, and political stability and national security. Taylor would have us think that climate change means pleasant, mild conditions. Instead, think of the relentless tropical storms and devastating wildfires that we are now experiencing. Think of millions of refugees displaced by rising sea levels and extreme weather events. Think of food shortages brought on by droughts.
Second, Taylor engages in blatant falsehood about the evidence for climate change. The evidence, which is consistent with basic geophysics and atmospheric chemistry, goes way beyond the past century’s temperature records. It includes observations of change in sea levels, glaciers, weather, ecosystems, and seasonal patterns. It also includes paleoclimatic data and the fossil record, which enable us to reconstruct planetary conditions going back hundreds of millions of years and show that past increases in carbon dioxide and methane have heated our planet.
Third, Taylor misrepresents the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He claims, “Even the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change acknowledges it has low confidence that any of the forecast harms of a warming planet are occurring today.” In fact, in its 2012 report, the IPCC says, “It is likely that anthropogenic influences have led to warming of extreme daily minimum and maximum temperatures at the global scale. There is medium confidence that anthropogenic influences have contributed to intensification of extreme precipitation at the global scale. It is likely that there has been an anthropogenic influence on increasing extreme coastal high water due to an increase in mean sea level.”
Taylor asserts that “temperatures have been significantly warmer than today throughout most of the time that human civilization has existed.” That is entirely false. In fact, the Earth may be warmer than it has been in 120,000 years. Taylor also claims that “the planet [is] return[ing] to its customary warmth.” Such a statement is scientifically nonsensical and is a rhetorical device meant to assure readers that climate change means restoration of some preexisting equilibrium. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Finally, Taylor cites wind turbines as a major cause of bird death. In fact, while bird deaths from wind turbines are a problem, they are dwarfed, by orders of magnitude, by bird mortality from cats, collisions with buildings, and vehicles. Arguably, climate change will be much more destructive of wildlife than wind or solar installations.
Taylor’s screed is no doubt the first of many denialist broadsides that will pop up in the news media over the coming year. Why? President-elect Joe Biden is vowing serious action to address the climate emergency. And every time we are on the verge of confronting climate change, the denialist community of right-wing ideologues and fossil fuel interests ramps up its sabotage efforts. There is an unfortunate pattern here. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the initially promising 2009 United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen, 2010 federal climate legislation, the 2016 Paris Climate Agreement, and President Obama’s Clean Power Plan were all derailed in part by denialist disinformation and political campaigns.
Such efforts are not only manipulative, misleading, and untruthful; they are also deeply immoral. Driven by anti-regulatory zeal and economic self-interest, climate denialism attacks our ability to deal with an existential threat to civilization. A 2009 Stanford University study found that media balancing of mainstream climate science with denialism reduced public belief in the reality and seriousness of climate change and reduced support for public policy to address the issue. In publishing baseless denialist pieces, news outlets thus do more than abandon objectivity. They themselves become complicit in perpetuating the climate crisis. | https://medium.com/@peterfcannavo/the-return-of-false-balance-on-climate-change-da61766f3d8a | ['Peter F. Cannavo'] | 2020-12-18 16:54:03.914000+00:00 | ['Climate Crisis', 'Media Criticism', 'Climate', 'Climate Denial', 'Climate Change'] |
Whitelist | How do I implement a whitelist in Solidity?
Your PM ask you to implement a whitelist in your Smart Contract. At first, it seems very simple. You create a mapping called “whitelisted”:
mapping(address => bool) public whitelisted;
Than you create a function that whitelists an address:
function whitelist(address _user) external {
require(msg.sender == owner, “Only owner can whitelist”);
whitelisted[_user] = true;
}
Great. It is ready. It can’t be easier. You can go and drink your coffee.
But are you going to whitelist 20.000 address?? A transaction would cost around 45.000 gas. If you pay 20 Gwei, it is going to cost 0.0009 Eth. Today 1 eth in usd values around $ 4.000,00. So, it is going to cost only $ 3,00. Ok, not bad (remember, we are paying only 20 Gwei and today gas price is around 300 Gwei). Your project is going to spend $ 60.000,00. “My project is rich and we can afford”. Good. But how long would it take to whitelist 20.000 addresses? If it takes 10s for each one, 55hs!!!
But I am smart and I will whitelist using a batch approach. I send an array full of addresses that I want to whitelist.
function batchWhitelist(address[] memory _users) external {
require(msg.sender == owner, “Only owner can whitelist”);
uint size = _users.length;
for(uint256 i=0; i< size; i++){
address user = _users[i];
whitelisted[user] = true;
}
}
If blocksize is 8M, you can fit a bunch of address here. I can say around 200 addresses. Very good, now you are going to spend 16 minutes. But remember, you have other factors here: Infura (or another node) network, confirmations, you have to create a script and a list of addresses. For a large project, it is still not a good solution. And the price would be the same if you whitelist one by one or in a batch. And to make things worse, you may need another mapping to blacklist some addresses. You have just multiplied your problem by 2.
Before showing another solution, let’s improve the solution above. OpenZeppelin has a Smart Contract that can help with that. It is AccessControl. Here are some functions that helps you organizing your code.
function hasRole(bytes32 role, address account)
function getRoleAdmin(bytes32 role)
function grantRole(bytes32 role, address account)
function revokeRole(bytes32 role, address account)
function renounceRole(bytes32 role, address account)
Your code would be easier to read and maintain and is reusing a well used code.
But using a mapping can cost some money and take some time. How do we solve this problem?
To make it cheapier you can sign user address. Only signed addresses could execute a function.
Is it a complex solution? Well, it is going to need some effort, but not huge. After it is setup, it will not look hard to implement.
First, you create a lambda service where your admin address will sign a data for your customer. Here we need a backend and a database so you know which addresses can be signed. Maybe you already have this information because your Dapp needs a KYC.
For this example, let’s check a code used in a successful token sale. You can find here, https://etherscan.io/address/0x3ce3b6d9372a4d761172a89cf0139129309fa0ae#code .
Code above was used during Foam token sale (It was developed by ConsenSys team -Thanks https://github.com/vdrg, https://github.com/hensha256 and https://github.com/thekscar ). To contribute to the token sale user had already passed a KYC. Then, to be able to contribute, user had a contribution limit.
Lambda service would receive contributor address, contribution limit and a expiration date and it would sign it using Admin address.
bytes _rawHash = keccak256( abi.encodePacked(
_contributor,
_contributionLimitUnits,
_payloadExpiration )
Now, when calling contribute function from the Sale, it would receive:
function contribute(
address _contributor,
uint256 _contributionLimitUnits,
uint256 _payloadExpiration,
bytes _sig )
Notice that sig is a byte returned by the Lambda service. When contribute() is called, it will get _contributor, _contributionLimitUnits, _payloadExpiration and hash it and check the signature. If sig was signed by the Admin address, then it is a valid signature and user can call contribute() function. _rawHash is the hash of _contributor, _contributionLimitUnits and
_payloadExpiration.
bytes32 hash = _rawHash.toEthSignedMessageHash();
return whitelistAdmin == hash.recover(_sig);
Foam Sale code has more functions, like invalidateHash(). It is needed because if your service signed message to an address and then you later found that address sent fake documents during the KYC, you can invalidate the hash to prevent being used.
If you want to learn more how to hash data and recover address that signed it, please check OpenZeppelin signature test example here. | https://medium.com/@luizhamilton29/whitelist-553358559658 | ['Luiz Soares'] | 2021-08-27 18:20:45.129000+00:00 | ['Solidity Tutorial', 'Solidity', 'Openzeppelin'] |
How Can You Find Paid Surveys Worth Your Time to Take? | How Can You Find Paid Surveys Worth Your Time to Take?
Completing surveys is a popular — yet time-intensive — way to make some cash online. LimitlessReward by BitClave is the best way to maximize the return on your effort.
Making Money Online Through Surveys
If you’re not aware of the practice of taking online consumer surveys for compensation, it’s time to get familiar with this simple, popular way of making money online. Essentially, surveys exist to connect companies to consumers and, additionally, people who could potentially be interested in their product. Companies get feedback about how their services or products are received, and to understand the marketplace. Because that information is valuable, manufacturers and service providers want to compensate their reviewers whose survey responses they will relay on in the future for strategic decision making.
What are the Hurdles of Normal Survey Sites?
There’s still an important question to answer about paid surveys for consumer feedback. Most participants find their surveys on specific aggregator websites, which are convenient spots for companies to place their surveys. However, you might find surveys with no or very little compensation value for you, the participant. These middle man sites all have different methods of rewarding survey participants, which can slow down your money-making capability. Often, there’s a minimum — reached at about 10 surveys — before you can get your cash rewards. Plus, each aggregator site sign up shares your email and personal information with that site, and those details might not be as protected as you hope.
BitClave’s Portal Brings the Best Surveys and Compensates Twice
If you’re an avid survey taker, or interested in making some money in your spare time online, there are two reasons to make BitClave’s portal your first stop. Instead of aggregating many surveys with varied compensation levels, BitClave does the work for you, finding the highest value surveys for you to take. Plus, we compensate you just for selecting and completing those paid surveys through our portal.
Try out LimitlessReward portal that gives you greater compensation for your consumer feedback effort. | https://medium.com/bitclave/how-can-you-find-paid-surveys-worth-your-time-to-take-551c714dab51 | [] | 2019-06-06 12:56:14.364000+00:00 | ['Surveys', 'Paidsurveys', 'Feedback', 'Cashback'] |
When Timing is Everything: Disruptive Startups in Established Industry | In the startup world, it’s tough to be early. You can have the best team and the most innovative product but sometimes the market is not ready.
As a startup veteran, it’s always with a heavy heart when I read about the closure of a robotics company. I had this feeling last week when I read about Abundant Robotics. It’s equally tough when I read reporting about the closure, looking for blame as to why things turned out how they did. Being someone who lives robotics startup life every day, I know that in most cases there is no real blame. Occasionally the most innovative robotic technologies with the most fantastic teams do not make it simply because the overall market isn’t ready for the offering.
Attempting to change the world is brave, and also scary. Startups take on the challenge of developing brand new robotics technologies for the oldest industries around: manufacturing, agriculture, machine tending, packaging, etc. It’s a bold undertaking to break into markets that have done tasks a certain way for hundreds of years. New ideas in old industries can be disruptive to how things have always been done in “tried and true” ways and adoption is typically slow.
Even in our advanced society, it remains difficult to convince older industries that there are better ways to approach often tedious and time consuming tasks by taking a chance with new robotics. Even if the proposed solution meets the complete needs of a task, a customer can be cautious of the risk associated with trying new technologies. I’ve seen it take years to convince the market that a solution is ready and sometimes in the results driven startup world, there isn’t the time. No one is to blame here. It’s simply a game of timing in often risk averse established industries.
This sounds cliché, but with endings also comes new beginnings. Even when a company disappointingly closes, team members, not ready to give up innovating, disperse and bring their brilliantly disruptive ideas to other companies and the startup world continues to grow. I’m looking forward to seeing how Abundant Robotics team members continue to change the world as they take on new challenges. | https://medium.com/rioscorporation/when-timing-is-everything-disruptive-startups-in-established-industry-1ac21225810f | ['Mandy Dwight'] | 2021-07-15 19:23:30.878000+00:00 | ['Manufacturing', 'Agritech', 'Startup Lessons', 'Robotics', 'Automation'] |
Secure your SMTP signs in Rails application | We as a whole know advantages of logging. It empower designers to rapidly investigate issues even prior to imitating it.
In dispersed frameworks, registering logs are put away in shared drive or at times on circulated workers itself. Later these logs are collected in devices like Splunk, LogDNA, Logstash to make them open at single spot and empower clients to look/read logs.
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Since these instrument are not overseen by your association would it be a good idea for you to push touchy data likes individual subtleties of your clients, validation subtleties, installment data on these apparatuses? Evident answer is NO! So these subtleties are concealed in the majority of the application before application logs are produced. In short we are acceptable here😇.
Yet, presently I have one more inquiry. Shouldn’t something be said about the logs created by your application while sending messages to application clients? Do you have to make sure about those as well🤔?
Your messages may have reset secret phrase joins, verification OTP’s or installment receipts which may get traded off in the event that you don’t make sure about your email age logs.
Lets have take a gander at underneath model.
Here in my Rails application I am sending installment affirmation email to client when membership is restored by client. We should have take a gander at Mailer and html format document.
application/mailers/application_mailer.rb document looks like beneath:
class ApplicationMailer < ActionMailer::Base
notify_payment_success.html.erb record looks like beneath:
Presently lets produce email from rails support with beneath order:
ApplicationMailer.notify_payment_success(1).deliver
Woah we have another email now!
Stand by! Account_id is touchy data of client. What it’s doing in logs😳? Its likewise pushed to Splunk. Presently what🤨?
Try not to Frenzy. This can be fixed! What all do you require to browse if email was shipped off client? Do you need email body too? Well we dont need it in the vast majority of the cases. So how about we quit adding it in logs.
Of course ActiveSupport::LogSubscriber print whole email content in investigate mode. We have to overwrite this conduct. For the time being we should log just date, subject, sender and beneficiary.
Make a document log_subscriber.rb in config/initializers catalog and add underneath code in that.
module ActionMailer
class LogSubscriber
def deliver(event)
Presently restart your rails reassure and create another email. Lets take a gander at the logs.
Picture for post
We see just required subtleties in logs
I trust this will help you next time when you add another email in your Rails application.
Glad coding | https://medium.com/@banhjdsf1589/secure-your-smtp-signs-in-rails-application-46286a43d6b3 | [] | 2020-11-22 14:43:41.632000+00:00 | ['Logs', 'Smtp', 'Secure', 'Rails', 'Splunk'] |
Priorities for Administrative Action on Carbon Removal in 2021+ | Below is the executive summary of Carbon180’s Transition Book: Priorities for Administrative Action on Carbon Removal in 2021+. Please direct any inquiries to [email protected].
We are at the inflection point for stopping climate change. Growing public awareness and mobilization alongside increasingly devastating impacts from wildfires, hurricanes, and drought make clear that this moment is critically positioned for addressing the climate crisis. The next administration will need to take bold action in 2021 and beyond to drastically and swiftly reduce emissions across all sectors of the economy. And while there have been many decarbonization roadmaps that chart that track, there remains a critical piece missing from the climate fight: carbon removal.
The scientific consensus finds that cleaning up the carbon already in the atmosphere — in addition to reducing emissions — is essential to avoiding the worst impacts of climate change and protecting frontline communities across the globe. To hit our climate goals, estimates suggest that we’ll need to deploy a portfolio of solutions on the scale of 10 billion tons of CO2 per year by mid-century. While there has been significant promising innovation over the last decade, investments from the public and private sectors still do not match the scale needed.
Beyond their climate benefits, carbon removal solutions offer enormous economic and social advantages, including generating high-quality jobs, creating new sources of revenue for rural communities, developing new carbon-negative industries, improving biodiversity, and positioning the United States as the leader on carbon removal.
Though there has been growing interest in and action on carbon removal from Congress, there remains a foundational gap between our goals and the current efforts to make them a reality. The next administration should establish leadership on carbon removal in its first 100 days, taking early action to lay the groundwork for and begin actualizing the just carbon-removing economy of the future.
This report serves as a guide for transition teams as they explore pathways for administrative action on climate. We make recommendations for high-priority steps the White House should take within the first 30 days, as well as additional priorities for the first 100 days. For each agency, we outline key actions that can be executed within existing authority and funding. We also propose legislation and a draft first-year budget that the president should pursue in partnership with Congress. Together, these pieces form a comprehensive roadmap for ambitious administrative action on carbon removal.
View the full report. | https://medium.com/@carbon180/priorities-for-administrative-action-on-carbon-removal-in-2021-a531053c586c | [] | 2020-11-23 15:09:40.586000+00:00 | ['Climate', 'Climate Action', 'Carbon Emissions', 'White House', 'Policy'] |
Apache Spark and Hadoop HDFS: Hello World | This post intends to help people starting their big data journey by helping them to create a simple environment to test the integration between Apache Spark and Hadoop HDFS. It does not intend to describe what Apache Spark or Hadoop is.
Prerequisites
A Docker environment (local or remote).
A DNS entry on our local machine to map hadoop to the Docker host IP address.
Hadoop Docker Image
Pull the teivah/kafka:2.9.2 Docker image:
docker pull teivah/hadoop:2.9.2
This image starts a single-node Hadoop cluster.
Run the Docker image:
docker run -ti --hostname hadoop -p 50070:50070 -p 9000:9000 -p 50075:50075 -p 50010:50010 teivah/hadoop:2.9.2
The command exposes 3 ports: 50070 is the HDFS namenode port, 50075 is the HDFS datanode port and 9000 is the port to be accessed by Spark ( fs.defaultFS configuration).
Once the container is running, go to the web UI: http://hadoop:50070/ and then navigate to Utilities -> Browse the file system.
Upload a file at the root level (you may want to create hierarchies afterward).
Apache Spark Client (in Java)
Git clone the following project: https://github.com/teivah/spark-hdfs-helloworld.
Run mvn clean install to install the project and download the dependencies.
to install the project and download the dependencies. Open io.teivah.spark.SparkHdfsHelloWorld.java . This client connects to an HDFS cluster (hdfs://hadoop:9000/…) and executes a series of queries to counts how many times each word appears in the file.
. This client connects to an HDFS cluster (hdfs://hadoop:9000/…) and executes a series of queries to counts how many times each word appears in the file. Replace FILENAME (line 21) by the name of the file you just uploaded.
(line 21) by the name of the file you just uploaded. Execute the application. At the end of the execution, you should have a part-00000 file created in the /output folder representing the results.
You are now ready to play with Apache Spark and Hadoop HDFS. | https://itnext.io/apache-spark-and-hadoop-hdfs-hello-world-ed6fb2077c20 | ['Teiva Harsanyi'] | 2020-12-09 19:21:59.270000+00:00 | ['Apache Spark', 'Big Data', 'Programming', 'Hadoop', 'Hdfs'] |
Understanding pain points and delight: The key to a better employee experience | Where we used to trade in commodities and goods, as an economy, we are now moving towards creating great experiences — whether you are an end-user, a customer, an employee or all of the above. You only need to look at what companies like Amazon, Uber or Starbucks are doing to see this in action.
While I like to talk about user experience (a person’s emotions and attitude towards a product, system or service), and customer experience (the interaction between the organization and the customer), employee experience is also a topic that is high on my team’s agenda.
There are clear parallels between a superior customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX). An Accenture report, Employee Experience Reimagined, shares that while an optimized CX generates loyalty and additional sales, a stellar EX attracts talent, boosts workforce engagement, productivity and retention. In the current war for talent we’re experiencing, focusing on creating a place where people want to work each day is essential and will give companies an edge. In addition, research from Jacob Morgan showed that, compared with other companies, those who invest heavily in the three aspects of employee experience (culture, physical space, and technology) had more than four times the average profit and more than two times the average revenue.
One of the shared attributes when looking across the experience of users, customer or employees is empathy, and understanding their point of view. Looking for pain points or friction in an employee’s day is very similar to looking for pain points or frictions when looking at someone’s product experience. There are a lot of lessons I believe we can take from UX and CX to apply in the workplace and improve the day to day life of employees universally.
I sat down with Aaron Stewart and Jon Yu, my User Experience (UX) colleagues at Lenovo, to talk about employee experience (EX), why it’s so important to have conversations with employees about their work pain points, and how we can use technology to assist and improve their experience.
DILIP BHATIA: Hi Aaron and Jon, thanks for your time! Let’s start by talking about what you do at Lenovo.
Aaron Stewart: I’m a Director of Next UX & UX Research. As a team, our mission is to look ahead of current product portfolios and anticipate new features or completely new solutions for Lenovo’s Intelligent Devices Group (IDG).
Jon Yu: I’m a member of the Next UX team too, focused on the design and concept side. While I wear a bunch of different hats, right now I’m helping to drive our new smart office solutions and explore what the potential of smart tech in the workplace will be moving forward.
Dilip: You’ve both been directly involved in projects that look at developing solutions to address pain points for employees, so what does EX mean from your perspective?
Aaron: If an employee is truly engaged working at a company, it’s fair to think that they’re going to be productive and delivering as fully as possible for the organization and its customers. That’s why having a great employee experience is so important. It’s a cycle of addressing needs to make employees proud in what they’re doing and more focused on what matters.
Jon: For employees to have a great experience, you need to meet the needs of your workforce and enable them to do their best work. It’s not just Facilities, HR or IT; it’s the people, it’s the space, it’s the technology in that space and the tools that you have to enable and encourage them for success.
Dilip: You both mentioned addressing employees’ needs as crucial to EX, how do organizations go about this?
Aaron: Organizations need to have a genuine and cyclic focus on having conversations with employees about what their pain points and delights are throughout the day, followed by concrete actions to remove those top pain points and continually remedy them. We often hear about things like crappy wireless connections or inability to find a desk when they need it or the computer they’ve received is too old. Those are all solvable problems.
At Lenovo, we did a lot of research which included creating journey maps of what an employee’s typical day looks like, what are their pain points, what are their delights, the tools they use for work, and the spaces they inhabit. In that research we asked them what improvements would have the greatest impact on their experience in a positive way, and that gave us focus for our efforts.
Dilip: These are solvable, but it does require effort and support. What was your biggest takeaway from the research?
Aaron: You need to have a genuine conversation and discovery phase to find out what’s working and what’s not working and put it on repeat. It can’t be a one and done conversation. The C-Suite is going to have to support the need to do it though. It can’t just be the discovery of what’s good and what’s bad, it needs to be a legitimate enabling to go solve the problems.
Dilip: You mentioned earlier delivering for customers — do you think there is a correlation between a great employee experience and a great customer experience?
Jon: The prouder you are to work for a company and the more authentically you believe in that company, the more likely you are to become a positive ambassador for the brand. I think there is a direct relationship between people who feel like they’re truly valued within a company and how they represent outwardly to the public. There’s also a fair amount of data to suggest companies who have a keen focus on employee experience end up doing better with their customer experience initiatives.
Dilip: As you know, at Lenovo employee experience has been front of mind for us and at the heart of many of our recent discussions. What are we hearing from our customers? Is this high on their agenda?
Aaron: At recent advisory councils in North America, I polled the attendees in the room, all IT decision makers, as to whether they have a formal focus on employee experience. Of the 59 attendees across the three councils, only 6 of them said they aren’t really focusing on it. 32 said they definitely do, while 21 said they did somewhat. While they were all in IT and that’s only part of the puzzle, the vast majority of them are formally speaking the language. It’s a tell of how much this seems to be rising in importance. That wasn’t the case two years ago.
Dilip: Given that many organizations are just starting out formally in this space, what are some of the first things they must address when they’re trying to craft a positive employee experience?
Aaron: What we are hearing across the board is that for a company to execute on a formal employee experience program they need multiple functions involved, it can’t be just IT, it can’t just be HR, or the Facilities team. Getting those three functions together from a strategic, structural and budget perspective is not a trivial exercise for most companies, as the three groups are not necessarily driven by the same metrics. This organizational shift is probably the first thing that has to begin.
Jon: As we’ve mentioned, to create a great experience, you need to listen to employees, and provide them with the spaces, the technology, and the support they need. What we’re constantly seeing is a battle for collaborative spaces and a battle for technology that just works, day to day frictions that make it hard for people to do their job. You must address these before you introduce anything new.
Dilip: We believe that technology is one of the three pillars of employee experience. How can we use tech to improve employee experience and address those day to day frictions?
Jon: Once you understand the pain points, you can then look at whether there is a tech solution to address that, and there usually is.
Depending on what those points are, to create a seamless experience it can sometimes be as easy as having a choice of what PC your people can use so they can work on a machine they’re familiar and comfortable with, it can be making sure the device you provide boots up quickly and is fast and responsive so that any lag time is taken out and everyone can get straight on to what they need to do, or even offering great displays so your people have a great view of what they’re working on.
A great example of a pain point that we hear from a lot of organizations is that it takes too long to set up and join an online meeting. If every meeting takes ten minutes to set up, just think of how much time, money and frustration you can save by addressing this.
That’s why we’ve worked so hard on the ThinkSmart Hub, which I’ve coined as a collaboration computer. We’ve really tried to build smart technology into the device, consolidate experiences and streamline it to make it simpler. The device, while helping you to join a meeting with just one button, removes the friction — and time — of having to connect your computer and log in, and click a link. We’re able to start a meeting with one click. You walk in the room, this device wakes up, shows you the calendar, shows you the meeting, you press a button and you’re in the online meeting.
Dilip: When we looked at the design, were we only focused on reducing time or is there more to it?
Jon: We also looked at team dynamics, and how people are collaborating in the room. We’ve designed the ThinkSmart Hub so multiple people can be connected to the device, they’re able to show all their content and take turns sharing that content without having to wait for the cable. We’ve also removed that friction of having to wait for someone to finish until you can start sharing.
We’re very much focused on what we can do to support democratized meetings or collaborative meetings, where it’s not just one person in front of the room showing information to everybody, but it’s people having a conversation with content in the room and also online.
Dilip: Let’s talk about physical space. I was recently in New York at the Fast Company Innovation Festival and I had a chance to go visit RGA to check out what brand marketing agencies like them are actually doing in their office space and different types of environments. Why do you think this is important for EX?
Jon: As part of employee experience, you have to look at all of the different places people work in and see how we can make that easier for everyone. When we were going and talking to customers, we’re asking about what type of spaces their employees need and what spaces they are planning, as that is an integral part of the employee experience.
Some of them are planning on cutting up larger conference rooms and turning them into smaller huddle spaces. Beyond the huddle spaces, it’s the same sort of philosophy, streamlining the experience once you land in an area that you want to work. This could be at a desk, this could be in a conference room, this could be in a ‘phone booth’. You have to provide a different range of spaces to suit the needs of employees today — not everyone wants to sit at a standard hot desk, and it actually doesn’t work for every job role. We’re really interested in how these philosophies can influence all spaces, the desk, open seating arrangements, communal spaces, and even private offices.
Aaron: There’s a lot of debate in the industry about the efficacy of the agile workplace where people are using unassigned seating or a hot desk. We have seen it executed well, and we’ve seen it executed poorly. That’s why we need to look at employee needs to understand what spaces they actually require to collaborate and do their work. We need to make it easy for employees to find spaces that work for their particular needs.
Dilip: Obviously, from what you are both saying, looking at your pain points and figuring out how to address these is the key to a great employee experience. From your perspective, if a company was looking for ‘low-hanging fruit’ or getting more bang for their buck in employee experience, where would you encourage them to focus?
Aaron: I believe that the very first step any company needs to take is to, if they haven’t already, begin to have a dedicated focus on employee experience and start the conversation. Share this with your employees in your communications and find ways to form the cross-disciplinary team that you need for success — make sure you get the HR, IT, Real Estate, CX/UX teams, Brand and your leaders together and have them talk about what you collectively need to do to improve the experience of your employees. That will give the most bang for buck, as it’s the foundation you need to make a real impact.
Jon: Following that, I would say telepresence. The more you can speak face to face, in person or online, means there’s more communication, less is lost in translation and there’s a lot of benefit to seeing your co-workers, no matter where you are in the world.
Aaron: I think that’s a great one. I’ve repeatedly seen when a company’s culture endorses ‘turning the camera on’, once they get used to it, they don’t want to go back. They appreciate the engagement they have with each other as employees. Those tools are already released, while there may be some back-end cost in enabling them, it’s an easy thing to do. The hard part is the cultural shift.
Jon: From the research we’re doing, we’re seeing data come back that more employers are encouraging or requiring people to use videos, and then employees, the people who work for those companies are saying they want to use video telepresence more, so I think there’s a positive trajectory. I think there’s a lot of positive things to be gained from using video — or turning the camera on as Aaron said.
Dilip: Thanks to you both for your time today and for sharing these insights.
Thank you to Brian Lee for pictures of Aaron Stewart, Jon Yu and me. | https://medium.com/@dilipbhatia/understanding-pain-points-and-delight-the-key-to-a-better-employee-experience-a46e11add616 | ['Dilip Bhatia'] | 2019-06-17 23:02:33.656000+00:00 | ['Employee Engagement', 'Tech', 'Employee Experience', 'Lenovo', 'Talent Acquisition'] |
It’s end of 2020. If you don’t own a virtual reality headset yet, here’s may be why.. | THINKING IT’S A TOY OR A VIDEO GAME.
The aircraft was also called a toy at one point. FACEBOOK was also called a video game at one point. The new VR headsets are not toys nor video games, even though they can provide such entertainment similar to the functionalities of computers or phones. Here’s what VR is today…..
2. A PREVIOUS UNEXCITING EXPERIENCE WITH A 3D GLASS OR VR BOX AND YOU THINK NEW VIRTUAL REALITY HEADSETS ARE THE SAME
Virtual reality today is as real as it promises. Experience real heights, depths, under water, outer space… sweating, swinging, laughing, screaming, talking with new people in real time by the fire side, in the cinema, at the lounge, in the living room, in live events …. connect with like minded people etc
3. THE WEIGHT OF THE OLDER VR HEADSET ON YOUR NECK AND WIRES ALL AROUND YOUR FEET..
Good news is the Oculus quests weigh only 0.5kg, are wireless, have very long battery life and have 6 degrees of freedom — i.e you can move and rotate in ALL directions.
4. YOU THINK A NEW HIGH SPECS COMPUTER IS REQUIRED AND IT IS VERY EXPENSIVE TO SET IT ALL UP
Nope. A computer is not required. The oculus quests are all in one VR headsets! There are other VR headsets too.
5. YOU DON’T LIKE THE TECHNICALITIES INVOLVED IN SETTING IT UP.
Strap it on and go! The new headsets are very interactive just like setting up a new phone. You are not connecting any wires.
READY FOR A NEW EXPERIENCE? Reach out to us at Re-awake Reality and we can deliver an Oculus Quest virtual reality headset on your request. Email: [email protected], Phone: +234 904 6467 585, Facebook:@reawakeReality | https://medium.com/@reawake-reality/its-end-of-2020-if-you-don-t-own-a-virtual-reality-headset-yet-here-s-may-be-why-149faddd7ab8 | ['Reawake Reality'] | 2020-12-16 14:01:26.232000+00:00 | ['Oculus Quest', 'Virtual Reality', 'Nigeria', 'Oculus'] |
Understanding the concept of JSX with ease | Confused about the JSX syntax?
Or did you get startled by the term?
You will feel none of that after you are done with this article.
By the way guys, it’s Agbejule Kehinde Favour.
So without further ado, lets headbutt this stuff guys!
What’s JSX all about?
JSX is like the combination of HTML and Javascript. It is used to describe your UI (User interface) view when using React. It also produces the “React elements”.
“The essence of Jsx is to make coding less stressful”.
Separating Javascript (The logic) and HTML(Markup) is very stressful……Just like separating grains from sand particles. Damn guys, that’s soo stressful!
So by integrating them together, JSX makes coding much more easier.
React makes this possible through the use of components which contain the JSX syntax (Javascript and HTML).
Don’t you feel that relief?
So enough of the intro and lets jump into the interesting part…..
Using the JSX syntax
# Writing the JSX syntax for HTML and Javascript
In JSX , Javascript expressions are written in curly braces({})
The name variable( const name) is a Javascript expression
The element variable (const element) is equal to a JSX expression containing HTML and the Javascript expression
You notice that the javascript expression is inside the curly bracket.
If not written this way , you would be getting errors while writing your code.
HTML code as shown above is written with the HTML tag of your choice.
# JSX can be used in ;
for loops
if statements
if statement
You can assign it to variables, accept it as an argument and also return it from functions.
Therefore, JSX is definitely an expression.
# You can also specify attributes in JSX
In JSX, quotes are used in specifying string literal that is sentences or words in strings and so on.
string literal
As mentioned earlier, Javascript expression are put in curly braces({})
NOTE: Don’t put quotes around the curly braces for Javascript expressions in attributes. Use the marks and braces for their respective expressions.
#JSX is mostly Javascript than HTML, so the React DOM uses the camelcase naming convention instead of the HTML naming convention or attribute names.
Therefore;
class in JSX is className
tabindex in JSX is tabIndex
# JSX represents objects
“Babel is a software that complies JSX down to React.createElement() calls”.
React.createElement() calls helps to keep your code bug free and create an object like this :
Babel objects
They are called react elements.
Think of them as descriptions of what you want to see on your screen.
React reads/processes these objects and utilize them to construct the DOM and keeps it up to date.
Amazing right?
NO MORE MANUAL MANIPULATION!
Now you know the logic behind the Virtual DOM and the Real DOM synchronization.
Babel HTML
Babel objects on babel
CLICK HERE TO CHECK IT OUT
# in JSX ,you can close empty tags with (/>) like XML
Just like the image tag above
# JSX tags have children
It can contains lots of elements in the variable. It can be nested as shown above.
#FINALLY, The React DOM converts JSX expression to strings before rendering it to prevent XSS (cross-site-scripting) complications which essentially means ERRORS
So that’s about it for JSX expressions.
Hope you’ve learned a lot?
Hope you enjoyed the article?
Feeling like a Badass already?
Cool!
Thank you guys!
Drop in your thoughts in the comment section and don’t forget to hit that clap button if you liked it.
Let’s make this interesting!
How?
Jump right into it here!
Until next time!
Agbejule Kehinde Favour.
Peace y’all! | https://medium.com/@favouragbejule/understanding-the-concept-of-jsx-with-ease-bf7563e5873d | [] | 2020-11-29 06:59:04.819000+00:00 | ['Beginners Guide', 'Reactjs', 'Programming', 'JavaScript', 'React'] |
The Gradient at work: Building a smart personal contact app | Expertise: UX Strategy, UX /UI Design, User Testing, Digital Branding, Requirements Management, Product Management, Product Marketing.
Project Team: Agency Partner, Product Designer, Business Analyst, Product Manager/ Product Marketer.
Platforms: iOS and Android.
The brief
There is a reason why almost every time a ‘personal CRM’ product comes out, it says it takes the pain out of managing personal contacts. Contact management space is a common problem, and only growing larger.
Today, we communicate with people across various communication platforms, including emails, messengers and chat apps. From personal experience, we at The Gradient understand the difficulty of maintaining contact lists and ever-growing contact books.
Connections are our most valuable assets. The more connections we get over time, the harder it becomes to navigate and organize our network.
The client came to us with an idea of a product that resonated with our own pain. That’s why we took the challenge of creating a beautiful and simple contact app.
Removing complexity
During the initial research stage, our product team learned that:
most of the traditional CRM products on the market are too complicated and robust for personal use 🙅
many people are still keeping their list of contacts in spreadsheets, it takes a lot of effort and time.
Researching the users’ pain of keeping contacts in tedious spreadsheets and address books, we wanted to create something better. A product that would strip away the effort and frustration.
Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. — Herbert A. Simon
Our goal was to create a super simple user experience that would make navigating personal network easy and fast.
Discovery and Research phase
There are a few methods we used in the discovery phase to jump-start this particular project.
In the beginning, we had a number of assumptions about the problems which we will be solving during our design process. Discovery and research is an important phase at the beginning of a project that helps both our clients and our design team to understand the real pains and problems that we are trying to solve.
A great product is a response to a painful problem, and we use research to make sure we know everything about that problem. First, we should have an understanding of:
Who are the users we are designing for? What are the key tasks those users want to accomplish?
Our potential target audience for the content management solution was incredibly wide and included people who have to manage thousands of contacts at work and their daily lives, for example, top managers, HR managers, entrepreneurs, professional networkers. Working with personas was not an optimal technique in this case.
We decided to follow the Jobs-to-be-Done methodology instead, which is often considered as better suited than personas for product development due to the fact that it’s more objective and measurable. This methodology uses “jobs” as a metaphor to explain what people are trying to achieve when they buy a particular product.
According to Jobs-to-be-Done theory, ‘customers are not buying your products, they are hiring them to get a job done’. Our goal was to understand what that job is and identify what would motivate customers to hire our product.
The key to success is understanding, from the customer’s perspective, what the entire job is and making that job the main point of value creation in a product.
We started by conducting numerous user interviews and identifying the most common tasks and pain points when managing their contacts. | https://medium.com/the-gradient/the-gradient-at-work-building-a-smart-personal-contact-app-789e8085fce8 | ['Aleksandra Smelianska'] | 2019-06-24 10:42:39.117000+00:00 | ['Design Process', 'UX', 'Product Design'] |
Il viaggio di Terra, la blockchain per l’adozione di massa | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/iconium/il-viaggio-di-terra-la-blockchain-per-ladozione-di-massa-997b9cc85024 | ['Edoardo Vecchio'] | 2020-12-11 13:23:33.422000+00:00 | ['Payments', 'Terra', 'Iconium', 'Mirror', 'Blockchain'] |
Book Coach Success Spotlight: Marni Seneker | Q: What was your experience in the Advanced Training and Certification course? What did you find most satisfying? What did you find most challenging?
Marni: There were times when I was working in an unfamiliar genre (fantasy!) where I found the exercises to be uncomfortable — hello world building! There were also times when my feedback differed from the answer key in one of the exercises and I wished I could discuss it with someone.
I loved the practicum work! It was so exciting to work through a fresh project using the tools from the course. The responsibility to the writer is so critical and it forces one to bring their best work to the task. | https://medium.com/no-blank-pages/book-coach-success-spotlight-marni-seneker-b27b95b12d23 | ['Terri M. Leblanc'] | 2020-09-01 15:08:54.294000+00:00 | ['Coaching', 'Freelancing', 'Coaching Skills', 'Writing', 'Success Story'] |
Reducers in JavaScript | How do Reducers work?
The reducer is nothing else but a simple function that accepts two arguments and base on those two arguments, returns a new state value.
The reducer will accept a state and an action and then return a new state. Bellow is the pseudo function that represents this concept.
This can rewrite as follows with the JavaScript arrow function.
Please note that even though I used “color” as the first argument above, it is still the state variable, and we can name it whatever we need. And also, note that the second argument, “action.” This is a simple object with a property called type and optional payload property, another object. Because that payload object is optional, and for the simplicity of this first example, I’ll just omit it here and use it later down in this article.
Based on the type property in the action object, the reducer can return a new state conditionally.
This is a straightforward use of the reducer concept, but you’ll most often have complex states than this in your applications. It’s very common to use a switch-case statement rather than the if-else statement inside reducer functions. If this rewrite using a switch-case, it’ll look like this:-
Then let’s look at a bit complex reducer function with an additional payload property (object) in the action object.
Before diving into the reducer function itself, I need to highlight a couple of things in the above code section. First, in line number 2, I used JavaScript object destruction to extract properties from the payload object and bind them to a constant. If you are not familiar with this concept, I recommend going through that first.
The other main thing is, the reducer functions are used to return a new state value based on the incoming state value to the function. This means we never directly change the todos state; rather, the reducer function returns a new todos object. So, in short, the state processed by the reducer function is immutable.
Please note that in the line number 8 and 17 above, I’m using the JavaScript spread operator to change only the part of the matched todo without touching the rest of that todo. And also, using the array map method, I always ensure to return a new array by using the incoming todos array. That’s how we ensure the immutability of the state, in our case, the todos.
So, we can use our todoReducer function in our application like below. Please pay attention to how I define the action object and its optional payload property. The payload property (object) consists of a minimal amount of information our reducer functions need to know to change the state.
After calling to our todoReducer, the new todos state object will look like this:- | https://enlear.academy/reducers-in-javascript-f5317b34cba2 | ['Nadun Malinda'] | 2021-07-27 16:43:21.339000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Reducer', 'ES6'] |
I Could Reject an Unwanted Sexual Advance, but Only Because I Was Under the Perfect Conditions | Later that night, my good friend George and I threw some pillows and blankets on the floor of our living room. We wanted to create a nice comfy space people could lay down on together.
Once we finished arranging the area, George and then Richard jumped on the pillows. Then I jumped in the mix.
George began to touch Richard’s body with his feet as I playfully touched my feet to George’s torso. Then I rolled back and forth on the blankets and pillows like a little doggy. (Okay, this might sound weird to you but this is a regular occurrence in my apartment. Acting like a kid as an adult is highly underrated.)
At some point, I stopped rolling and just lied on my back with my legs stretched in the air, feeling happy and tired.
Then I felt some feet on my legs and noticed they were coming from Richard, the hot guy I’d only exchanged two sentences with.
At first, I didn’t know what to think of it. It was mostly okay with me. But then his feet moved closer and closer to my crotch eventually landing in between my legs. He kept massaging that area with his feet.
I was not comfortable anymore and knew it was up to me to just say something. So as politely as possible I said, “Hey, can you not touch me there.”
But it didn’t do anything. The feet continued to the beat of the music playing loudly behind us. Chatter from the people sitting on the couch just next to us came at me in bursts. Maybe he just hadn’t heard me.
I shifted my torso to a different angle hoping he’d get the message that way. But his feet found their way to my crotch once again. “Hey!” I said again louder. “Can you please not touch me with your feet like that.”
With that, he moved his feet off of me. Phew. Maybe it had just been a misunderstanding. I collected myself and then went back to rolling back and forth on the pillows.
But not long after that, I felt feet on my legs again. It was from Richard. Apparently, he hadn’t gotten the message the first time.
My heart started to beat faster. I placed my legs on the ground in front of me. My heart was in my throat as the feet moved back toward my crotch.
Why was this happening? Should I just get up? But I like it here, why should I get up? George was still giggling next to me. Am I being too prude? He’s attractive, maybe I should just go with it.
And the thing is, his foot massage did feel good. I was feeling somewhat aroused because of it.
Someone laughed from the couch just above. I wondered why I couldn’t just have fun like everyone else, and thought about just letting Richard continue doing what he was doing.
And at that moment, a switch flipped.
You didn’t ask for this, Sarah. This is your body and you are the only one who is allowed to decide who touches it. And with that thought, the words finally erupted.
“Hey! Seriously, I said stop touching me with your feet!” There was no mistaking my earnestness this time. Finally, he took his feet off of me again.
I laid back down for a few minutes collecting myself. Not wanting to make more of a scene. I’d wanted to keep having fun, but I soon realized the fun was over for me. And I got up to go to the kitchen.
As I leaned against the counter listening to Matt talk to another friend, I tried to process what had just happened.
I knew what I’d done was a no-brainer. A man was touching me without my consent. And I’d obviously done the right thing by speaking up.
Yet, it had been surprisingly hard to do. And now, I felt kind of guilty about it.
I hadn’t wanted to make an enemy. I hadn’t wanted to be the reason the fun was spoiled.
I am the queen of fun. My Myers-Briggs profile is ESFP, the entertainer. All I really want in life is for me and all my friends to have a good time.
By yelling at someone I had ruined the vibe. I knew this, and for me, this was like peeing on someone’s birthday cake.
Looking back from several months later, the crazy thing about this story is that given the circumstances, it was actually easier to say no to his advances than it could have been.
A lot of the time, saying no is much harder. Here’s why it was relatively easy to say no in this scenario but wouldn’t have been in many others.
1. I was in my own home.
In this situation, I had a leg up, literally and figuratively.
I was on my own turf. I didn’t fear getting told to go home for rejecting Richard.
If it had been 3:00 AM and we were in Richard’s home, things could feel quite differently. I wouldn’t feel as safe to stand my ground in that situation.
2. I had close friends around me.
Along the same lines, I was among good friends when this all went down.
Richard, on the other hand, had no close direct connection to me or my roommates.
There was no question that the group would side with me. I was safe no matter what kind of conflict were to arise between us.
When I was in Italy a year ago, on the other hand, and I was pressured into having a sexual experience I didn’t want to have, the scenario was completely different. There, I was traveling by myself and I was on his turf. (He was a local and I was staying in the hostel he managed.)
I had no close friends within a reasonable distance from me. Thus being tough and potentially making an enemy was much harder to do. So in that situation, I ended up giving into the pressure and hooking up with someone I didn’t really want to hook up with.
3. I had time to think.
When I was lying on the floor that night, I had time to assess the situation and make a reasonable decision about what to do next.
But often this is not the case.
Often sex-related decisions happen in the heat of the moment. And our ability to logically consider how we feel about them is handicapped by our state of arousal.
According to a 2005 study from MIT and Carnegie Mellon, sexual arousal has a strong impact on sexual decision making.
According to the study, subjects were more willing to engage in unsafe sex, find a range of sexual stimuli appealing, and “engage in morally questionable behavior” when they were sexually aroused than when they were not.
When someone pressures us into sexual activity by continually touching us physically, we are more likely to agree to something we wouldn’t allow when we could think more clearly.
Given the nature of my situation (we had some physical separation, were physically clothed, and in a room with many other people), there was less opportunity for him to proposition sex or another more intimate act that could happen more quickly, where I wouldn’t have as much time to answer the question: Is this what I really want or am I just trying to stay pleasant?
4. I didn’t need him to like me.
His approval didn’t have any stake in my life. We didn’t have any of the same friends. Causing a riff with him wouldn’t have made any difference in my day today.
But for the women who dealt with Harvey Weinstein, or Bill Cosby, or basically any of the powerful men who used that power to get sex, that person’s approval would make a big difference to them and their careers.
Thus saying no would have been much more difficult.
5. We weren’t face-to-face.
Although I eventually sat up to tell Richard I didn’t want him to touch me anymore, he was still laying down when I broke the news. I never had to look him in the eye and reject him to his face.
When I was with the other man in Italy, I was looking him in the eye and I could see the fresh disappointment in his eyes when I denied his advances. That made me empathize with him.
And it made it harder to reject him the next time he asked me to kiss him.
Whereas with Richard, it was easier to impersonalize the situation and look out for myself without letting his feelings sway me.
6. I had lived through #MeToo.
If I hadn’t heard all the stories of sexual misconduct, consent, and abuse of power during #MeToo, I don’t know if I would have felt confident enough to raise my voice the way I had.
For anyone who was brave enough to share their stories in 2017 and beyond, you have helped a whole generation make sense of situations that are not black and white.
Because of #MeToo, I had a trove of examples to pull from that helped me understand what was happening in that moment on the floor. There were neural connections already in place in my mind that helped lead me to the conclusion: This is wrong.
What happened in Italy on the other hand happened in the summer of 2017, right before #MeToo. I can only wonder whether things would have unfolded differently had they happened a year later. | https://medium.com/sexography/i-was-able-to-reject-an-unwanted-sexual-advance-but-only-because-i-was-under-the-perfect-conditions-497e1afa3626 | ['Sarah Stroh'] | 2020-12-08 16:42:43.549000+00:00 | ['Sex', 'Metoo', 'Feminism', 'Sexuality', 'This Happened To Me'] |
Coming Soon: The Legends Marketplace (Beta) | Authors: Thomas Lang(*), Noisy Noah, Kenny Le, Justin Sung
* Corresponding author
Highlight:
Legends Marketplace first decentralized marketplace is a complex of DeFi Center, Crypto Asset Management, NFT Exchanges for global users.
To create a better user experience with scalability by self-developed cross-chain solutions applied for Blockchains project.
Cross-chain solutions for not only network tokens but also can be used to bridge collections for NFTs.
Customized for flexibility and scalability.
Various products related to staking, renting, and minting new NFTs with attractive rewards
Current Feature of Marketplace is for only the first game Legend of Fantasy War include:
*A fully decentralized marketplace
*Supporting NFTs asset management
*Various NFTs products including Heros, Equipment, Consumables, Fastions, and also Lands
*Gem Center for Currency exchange, liquidity provider
Starting Jan 5th, 2022 at 8AM UTC, the Legends Marketplace Beta will give early adopters the possibility to monetize their collections of our NFTs Heroes on Binance NFT, GameFi, and Apollo-X . In the first version, the NFT Marketplace will help people to exchange their beloved NFTs, of course everyone will have access to the marketplace.
Thus, we are thrilled to introduce the decentralized Legends Marketplace to the community.
TL;DR
The Legends Marketplace beta will launch its first phase on Jan 5th, 2022–8AM UTC.
Early adopters will start to trade their NFT collections for profit, while more in-game items will be available later.
The revenue from each sale will be 4% of the selling price, part of the fee will be burned for LFW token /add LP for BNB token. More detail here
What is the Legends Marketplace (Beta)
NFT is an acronym for “Non-Fungible Tokens”. Although NFTs are conceptually similar to cryptocurrencies, these digital assets might represent artworks, trading cards, and legendary heroes and items. These tokens are stored cryptographically in a blockchain network for authentication and validation.
The beta version of LFW NFT Marketplace is a marketplace complex of DeFi Center, Crypto Asset Management, NFT Exchanges for global users. The NFTs created by LFT Studio for the Legend of Fantasy War blockchain game can trade for an impressive profit. A perfect place for gamers around the Globe to purchase, sell, auctions, and lend NFT heroes, chests, in-game items, lands, and more to play our LFW game. Besides, there is a place for gamers to manage their assets.
Moreover, the LFW marketplace is the first initial step to mint heroes and in-game items. It also introduces users to the blockchain by presenting them with a non-fiat decentralised marketplace. In addition, in the future the LFW marketplace will allow the trading of NFTs which are interoperable between different games (i.e., our new games) and different blockchain platforms (i.e., cross-chain).
Last but not the least, the NFT marketplace enables users to easily exchange in-game currency for playing games where inspiration begins to create a series of valuable rewards.
2. Legends Marketplace Beta Features:
Trading: Early adopters can list their NFTs to monetize, while latecomers will be able to collect as a preparation step for playing games. As soon as the game is available, players around the world can mint in-game items to monetize.
Reward center: As a home to all blockchain game lovers around the world, we regularly have give away campaigns and participants can claim rewards. It is known as one of the first decentralized rewards centers, it is completely secure and transparent. An extremely user-friendly way to claim rewards: you can check out all the giveaway prizes sent by us. After the official game launch, valuable prizes come from in-game earning activities and events can be claimed here.
Swap NFTs: Why are NFT items valuable? Because you can own them and can easily buy and sell them. This is so important that in the first stage of product development, our marketplace supports other world’s top selling NFT platforms such as Binance NFT, Apollo-X, and GameFi. In the next stage, many other marketplaces will also be supported.
Staking: One of LFW DeFi Space features. We can proudly say that LFW Marketplace is unique as it integrates a DeFi center where you can stake and do more in just one place.
As soon as the game is available:
Swap Center: Great function to help investors and players increase their power in the game.
Direct ≪Play game≫ button inside the Marketplace. Firstly is the gate to LFW-616 in the Legend of Fantasy War game. In the future, there could be more games available.
button inside the Marketplace. Firstly is the gate to LFW-616 in the Legend of Fantasy War game. In the future, there could be more games available. Referral system : We have a system to reward users for inviting friends to join the game and share the benefits when that friend makes a transaction with LFW.
: We have a system to reward users for inviting friends to join the game and share the benefits when that friend makes a transaction with LFW. Legendary Chest (in-game earning reward), the chest can be opened to valuable items and users can sell either the chest or the items within. More detail will be given in the next announcement.
(in-game earning reward), the chest can be opened to valuable items and users can sell either the chest or the items within. More detail will be given in the next announcement. Other features: lands selling, buy/sell/trade in-game equipment/ items, etc.
3. The Advantages of Owning LFW NFTs
There are two types of NFT heroes in our LFW game Legend (Ancestor) and Legacy (Disciples) and a variety of on-chain rewards that can be exchanged for LFW tokens. To ensure transparency, the Legend NFTs are only sold via Binance NFT, ApolloX, and GameFI before the game launch and then holders can trade on our NFT Marketplace. All income from the sale will be used to develop products, buy back and provide liquidity.
NFT Heroes Legacy (Disciples) will be created by Legend (Ancestor) owners as valuable rewards for players that they can explore the game more and enjoy more. When the supply of Legacy (Disciples) NFT exceeds demand, we will proactively distribute it to ensure that the community’s needs are met. Note that, to ensure fairness and avoid conflict of interest with players, all revenue from this will burn forever. The difference between Legend NFT and Legacy NFT is that Legend heroes will be stronger from being able to collect more rewards than Legacy Heroes. Legend NFT and Legacy NFT will be sold in BNB and LFW token, respectively.
By owning one of our two NFT hero types, users are able to dive into the world of Legend of Fantasy War blockchain game. Players lead a group of young warriors of different sects, clans and martial arts to uncover the mystery of the dark, fight the darkness and help the people. With a rich character customization with the Elemental System of Metal — Wood — Water — Fire — Earth, players can create the strongest and the most unique lineup ever.
Owing to LFW NFTs, users are also able to get profit from buy/sell/staking transparently on our LFW NFT Marketplace.
4. Play-to-earn supports Free-to-play
To encourage early adopters, at the beginning, all players will be given two heroes for free to increase the player experience (the program will end without notice).
Legend of Fantasy War is a 3D turn-based role-playing game where participants can choose characters and build teams to overcome challenges, complete missions, and win worthy rewards. Here there will be daily tasks for players to collect rewards every day. Break even will be very fast. Actually this is free to play!
To start the game, players need at least 3 Heroes, in the early stages two NFTs are given for free. A nice setup is 5 NFT heroes, it will help you increase your experience and can explore many quests of the game.
By playing the game, the player can hunt for chests containing items that can be exchanged for FLW with other players. While the detail of the play to earn mechanism will be revealed in the near future, it can be depicted in the picture below.
In the next stage, we will gradually open up many other items so that players can freely buy, sell and exchange in a completely transparent manner.
Congratulations, we’ve never been closer to a world of extreme fairness for gamers. What you hunt will be yours! | https://news.legendfantasywar.com/coming-soon-the-lfw-marketplace-520fddefcca6 | ['Hookrook'] | 2021-12-31 15:08:27.770000+00:00 | ['Marketplaces', 'Metaverse', 'Gamefi', 'Nft', 'Lfw'] |
Map Protocol Event in Kakaotalk 11-2nd Week | On November 11, Map Protocol Korea held an event. The event was to guess what is the name of the enlarged pictures. The prize is Starbucks Americano!
Q1
The Right answer for Q1 was …!!
Oh-Yes Cake!!
Q2
The answer for Q2 was … !!
Pepper!!!
Q3
The answer Q3 was..!!
Wasabi!!
And here are the winners~!
The community members participated really well so it was quite competitive to get reward. Congrats to the winners getting Starbuck Coffee~! | https://medium.com/marcopolo-protocol/map-protocol-event-in-kakaotalk-11-2nd-week-b0507d3028fb | ['Map Protocol'] | 2020-11-17 03:59:23.379000+00:00 | ['Map', 'Marcopoloprotocol', 'Crosschain', 'Blockchain', 'Map Protocol'] |
Deep learning for Python developers (and the average Joe who is just curious about the stuff) | This article used to be a mini ebook — a few hundred people got it for free and a couple dozen bought it at a very cheap price, but I figured Medium would be the most efficient way to reach people, so I since removed the book from Amazon.com & Kindle, updated and simplified it, and what you are about to read is the result.
Introduction
Wrote by a developer, for developers, this article is written in a language better-suited for professionals with prior experience in programming that want to get themselves up to speed with the latest Deep Learning trends and want to understand basic Artificial Intelligence concepts, jargons, and technology. Expect to get your hands dirty!
Throughout this, I’ll assumes you know nothing about Artificial Intelligence and will hold your hand throughout the entire process, the knowledge will be given to you when you need it, never before, preventing overflow of information which is what I have identified as the most common problem people face when trying to learn about data science, artificial intelligence, and or machine learning.
By the end of this article, you will have used Python to train a model, make predictions, and have leveraged supervised learning techniques.
How to use this
I recommend reading somewhere with access to a computer so that you can practice the examples. And do practice the examples, it’s the best way to fixate knowledge.
This article comes with a glossary, the glossary contains key definitions that will be fundamental to your understanding of the contents of this book. I recommend that you quickly scan the glossary but don’t try to memorise its content, just come back to the glossary every time you find a term you are not familiar with!
If you find a term in italic during your reading, that means you can find its definition in the glossary.
The Artificial Intelligence field contains several jargons and has various nuances that seem foreign and very unfamiliar, throughout the reading if you encounter yourself overwhelmed by new terms and concepts, power through them, a practical example should come right after which will hopefully make things clear to you.
Talk to the talk — Glossary
Activation Function — The activation function of a node defines the output of that node given an input or set of inputs. Some activation function algorithms are: relu, softmax and sigmoid.
Dataset — A collection of samples
Feature — A variable that defined a characteristic of something. E.g: alcohol level is a feature of a beverage.
Flask — Flask is a micro web framework written in Python.
Hidden Layer — A hidden layer is a layer whose output is connected to the inputs of other layers and is therefore not visible as a network output. Hidden layers are fed with data from the input layer or from another hidden layer and feed its results to another hidden layer or to the output layer.
Initialisation — Initializations define the way to set the initial random weights of Keras layers.
Input Layer / Entry Layer — The input layer is the first layer or the entry layer of a Neural Network. It’s used to feed information into the network for processing.
Keras — A high-level neural networks API, written in Python and capable of running on top of TensorFlow, CNTK, or Theano.
Metric — A function that is used to judge the performance of your model
Model — Artifact product of the training process.
MongoDB — MongoDB is a free and open-source cross-platform document-oriented database program. Classified as a NoSQL database program, MongoDB uses JSON-like documents with schemas.
Node — Akin to the vast network of neurons in a brain. Nodes are what layers are composed of.
NumPy — A Python library that adds support for large, multi-dimensional arrays and matrices, along with a large collection of high-level mathematical functions to operate on these arrays.
Optimizer — Optimisation algorithm for a deep learning model.
Output Layer — The output is the last layer of a Neural Network. This layer is fed with the results of previous layers and is responsible for coming up with a solution.
Sample — A set of features of a specific thing. E.g: body mass, age, diastolic blood pressure are a set of features that form a sample that describes a diabetes patient.
TensorFlow — TensorFlow is an open-source software library for dataflow programming across a range of tasks. It is a symbolic math library, and also used for machine learning applications such as neural networks.
What Machine Learning Actually is?
Machine Learning is a field of statistics and computer science that gives computer systems the ability to “learn”, or better yet, to progressively improve performance on a specific task, leveraging data, without being explicitly programmed.
The term was first used in 1959 (yep, that long!), it evolved from a study of pattern recognition and computational learning theory in artificial intelligence. Machine Learning explores the study and construction of algorithms that can learn from and make predictions on data — such algorithms overcome following strictly static program instructions by making data-driven predictions or decisions.
Nowadays, the most common form of Machine Learning is through the use of Neural Networks.
What are Neural Networks?
I really like Maureen Caudill’s definition of Neural Networks, “a computing system made up of a number of simple, highly interconnected processing elements, which process information by their dynamic state response to external inputs”. In short, much like any other thing computer related, something is input, that something then gets processed, and something else gets output.
The catch is that Neural Networks try to mimic how the brain works, by processing information through interconnected processing elements called nodes grouped by layers.
These nodes contain an activation function. Patterns are presented to the network via the input layer, which communicates with one or more hidden layers where the actual processing is done via a system of weighted connections. The hidden layers then link to an output layer where the answer to the problem it’s trying to solve is output.
What is Deep Learning?
Deep learning is part of a broader family of machine learning methods based on learning data representations, as opposed to task-specific algorithms.
Learning can be supervised, semi-supervised or unsupervised. Deep learning models are loosely related to information processing and communication patterns in a biological nervous system. Deep learning architectures such as deep neural networks, deep belief networks and recurrent neural networks have been applied to fields including computer vision, speech recognition, natural language processing, audio recognition, social network filtering, machine translation, bioinformatics and drug design, where they have produced results comparable to and in some cases superior to human experts.
Enough theory, let’s get our hands dirty
From now on I’m assuming you have access to a computer with Python 3 installed and is able to run scripts. If not, go sort that out and come back! If you don’t know where to start, have a look at https://mlis.fun/start-here/get-started-with-python/.
You will need to install a few dependencies right out of the bat such as TensorFlow, h5, NumPy and Keras. Get that sorted too before we proceed.
Thirteen lines of code! That’s all that is going to take to train your first model using Keras. This is what the neural network will look like, more or less:
Just a reminder, make sure you check the meaning of these layers in the glossary in case you are in doubt.
We will use a dataset that contains information about patients with diabetes, they contain the variables mentioned above on this order:
Number of times pregnant
Plasma glucose concentration a 2 hours in an oral glucose tolerance test
Diastolic blood pressure (mm Hg)
Triceps skinfold thickness (mm)
2-Hour serum insulin (mu U/ml)
Body mass index (weight in kg/(height in m)²)
Diabetes pedigree function
Age (years)
In short what’s going to happen is, we will insert the features above in our neural network through the input layer, that’s going to get processed and sent to the first hidden layer, then to the second, and finally to the output layer that will generate a result.
If this is getting confusing, don’t worry, read again, if still a bit blurry, power through it, it will make more sense later.
I used a public machine learning dataset retrieve this data, you can download it here.
The dataset is a CSV with 9 columns, 8 with the variables listed above and a ninth one containing a boolean informing whether the person has diabetes or not.
Let’s get coding:
The code above expects you to have downloaded the dataset and placed it in the same folder as the script above and that you have named it as “diabetes.csv”, as seen on line 6.
The first thing we will do after loading dependencies and the dataset, is to split the input from the output. See lines 9 and 10.
From line 13 to 16, we’re making sure the neural network looks as proposed.
Line 14 ensures there will be 12 nodes in the input layer, that will take 8 features. We’re then telling the initialiser to use a “uniform” initialization. We chose the activation function ReLU. Activation functions almost deserve a book of their own, so let’s skip past that for now or things will get too complicated.
Line 15 creates a hidden layer. The results of the input layer will be fed into the hidden layer which will feed the output layer defined on line 16.
For the output layer, we only want to get one result, so there will be only one node. We also changed the activation function to sigmoid.
It’s time to compile the model so it’s ready for training, that’s exactly what we do on line 19. The optimizer of choice is “Adam”. Adam is all about performance, that’s why we’re choosing it for now. Finally, we’re setting the metric to “accuracy”, as that’s what we want to get out of it.
On line 22 we start fitting our model, yes we are finally training it. By setting the epoch to 600, we’re telling Keras to pass the entire dataset through the network 600 times, the batch size of 10 means we will send 10 samples at a time. This values are somewhat arbitrary, you can play with it and try to get the best results, there are some heuristics around it, but let’s not get into it now.
On line 24, we’are saving it into a file that we can use later.
Right! It’s time to finally test the accuracy of this thing, thankfully, Keras provides ways to evaluate the model and find out its precision.
Again, very simple code, 8 lines of code if you don’t count empty lines.
Up to line 8 there’s nothing new, on line 9 we load the model we trained with the previous script.
On line 11 we use the evaluate function that is built in. And on line 12, we simply print out. If you didn’t make modifications to the code, you should get an accuracy of just over 80%. Pretty decent, given the small dataset, huh?
Not it’s time to get to the fun part, making predictions!
I will just hand you the code:
Nothing new all the way to line 6, on line 7 we’re loading the features of a diabetes patient. On line 9 we’re telling Keras to use our model to predict whether the sample we’ve given has diabetes or not. Keras will return with it’s confidence levels, we’re just going to round it, if the confidence is below 0.5, we will say the person doesn’t have it, if it’s above, we will say the person has diabetes.
On line 12 we just print the results. That simple.
Example Project
The example project is meant to recap, fixate and introduce some more advanced concepts. We will build an end to end deep learning application through neural networks that leverages supervised learning for continuous learning and improvement of the model.
The project will be divided in small fully functional chunks of work, what that means is that for every thing we start we will finish in the same section of the book, on the following section we will pick up where we left and continue improving on the application and adding more functionality. If you have to stop reading, I recommend doing so in between sections so you don’t leave in the middle of the work, making it harder to come back later.
From now on, you should already be familiar with the jargons, so I will stop making the words italic. If you are in doubt about the meaning of something, you can always revisit the glossary. Whereas I expect you to be familiar with the jargons, there is no expectation that you will be familiar with the concepts, so I will continuing reinforcing them as we move forward. If you don’t understand what we’ve done in the previous example, I recommend coming back to it one more time (come on, it’s just a quick read!).
Supervised Learning
Supervised learning is the machine learning task of learning a function that maps an input to an output based on example input-output pairs. It infers a function from labeled training data consisting of a set of training examples. All of that to say that supervised learning is exactly what we’ve been doing so far.
We had a dataset with inputs and outputs and we used it to train our model.
The key difference of this new project is that we will use the output of predictions to further train the model, therefore making it smarter over time, the more you predict, the more training data you will have, therefore the more samples are added to the dataset and our model can be further trained.
Ok, enough mystery, what are we actually building?
This time around we will build a neural network capable of predicting if a wine is good or bad. Here’s a breakdown of the Python application we will build:
Script to load an initial dataset into MongoDB Script to generate a model using data stored in MongoDB Script to perform an evaluation of the model precision A REST API built in Flask that receives wine features and outputs a prediction of its quality
Here’s the dataset we will use.
Make sure you save and download it, we will need it for later.
MongoDB
If you have MongoDB set up in your computer, you can skip to the next section!
If you don’t have MongoDB set up in your compute, the easiest way to proceed is to create a free mLab account. Head to https://mlab.com and get yourself an account.
Once you log in, hit “create new” to create a brand new database, choose the sandbox plan which is the free one, it will then let you pick a region to deploy the database, choose the one nearest to where you live. Give it a name and hit continue.
Once it’s created, click on it to go into the database settings area. Then create a user and give it a password.
You should be able to see your MongoDB URI, here’s what one looks like:
mongodb://<dbuser>:<dbpassword>@ds253918.mlab.com:53918/wine-ml
And here’s what I see at this stage:
Save all of this we will need it in a bit.
Folder structure
The following image represents the folder structure we will follow for this project. I recommend you start creating these folders and files now even if they are completely empty.
There’s not a lot to it, this is just so we don’t have everything in the same folder.
Setting up the environment
In the ‘.env’ file, we will have something like this:
Be sure to update the above with your mLab credentials.
It’s also a good practice to include a .python-version containing the version of Python we want to use. This project was tested using 3.6.1, so your ‘.python-version’ would look like this:
And finally, the project requirements:
Script 1 — Loading the dataset into MongoDB
Let’s start our code.
If you haven’t yet, create the config folder and include a file named ‘mongo.py’ in it. Don’t forget to add an empty ‘__init__.py’ too.
Take a minute to read through the code, there is no rocket science going on, we are using a library called ‘python-dotenv’ to be able to read from the ‘.env’ file, there is a few functions for returning each value individually and one called ‘uri’ that concatenates them and returns the entire uri.
It’s time to create the wine model. This class will be responsible for the interaction with MongoDB. Note that we are using ‘Pymongo’ to handle the interaction with MongoDB and simply importing the configuration from the mongo config file previously created.
There’s also an ‘insert’ method that does exactly what its name says, it allows for inserting a new wine sample into the database.
Now it’s time to create ‘load.py’. This script will be responsible for loading the dataset from the storage folder and load it into MongoDB. Remember, we need to have all the data in Mongo so that we can add more to it later and be able to regenerate the model once there’s more training data available.
The script above loads the dataset then loops through all samples and inserts them into MongoDB. Run the script above, it should take a while to finish and when successful, the collections view in your mLab panel should look more or less like this:
At this you have the dataset all loaded in MongoDB and you are ready to get to the next level.
Script 2 — Training the model
As previously stated, we will be adding new samples to the Mongo database, what that means is that there will be a constant flow of new samples that can be used to improve the model. That also means that we need to have means to read from the database to rebuild the model as needed.
The first obvious thing we need is a way to extract all wine samples from the database, to achieve this you will need a new function added to the wine model:
I used the same code from the diabetes example, turned it into a class for better reusability and placed it under app/services/wine_neural_network.py. Here is what that looks like:
I created very specific methods for each of the critical actions, “train”, “evaluate” and “predict”, also the class expects to receive an input, and output and the path to the model.
The last thing required to be able to train the model is to create the training script that will tie this all together:
I appreciate that over the last few pages I simply threw a lot of code at you, but this is to mark the very end of the theoretical part of this book, it’s really time to get our hands dirty.
“Train.py” loads all samples from the database, then parses it into a numpy array then feeds the input and the output of that into the neural network whilst specifying the path where the model should be saved.
Imagine your system is constantly receiving new samples that can be used for training, maybe you want to constantly re-train your model to make it better leveraging these new samples, all you would have to do is set up a task in the server to run ”train.py” every now to rebuild the model. Maybe every hour, every day or every month depending on your needs.
A quick recap
The last few pages have been a bit hard core but we also achieved quite a bit:
A well defined project structure A solid base for handling MongoDB The base for the neural network inspired by the previous example Ability to run the first load of the dataset into Mongo Ability to re-train the Model in a quick and scalable manner
server.py
This will be the keystone of the application, it will leverage the microframework Flask, server.py will wire up everything we done so far. To start with, we will create a REST endpoint that will take a json body like the below and perform an evaluation as to whether the wine is of good quality or not based on its features.
Here is what ‘server.py’ looks like:
Running the above will start a web server on port 5000 that can receive post requests.
The server will return a response like this when the wine is of good quality:
The server will return a response like this when the wine is not of good quality:
We are also doing some validation to check if the sample information is present within the request. I recommend using Postman for testing this, but a CURL request is also ok and would look like this:
What this does not do yet, is to save the sample into our database. Remember, we want to collect more samples over time, so that we can rate it later and use it to improve our model!
To accommodate that, we will have to make some changes into our code.
Starting with the wine model, it should allow us to insert samples without rate — as we don’t expect a rate when evaluating a wine — at the moment this is not possible, to make it possible, we need to change the “insert” method slightly, to this:
That way samples without a rate will be marked as “-1” in the database, that way we can separate unrated from rated samples.
Also we don’t want to use unrated samples when building the model, so we need to change the “all” method too to only return rated samples.
And let’s not forget to actually save the new sample by adding this to “server.py”:
Continuous learning
At this point you should have a fully functional REST API capable of analysing wine samples and make predictions as to whether the wine is good or bad. You are also saving these samples for posterior rating, which allows for continuous learning in your deep learning model.
You can now go into mLab and manually add rate do these wines:
After doing so, you can re-run the training script and instantly your model becomes stronger and more accurate!
What is next?
It’s only been a few minutes (an hour, maybe?) studying an article full of pictures and lines of code, really not too bad huh? Just imagine what you can achieve with a few more days of study!
This project could be improved by adding a dashboard to it where all the samples that haven’t been rated could be seen and rated, perhaps using crowdsource. The panel could also display the accuracy of the model and etc.
I hope you enjoyed this, and I hope it set you up with a good starting point and the basic knowledge to have you continue forward on your learning journey, thank you for reading!
def database():
return str(os.getenv(‘MONGO_DATABASE’))
def uri():
return ‘mongodb://’ + username() + ‘:’ + password() + \
‘@’ + host() + ‘:’ + port() + ‘/’ + database() + \
‘?authMechanism=SCRAM-SHA-1’
Take a minute to read through the code, there is no rocket science going on, we are using a library called ‘python-dotenv’ to be able to read from the ‘.env’ file, there is a few functions for returning each value individually and one called ‘uri’ that concatenates them and returns the entire uri. | https://medium.com/edward-leoni/deep-learning-for-python-developers-and-the-average-joe-who-is-just-curious-about-the-stuff-b971efe54ef4 | ['Edward Leoni'] | 2020-04-15 07:42:57.337000+00:00 | ['Deep Learning', 'Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Python', 'Neural Networks'] |
The Chick Abides- Life Lessons From The Big Lebowski | Moxie On Monday with CatherineGraceO
“I’m the Dude, so that’s what you call me. That or, uh His Dudeness, or uh Duder, or El Duderino, if you’re not into the whole brevity thing.” — The Dude
Did you know that I used to love White Russians? Yup. This green juice loving, yogi puritan, used to think it was pretty cool to head out for a night with the girls — the chicks — cozy up to the bar and happily guzzle a White Russian — or two. Overtime, I graduated to Bailey’s on the rocks until I began my foray down the path of the Buddha, raw juices, crystals and energy healing, looking to purify my soul in search of … what exactly???
I wasn’t quite sure.
Until NOW.
Until the awakening or “quakening” that begins upon reaching Midlife & Beyond.
Until something clicked. Until this Chick learned to Abide.
You know, “The Dude Abides.” The Big Lebowski. Bowling, Nam, oriental rugs and White Russians.
Ok, I’ll admit the first time I watched “ The Big Lebowski,” I was confused. Like, get me the hell out of here confused. Like turn the channel — I don’t care if it’s Hallmark or college football, this chick ain’t abiding.
Why not?
I didn’t get it.
I didn’t get the Dude.
I didn’t want to get the Dude.
You see, I’m a “How?” “Why” girl — you know that annoying type A student in the front of the class with her hand perpetually raised, forever perplexed, searching for the secrets of the universe?
I didn’t understand that we were Born to Abide or naturally born abiding.
Which brings me to this morning, I was listening to a book on Audible by Davidji — a bit of homework for my meditation training. Ji was talking about our emotional well being and began a discussion on neuroticism.
Let’s just say that neurotics, which I’ve been called once or twice (maybe more) — those humans who live in worry and anxiety, the ones who fret over the past, lugging it with them into the present and plop it waiting for them into the future, are on the opposite end of the emotional well being spectrum from The Dude.
When Ji began describing someone who’s grounded, emotionally balanced, who lets things simply roll off — you know, water off a duck’s back — someone who lives in the moment, I realized he was talking about the Dude — or a human who chooses to live life abiding.
Abiding by what?
Life and whatever life may bring.
What Ji was really saying is the ultimate benefit of meditation is rewiring your brain from wherever you are on the emotional well being scale to someone who learns to abide. Meditation will transform the most neurotic neurotic into a Chick who Abides.
Yes, it takes practice, like A LOT of practice to learn to Abide, especially if you’re a chronic worrier or someone dealing with a lot of stress, like yours truly.
So, maybe it’s time to cozy up on the sofa, pour yourself a White Russian, flip on “The Big Lebowski” and go a bit deeper into the “Tao of the Dude” and join me as this chick finally gets it.
This Chick Abides.
After all, why should Dudes have all the fun?
Need More Moxie?! See all my Moxie On Monday’s!
Founder, Creator, and Chief Executive Catalyst of CatherineGraceO and Forever Fierce Media. Join the Revolution! | https://medium.com/@catherinegraceo/the-chick-abides-life-lessons-from-the-big-lebowski-83152f741462 | ['Catherine Grace O Connell'] | 2020-12-14 18:52:02.087000+00:00 | ['Empowerment', 'Quotes', 'Monday Motivation', 'Women', 'Inspiration'] |
Review: SENet — Squeeze-and-Excitation Network, Winner of ILSVRC 2017 (Image Classification) | In this story, Squeeze-and-Excitation Network (SENet), by University of Oxford, is reviewed. With “Squeeze-and-Excitation” (SE) block that adaptively recalibrates channel-wise feature responses by explicitly modelling interdependencies between channels, SENet is constructed. And it won the first place in ILSVRC 2017 classification challenge with top-5 error to 2.251% which has about 25% relative improvement over the winning entry of 2016. And this is a paper in 2018 CVPR with more than 600 citations. Recently, it is also published in 2019 TPAMI. (Sik-Ho Tsang @ Medium) | https://towardsdatascience.com/review-senet-squeeze-and-excitation-network-winner-of-ilsvrc-2017-image-classification-a887b98b2883 | ['Sik-Ho Tsang'] | 2019-10-17 13:29:54.819000+00:00 | ['Deep Learning', 'Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Image Classification', 'Data Science'] |
Why Writers Should Never Have Sex With Their Readers | Since becoming a blogger, I’ve gotten sexually involved with two people who have read me — and I had to face the consequences that come with it.
I get a lot of different types of messages from my readers.
The majority of emails and DMs I get are from people who want to say something nice about my work.
Sometimes, a business or an entrepreneur will reach out to me to see if I’m interested in collaborating with them or promoting their product.
Because I’m a woman with an online presence, I also get to use my block button to deal with the men who send me dick pics.
And every once in a while, a reader will proposition me.
They’ll message me something dirty or flirty. They’ll nudge me to exchange nudes. They’ll offer themselves up for some dirty talk or phone sex.
In one memorable instance, a guy messaged me for advice on making his girlfriend squirt and then asked me if I’d be interested in flying to Lebanon to eat her pussy. (No thanks, I’m good.)
I know that kind of thing is bound to happen. I’m an openly polyamorous woman who writes and podcasts about sex. I bare my sexual side online and anyone who wants to give me a click can have a peek at it. Some people assume that means I’m down to fuck.
But I’m not — not with them anyway. Not with any of my readers.
Getting sexually involved with your readers can be surprisingly tempting.
When you create content full time, your audience becomes a big part of your world. Outside of my immediate family, most of my interactions are with the people who read me.
So, whenever I consider dating or fooling around a little, they’re the obvious choice. I’ve already put myself out there. It would be a short skip and hop to start flirting and courting the people who are already interacting with me.
But I won’t do it because I know it’s bad news. And sadly, I know that from personal experience.
In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve done this kind of thing twice. Each time, I was on a different side of it.
The first time it happened, I was the writer. Soon after I started publishing my work, a reader reached out to me privately and we got to talking. Since I wrote about sex, that was the topic we discussed.
Those conversations started getting more personal, more intimate. The more emails we exchanged, the more they turned me on.
For a while, he became a part of my life. We would flirt, exchange nudes, and talk dirty on a regular basis.
And then it ended and in a way I wished it had never started. Not just for the usual reasons you feel that way after a breakup, but also because he was someone who got to know me through my writing.
I should have learned my lesson, but there was another guy who came along months later. This time, though, I was the reader.
Yeah, I was a writer, too. But a much smaller one by every measure.
He found one of my articles and commented on it. I read some of his work and developed a crush on him at a distance. I did a bit of fangirling in his comments. That’s when he sent me a private message.
This time, we weren’t just talking about sex. He skipped right over that and went straight to hitting on me. There wasn’t much in the way of formalities — just filthy and horny messages.
It was happening way too quickly for me. I wasn’t comfortable with the way he jumped right to sex. But I didn’t want to disappoint him — he was kind of a big deal.
I went along with it. I tried to focus on the fact that I had a crush on him and figured I’d have time to assert my boundaries as things got going.
Our conversations soon led to cybersex, which then lead to phone sex. And even more phone sex. Then it became clear to me that he lied about his feelings to get some fast action out of me. That left me feeling miserable for a few months. It also helped me realize that someone in his position should never have messed around with someone in mine.
That sealed it for me. I closed off the option of ever dating or fucking one of my readers. Both of my experiences showed me why that kind of thing is a huge mistake.
Based on what I’ve been through and what I’ve seen happen to others, here are some of the biggest reasons writers shouldn’t get romantically or sexually involved with their readers.
Parasocial Relationships Aren’t the Basis for Real Relationships
A parasocial relationship is a one-sided relationship between two people, usually involving a public person and a member of their audience.
It happens a lot with digital content creators. After watching a YouTuber for years, you might feel like you know them really well even though they’ve never even heard of you. You might feel a personal connection with a musician who has no clue you exist.
And you can feel like you’re getting to know a writer without them being aware of you at all.
Parasocial relationships are perfectly normal and they’re usually fine. But they’re not the right kind of foundation for a healthy romantic or sexual relationship.
For one thing, you’re on uneven ground from the very beginning. Dating someone who has read you for months or years when you’ve just recently learned their name is going to feel kind of like dating a stalker. It will become clear very quickly that they know way too much about you and that will, at best, make you feel uncomfortable.
But it’s worse than that because your readers are going to be wrong about you.
Even if you tell nothing but the truth in your writing and in interviews, it’s only ever going to give them a small glimpse into your life.
I write primarily about sex and based on that a lot of the readers who have hit on me seemed to feel like they really got me, understood who I was, and knew what I needed.
But my sexual side is far from being the only important part of my personality. And it’s not in the driver’s seat nearly as often as some people seem to think. For the most part, I’m a painfully normal person with a very mundane day to day life. It’s just that no one gets to see that when they’re reading my blowjob tips or about the awkward foursome I had once.
It’s normal to fill in the blanks, too, and come up with all sorts of assumptions about the person you’re reading.
Some guys try to talk dirty to me, bragging about having a big cock after reading my article on dick size — even though I make it clear in that article that I have a preference for more modest ones. Or they’ll send me a dick pic after reading something dirty I wrote, because they think I’m the kind of lady who’d appreciate a cyberflash.
Actually starting a relationship with a writer you admire is bound to be disappointing. The guys who hit me up might assume I’m always on and horny. They might think I’m the queen of dirty talk. They might think I’d fulfill whatever sexual or romantic fantasy they have. But chances are I wouldn’t, because I’m just a regular person with needs, boundaries, and preferences of my own.
That kind of disappointment happened to me when I got mixed up with a writer I admired. When the guy he was in real life didn’t match up to the man he was in his articles, it left me feeling confused. I was let down by that harsh reality check. I felt stupid because I had fallen for a persona instead of a person. And I felt torn between wanting to hold on to his image while realizing I had to let go of him.
The other major problem with parasocial relationships is that the reader has already invested a lot in you. They’ve followed your journey, heard your stories, felt things for you, identified with you, empathized with your struggles, and celebrated your victories. They might even have fallen a little in love with you.
Meanwhile, you’re just starting to feel things out.
It will always feel like they’ve put in so much and you’ve put in so little. There’s a really good chance that leads to a whole lot of hurt.
Pedestals Are Easy to Build
When meeting a writer doesn’t disappoint the reader, that can be a problem too. Because sometimes readers will put writers they love on a pedestal.
They’ll assume nothing but the best about them. They’ll feel intense, unshakeable admiration. They might even want to worship them.
That’s an unhealthy way to relate to someone you know personally.
When someone puts you on a pedestal, it’s way too easy to take advantage of them. They’ll be too quick to set their own needs aside and even quicker to make excuses for your behavior.
And the fact that they look up to you will make it harder for them to voice their concerns. Or they’ll be too afraid of disappointing you to assert their needs.
Being put on a pedestal also tends to bring out the worst in people because it makes you feel like you can get away with anything.
That doesn’t have to result in exploitation, but I’m willing to bet most writers wouldn’t be able to resist taking advantage of it, at least a little.
There’s a Power Imbalance
It’s weird to think of myself as having any kind of power. But I do have a platform. I have an audience. I have a name that some people recognize.
That’s enough to give me, and anyone in a similar situation, a little bit of sway. And it’s the kind of sway a reader you decide to get involved with probably doesn’t have.
If the reader you’re fucking happens to be a writer themselves, that can be a bigger problem because their professional lives get mixed into it.
If you’re the one with the bigger platform, the one with more clout, or the one who already has a small army of defenders, it’s easy for them to feel like they need to please you or else they might jeopardize their chances of making it.
They might fear the consequences of displeasing you. They could worry that you’ll bad mouth them to people you might pitch to one day. Or that you could sour things in their writing community.
Because of that, they might stick around longer than they want to because they’re worried about what would happen to their writing career if they broke up with you — or just said no to you.
I know that’s a factor because I’ve been in that position. I put on a brave face, tried to play nice, and agreed to things I wasn’t comfortable agreeing to because I didn’t want to get on the wrong person’s bad side.
That’s a problem. And it can be avoided by keeping it in your pants when you interact with your admirers.
Reputations Get Ruined
Treating your readers like sexual prospects isn’t a good look.
When you create a pattern of hitting on your readers and sending them flirty private messages, it starts to get pretty sleazy after a while.
Do that enough and people will start analyzing your writing for all the wrong reasons. Is your new article just casting a net and hoping someone cute responds? Is that passage where you brag about your accomplishments just a flex or is it you using your blog post as a dating ad?
It’s going to be hard for other writers to keep taking you seriously. Building meaningful connections isn’t easy when you’ve got a sketchy reputation. And publications and platforms might be reluctant to have you on or host your work if they know you’re on the prowl.
It Creates a False Sense of Security
A reader who dates a writer is likely to enter into that arrangement already having a high level of trust. They feel safe because they’re sure they know you based on your writing.
That can create a false sense of security, which can lead to them sticking around longer than they should. In some cases, it can even cause them to suffer through toxic behavior, emotional abuse, or worse.
When I was getting dicked around by a writer, I kept telling myself I must be wrong, that I must be misreading the situation.
I believed the things he had written about himself. So when his conduct didn’t match that image, I made all sorts of excuses for him instead of trusting my gut.
I gave him so much unearned trust, all because the narrative he created about himself made me feel safer than I would have otherwise.
You’re Always on Display
I used to be into the idea of dating someone who read me because it would’ve been like a shortcut to intimacy. They could learn so much about me through my writing that I could skip some of the awkward conversations.
I might not have to bring up my emotional triggers if they read about them already. Learning about my chronic illnesses is just a link or two away. I wouldn’t even have to risk getting involved with someone who wouldn’t be into my kinks.
Now I realize how naive that is. Not only would skipping the getting-to-know-you stage mean I’d be missing out on some serious intimacy building, but knowing they’re kind of lurking around can get awkward.
Both of the men I got involved with can still read anything I write. I mean, yes, anyone can read what I write because it’s public — but they were already on the platform I use before I met them and they’re still on them now.
Feeling like they’re still lurking can make you second-guess certain things you write. It can make you worry that they’ll get the wrong message from something you post. You always have to worry you’ll get a notification telling you they commented on your latest article.
Even if you don’t air your relationship’s dirty laundry, it can still put you in a weird place.
It’s easy for them to stay connected to you and what’s going on in your life. They just have to go back to reading you — just like they did before you got involved with them.
Keep It Professional
I learned some of these things the hard way, but I’m glad I learned them early. It’s an important thing for writers to know because it can keep you from tarnishing your career and getting mixed up in way more drama than anyone needs.
Your audience isn’t your dating pool. Your readers aren’t your prospects. That can be hard to see when you’re getting started, but it’s an important thing to recognize.
Dating or fucking your readers is bad for you as a writer. It’s bad for your fans, too.
Your readers are your lifeblood. They’re the reason you get to keep writing. If you make a living doing this, it’s thanks to them. The very least you owe them in return is to not blur those lines.
So, keep things professional and never use your influence or your platform to get laid. That’s what Tinder is for. | https://medium.com/love-emma/why-writers-should-never-have-sex-with-their-readers-9071bd1ea5d8 | ['Emma Austin'] | 2020-08-05 11:02:17.397000+00:00 | ['Self', 'Relationships', 'Life Lessons', 'Sex', 'Writing'] |
Sony HT-G700 review: This Atmos- and DTS:X-enabled soundbar boasts a trifecta of virtual 3D modes, but no Wi-Fi | Sony HT-G700 review: This Atmos- and DTS:X-enabled soundbar boasts a trifecta of virtual 3D modes, but no Wi-Fi Jill Sep 7, 2020·8 min read
Sony doubles down on virtualized 3D audio with the HT-G700, a 3.1-channel soundbar that can deliver immersive 3D audio using not one, not two, but three competing audio technologies. While it lacks the upfiring drivers that most Dolby Atmos- and DTS:X-enabled soundbars employ for height effects, the HT-G700 simulates height and surround cues using virtual 3D solutions from Dolby, DTS, and Sony itself. The HT-G700 makes for an impressive showcase for how far virtualized 3D audio has come in recent years, yet it also betrays its weaknesses, particularly when it comes to Sony’s aggressive—perhaps too aggressive—implementation.
The HT-G700’s $500 price tag might sound enticing given its array of 3D audio functionality, but it’s also missing one huge feature: a Wi-Fi adapter. That means many of the wireless capabilities we’ve come to expect from soundbars in this price range—including multi-room audio, AirPlay 2 or Chromecast connectivity, direct support for streaming music services, and voice assistant support—are missing.
This review is part of TechHive’s coverage of the best soundbars, where you’ll find reviews of competing products, plus a buyer’s guide to the features you should consider when shopping.
ConfigurationA replacement for Sony’s 2.1-channel HT-X9000F, the HT-G700 arrives with more power than its predecessor (400 watts versus 300W for the X9000F), along with (according to Sony) a wider sweetspot, a larger subwoofer, and a new “Immersive AE” (Audio Enhancement) mode that’s capable of upmixing 5.1 or even stereo audio to virtualized 7.1.2 audio.
The Sony HT-G700 is a 3.1-channel soundbar, with a trio of 45 x 10mm oval-shaped cones in the main unit for the left, right, and center channels (the “3” in “3.1”) and a wireless subwoofer with a 160mm cone for low-frequency effects (the “.1”). Because the HT-G700 lacks the wireless capabilities of Sony’s pricier soundbars, it can’t be upgraded to a full-on 5.1-channel system using a set of wireless surround speakers; in other words, what you see (and hear) is what you get.
The HT-G700 supports 3D object-based sound formats such as Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, but it doesn’t deliver height effects with upfiring drivers that bounce sound off your ceiling (which is itself an alternative to installing speakers in your ceiling). Instead, it uses virtualization to trick your ears into thinking you’re hearing sound from above (not to mention from behind, or from the sides). The soundbar actually supports three flavors of immersive 3D audio virtualization: Dolby Atmos with height virtualization technology, DTS Virtual:X, and Sony’s aforementioned Immersive AE, which employs a pair of other Sony audio technologies—Vertical Surround Engine for height cues, and S-Force Pro for side-to-side surround—to upmix 5.1 or even 2.0 audio to virtualized 7.1.2 sound.
In general, virtual 3D height effects lack the precision you’ll hear from those delivered by upfiring drivers (which, in turn, aren’t as precise as in-ceiling speakers), and they can also sound harsh and distractingly artificial if they’re applied too aggressively. That said, virtual 3D sound offers a key benefit over drivers that bounce sound off the ceiling: its performance doesn’t depend on the type of ceiling you have. To wring the best sound out of upfiring drivers, Dolby recommends a flat ceiling between 7.5 and 14 feet height, and vaulted ceilings simply won’t do. If the ceiling in your entertainment room is too high, too low, or anything other than perfectly flat, virtual 3D sound might be your best option, shy of actual in-ceiling speakers.
The Sony HT-G700’s main soundbar unit measures 38.6 x 2.6 x 4.4 inches, making it somewhat narrower than my 55-inch LG C9 OLED TV, with the soundbar barely grazing the bottom edge of the screen from the vantage point of my living room sofa. Meanwhile, the 7.6 x 15.25 x 16-inch wireless subwoofer (which isn’t really wireless, since it requires a power cord) is about as big and bulky as those that come with competing soundbars.
SetupThe Sony HT-G700 takes only minutes to set up. You have the option of placing it in front of your TV or mounting it on a wall beneath your TV; a wall mounting guide is included, but no brackets or screws. I skipped the mounting process and simply plunked the soundbar down in front of my TV set.
Once you’ve put the soundbar where you want it, just plug in the power cord (there’s no outlet-blocking wall wart or power brick, thankfully), then position and power up the pre-paired wireless subwoofer, which should connect to the soundbar automatically (you can also pair the subwoofer manually if something goes wrong with auto-pairing).
Because the HT-G700 lacks network connectivity, you won’t have to deal with adding it to your home Wi-Fi network, a process that (as I’ve found with other soundbars) can be surprisingly arduous.
While its lack of Wi-Fi connectivity makes the HT-G700 a snap to set up, it also means that the soundbar lacks bevy of key features, including multi-room audio, AirPlay 2 and Chromecast audio casting, and the ability to directly connect to streaming audio services such as Spotify or Amazon Music. You also can’t control the HT-G700’s features or settings with a mobile app, nor with Alexa or Google Assistant voice commands. For a $500 soundbar, that’s a lot to give up.
Sony does offer a similar soundbar with Wi-Fi capabilities: the $700 3.1-channel HT-Z9FRemove non-product link (which we haven’t reviewed yet).
Inputs and outputsThe Sony HT-G700 comes equipped with a pair of HDMI ports: one is a standard HDMI input, while the second is an HDMI ARC (short for “audio return channel”) port that supports eARC, an “enhanced” version of eARC that allows for lossless audio formats such as Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio (you can read all about ARC and eARC in this story). In addition to the HDMI ports, there’s also a Toslink optical digital input, plus a USB port that’s only for installing firmware updates.
Ben Patterson/IDG The Sony HT-G700’s HDMI-ARC ports supports eARC, the “enchanced” version of ARC that allows for lossless audio formats such as Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio.
The easiest way to connect the HT-G700 to your TV is via the aforementioned HDMI ARC port, which allows you to keep your various video sources connected to your TV while sending audio to the soundbar over the included HDMI cable. If one of your video sources is a Blu-ray player (either standalone or those that are built into PlayStation 4 and Xbox One game consoles), the HT-G700’s eARC support will let you enjoy lossless Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks in all their glory—provided your TV also supports eARC, that is.
Another option is to connect a video source to the soundbar’s single HDMI input and then connect the soundbar to the TV via the HDMI ARC port, which supports 4K HDR video passthrough. The benefit of plugging a video source directly into the soundbar is that you’ll be able to hear lossless audio from a Blu-ray player even if your TV doesn’t support eARC (which it likely doesn’t, unless you bought it in the last 12 months or so). The downside, however, is that you’ll have to physically swap out HDMI cables if you have more than one video input.
Integrated buttons, remote controlOn top of the main soundbar unit, you’ll find touch-sensitive buttons for power, input select, Bluetooth, and volume up/down. Peeking out from the black aluminum speaker grille is a five-character display that tells you (among other things) the volume level, the detected audio signal (Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, etc.), which input is selected, and so on. You can also set the indicator to go dark after a brief period, handy for cutting down on visual distractions.
The HT-G700’s long, thin, and non-backlit remote can be tricky to use. While the large round volume button is easy to find in the dark (as is the jumbo-sized power button in the top-right corner), good luck identifying the other small, circular buttons without turning a light on.
A dozen of these identically shaped buttons are arranged in two columns of six buttons each, including the mute button, the night and voice modes, and the subwoofer level buttons. All of those sit beneath the volume rocker. Eight more buttons, including four for sound modes (such as Cinema and Music), one that toggles Sony’s Immersive AE feature, another that cycles the display, and yet another for selecting the active input, are above the volume rocker.
Ben Patterson/IDG With its array of more than a dozen buttons, the Sony HT-G700’s non-backlit remote can be tricky to use in the dark.
To navigate the HT-G700’s settings menu, you’ll need to press the Menu button, which sits in the right column of buttons beneath the volume rocker. You press the Up and Down arrows in the left column to navigate the menu options, and then press the Enter button that’s below the Menu button to select an option. The Menu button is the only way to enable DTS Virtual:X and Dolby’s virtual 3D sound modes, and to get to those menu options, you’ll have to navigate two menu levels deep, then step down to the very bottom of the second menu.
Virtual 3D modesThe Sony HT-G700 offers an embarrassment of riches as far as virtual 3D audio engines are concerned; indeed, if you ever wanted the opportunity to stack the virtual 3D sound technology of Dolby, DTS, and Sony against each other, this versatile soundbar presents the perfect opportunity to do so.
DTS Virtual:X is likely the most familiar of the three competing virtual 3D modes. Following its debut in 2017, DTS Virtual:X showed us just how realistic virtual 3D audio technology could sound. Dolby’s virtual 3D technology, known as Dolby Atmos height virtualization, is only now making its way onto soundbars (such as the upcoming TCL Alto 9+).
Then there’s Sony’s Immersive AE mode, which requires some explaining. As I mentioned earlier, Immersive AE is actually a combination of two Sony audio technologies: Vertical Surround Engine, which supplies height effects, and S-Force Pro for side-to-side surround effects. These two technologies are applied—or not—depending on the content you’re listening to and the sound mode you’ve chosen.
Both the Vertical Surround Engine and S-Force Pro are auto-enabled—and mandatory— whenever you’re watching object-based Dolby Atmos or DTS:X content (and assuming you aren’t using the Dolby or DTS virtualizers), meaning that pressing the Immersive AE button on the remote won’t have any effect. If you’re watching 5.1- or 2.0-channel content, pressing (for example) the Cinema button and enabling the Immersive AE mode engages both the Vertical Surround Engine and S-Force Pro; if you disable Immersive AE in Cinema mode, the Vertical Surround Engine is turned off, but S-Force Pro stays on. Music mode behaves a bit differently; while both the Vertical Surround Engine and S-Force Pro will (as with the Cinema mode) switch on if you enable the Immersive AE mode, they’ll both turn off if you toggle off the Immersive AE mode. | https://medium.com/@Jill86016674/sony-ht-g700-review-this-atmos-and-dts-x-enabled-soundbar-boasts-a-trifecta-of-virtual-3d-modes-bab83f70bbd1 | [] | 2020-09-07 09:13:47.684000+00:00 | ['Connected Home', 'Cord', 'Internet', 'Chromecast'] |
eSight 4 Powering my Sight to 20/20 | I self-identify as a person who is visually impaired or has low vision. Born with an inherited retinal disease, X-Recessive Blue Cone Monochromacy, my vision has been correctable to only about 20/100 since the second grade. At the risk of oversimplifying, my vision is roughly 20% of normal. There is good news though. Based on extensive family history, my sight likely will not deteriorate much at all with age. If you want to learn more, just ping me on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook, or read what I have written previously for Medium.
Enter Toronto-based eSight, a technology company making augmented or enhanced reality glasses to greatly improve the eyesight of many people who are visually impaired or legally blind. You can find my 2018 article about their eSight 3 eyewear on LinkedIn Pulse. Recently, they released their much improved eSight 4, and I have a set to try! So, let’s get into it.
Bottom Line
While wearing eSight 4, reading the standard eye test is no longer a challenge. Simply, my eyesight improves from 20/100 to 20/20 using eSight 4 to view a standard eye chart. That’s remarkable for a person who never saw a presentation in a board room, the materials in a lecture hall or the chalk board, ah.. white board, in a class room. While there is no guarantee eSight 4 will work for everyone, this technology makes a remarkable difference for me.
Great First Impression
Particularly for people with a vision impairment, details are critical. Packaging, poke-yoke design, etc. are really important.
eSight 4 Nestled in its Carry Bag for Shipping
When a $6,000 (USD) piece of technology arrives at your front door, it should be well-packed, and eSight 4 meets expectations. Like a Matryoshka doll, inside the carrying case inside the colorful retail box inside the shipping box is a pair of the new eSight Version 4. Immediately apparent is the absence of wires, which were such an encumbrance with eSight 3. Wireless capability is one of many significant improvements.
Simply shake the eSight 4 battery to light the charge indicator. 100% is indicated by four lights, 75% by three lights, and so on.
A challenge with eSight 3 is the difficulty for some users to see if the unit is fully charged. This will be a different experience for everyone who is visually impaired, but it is easy for me to see that the eSight 4 batteries are fully charged. Another nice detail is the batteries were fully charged right out of the box. It may be a small thing, but it’s an important detail when you want to get started. That literally saved several hours.
The remote control’s battery cover is tethered to the remote.
eSight 4 can be controlled with a remote that is similar to a TV remote. One of the outstanding user-centric details is you just cannot drop the battery cover. Note in the photo of the remote control battery compartment on the left that the lanyard is threaded through the compartment cover. That’s a really cool detail, especially for people who are visually impaired. You can’t drop the cover, because it is tethered to the remote itself.
eSight 4 can also be controlled with an app on your smartphone and controls on the right temple of the glasses themselves. Each of these options works differently, so you may find that one of the options or a combination works best for you.
eSight battery receptacle (bottom left) and battery (top right)
Another important detail is that you cannot put the battery into the eSight 4 glasses themselves incorrectly. To the left is a photo of the battery receptacle on the back of the glasses (bottom left) and the battery (top right). You can see two sets of contacts in the receptacle to accommodate inserting the battery in either orientation. So, there’s no need to figure out the polarity. Just plug and go! Again, that’s great recognition of the needs of their users who often cannot see the orientation of the battery.
This foolproof design is really helpful when you’re on the go. Assuming your hair isn’t in the way, you can swap out the batteries without even taking time to take off eSight 4!
A Compliment to My Arsenal of EyeGlasses
Either My eSight 4’s Over Prescription Maui Jim Sunglasses or a Social-Distancing Marvel Comic Book Character in Desperate Need of a Haircut
Another major improvement is that eSight 4 can be worn over my regular prescription glasses. That’s a huge improvement over eSight 3 that require a dedicated pair of prescription glasses — at least two in my case, one clear and one tinted — that would snap into the unit. Like so many people who are low vision, I have a collection of clear glasses for various applications including single-vision for distance, tri-focals, and computer glasses — and three colors of Maui Jim sunglasses for different situations. So if the wearer doesn’t need enhanced vision for a moment, you just swing eSight 4 up. This also represents a significant cost savings for me of $800.
One of the aspects of my low vision condition is light sensitivity. Sunglasses help enormously, even indoors and while watching television. The ability to wear eSight 4 over my prescription sunglasses is a tremendous feature and will benefit others whose vision experience includes photosensitivity.
Goin’ Mobile, Mobile, Mobile, Yeah!
What may not seem apparent is how important the ability to wear eSight 4 over your prescription glasses is for mobility. When seated, of course, it’s great to be able to swing eSight 4 up to use my regular glasses. What’s more important is how easy it is to walk with eSight 4 down and in place while using the periphery of my regular glasses to navigate. One of my favorite applications is hiking with my regular sunglasses with eSight 4 in the up-and-out-of-the-way position. When I want to zoom in on something to see it better, I’ll stop, swing the eSight 4’s down and zoom in on what I want to see.
Photo of a Roadside Sign taken with the eSight 4 camera at 3X magnification using the Image Freeze function (from the passenger seat at 60mph)
While certainly not an application for everyone, riding in the car—not driving, of course — is far and away my favorite eSight 4 application. It really is remarkable how much detail passes by that is indistinguishable without magnification.
Experimenting with magnification is essential to find the right balance between detail and image stability. For me, 3X magnification works best in the car. Some people who are susceptible to motion sickness may not be able to try this application at all. That said, it’s best to view through the front windshield, because magnified images pass by too quickly to recognize them through the side windows.
The eSight 4 image is inherently more stable than its predecessor, because eSight 4 fits so much more securely on the wearer’s head than eSight 3. Unfortunately, just like using a long lens in photography, it’s nearly impossible to keep my body still enough at long focal lengths (i.e., high magnifications). So if I could have one eSight 4 improvement, it would be image stabilization much like what is available in modern digital SLR cameras. In photography, image stabilization works great in some situations and less well in others. So the ideal eSight 4 implementation would follow the lead of a good photo-quality lens and be able to toggle image stabilization on or off.
Wireless or Not, Here We Go!
By far, the most noticeable improvement is that eSight 4 is wireless! It’s amazing how clean the design is compared to the eSight 3, which is an incredible tool in its own right. eSight 3 has a power cord between the controller and the glasses and an HDMi cable from the controller to the device you want to port to the glasses (e.g., between your computer and the controller). eSight 4 eliminates the power cord and makes the HDMi cable optional.
One of my mentors stressed that if you plan a huge change to a product that impacts how people use it, make the old way an option if you possibly can. That’s exactly what the developers of eSight 4 have done. More than an accommodation for people who don‘t like change, it is recognition that some applications actually work better with a cable. In fact, there are sometimes advantages to using a cable over a wireless connection.
A Theater Experience
One of my favorite experiences is watching video with eSight 4. With AirPods Pro synced with an iPhone XR (iOS 14.2), and the iPhone XR connected to the eSight 4 via HDMi cable, running the Disney+ app (Version 1.11.2.28845) to watch the Mandalorian works perfectly. The video quality is outstanding, and the sound quality is as well. eSight messages (e.g., if the user changes magnification) are delivered from the eSight 4 speaker near your right ear, and that is just fine with the AirPods Pro set to pass through ambient sound. So with the highly regarded Disney+ app, the system works perfectly. Popcorn not included.
A feature of eSight 4 that is just fantastic is that the user can pan left or right, up or down, simply by moving your head to look in the desired direction. It’s as intuitive as turning your head to follow a moving object.
Then there was the experience with the not-so-highly-regarded CBS app Version 7.4.15 (3148), Player Version 9.0.0. With the setup above, neither the audio nor video would work when I tried to watch the most recent episode of Star Trek Discovery (yes, I am ambidextrous). When I put away the AirPods Pro and used the eSight’s audio, the setup worked but the CBS app’s buffering capabilities (or lack thereof) prevented a good test. What I finally did was disconnect the HDMi cable and watch the episode through the eSight 4 viewer (as glasses) with audio coming from my AirPods Pro. That was just fine. The video quality wasn’t quite as good as the eSight 4 HDMi experience, but it was far better than my unaided eyes.
Many people who are struggling with the CBS app’s buffering in general recommend watching CBS programming via Amazon Prime Video. So for Amazon Prime users, I was able to verify we can watch CBS content — like Star Trek Discovery — via the Prime Video for iPhone app (Version 8.193.6224.3). The HDMi connection and AirPods Pro worked flawlessly.
A Process of Adjustment
It was apparent early on that you just cannot put on a pair of eSight 4 and go 24/7. Two things seem to be happening.
First, eSight is providing quite a bit more information about my surroundings than I have ever been able to see. There is quite a lot to process. Initially, fatigue would set in after about an hour of using the eSight 4. Gradually, I have been able to increase usage over time to about four hours. Accordingly, I only wear my eSight 4 when necessary. If it’s possible to be fully effective without, then I give my eyes and my eSight 4 a break.
Second, while the battery in back counterbalances the lenses and computer in front. it does take some time to learn how to wear the eSight 4’s weight and hat or ring comfortably. It’s simply a different feeling than a ball cap or one of my Stetsons. After a few weeks, it was easy to forget I am wearing eSight 4.
eSight 4 Pupil Alignment Test Screen
A setting that requires careful attention is adjusting eSight 4 to match your pupil-to-pupil distance. The process is to move the left eye-piece until the image of the cross shown at the left is clear. Then the process is repeated with your right eye. Finally, you fine tune with both eyes open. Before taking time to get this exactly right, my eyes felt as though they were crossing. So take time to get this right.
Something that would help improve this adjustment is a black-and-white color combination for the focus pattern. The yellow over grey does not work well for my vision condition. In fact, the yellow is so bright that it is difficult for me to see the edges crisply. It’s a lot like looking at the headlight of an oncoming car at night. A white cross on a black background would be best for my condition, but even black on white would be a significant improvement.
Ask for Help!
eSight 4 could very well be life-changing technology, but the cost is not insignificant. So my strong recommendation is to take advantage of the low-cost at-home trial, which comes with the help of an expert coach. Having gotten to know many of them during the isolation of this pandemic, the eSight coaches are great. They’re excellent communicators, tech savvy and have a wealth of knowledge and experience to share. Perhaps even more importantly, many of them are people who are visually impaired, so they’re working as hard to see the world as you are. They will help you squeeze every last drop of potential out of your eSight 4.
Just the Beginning
As much as I have learned about eSight 4, this still feels like the steep part of learning curve. There is so much to explore. My goal is to share experiences that might help you or someone you know, not to recreate the eSight 4 quick start, user guide or reference guide. There is also quite a lot of information available about eSight 4 from the manufacturer.
As I learn more from my experience, however, the plan is to share more. The goal is to publish an update in January as the journey continues. | https://medium.com/@inkengray/esight-4-powering-my-sight-to-20-20-19c144411ccf | ['Ken Gray'] | 2020-12-28 13:17:10.026000+00:00 | ['Visually Impaired', 'Accessibility', 'Low Vision', 'Low Vision Aids', 'Augmented Reality'] |
shawn mendes: in wonder | Today I sat down to watch a movie and stumbled across Shawn Mendes’ documentary. Ive always loved his music and his genuine nature. His music has got me through loads of heartbreak, high school drama and lonely nights. Last year my best friend surprised me with concert tickets. It was a night I’ll forget. The energy and warmth that radiates of his music and his fans was immaculate.
Watching this documentary brought me to tears at multiple times. It was a symbol that despite your net worth or how fancy your car is, we are all confused, lost, and living life as it comes.
He expresses how at times he’s wanted to show his true feelings, the 21 year old boy who just wanted to go home, spend time with his family and friends and maybe smoke a joint. He speaks about his anxiety and how it is not his enemy but his friend who he battles with but always comes back stronger. Allowing ourselves to understand that anxiety, confusion, madness is life. We are allowed to feel all of it and even if we don’t allow ourselves to we still will because our hearts feel, we can’t turn off our emotions.
A part of the documentary that especially hit me was when he returned home to preform at Rogers Centre. Prior to the concert he got to spend a few days at home with his family and friends after months of being away. He explains how preforming at the largest arena wasn’t what this concert was about. It was about being in his hometown where his career started. All the town people told him how they bought tickets to come see him preform. The energy his was feeling was indescribable. Preforming there was the night he’ll never forget because it’s where it all started and being back there as a legend meant everything.
On the more down side he shares his medical journeys. Doctors visits, cancellation of concerts, etc. He never knew when his voice would give out. Sometimes in the morning, sometimes at night but sometimes during a show. The pressure of millions of fans is exhausting and overwhelming. His most important instrument is his voice and the fact that an athlete needs to take extra precautions physically sometimes artists are overlooked and need to rest their voices. They can injure themselves by talking or screaming, maybe by eating or drinking something too cold. It is such an interesting adventure to watch someone experience the ups and downs of their career. At times his voice doesn’t allow him to preform on a certain night and he cant risk damaging his voice for the shows to come. The disappointment of letting down all his fans is heartbreaking and for an artist who truly loves what he does. Watching him cry for letting his supporters down shows his love and gratitude towards his fans. He expresses how hopeless he feels when there are 40,000 people waiting outside who are now crying and all they want is to see him do what he loves.
There is a part of that cancellation that many people didn’t get to see. He had to cancel his show in South America and head back to his hotel due to vocal cord issues. His voice couldn’t preform to the level that was needed and the risk of damaging his voice for the next 11 shows was one he could not take. His supporters came outside his hotel window and turned around his hopelessness. They screamed and chanted their love for him. The warmth and love he felt made him understand that his fans know that he didn’t have any other choice.
Since I’m a hopeless romantic, the part where he talks about his relationship with Camila Cabello made me crave something so pure. Often relationships are turned into something so different through the media. The way their relationship started so long before it truly began was something I never knew before. He talks about how every song has always been about her. In particular he mentions how treat you better was about her. He always knew it was her. He knew he could do so much better with her by his side. Watching how supportive they are of each other is beyond beautiful and inspiring. Before their concert together or just his concert, she’s there to help him calm his nerves and preform like the legend his is.
Some of the things I found most interesting were that sometimes he needs a break mid show for a little pep talk. He needs to be told how amazing he is because he is fucking human too. On the more physical aspect, I found it so neat how his attire fit the country he was in. When he was in Mexico he wore a more ethnic vest to fit the fans. It was just a small part of a musicians life which I never thought about.
His song wonder has spoke to me on so many levels. I wonder if i’m being real do i speak my truth or do i filter how i feel. So often we find ourselves lost in the feeling of wondering whether we are faking it to make others think about us in a certain way. His lyrics put our everyday feelings into a song that allows a safe space. I wonder what it’s like to be my friends hope that they don’t think i forget about them. Always being away from his friends and having such little time to call them or text makes him feel like he isn’t the greatest friend. I wonder what it’s like to be loved by you. This lyric speaks to every single one of us differently because we all have the person who we are curious to know their thoughts. We want to know whether they feel the same way about us or do they find us pretty or do they even know who we are. He even brings in the double standard men are held against of crying makes them less of a man. I wonder when I cry into my hands i’m conditioned to feel like it makes me less of a man and I wonder if some day you’ll be by my side and tell me that the world will end up alright. The fact that a man can’t wear pink and cry is just so stupid. As a women I am constantly fighting to be equal in dominance but at times a man wants to let go a little and feel what he’s going through. And as far as being curious if someone will be by our side to tell us that in the end we’ll make it, that’s something most of us crave in life.
Some songs that have got me through my darkest nights have to be never be alone, in my blood, lost in japan, mercy, and ruin. Some songs that have got me through my happiest days have to be señorita, youth, memories and life of the party.
“Let’s make mistakes and don’t look back, it now or never” -Shawn Mendes | https://medium.com/@birtik8/shawn-mendes-in-wonder-54ed2ebc647 | [] | 2020-12-06 05:30:42.963000+00:00 | ['Passion', 'Shawn Mendes', 'Documentary', 'Love', 'Music'] |
When they don’t want to let you go easy. | When they don’t want to let you go easy.
Photo by Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash
I’ve embarked on a journey to become the best possible writer that I can be about two and a half months ago. Even though I’ve always been driven by growth, only after I attended the Akimbo Freelancer’s Workshop did I realize many of the small lessons that are shared across all disciplines.
One of the major milestones in my strategy for improvement is to create space for growth. This means to stop working temporarily. In the past 4 weeks, I’ve rejected a total of 5 job offers and a few more requests from previous clients.
I’ve also informed all of the current clients of my decision, and a few of them are having a hard time finding a replacement. This is a good thing for me because it shows me that my work is not as “template” as I thought it was.
It’s an eye-opener, to say the least.
Naturally, I want to keep doors open for the future. It’s not my plan to bail and stop writing altogether. I just want to invest some time in my own processes so that I can do my best work.
Another surprising result was that some of my clients offered as much as double for my services going forward. It wasn’t easy saying no to an offer like that, but I have to stay on the course, otherwise, I may never end up where I want to be.
There’s nothing wrong with the work that I’m doing at the moment. In fact, I find it quite enjoyable when everything is going well. That is until I remember that I have many other people waiting on me to fulfill promises made to them.
These promises were made naively, thinking that I could organize my time and effort to actually deliver. But, when a “Yes” person gets overwhelmed with opportunities, so does his or her life.
I am both happy to be appreciated as much as I am. It makes me feel good to discover that I am not as replaceable as I believed before starting this journey.
If I could I would forge this feeling into a medal that says “Zoran — The Freelancer Client’s Hate To Lose.” as a memento. There is no pride to be gained in manipulating other people to get what you want, that’s simply not who I am.
I must take this time to improve my processes, for my sake, and my client’s benefit. If this decision turns out to lead to starvation, I’m prepared to risk that outcome in exchange for a shot at being remarkable.
I will never leave a client hanging. Only after I am certain that their needs will be met by another person, will I feel free to leave.
Working with me is a promise of excellence, and this is the main reason I want to stop, turn back, and finish what I promised I would do.
In the end, I want to be “Zoran, a professional writer that you would be lucky to accept to work with you, because he always delivers” rather than “Zoran, a highly ambitious freelance writer that promises a lot, underdelivers, or is simply late to the party.”
About this blog
Zoran is a professional freelance writer and journalist and pursues many hobbies in graphic design, woodworking, psychology, sports, sales, negotiation, pretty much a bottomless pit of interest.
Right now he is dedicating time to improve his writing to a remarkable level, and for this reason, he stopped accepting new client assignments, focusing only on clearing out the backlog of projects that have accumulated over time.
He’s working on rebranding into a more specific type of writer and is still figuring things out. Join him on his journey as he blogs about it right here on Medium.
Click on that “Follow” button to keep in touch. | https://medium.com/zoran-spirkovski/when-they-dont-want-to-let-you-go-easy-6695b90275e7 | ['Zoran Spirkovski'] | 2020-12-16 15:10:44.118000+00:00 | ['Clients', 'Freelance Writing', 'Client Relationship', 'Rebranding', 'Freelance'] |
Four Seasons Announces First Mountain Destination In Europe | Four Seasons has announces strategies for the brand name’s 3rd destination in France, 4 Seasons Hotel, Megève and also the Chalet du Mont d’Arbois, Megève. Scheduled to open in late 2017, Four Seasons initially mountain location in Europe will be set amongst the snow-capped optimals of the large Haute-Savoie Alpine range. The task will consist of the all-new mountainside Four Seasons Resort, Megève also the conversion of a collection of traditional chalets in the heart of the middle ages Mont d’Arbois village.
Facing Mont Blanc and located just 44 miles from Geneva International Airport terminal, 4 Seasons Hotel Megève will be the very first hotel to provide straight access to the Mont d’Arbois slopes along with a luxurious sanctuary for skiers looking for ski in/ski out straight on the Alpine range. In enhancement to the 55-room resort, existing cabins will certainly be restored within the village of Mont d’Arbois, close to the major gondola.
Edmond de Rothschild Heritage, a distinguished way of life firm possessed by Benjamin and also Ariane de Rothschild, is partnering with 4 Seasons Hotels as well as Resorts on the project.
Commenting on this amazing development, Ariane de Rothschild, Chairwoman of the Executive Committee of Edmond de Rothschild Team, claimed, ‘This collaboration will certainly bring brand-new measurements not only to our friendliness at Mont d’Arbois however additionally to the town of Megève. The professionalism and reliability, global network as well as historical experience of 4 Seasons in the hospitality industry are 2nd to none, as well as I am particularly happy that the Hotel and Chalet in Megève will certainly be Four Seasons first luxury mountain location in Europe.’
J. Allen Smith, Head of state and also Chief Executive Officer, 4 Seasons Hotels as well as Resorts, added ‘The de Rothschild household has a lengthy history in Megève and also we’re honoured they have decided to companion with us to present this unbelievable destination to the next generation of deluxe visitors. Keeping the history and also personality of Mont d’Arbois while introducing 4 Seasons fabulous personalised service, we will certainly develop something yet undetected in the French Alps.’
Mont d’Arbois town’s several Michelin-star restaurants, historic Alpine architecture, as well as winding rock roads have actually established Megève as a location known as much for its gastronomy as well as cultural richness as for its striking all-natural landscape. The bordering areas of Megève likewise offer unlimited chances for Alpine experience, consisting of heli-skiing, dog sledding, glacier snowshoeing, as well as greater than 30 kilometers of groomed cross-country winter sports trails via idyllic snow-capped woodlands. An absolutely year rounded destination, Megève is transformed in the spring and summertime, as its mountainside fields flourish, bring in visitors from worldwide to its colorful gardens.
Four Seasons Resort, Megève and also the Cabin du Mont d’Arbois, Megève, A Four Seasons Resort will note the 3rd Four Seasons location in France, signing up with the epic 4 Seasons Resort George V, Paris and Grand-Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat, A Four Seasons Hotel in the French Riviera. The Resort will certainly be the 5th ski destination in the firm’s portfolio, joining Four Seasons Resort and also Residences Whistler, 4 Seasons Hotel as well as Residences Vail, 4 Seasons Hotel Rancho Encantado Santa Fe as well as Four Seasons Resort and also Residences Jackson Hole. | https://medium.com/@fascinatingtraveldeals/four-seasons-announces-first-mountain-destination-in-europe-900ef2c2275e | ['Tamekia Muniz'] | 2016-12-15 14:17:55.147000+00:00 | ['Destination', 'Flights', 'Hotels', 'Resort', 'Travel'] |
Generate etymology clusters on world map with Python and Scikit-learn -using Google Cloud Translation Service | Generate etymology clusters on world map with Python and Scikit-learn -using Google Cloud Translation Service Seb S Mar 4·2 min read
Generate etymology cluster on world map for any word in any language. Needs google cloud translation account — free £300 on first calls
To start using Cloud Translation, you need a project that has the Cloud Translation API enabled and credentials to make authenticated calls. The following sections detail how to get set up before you make your first call to the Cloud Translation API.
Download Wordmapix repo from here:
https://github.com/haker88/wordmapix
Read through Google Cloud setup guide: https://cloud.google.com/translate/docs/setup
In short:
Setup your new app here — https://console.developers.google.com/apis/dashboard
Setup API for google cloud translation: https://console.cloud.google.com/flows/enableapi?apiid=translate.googleapis.com
Generate json key for your app:
https://console.developers.google.com/apis/credentials
Download your json key to main app folder and rename: ‘key.json’ You are ready to go ! In jupyter file execute all cells and feel free to edit list of phrases or load from csv etc.
Go to cloud console to monitor calls and setup threshold limits — you should be ok to run 500k calls which will be enough for decent number of maps.
#scikit #sklearn #datascience #geodata #wordmapix | https://medium.com/@haker88/generate-etymology-clusters-on-world-map-with-python-and-scikit-learn-using-google-cloud-df081ba8c6ad | ['Seb S'] | 2021-05-21 06:43:36.566000+00:00 | ['Geodata', 'Datascience Training', 'Scikit', 'Maps', 'Python'] |
How To Prove That God Exists By Thinking About Birds | Borges remixes St. Anselm
Borges, who spent his whole life immersed in books, certainly knew of both the original argument and its refutation. He restates it in a more artistic way: if we can imagine something that is beyond our intellect, but also imagine a thing which fills that void in our understanding, then that thing must be God. Since that property can only be attributed to a superior being, and a superior being must exist to receive that attribution, God exists.
The argument is, much like Anselm’s, also pretty bad. Borges saw a number between one and ten. So…how could it not be any of the numbers between one and ten? He could not figure out which one of these it was, but it clearly was one. Implying that God must need to have seen the number for the birds to exist in objective reality is an unproven assumption. It relies entirely on the word “flock”: it implies a bunch of individual birds making up a bigger group, so one could count up all the birds to get a definite number of them. But that’s just a word game — that’s like saying that if God can count all the atoms in any object, which we cannot see, then God exists.
It simply doesn’t follow. The argument is, perhaps, even more shaky than Anselm’s. It relies on only one property of this hypothetical God, not its inherent greatness: that of omnipotence, or specifically, of seeing.
Borges went almost completely blind in the later years of his life. That is the key to understanding this piece: if the things the writer faintly sees with his failing eyes have a definite form outside of his mind, exist outside, then whatever fully contains that form and defines those things, if it is not him, is God, and a God that must exist. In short, if you’re blind and a flock of birds flies in front of you, God sees them. | https://medium.com/the-apeiron-blog/how-to-prove-that-god-exists-by-thinking-about-birds-428b303b0de3 | ['Joe Ferrante'] | 2020-11-02 23:56:12.288000+00:00 | ['Art', 'Religion', 'God', 'Literature', 'Philosophy'] |
The Only Mystery In Vermillion, South Dakota | by Lyz Lenz
The first and last crime I ever tried to solve was the disappearance of two teenage girls. Michelle Strand and Suzie Hewlitt of Vermillion, South Dakota went missing in May of 1971. They were high school juniors, and they left for a party at a gravel pit about 20 miles outside of town and never came back.
In 1998 my family moved to Vermillion. I had lived in Texas for my whole life up to that point. The town was small. Kids drove tractors to school. Everyone had known one another since preschool, and most of them were related. The only mystery was the mystery of Michelle and Suzie. So, I spent the entire summer between eighth grade and freshman year of high school looking for them.
I did this in part because I was never invited to parties in gravel pits. I had been homeschooled until high school. The only people I knew were librarians and my friends Jenny F., Jenny D. and Jon from drama camp and community theater classes, and the parties I went to involved giving Jenny F. a make-over and the two of us trying to learn the dance routine from Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion in her basement, where her father’s deer trophies watched us glass-eyed from the wood-paneled walls.
I rode my bike to Jenny’s house almost three miles away and across a busy road. Kids my age drove by in their parents’ rusty trucks and new tractors. Sometimes they honked. Most often, they ignored me. Everyone could drive that summer before high school because of the state law that said if a kid lived in the country, they could get a permit to drive to school at the age of fifteen. And everyone lived in the country: Vermillion, South Dakota is a dusty town on a hill. It’s a faint radiation out from the University of South Dakota, where a sign proudly proclaims that Tom Brokaw went there. It was rumored that the girl who sang “Sunny Came Home” was born here, too. But she grew up in Canada, so it didn’t really count, did it?
In Allen, Texas, our house had bordered a busy highway and a small creek. My siblings and I rarely left the confines of our property and when we did, we were never by ourselves. We were Evangelical and homeschooled: our world was our home and our church and the little cardboard houses we built down by the creek. My parents kept the TV in the closet; we never heard the news. But in Vermillion, all of that changed. The town was small and safe. There wasn’t a lot of crime besides bikes being stolen and college students passing out in our yard. And maybe it was here that my parents reached their tipping point of constantly corralling and protecting all eight of us. In Vermillion, they finally let me go free.
Our neighborhood was made up of small blocks of teetering old Victorians, occupied by rickety professors and busy students. Five blocks away was Main Street, which had a movie theater with two screens, and next door, a bar and a video store. Down the street, just past the old Baptist church, was the library. If I went with my brother, I could ride my bike to see G or PG movies; I could go to the library by myself. I took drama classes at an old converted church and over the summer I volunteered at the library, shelving and reshelving the kids’ section.
Eventually, not knowing what a person did with freedom, I began looking for mysteries. I wasn’t sure why at the time; I was 14, an age where you barely ask yourself that question. Looking back, it’s clear to me that I just wanted to feel important. I wanted something magical and mysterious to lift me out of the mundane, to transform me. Some kids look for that in sports, others in amassing friends and a homecoming crown; me, I wanted a mystery.
At first, I thought the key was the crumbling stone band shell in the park. It looked mysterious. It had stone, moss and looked creepy in the moonlight, which seemed like mystery 101. In drama class, Jon told me that a man had killed his wife and hidden her money in one of the stones, and then when he came back to retrieve the money, the ghost of his murdered wife killed him. The story immediately seemed ridiculous, like the single episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark I had watched at my friend’s house despite the fact that my mom said that show was about the occult and it was a sin to watch it. But none of that stopped me from sneaking out of the house at nine (that was as late as my conscience would allow) and riding my bike to the park to see if the ghost of the wife would arrive and try to kill me.
Then Jenny D. told me that a girl she knew in sixth grade had lived in a house that used to be a hospital. The third floor, she told me, had been the morgue. And one time when she slept over, the groans of the dead echoed through the house in the darkness.
I rode my bike by that house a lot, trying to feel the ghosts. All the books said you could feel their presence. I never felt anything. So, at the library, I used the microfiche machine to see if I could find any stories about that old hospital.
What I found instead was the mystery of Michelle Strand and Suzie Hewlitt. Maybe they had been taken by a serial killer, theorized reporters. Maybe they were living, disguised in the neighboring town of Yankton. Maybe they were running from the law. I asked the librarians about them. The children’s librarian, a wonderful woman who had tolerated my terrible shelving for the past two months, told me it was more likely they had just run away to a bigger town. “Kids,” she said, “are always leaving this town.”
At the time, I didn’t know why, but I had to search for them. I rode my bike down the hill to the river. I looked into the swollen brown water and knew they couldn’t be there. Perhaps they were living on the banks, behind the green tangle of trees and brush. Perhaps they had fled because they’d discovered something special about themselves. They had magic and it’s impossible to be magic in high school, so they left. They built themselves a cottage by the river, where they could practice their gifts without being afraid of being mocked.
The town of Vermillion had once been located near the river. But a great flood had driven residents up the hill, closer to the university. Ruins of the former town still remained. I found the stone remains of an old church in the woods. I went there frequently as the summer began to turn to fall and the woods smelled of wet leaves and sweet rotting trees. I thought I’d meet the girls there. I snuggled into the stone, where I imagined the pulpit had been (never mind that the pulpit wouldn’t have been built into the foundation; that was a practicality that escaped me at 14). I wrote poems in my journal about pirate queens and sea-faring adventures. I told my journal, who I named Rose, that I had no friends. I told Rose I didn’t like my parents. I didn’t like God, either. I told her I wanted to leave.
School started. My first year in public school was miserable. Carson in Biology sat behind me and kicked me with his steel-toed boots every time I raised my hand, which was a lot. In composition, a kid whose name I forget but whose tobacco-breath I smell in my anxiety dreams whispered words like “cunt” and “carpet muncher” in my ear. I didn’t know what they meant. I had to look them up in the library. When I found out, I asked the teacher if I could move my desk. He refused.
Dustin was the captain of the swim team. In the crowded hall between classes he’d shout out, “Hey Lyz, want to date? Oh right, you can’t because your parents won’t let you!” Megan told me that my Clarissa Explains It All-inspired styles were ugly. Liz told me to stop wearing denim pageboy hats. Tabitha slammed my head on my desk in geometry class. I never told my parents about any of this, because I knew they’d take me out of school, and I wanted the freedom. I looked at Michelle and Suzie’s pictures over and over from a microfiche print out. What made them so special? Why did they get to go?
A few years, I too would leave. I too wouldn’t go back.
Michelle and Suzie were found in September of 2013, when a passerby noticed an old Studebaker in Brule Creek, miles away from where I’d imagined they’d be. The police were able to identify the remains, along with drivers’ licenses and wallets from the girls. Almost forty years later, the case was solved: probably a traffic accident on a gravel road. The girls never left Vermillion. They were there the whole time.
What strikes me about reading the news stories now, sixteen years after I tried to find them, was how little I cared for the details or the actual facts. I could have talked to their parents; they didn’t live far from me. I could have tried to track down a sibling. I could have ridden my bike in the right direction, the direction they had actually been going, toward the gravel pit. Even the pictures of the girls that I am looking at right now look nothing like what I remembered from the grainy microfiche.
No wonder their ghost never found me. I didn’t want to be haunted by them. I wasn’t even seeing them. I wasn’t even trying to find them. I was trying to figure out what haunted me.
Names in this essay have been changed.
Previously: “Being Maleficent”
Lyz’s essays have appeared on the New York Times online, Brain, Child, Geez magazine, and The Louisville Review. You can find her on Twitter @lyzl. | https://medium.com/the-hairpin/the-only-mystery-in-vermillion-south-dakota-7baebf291f83 | ['The Hairpin'] | 2016-06-02 04:58:51.597000+00:00 | ['Church', 'Personal Histories', 'Freedom'] |
Your Average Trump Voter | Your Average Trump Voter
I have to admit that I don’t know a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump. Mostly, they think the president is nothing but a buffoon in a suit. But one of my best friends is one of those oddballs who believes in conspiracy theories, loves Trump, and hates Biden and Harris with a passion.
Jack is 67 years of age, an army vet with an honorable discharge, and lamentably, little knowledge of anything academic. Clearly, he didn’t pay attention in school. I took a sample citizenship test with Jack recently. He failed miserably. I knew Jack was ignorant. But I didn’t realize to what extent!
Jack is a patriot and four square for America. He favors closed borders without realizing that if America is great, it is open borders that made it that way.
I’ve known Jack for over 30 of his 67 years. We drove a cab from the same garage. In those 30 years, I know Jack has never paid a dime in income tax. I got him a white-collar job after I left that employment in favor of greener pastures. He got himself fired and then dodged his ex-boss when he reached out to Jack to pay his share of the 1099 income he’d paid him.
Jack is receiving some combination of social security and disability. I hope he paid in for 10 years (the requirement for social security) before I knew him. I have my doubts. With regard to his disability payment, Jack runs 2 miles every day. He is a very robust 67 years old.
In a conversation with him yesterday, I mentioned that our president doesn’t even know the words to the national anthem. He disputed that claim. I asked if he’d seen the video of Trump trying to sing along and flubbing the words. He doubted that video existed.
I switched gears and asked if he knew those words. Jack freely admitted he did not. And there’s something else he revealed: While in the army, Jack took a beating from a superior for refusing to go to Vietnam. After getting roughed up, he was dispatched to Germany where Jack alternately cooked eggs for his fellow soldiers — and spent his off-hours trading cartons of cigarettes for blow jobs from German hookers on the strip.
I appreciate Jack for being that “for better or worse” kind of friend from the old neighborhood. We “go back.” I love reminiscing about the old cab-driving days with Jack. He just has so many knucklehead stories from that period in our lives.
In yesterday’s conversation, we discussed Trump’s impending veto of the new stimulus relief act. Predictably, he did not understand that if Trump vetoes the bill, a 2/3 majority vote in favor of that bill in both houses, would effectively negate Trump’s veto. And he did not know that way over that 2/3 majority had already voted “yea” on the bill in both houses.
Ultimately, Jack is an idiot who thinks he knows everything — but actually knows nothing. Ya know…the poster boy Trumpster. There are 75 million in the USA. In the words of Yakov Smirnoff, “what a country.”
Hopefully, they won’t take out their guns and cause a civil war in the next 27 days. Like their hero, they're not fit to run a nation. Of that, I have no doubt.
More about Trump from Jeffrey Epstein:
And from Paul Manafort: | https://medium.com/illumination/your-average-trump-voter-b91579816710 | ['William', 'Dollar Bill'] | 2020-12-24 17:37:51.650000+00:00 | ['Opinion', 'Life', 'Trump', 'Culture', 'Politics'] |
Run | It’s so easy to get discouraged when others don’t believe in your potential. But you shouldn’t do that.
If your voice is not the favourite sound of others, at least it can become your favourite sound.
If you enjoyed this, please take a look at my previous work: | https://medium.com/illumination-curated/run-66366d5830ca | ['Alice Floris'] | 2020-12-22 18:22:21.023000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Illumination Curated', 'Dreams', 'Self', 'Poetry'] |
Looking back on 2020 (and ahead to 2021) | 2020 has shed a light on what many of us have known all along. People of color are routinely being excluded from equity and ultimately being left out of the future. After this spring’s unarmed killings of Black people and COVID-19 again laid bare the continued systemic oppression in our country, companies are reckoning with the ways that they contribute to this oppression. There’s energy to create change, in 2021 and beyond.
At Reboot, 2020 has provided us the opportunity to share our mission far and wide. As we reflect on what we’ve accomplished since our launch in 2018, we are motivated to continue centering Black, Latina, and Native American women in the movement for equity.
Strengthening the Collective Power of the Reboot Coalition
The Reboot Representation Tech Coalition now has 18 members, and we continue to welcome companies who are committed to addressing the systemic inequities in the tech industry. In 2020, the Coalition welcomed Walmart, Cognizant, and Comcast NBCUniversal. Their commitment is critical. The power of the coalition grows with each new member, and we can’t wait to welcome even more in 2021. No single company created gender and racial inequity in the industry, but as a collective, they have the unique power to change the current landscape.
Our new members are joining a strong coalition of companies that have committed $21.1 million to increase the numbers of Black, Latina, and Native American women in computing. But the coalition’s power goes beyond monetary resources. Our coalition members meet regularly to talk, share, and learn from one another about programs and initiatives in diversity, equity, and inclusion — and particularly those that support Black, Latina, and Native American women. These conversations often happen behind closed doors, but at Reboot, we truly believe that if you’re serious about diversity, you need to start working with your competitors.
Our coalition members stepped up to the challenges of 2020 and collectively shared resources on addressing racial equity and COVID-19. In collaboration with some of our coalition members, Reboot also provided students and managers with resources for remote internships and had conversations that we hope will move the needle for increasing representation in 2021 and beyond.
Defining Representation with Reboot Grantees
Together, the Coalition funds organizations serving Black, Latina, and Native American women and supports them in gaining college-level computing skills. These organizations set the path to doubling the number of Black, Latina, and Native American women receiving computing degrees by 2025. Reboot launched our grantee spotlight series, featuring interviews with our grantees whose on-the-ground work is driving progress. Here’s a look at what a few of our grantees accomplished this year:
The United Negro College Fund, in partnership with Reboot Representation, established Black Females moving Forward in Computing, a program that will provide academic and mentoring support for Black women pursuing computing degrees.
The Kapor Center and American Indian Science and Engineering Society began piloting new curricula for Exploring Computer Science and Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles that are culturally relevant for Native American students, and especially designed to engage young women and two-spirit individuals.
At the 2020 Great Minds in STEM (GMiS) virtual conference in October, our CEO Dwana joined the Computing Alliance of Hispanic Serving Institutions to announce the first cohort of Latina Student Scholars.
KIPP, the largest public charter school system in the US, encouraged gender-equal participation in its Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles (AP CS P) course. They recruited over 380 underrepresented girls of color to enroll in the 2019–2020 AP CS P course. Over 60% of Black, Latina, and Native American girls taking the exam passed with a score of 3 or higher.
And that’s just a small sample of the amazing work our grantees have undertaken. We look forward to partnering with our grantees further in 2021.
Participating in Conversations about Equity, Representation, and Inclusion
Across industries, people and organizations are discussing and evaluating their commitments to equity. Tech, computing, and higher education are no exception. As CEO of Reboot, Dwana Franklin-Davis participated in many conversations at events, at conferences, and in the news, offering her experiences as a Black technologist and sharing Reboot’s point of view on representation and inclusion.
This summer’s racial equity movement inspired Dwana to create the Dear Tech Companies blog series to provide specific, actionable strategies to companies looking to make the industry more accessible to women of color. We shared how Juneteenth can act as a commitment to the Black community and Dwana authored op-eds in Fast Company on how to center women of color in the future of work. Look out for more from Dwana in 2021 on how collective grantmaking can make an impact for women of color in tech.
As we all grappled with the many inequities highlighted by COVID-19, Dwana spoke to Forbes about how Reboot is addressing the related challenges of COVID-19 and racial injustice. We also collaborated with our tech equity partners to share strategies for prioritizing inclusion during virtual school and work from home, and Dwana authored an op-ed describing how COVID has made it harder for women of color to enter tech careers.
Shifting to virtual events didn’t stop us! From roundtables to panels to keynotes, Dwana spoke at over 25 events this year. In the company of Megan Rapinoe and Serena Williams, Dwana presented at the 2020 Grace Hopper conference and shared strategies for companies looking to strengthen diversity in tech. She’s ready for more in 2021.
2020 has kicked us into full gear, and our drive to increase representation will not slow down. We look forward to pushing the industry to continue to reflect on the events of 2020 and see them as an opportunity to be intentional and inclusive in their efforts to cultivate anti-racist workplaces. Reboot is proud to be an advocate for Black, Latina, and Native American women and work with companies to increase pathways and representation. 2021, we’re ready for you! | https://medium.com/@rebootrepresentation/looking-back-on-2020-and-ahead-to-2021-9b7cf261adc4 | ['Reboot Representation'] | 2020-04-02 00:00:00 | ['Diversity In Tech', 'Racial Equity'] |
COVID-19 Impact on Early vs Late Stage Funding: A Data-Driven Analysis | COVID-19 has had unforeseen and unpredictable impacts on many industries, including Venture Capital. VC, an industry predicated on personal relationships and accessibility, now needed to operate virtually. Did early stage companies shift their focus from their next funding round to staying afloat? Did late stage companies take a second look at potential sales cycle disruption and employee safety? Here at A-Level Capital, we wanted to quantify COVID-19’s impact on the VC space. We wanted to answer questions like how has VC funding changed since the onset of COVID? Has it changed at all? And perhaps most importantly, is the VC space resilient?
To answer these questions, we conducted a high-level, data-driven analysis of VC activity from Q4 2019 all the way through the present, Q2 2020. Venture funding history data was obtained from whogotfunded.com, a free online service that aggregates data through mass web text scraping. The data was then verified and supplemented via Crunchbase. All deals were based in the US. The data and code can be found here.
To start, let’s look at the frequency of venture funding over time.
These three figures show the number of rounds raised per day, from Q4 2019 through Q2 2020. Daily, weekly, and monthly frequency windows are shown.
Here are some key observations:
There’s a clear decrease in the number of rounds raised in Q1/Q2 2020 as compared to Q4 2019.
This decrease in rounds raised appears to line up with increased COVID awareness in the US, which started around March (blue shaded region).
This decrease appears to start around when the WHO declared COVID a global public health emergency (orange shaded region).
The decline doesn’t continue into Q2 2020 — round frequency plateaus instead.
We can see that number of rounds raised has decreased into 2020, presumably due to lock-down procedures, quarantine across the US, and the general disruption of VC daily activities.
Let’s now look at trends in the size of these rounds.
Here’s a graph of the average daily round size over this time frame. The line shown is the average round size and the shaded regions represent one standard deviation of a Gaussian distribution of the other rounds that day. Basically, the shaded distributions give us a good idea of the diversity of round type raised that day. Q4 2019 has a pretty wide range of round sizes, whereas in Q1/Q2 2020 round sizes are much more uniform.
When we compare these trends in average round size to our earlier graphs of monthly deal frequency, we see a really interesting pattern.
Average round size is much higher in Q1/Q2 2020 than Q4 2019. However, 2020 has seen a clear decline in rounds per week.
than Q4 2019. However, So less deals are happening in 2020, but the round average is getting significantly higher??
Here’s the earlier two graphs on top of each other. Keep in mind that the y axis units here are non-important, but you can see pretty clearly that deal volume is going down as round average goes up.
We can hypothesize that this either means (1) not many late stage companies raised venture funding in Q4 2019, or more likely (2) COVID onset has really impacted early-stage startups raising rounds. The first option’s unlikely because the shading on the Q4 portion of the graph means there’s actually a lot of round diversity in Q4 2019!
The first option’s unlikely because the shading on the Q4 portion of the graph means there’s actually a lot of round diversity in Q4 2019! We can speculate large companies generally have the resources in place to weather out COVID’s impact, at least enough to complete their scheduled fundraising rounds. Smaller companies however might be having a harder time adapting to these changes and as a result, be pushing off their funding rounds to focus on more immediate priorities.
From these trends in the data, our standing hypothesis is that COVID-19 has had the most disruptive impact on early stage companies, causing them to push their funding and as a result, raise the observed average round size in Q1/Q2 2020.
Let’s see if this is reflected on a state level as well.
The top 3 states with the most VC investment are New York, California, and Massachusetts.
Taking a closer look at New York: | https://medium.com/a-level-capital/covid-19-impact-on-early-vs-late-stage-funding-a-data-driven-analysis-48290c46828d | ['Shreya Singh'] | 2020-06-27 00:11:04.501000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Visualization', 'Covid 19', 'Venture Capital'] |
Why should you use a website designer for your business? | Recent analysis suggests that about 66 percent of people prefer websites with a beautiful theme and synchronized pattern. Therefore, website design is an essential factor for attracting customers and gaining success in your online marketing business. For this purpose, you need to hire a website designer who is an expert, professional, and highly skilled individual.
Now, let’s see in detail why it’s essential to use a website designer for your business?
1. Hiring a professional Website designer will enable you to get the high-quality and best website.
You can have many free website design templates available on the internet. Still, these are basic level designs used already by a lot of people. So, these designs won’t help you in making an audience-engaging website.
Furthermore, a website contains several features such as headers, images, codes, and plugins. All these things will appear impossible for you if you have no background information regarding this. Hence, hiring a website designer will help you get a high-quality and innovative design for your site.
2. Online strategy
A professional website designer can form an efficient strategic plan for the website. The designer will make the website according to the business goals and target audience. In short, the designer’s purpose will be to form a solid foundation for the websites so they can thrive long term.
3. Responsive design
Today most web users are using smartphones and tablets for viewing the website. So, your website design must be responsive. This means the website is compatible with desktop and is mobile friendly too.
You need to hire a website designer for responsive design. Otherwise, the audience will bounce off the website and won’t spend enough time on your website.
4. SEO
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is essential for the business website to rank and appear in the searches of its target audience. It is challenging to optimize your website well, but this is an essential part of website design and development.
An experienced and skilled designer can increase the website’s chances of appearing in the search engines, thus helping Google index and rank your website.
To cap it all, SEO is the best way to approach your target audience, and you need the massive help of a website designer in this regard.
5. Competitive advantage
Before stepping into the online business, the foremost necessary factor is to have an insight into your competitors. For instance, Who are your competitors? What are they doing? And What are their strengths and weaknesses? These questions will help you have an idea about the existing market. In this way, you will know how much hard work, effort, and persistence you need for the successful launching of your website.
You may not analyze this factor quickly and need to hire a website designer who can do a detailed competitor analysis using various professional approaches and tools.
6. Error-free design
Another good reason you should use a website designer is that you need a professionally formed website free of errors and mistakes.
For instance, If you create the website yourself, there are chances that you make few mistakes. Afterward, detecting those errors and correcting them can be a big mess and difficult for you. This will result in wastage of a lot of time and money.
As handling business already requires a lot of effort. You should hire a professionally trained designer for this purpose and get rid of all your tensions in this regard.
7. Faster Site
One of the most aggravating factors for website visitors is a slow website which takes a lot of time to load the desired page. So, slow websites have 60% chances that they will lose the visitors and domain authority, resulting in loss of credibility, de-ranking, and deindexing.
A skilled and expert designer can help you speed optimization by using efficient tools and deleting extra plugins. Also, he will a website featuring integrated features and plugins for providing security and speed.
8. Time and money savings
One reason for hiring a professional designer is that it will save your time. As it well said, “Time is money.”
Hiring a professional means that your website is completed quickly and efficiently. This means that the launch of your business will not be delayed. Moreover, as the work is handed over to the expert, there will be fewer chances of repairing the website, thereby saving money. In this way, you can utilize your time in other business chores.
9. New technology
Professional and qualified website designers are well equipped to know the latest technologies and alterations in algorithms, coding, search engine functionalities, plugins, and the latest tools. Therefore, you can ensure that your website is according to the latest demands and new technologies.
To cap it all, hiring a professional seems difficult and costly. Still, once you find a good individual, you won’t regret it. Therefore, the above article illustrates the importance that Why you should use a website designer for your business. For the best website designers and professionals, you can contact Hotsnow. Moreover, you may check our portfolio and previous work. | https://medium.com/@igorpolyakov/why-should-you-use-a-website-designer-for-your-business-ed0a6173a612 | ['Igor Polyakov'] | 2021-05-03 18:02:35.614000+00:00 | ['Website Design', 'Business', 'Web Design'] |
Secure Data Links as a Chainlink Reviewed Oracle | Secure Data Links is proud to be one of the reviewed oracles live on Chainlink Mainnet. Our node infrastructure employs Kubernetes to maintain node uptime guarantees with reliably fast response times.
The Chainlink ecosystem is growing with many high-quality oracles joining the network and plenty of useful smart contracts being serviced. We are confident that Chainlink will be the industry standard for oracles and we intend on leveraging the network to work with other teams to build exciting smart contract applications.
The State of the Network and Market
Innovations such as Linkpool’s Listing Service, Fiews Ethereum as a Service, Honeycomb’s API Marketplace and others are ensuring that existing oracles and data requesters have a useful set of tools to start deploying quality oracles and data-driven smart contracts. There are currently many Chainlink oracles that are on standby to supply data for smart contracts. This is a positive sign that when demand for decentralised inputs increases it will be met by quality oracles that are competing for work. Chainlink’s measured and controlled approach to building out their decentralised network will transition into a more fast-paced autonomous job-matching economy with the integration of SLAs (service level agreements) and a coordinator contract.
The important development of Mixicles has opened the door to privacy-oriented smart contracts. For enterprise applications where confidentiality is key, Mixicles enables smart contracts to be executed on public chains with transaction details kept private, rather than having to set-up more purpose specific private chains. Coupling Mixicles with new protocols such as DECO will unlock highly secure Defi smart contracts that are optimised for confidentiality.
Currently, the demand for secure data in Defi smart contracts is increasing. Several attacks on oracles have reinforced to the market that security by decentralisation is a requirement for running a reliable finance application. It’s only a matter of time before security through obscurity approaches to oracles and providing data for high-value contracts will fail, and more than likely result in devastating financial implications.
Defi applications have extreme value propositions as they continue to open up the consumer market for financial instruments such as margin trading, options and synthetic assets. One only has to spend 5 minutes researching to realize that the barrier to entry for trading financial instruments is far too high. We expect this increasing demand for data to sustain as the potential for these financial applications are further developed out. It is exciting to see innovative applications like Synthetix integrate with the Chainlink and demonstrate the use-case of oracles being used to update contracts if and when the price changes by a specified basis point (e.g. 1% deviation in price, trigger oracle to update contract).
Our Direction
For Secure Data Links, network integration is number one. Our Brisbane based team are solution oriented and specialise in providing secure inputs and outputs for any smart contract needs. We are focused on being a trusted, long-term service provider for the Chainlink network whilst building relationships with other oracles, data providers and smart contract creators.
Behind the scenes SDL has been developing solutions that will help to build layers of trust and reliability for the entire Chainlink ecosystem. We intend to release more on our staking platform when the penalty deposit functionality is further built out by the Chainlink development team. In the meantime, try out our simple Ropsten test app here.
After recently competing in the Chainlink Virtual Hackathon and submitting our prototype for a LINK Total Return Swap we intend to continue to illustrate exciting use-cases for smart contracts powered by Chainlink, in the finance space and elsewhere. A massive congratulations goes to the Chainlink team and all other competitors for such a great hackathon.
To find out more about Secure Data Links and integrate with our decentralised oracle click here. Follow us on Twitter for future updates. | https://medium.com/secure-data-links/secure-data-links-as-a-chainlink-reviewed-oracle-5a9e4b7243a0 | ['Secure Data Links'] | 2019-11-20 13:59:15.863000+00:00 | ['Chainlink', 'Oracles', 'Ethereum', 'Smart Contract', 'Crypto'] |
Competitive dynamics in the social sector — Part 2 | Photo by Javier Allegue Barros on Unsplash
Understanding market forces is absolutely crucial for strategy — and for business modelling, which is the backbone of strategy. Recognising this, extensive research has been conducted on the topic in the for profit sector. However, similar thinking was only sporadically done to date with regards to social sector market forces. Part 1 of this article was my first — but not the last — attempt to fill that gap. This second half deals with the “so what” question.
Selecting the approach
There are three distinct customer types in the social sector. Identifying which type the majority of your customers fall into helps deciding if a competitive or a collaborative business model is more practical. The three types are:
Governmental agencies
Consumers
Donors
In this context, consumers are individuals or businesses purchasing a product or service that they are the end users (consumers) of. Most social enterprises, like thankyou mainly serve consumers. Donors on the other hand are individuals or businesses who donate voluntary capital to fundraising charity organisations.
Depending on which type your customers fall into, you can predict the prevailing market forces your organisation is likely to face and build the most appropriate strategy.
Highly competitive, highly regulated: the custom of governmental agencies
Government grants aimed at financing charitable activities* are a scarce resource, as only a small portion of tax payments is redistributed for such purposes. What’s more, purchasing power is concentrated in the hands of a few customers (central and local government bodies). This combination makes the market highly competitive. Not only there are limited funds to go around, but those funds are also handed out in a very limited number of purchases. If a small charity misses out on local government funding for a year, it might put them out of business.
To ensure fairness in such a taunt situation, government grants are generally allocated through a regulated tendering process. Collaboration of bidders might also be monitored more closely than usual in the social sector to prevent unlawful collusion.
[*not the same as government contracts; this article focuses on grants]
Moderately competitive, somewhat regulated: the custom of consumers
Those serving consumers compete in a regular for-profit market, according to roughly the same rules and regulations as any other company trying to gain income from selling products or services. This dynamic is more conductive to competitive than collaborative dynamics as organisations need to build sustainable and visible differentiators to survive**. From the perspective of the consumer, the service provider donating their profits is like any other product differentiator, which they might or might not value. If the purchasing power of the customer segment valuing this differentiator over others is significant enough, the business will survive. If it survives, having this hard to imitate value proposition will mean higher switching costs to the customer. This combined with the common practice of tax breaks for NFPs elevates barriers of entry and thus moderates competition.
[**It makes even less sense for NFPs than for-profit companies to enter in a price competition, which leaves differentiation as the main vehicle of competition.]
Collaborative, loosely regulated: the custom of donors
Voluntary capital works quite different from the other two markets. As discussed in Part 1, demand is highly elastic, and price, if set at all, is set on the basis of cost, which is not how competitive markets work.
Instead of financial gain, the value exchange is determined in terms of impact. The expectation of customers is that the social organisation will do everything in their power to achieve the highest social impact possible with every dollar they get. If increased impact can be achieved with collaboration — arguably, this is often the case — then the ability and eagerness of charity organisations to cooperate becomes a strong selling point.
Given that collaboration in these cases is for social good, not for selfish gain, these markets are significantly less restricted by competition law — after all, it would be hard to call a coordinated disaster response a cartel.
Building the appropriate business model
Organisations that do not notice how dynamics differ in the case of the three customer groups and try to serve all three will usually find that they stretch themselves too thin***. Each segment requires a different strategic approach; therefore the ideal internal configuration of the organisation — processes, systems, skills and capabilities — will be different for each.
Unless your organisation is very well-resourced, has a clear and highly visible value proposition and a truly agile operational structure, I would recommend selecting only one of the business models below, one the basis of the main customer type targeted.
[***Although larger charity organisations may diversify successfully if they have both the resources and a balanced portfolio strategy.]
Model 1: Getting good at tendering
Frequently, the government is criticised for the complexity of tendering processes. Whilst governments indeed tend to be overly fond of red tape that’s not the real problem. Rather, organisations tend to see grants as “free money”. Quite the contrary is true: because the government is a reliable and loyal customer that pays well, organisations have to invest in wooing it. Lack of success in this market usually means that the contender was underprepared compared to its rivals. To win the custom of governments, an organisation has to focus a large proportion of its resources at building out tendering skills and capabilities.
A successful business model in this market segment will be very similar to the structure of a for-profit B2B model. The sales team of such organisations consists of account managers tuned in on the needs of their customers, consistently seeking to provide them value in new ways. Great NFP tender writers have the same skills: they understand the rules, regulations and objectives and know how to demonstrate the value of the project they are proposing. They know which bid is worth applying for and which one to let go. But great tendering teams with copywriters, researchers and subject matter experts who also know the strengths and weaknesses of your organisation are not built overnight.
If the majority of your income is from government grants, or you wish it to be, invest in building out great tendering skills within your organisation.
Model 2: Focusing on the needs of the consumer
With the line constantly getting blurred between charity and social enterprise, many of the latter forget that their main focus has to be serving the consumer. If you can’t win the custom of consumers, you won’t have a viable business model and you won’t have profits to donate from.
Therefore the first step for those targeting consumers is to make sure they have a robust, viable product or service that satisfies consumer needs. Private market strategy tools and frameworks work very well in this context (such as the Business Model Canvas, value chain mapping, Porter’s competitive analysis and many more). As much as you are impatient to start helping others, you can’t if you are broke.
Model 3: Partnership-based value proposition
While the two previous customer types are (respectively) similar to the B2B and B2C customers of the for-profit markets, the game changes completely when targeting donors. This is a type of customer that the for-profit sector never encounters and therefore does not understand. The donor and the consumer customer persona have completely different needs and objectives, despite the fact that they are practically the same group of people.
Donors care about the impact of their contribution; they donate to organisations because they believe that said organisation is better positioned for reaching those in need and therefore can achieve a higher impact for the same dollar. The practice of making donations to charities is in fact a loosely structured and trust-based scaling model.
One of the most efficient ways of scaling impact is through partnerships. If the majority of your target customers are donors, consider this five-step process for building a partnership based business model, designed exclusively for the social sector context. | https://medium.com/accelerating-social-sector-innovation/competitive-dynamics-in-the-social-sector-part-2-fa26aaa77128 | ['Szilvia Fekete'] | 2019-06-16 19:44:09.423000+00:00 | ['Social Impact', 'Strategy', 'Business Models', 'Collaboration', 'Competition'] |
Non-Linear Paths | Non-Linear Paths
Email Refrigerator :: 15
Dots in triangular pattern by unknown source
Hi there!
Big news in our house. This month, Golda went from two naps down to one. For most of you, this is not that exciting. Actually, even for me, it’s not that exciting. It means more activity planning, less downtime to rest and clean, and earlier bed times. It has also meant sleep regression.
For the non-parents, sleep regression is that thing where parents think that their kid is finally sleeping through the night. And then said kid decides to wake up at 11pm until 3am for a week. Just because. It happens about every 2 or 3 months.
A child’s brain develops asynchronously. Big growth in one area means a temporary regression in another. As they learn to walk, their language skills might lag slightly. While they learn about object permanence and their own independence (that’s where Golda is right now… lots of “no!”), sleep might be disrupted. This is normal. She’ll emerge with a more regular sleep pattern and show new signs of development.
Growth requires relapse.
It’s a great reminder for all of us, thinking about the state of the world and the state of our country. It often feels dire and hopeless, scary and gruesome. Daily. But maybe we’re going through a regression. The optimist in me is saying that just like a baby, in order for progress to happen, maybe we need a moment of backwards motion…
The paths that we’re on are not always direct. Sometimes we go backwards to go forwards. Sometimes our journeys are cyclical, returning where we started but with a new perspective. Sometimes, it’s pure chaos. Let’s talk about the non-linear paths in our lives.
Happy snacking.
Night Waves by Pi Slices
I. Cyclical Thinking
Learning to surf, I first believed that it was like riding a bike. And sure, the metaphor of not forgetting how to do it is true. But the biggest difference that quickly became apparent is that every ride leads to a fall, no matter how good I get. As the wave approached I would paddle to match its speed, it would lift me up, I’d stand up and ride as it crashed and swallowed me.
Waves are cyclical. Increase, crest, decrease, trough. And repeat. Our world is full of cycles. Moon cycles. Hormonal cycles. Seasons. Sleep. Time.
But our culture is obsessed with linear thinking: step by step guides to better, more, bigger. We’re used to seeing progress as following a win with a bigger win. So we’re surprised when things in our lives don’t follow that linear progression:
•Relationships don’t always get better and better. There are times of unhappiness and resentment, growth and independence. Regressions aren’t reasons to leave, they’re indicators of a cycle.
•Creativity often comes in waves of inspiration and breakthroughs and then creative blocks.
•Sustaining hard work requires rest. (But because we follow cultural values that promote overworking and under-resting, the idea of slowing down, taking time off, or even sleeping becomes counter to the capitalistic pursuit of greatness through work.)
It’s in our nature to project and predict. And it can feel great to forecast our lives growing upward and ever-expanding on a linear path. Every year, more passport stamps. Every move, a bigger house. Each lease, a better car. New job, higher salary.
But that’s not how most things actually work. We don’t have to tie our happiness or definitions of success to linear growth. Cyclical thinking could be going back to a place we’ve already visited in order to go deeper. Choosing to downsize our house to live more financially comfortable. Taking a pay cut for a job that will actually make us happier and have more time.
Cyclical thinking can be comforting when things don’t go perfectly, or when we make a choice that might feel “backwards.” Backwards only exists in linear thinking. On a long enough timeline, there’s always an ebbing after expansion.
Our lives are the waves we ride. Sometimes we luck into good timing and drop into to an epic wave before tumbling. And then resetting ourselves and getting up again. Sometimes the next set comes quickly and we ride another, sometimes we have to wait in the calm.
But, thinking cyclically, there is always another wave coming from the horizon to lift us.
Convergence 2 by Janusz Jurek
II. Chaos Theory in Career paths
This month, I reconnected with someone from high school. We weren’t friends then, but he posted on LinkedIn two weeks ago and it made me reach out to propose a business partnership.
It’s been said that most of us will meet upwards of 10,000 people in our lives. Likely more. Each of those people add to the noise in an infinite sea of data points in our lives. Its chaos. It’s impossible to know which one will lead to a job, a marriage, lifelong friendship, heartbreak, betrayal, mentorship…
I’m far from being an expert in chaos theory but there are two principles I do understand. The first is that in a chaotic system, there is no simple cause-and-effect patterns; everything is a result of multiple, unpredictable forces. The weather is a great example of this.
The second principle is there are patterns amid the chaos. Order, while impossible to forecast, does emerge over time.
Our career trajectories can be better understood through chaos theory. No simple cause-and-effect. Over the course of our lifetime, we will meet people that might consider us for a job or introduce us to someone pivotal. But because we happened to email at the right time or recently posted on Instagram, the forces of the universe collide into a dream job offer. Or an investment. Or business partner. There is no way to predict outcomes.
We’re constantly looking for patterns to emerge amid our career. Most people I know (myself included) look back on our last 5–10 years of work and re-edit our story. We try and summarize the patterns by (re)defining ourselves– either through a new bio, LinkedIn title, our website, or resume.
Our resume! What better example of shoehorning a chaotic system into a linear framework than our resume? Chronological. Bulleted accomplishments. The expectation that each role is more senior than the last, salary has been linear, and that gaps between jobs are minimal or explainable.
The resumes of the future will be far from linear stories. They will chart the chaotic paths to our present, they will embrace the integration of work into the rest of our lives, they will weave the thread of work together with the threads of travel, relationships, learning, and creativity.
Our careers are unpredictable, non-linear, chaotic systems. Rather than try and plan the whole thing, what if we just chose what we want to learn next, what kind of environment we can focus in, and what kinds of people we work with best?
Because the rest is just noise.
III. The Swerve
In 2012, I took a week-long trip to Peru to see the ruins of Machu Picchu. Of course I made spreadsheets and custom maps and Google docs about the best restaurants and things to do from Lima to Cusco. After weeks and weeks of planning I finally arrive, and the worst possible thing happened…no wifi.
So here I am in Peru, a Google Drive full of things to do, and no way to access it. Luckily I wrote down my hotel information and printed out my train tickets. But for almost a full week, I’m relying on my memory to direct me.
The first day, I happen upon a really fun bar where I make conversation with the bartender who tells me about a great, but not so well-known restaurant. There, I try some of the most incredible dishes of corn and coconut and cuy (when in Lima…). Over the course of 3 days in Cusco, I run into the same woman 3 times at different coffee shops and restaurants and start up a conversation with her. I still keep in contact with Becky today and just saw her a couple months ago when she was visiting NYC.
More than the impact of seeing the ancient city or the awe-inspiring view after climbing the mountain Huyana Picchu, my biggest learning of the trip was a new life philosophy.
I call it The Swerve.
To swerve is to change direction suddenly. The premise of The Swerve is to pick a direction and be open to leaving the path. When traveling, research all possibilities and then under-plan the time, choosing one or two intended highlight of the day. While heading towards the destination, the intent is to be open to what’s around and willing to leave the path in service of our own feelings. Choosing to swerve down an interesting street might lead to an unknown cafe or hidden vintage store. That might open other possibility. Alternatively, it might be a dead end but the upside is that we can always go back to our original direction.
It’s a useful method of travel but it’s also a philosophy that applies to other courses in life. In our careers, in dating, in creative work, in our health. We can set a goal, not as a destination but as a direction. Along the way, learning what we can and being open to letting our feelings influence us to new and exciting divergent paths.
The world is an exciting place with too many side roads offering possibilities we might have never expected. We’ll never find them with our faces buried in a map (or phone). Look up.
Ready? Set. Swerve.
Kiss by Quibe
In finishing up this refrigerator, I have been hyper-aware of my own creative process. Sometimes, this document looks like a mess, I don’t know where to begin. Sometimes, I’m struck by an idea and it writes itself. The creative process is definitely a non-linear one. But in order to feel good about my work, I usually keep track of it linearly. Counting hours, or days in a row that I’ve showed up to work, checking a box when I feel good about my contribution for the day. Our emotions love linear progress. And even when our world and our work are chaotic or cyclical or backwards, we may feel the need for linearity. It’s ok to resist it.
Thanks for taking time to read this. I hope it’s made you see things a little differently or made whatever you’re going through right now a little clearer.
As always, I love hearing any thoughts this might have stirred. And if you feel like sharing it, there’s no greater compliment.
Enjoy the chaos out there,
-Jake | https://medium.com/email-refrigerator/non-linear-paths-57e4f79f5b9d | ['Jake Kahana'] | 2020-12-28 00:57:58.019000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Careers', 'Planning', 'Patterns', 'Cycles'] |
Don’t Argue but Don’t Stop Thinking | Don't Argue but Don't Stop Thinking [Video] - Dr. Howard Asher
The fate of our republic depends on individuals - you - to come together in big enough numbers to make legitimate votes… | https://medium.com/@drhowardasher/dont-argue-but-don-t-stop-thinking-2aa6685fddd7 | ['Dr. Howard Asher'] | 2020-12-10 07:07:46.953000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Psychology', 'Election 2020', 'Government', '2020 Presidential Race'] |
How important is an End of Tenancy Cleaning | 10 Reasons to Use an End of Tenancy Cleaning Service… | How important is an End of Tenancy Cleaning | 10 Reasons to Use an End of Tenancy Cleaning Service | Bonus Cleaning
Why you should hire a professional end of tenancy cleaning — if your tenancy is coming to an end soon, scheduling a professional end of tenancy cleaning service can offer many benefits.
When you sign your tenancy agreement there are many points to look out for, one of the most important ones is that you have to leave the property in the same condition you found it in at the beginning of your tenancy. This essentially refers to the level of cleanliness of the property. While landlords can no longer legally require their tenants to schedule a professional end of tenancy cleaning service, landlords and estate agencies will still expect that you leave the property in an immaculately clean condition at the end of your tenancy.
This is why scheduling a professional end of tenancy cleaning service by a professional and reliable cleaning company at the end of your tenancy can offer many benefits. There are several reasons why you should consider scheduling an end of tenancy cleaning service when your tenancy agreement is coming to an end.
An end of tenancy cleaning service refers to the deep internal cleaning of the entirety of your house or flat before the new tenants move in. Both landlords and tenants can benefit from scheduling an end of tenancy cleaning service. By scheduling an end of tenancy cleaning service tenants, meet the build-in expectations estate agents and landlords have of returning the property in pristine conditions and landlords prepare the property for the new tenants that are going to be moving in.
This is probably the primary reason why both landlords and tenants should consider scheduling an end of tenancy cleaning service, in addition to this we will also list 10 more reasons why you should consider scheduling an end of tenancy cleaning service.
1. A stress-free moving process.
Moving to a new home is certainly a stressful experience. Now imagine dealing with thoroughly cleaning the entirety of your home, top-to-bottom, every inch on top of having to move. The list of things you have to do when you are moving is incredible and having to clean on top of that seems like a nightmare. Scheduling an end of tenancy cleaning service with a reliable cleaning company is an easy, fast and stress-free (if you choose the right company) cleaning solution. Contacting a reliable cleaning company for an end of tenancy cleaning makes the move out process easier. After you have booked your end of tenancy cleaning you can simply relax, knowing that your bases are covered and look forward to moving into your new home.
Suggested: 10 Safe Cleaning Tasks For Kids | Bonus Cleaning
2. It is largely cost-effective.
Pricing an end of tenancy cleaning will of course vary based on the cleaning company you choose. Prices are going to be similar as is the case with most goods or services, however, consider what you are juxtaposing paying for an end of tenancy cleaning service with — getting your deposit back in full. Does it make much sense to purchase cleaning supplies and spend hours (or a few days) cleaning a property you will no longer live in? Ultimately cleaning your home on your own will turn out to be more expensive than scheduling an end of tenancy cleaning and there is also the risk of the landlord deducting a portion of your deposit if the cleaning was not thorough enough. Choosing a professional cleaning company isn’t expensive. Many companies will offer similar, or virtually identical, cleaning services at affordable rates. The influx of demand determines prices, if cleaning companies overprice they will be driven out by competition. Prices in the cleaning industry tend to equilibrate due to a large number of cleaning services suppliers.
3. The cleaning service is incredibly thorough (or at least it should be).
An end of tenancy cleaning service should cover every inch of your property. Kitchen appliances, cupboards, shelves, drawers, skirting boards, windows should be cleaned. The bathrooms should be cleaned, descaled and disinfected, windows should be cleaned, every inch of your home should be cleaned to the highest possible standard. You are scheduling a cleaning service for a very specific reason, you are vacating your property, and the cleaning service you receive should reflect that. You should have a checklist that your agency or landlord have provided and the cleaning company you schedule should have their own end of tenancy cleaning checklist and those should be virtually identical. The end of tenancy cleaning service you choose should be designed with the purpose of successfully getting you past an inventory check. This is why it’s important to choose the right cleaning company. Make sure you will receive the cleaning service you need. Also the service you schedule should not be hourly rated. The cleaning team that is delegated to attend your appointment should take as much time as necessary to get the cleaning condition of your home up to the standard required for you to successfully pass an inventory check.
Suggested: Deep Cleaning Your House or Flat — Why The Price Doesn’t Really Matter | Bonus Cleaning
4. Professional Cleaning Supplies.
The cleaning company you choose should provide all necessary cleaning detergents and equipment for the end of tenancy cleaning service. A reliable cleaning services provider should provide the latest professional cleaning equipment and industrial grade detergents, these will restore your home to its original condition. You cannot achieve the same results on your own especially if you schedule carpet steam cleaning or upholstery steam cleaning in addition to your end of tenancy cleaning. A reliable cleaning company will use professional cleaning detergents and equipment that are safe for most surfaces, in this way we guarantee that you will receive amazing cleaning results with no risk of damage.
5. Trusting experience.
Hiring a professional cleaning company means that you are trusting experience. Some properties require a professional touch, especially when you are going to be vacating. Using a professional end of tenancy cleaning service means that you are putting your trust in, experienced professionals. Professional cleaners provide end of tenancy cleaning services every day, through years in the cleaning industry professional cleaners have developed a lot of invaluable experience.
Suggested: Finding A Home To Rent- Key Details Of Your Contract And Where To Look | Bonus Cleaning
6. An end of tenancy cleaning service will save you time.
Cleaning your home by yourself up to the same requested standard will take a long time. A day (or possibly more) can be wasted in continuous scrubbing, wiping and polishing. A team of fully equipped and experienced professional cleaners will achieve the same cleaning results in a few hours as you will in a few days — we are not overexaggerating. For someone who is not specialized in doing this a full end of tenancy clean will take a lot of time. You may have to take a few days off of work or you could use an end of tenancy cleaning service.
Suggested: How To Clean Up After Your Pet — 5 Useful tricks to keep your home clean | Bonus Cleaning
7. Get your deposit back in full.
A security deposit is a standard commitment when you begin your tenancy. The point of the deposit is to secure the landlord’s property. If you vacate your property and its condition differs from the one you found it in (or even from a standard expectation landlords and estate agents have for the condition of the property when you are to vacate it) your deposit may be jeopardized. An end of tenancy cleaning service by a professional cleaning company is the best way to make sure that your deposit is returned in full. When you sign your tenancy agreement you, well essentially agree to return the property back in a proper condition. Landlords have specific checklists that will be used when the checkout inspection is conducted. Any violation of any point in the checklist may put your security deposit at risk. The contract you have signed during your rental period makes you responsible for returning the property in a proper condition. If you want to get your deposit back in full choosing an end of tenancy cleaning service can be a good idea.
8. Avoid complications for incoming tenants.
There are also reasons why landlords should insist that a professional cleaning service takes place. From a landlord’s perspective, an end of tenancy cleaning service can avoid many complications for incoming tenants. Even if a landlord is to withhold a part of their previous tenant’s deposit their rental property will still not be clean, or at least clean enough for new tenants to move in. You will still have to deal with one of the biggest property maintenance tasks there is, cleaning. This can be further complicated if the turnaround of the property is quick, if you simply do not have time to prepare the property yourself for the coming tenants a professional cleaning service is a reasonable option. No landlord has set out to retain their tenant’s deposit, however, in instances where the overall condition of the property is not such that new tenants can move in straight away you may need to use an end of tenancy cleaning service to prepare the property for the new occupants. A tenancy clean has many other benefits for landlords than just preparing the property for its new occupants. Conducting viewings in a clean environment simply makes the property look its best. Presenting a welcoming environment for your new tenants shows that you care that you want them to move in a hygienic and clean environment.
9. Improved occupancy.
This may not be immediately noticeable. However, if you present the property after the old tenants have moved out to new potential tenants and its overall condition, as related to cleanliness, is less than desirable you decrease the chances to rent the property out as quick as possible. Put simply how quickly you turn the property around will depend on how clean it is when you conduct viewings. A professional cleaning service improves your occupancy rate. The longer your property remains unoccupied the more money you lose. When prospective clients compare your property to similar ones in the area within their price range and the cleanliness conditions of your property fall short of competitive ones tenants will be swayed in a different direction. Landlords can easily and entirely avoid this problem by scheduling an end of tenancy cleaning service.
Suggested: Quick Tip — How To Properly Clean Your Bathroom | Bonus Cleaning
10. Avoid complaints.
One of the biggest challenges landlords will face are complaints from their tenants. An end of tenancy cleaning service will avoid complaints from new tenants when they move into your property. It is common for new tenants to focus on details and notice, for example, that the overall condition of the oven is less than perfect, or there is dust in the wardrobes. An end of tenancy cleaning service helps avoid complaints and ensures that your new tenants begin their tenancy smoothly and with trust in you as a landlord.
For tenants getting their deposit back in full is one of the most important points when they are at the end of their tenancy. Landlords should focus on presenting the property in its best condition when it is on the market, improving its occupancy and gaining the new tenant’s trust. Both of these challenges can easily be resolved by scheduling an end of tenancy cleaning service with a reliable cleaning company. An end of tenancy cleaning service is the best way to make sure tenants get their deposit back in full and landlords quickly rent the property to new tenants. Choose a cleaning company you can trust, make sure that all the t’s are crossed and i’s are dotted when you as a tenant move out and when you as a landlord are looking to rent out the property to new tenants. A reliable cleaning company will follow the same checklist landlords and estate agencies use when conduction checkout inspections. This is why using a professional end of tenancy cleaning service at the end of your tenancy can be greatly beneficial for both landlords and tenants alike.
Bonus Cleaning. | https://medium.com/@office_40632/how-important-is-an-end-of-tenancy-cleaning-10-reasons-to-use-an-end-of-tenancy-cleaning-service-a8b79ea5f5f9 | ['Bonus Cleaning'] | 2021-11-27 13:35:13.621000+00:00 | ['Cleaning Company', 'Cleaning', 'Cleaning Services', 'Landlords', 'Tenants'] |
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