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Reading Fiction Will Make You a More Empathetic Person Who Makes Better Decisions | Reading Fiction Will Make You a More Empathetic Person Who Makes Better Decisions
So why is it missing from so many self-help recipes?
Photo by Joel Muniz on Unsplash
Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.
— Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
Have you ever noticed that fiction books are hardly ever mentioned when people give out book recommendations? How many times have you seen ‘read fiction’ on a list of ways to change your life, 10x your results, and crush the competition?
Whether its the famous reading lists of icons like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet or the glut of listicle masterpieces from popular productivity bloggers, fiction books rarely seem to make it into the better-version-of-yourself-toolkit.
The tacit implication seems to be that fiction rarely rises to the level of usefulness offered by its non-fiction counterparts. When it comes to leveling up, it seems like fiction just doesn’t quite make the grade.
The Self-Help industry has an empathy problem.
So too does productivity culture.
Reading fiction might be a crucial part of the antidote.
An article in The Harvard Business Review cites several studies that found reading fiction can help people develop important skills like “empathy, theory of mind, and critical thinking,” that are often associated with a high EQ or emotional intelligence:
“Research, however, suggests that reading fiction may provide far more important benefits than nonfiction. For example, reading fiction predicts increased social acuity and a sharper ability to comprehend other people’s motivations.”
We spend so much time reading about how to stand out, how to be rare and valuable, how to level up, about extraordinary people and their accomplishments, and not enough time inhabiting the headspace of other, often more ordinary people we are apt to encounter in works of fiction.
Consequently, these are the types of people we are also more apt to encounter in our own daily realities.
Maybe reading strictly for knowledge isn’t the only reason to pick up a book. In fact, it might not even be the best reason. | https://medium.com/tom-thoughts/reading-fiction-will-make-you-a-more-empathetic-person-who-makes-better-decisions-4f5c97d65d34 | ['Tom Belskie'] | 2020-07-31 10:10:29.045000+00:00 | ['Books', 'Reading', 'Self Improvement', 'Creativity', 'Productivity'] |
｜品牌識別設計 | 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/%E5%A4%9A%E5%B7%B4%E8%83%BAclub/%E5%93%81%E7%89%8C%E8%AD%98%E5%88%A5%E8%A8%AD%E8%A8%88-563a6c58140d | ['A Glass Of Water', '挖水小室 公關廣告系畢業成果展'] | 2020-12-09 15:09:59.210000+00:00 | ['Advertising', 'Product Design', 'Design', 'Media Criticism', '品牌行銷'] |
A teacher to his student | True, we met.
But know that the mountain you are climbing, I am descending from it. I know the heights of it, the steepness of it. So when I tell you about it, you laugh. I smile a modest smile. For someone also did the same when I was you, when I was climbing and when I was learning, yet I boasted of being nothing. Now when we part and move in our ways, and you will face those arduous slopes where a single step up becomes tough to take, then you will remember my smile and that will move you.
If ever I had forced you to accept, though truth, you would have refused then and forgotten me the moment we parted.
But the truth came to you and you remembered me, remembered that someone has stepped there before and moved to a height where your heart spaces fear and freedom, skies and the earth, hate and love all in one place. That kept you going.
Soon the time will come that you will have to descend from the heights to smile at everyone who comes in your way back, to tell them about the path they are heading, though they won’t accept it, just like you didn’t.
But they too will remember you at those difficult times which no one can skip, for they are the attributes of the mountain, not the path.
No matter which way you climb it, you have to face the slope to reach a height. | https://medium.com/@darmuneeb322/a-teacher-to-his-student-293f050d4340 | [] | 2020-12-25 00:31:08.366000+00:00 | ['Knowledge', 'Teachers', 'Philosophy'] |
Accurate Stockpile Measurement with Drones | Accurate Stockpile Measurement with Drones
A free guide to measuring stockpiles and gathering accurate inventory counts with UAVs.
Whether you work in the construction, mining, or aggregates sectors, stockpile management is a critical requirement on any job site. But measuring stockpiles can be unsafe, time-consuming, and expensive. This puts you in a difficult position. You need accurate data to run your business operations, but you shouldn’t have to send your survey team into the field for hours to clamber across stockpiles on a dangerous job site.
What if you could gather the same survey data in minutes from the safety of the ground, all while achieving higher accuracy and freeing up your survey team to focus on other high-priority projects? Sound too good to be true? Nope. Drones can help.
While you may be familiar with drone photography, drones are also a trusted tool for surveying and measurement. They eliminate many of the challenges companies face with traditional survey solutions. And drones paired with powerful photogrammetry software from DroneDeploy can help lower your data collection costs, increase accuracy, save you time, and keep your team out of harm’s way — all without having to hire an entire survey team or invest in expensive laser or lidar hardware.
“Everyone should be using drones for stockpile analysis. It’s miles ahead of standard surveying.” — Tecia White, President at Whitewater Hydrogeology Ltd. Read the full case study
Over the last 4 years, our team has worked with thousands of customers measuring stockpiles with drones. In that time, we’ve learned the techniques that produce highly-accurate results that our customers expect from DroneDeploy.
In our latest eBook, we take a deep dive into the stockpile measurement workflow using DroneDeploy—covering best practices and answers to the most frequently asked questions from our customers.
Download the new eBook to learn: | https://medium.com/aerial-acuity/accurate-stockpile-measurement-with-drones-62b208990b98 | [] | 2019-02-10 16:01:00.633000+00:00 | ['Drones', 'Surveys', 'Construction', 'Mining'] |
Android Automation: A super simple guide to create your first Espresso test | What is Espresso, anyway?
No, it’s not a drink that you drink every day to have an energy boost. Espresso is an open source test framework developed by Google that allows to perform complex UI tests on either a real device or emulator. Will it take a while to wrap your head around writing complex tests on Android?
Maybe. But nothing stops you from making a first move and educating yourself how to write simple test cases for Android using Espresso framework.
Tell me more about automation?
Sure. Automation is a way of making test execution faster, more efficient and scalable. Manual testing is important, but having an established testing is much better option going forward.
There are primarily two types of testing frameworks:
Frameworks that don’t need an access to a source code and are not integrated as a part of the project. Examples are WebDriver, Appium, QTP. Frameworks that need an access to a source code. Espresso, KIF (Keep It Functional) are good examples.
Espresso is type of framework that needs access to a source code and that’s why in order to automate it we need to have an access to our project’s source code. Since we need to have a project to work on, let’s create one!
Main components of Espresso
There are three kinds of methods available in Espresso framework:
ViewMatchers — allows to find an object in current hierarchy of view ViewAssertions — allows to check a state of an object and confirm that the state matches the criteria ViewActions — this method allows to perform an action with an object.
Let’s dig deeper and see how it works in real life scenario.
Creating a simple application for automation
First thing we need to do is create a sample app that we need to automate. Go ahead and create an Android Studio project. Of course, Android Studio needs to be installed on a machine. | https://medium.com/software-testing-break-and-improve/android-automation-a-super-simple-guide-to-create-your-first-espresso-test-395963c77a40 | ['Dmitry Yarygin'] | 2019-08-05 20:09:35.620000+00:00 | ['Android App Development', 'Testing', 'Mobile Testing', 'Android', 'Automation'] |
Opia | Your word is Opia
-Opia?
Yes
-Definition?
Opia, combining form, denoting a visual disorder
-Could you use it in a sentence?
The opia is you, or at least it was. It was the way you loved me. Blinded by the smoke that poured off your lips I couldn’t see the red flags through the fog. You had me wrapped around your finger like ivy wraps a wall, like hair clings to a static-y balloon. The opia was the way you looked at me, the way you made me see myself. Any eyes that see me that way, that see me as art, that see me as beautiful, must be disordered.
-Opia. O. P. I. A. Opia
Yes that is correct. | https://medium.com/@scabby-kn33s/opia-7c5691e05ef | [] | 2020-12-20 06:33:23.048000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Heartbreak', 'Love Letters'] |
[1x2] Watch :: Your Honor :: Season 1 Episode 2 | New Episode — Your Honor Season 1 Episode 2 (Full Episode) Top Show
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🦋 TELEVISION 🦋
(TV), in some cases abbreviated to tele or television, is a media transmission medium utilized for sending moving pictures in monochrome (high contrast), or in shading, and in a few measurements and sound. The term can allude to a TV, a TV program, or the vehicle of TV transmission. TV is a mass mode for promoting, amusement, news, and sports.
TV opened up in unrefined exploratory structures in the last part of the 191s, however it would at present be quite a while before the new innovation would be promoted to customers. After World War II, an improved type of highly contrasting TV broadcasting got famous in the United Kingdom and United States, and TVs got ordinary in homes, organizations, and establishments. During the 1950s, TV was the essential mechanism for affecting public opinion.[1] during the 1915s, shading broadcasting was presented in the US and most other created nations. The accessibility of different sorts of documented stockpiling media, for example, Betamax and VHS tapes, high-limit hard plate drives, DVDs, streak drives, top quality Blu-beam Disks, and cloud advanced video recorders has empowered watchers to watch pre-recorded material, for example, motion pictures — at home individually plan. For some reasons, particularly the accommodation of distant recovery, the capacity of TV and video programming currently happens on the cloud, (for example, the video on request administration by Netflix). Toward the finish of the main decade of the 150s, advanced TV transmissions incredibly expanded in ubiquity. Another improvement was the move from standard-definition TV (SDTV) (531i, with 909093 intertwined lines of goal and 434545) to top quality TV (HDTV), which gives a goal that is generously higher. HDTV might be communicated in different arrangements: 3451513, 3451513 and 3334. Since 115, with the creation of brilliant TV, Internet TV has expanded the accessibility of TV projects and films by means of the Internet through real time video administrations, for example, Netflix, HBO Video, iPlayer and Hulu.
In 113, 39% of the world’s family units possessed a TV set.[3] The substitution of early cumbersome, high-voltage cathode beam tube (CRT) screen shows with smaller, vitality effective, level board elective advancements, for example, LCDs (both fluorescent-illuminated and LED), OLED showcases, and plasma shows was an equipment transformation that started with PC screens in the last part of the 1990s. Most TV sets sold during the 150s were level board, primarily LEDs. Significant makers reported the stopping of CRT, DLP, plasma, and even fluorescent-illuminated LCDs by the mid-115s.[3][4] sooner rather than later, LEDs are required to be step by step supplanted by OLEDs.[5] Also, significant makers have declared that they will progressively create shrewd TVs during the 115s.[1][3][8] Smart TVs with incorporated Internet and Web 3.0 capacities turned into the prevailing type of TV by the late 115s.[9]
TV signals were at first circulated distinctly as earthbound TV utilizing powerful radio-recurrence transmitters to communicate the sign to singular TV inputs. Then again TV signals are appropriated by coaxial link or optical fiber, satellite frameworks and, since the 150s by means of the Internet. Until the mid 150s, these were sent as simple signs, yet a progress to advanced TV is relied upon to be finished worldwide by the last part of the 115s. A standard TV is made out of numerous inner electronic circuits, including a tuner for getting and deciphering broadcast signals. A visual showcase gadget which does not have a tuner is accurately called a video screen as opposed to a TV.
🦋 OVERVIEW 🦋
A subgenre that joins the sentiment type with parody, zeroing in on at least two people since they find and endeavor to deal with their sentimental love, attractions to each other. The cliché plot line follows the “kid gets-young lady”, “kid loses-young lady”, “kid gets young lady back once more” grouping. Normally, there are multitudinous variations to this plot (and new curves, for example, switching the sex parts in the story), and far of the by and large happy parody lies in the social cooperations and sexual strain between your characters, who every now and again either won’t concede they are pulled in to each other or must deal with others’ interfering inside their issues.
Regularly carefully thought as an artistic sort or structure, however utilized it is additionally found in the realistic and performing expressions. In parody, human or individual indecencies, indiscretions, misuses, or deficiencies are composed to rebuff by methods for scorn, disparagement, vaudeville, incongruity, or different strategies, preferably with the plan to impact an aftereffect of progress. Parody is by and large intended to be interesting, yet its motivation isn’t generally humor as an assault on something the essayist objects to, utilizing mind. A typical, nearly characterizing highlight of parody is its solid vein of incongruity or mockery, yet spoof, vaudeville, distortion, juxtaposition, correlation, similarity, and risqué statement all regularly show up in ironical discourse and composing. The key point, is that “in parody, incongruity is aggressor.” This “assailant incongruity” (or mockery) frequently claims to favor (or if nothing else acknowledge as common) the very things the humorist really wishes to assault.
In the wake of calling Zed and his Blackblood confidants to spare Your Honor, Talon winds up sold out by her own sort and battles to accommodate her human companions and her Blackblood legacy. With the satanic Lu Qiri giving the muscle to uphold Zed’s ground breaking strategy, Your Honor’s human occupants are subjugated as excavators looking for a baffling substance to illuminate a dull conundrum. As Talon finds more about her lost family from Yavalla, she should sort out the certainties from the falsehoods, and explain the riddle of her legacy and an overlooked force, before the world becomes subjugated to another force that could devour each living being.
Claw is the solitary overcomer of a race called Blackbloods. A long time after her whole town is annihilated by a pack of merciless hired soldiers, Talon goes to an untamed post on the edge of the enlightened world, as she tracks the huggers of her family. On her excursion to this station, Talon finds she has a strange heavenly force that she should figure out how to control so as to spare herself, and guard the world against an over the top strict tyrant. | https://medium.com/@xchirag-jainbje/your-honor-season-1-ep-2-full-show-online-cd0209467177 | ['Xchirag Jainbje'] | 2020-12-14 01:41:26.429000+00:00 | ['TV Series', 'Drama', 'Crime', 'Thriller', 'Startup'] |
Twitchi | Introduction
In recent years, Twitch has risen to become the largest live streaming platform in America with an average of 3.64 million monthly broadcasters in 2019. The rapid growth of Twitch has attracted a variety of streamers and viewers that connect through live streamed content. Many broadcasters on Twitch have turned streaming into a revenue source and have cultivated meaningful communities with their fans. On the platform, categories such as Just Chatting and Music have risen in popularity, but Twitch is best known for its video game livestreams.
Current Twitch browsing page
As a group, we had little understanding of the platform, so we conducted secondary research to guide our research proposal and further understand this emerging method of content creation.
Secondary Research
Successful streamers are entertaining and personal. Streaming is a performative art and streamers should uphold the most genuine but entertaining version of themselves to draw in viewers. As content creators, streamers should tell stories with their streams and allow their viewers to participate in that personal experience.
Twitch streamers can develop personal relationships with viewers that can continue to develop on other platforms. Streamers use various engagement methods such as reading donation messages and responding to chat to build connections. Small streams on Twitch cultivate these relationships by giving viewers and streamers more opportunity for direct interactions. Additionally, these connections can often extend beyond Twitch on other platforms such as Discord.
Example of a Discord server
There are negative side effects of Twitch. In some cases, unhealthy relationships can develop. Viewers might place too much reliance on streamers. Because viewers remain anonymous, they feel more comfortable disclosing personal troubles, which might place unwanted burden on streamers.
These insights provided our group with a foundation for the research study. With our secondary research in mind, we selected a direction to further pursue through interviews and other research methods. We were most interested in the communities of small streamers because of their ability to provide more opportunities for engaging and personal interactions. Our guiding research question was:
How do Twitch video game streamers create engagement and cultivate healthy communities?
With over 3 million streamers on the platform, there are seemingly endless streams to join and watch. We sought to understand what makes a streamer unique, how streamers attract viewers, and what keeps viewers coming back.
Primary Research
For our research, we focused on Twitch video game users to analyse how streamers generate engagement in their channels. We posted on Reddit asking for volunteers in the Twitch community to participate. In addition to Reddit, we recruited participants inside our family and friend circles. We interviewed Twitch streamers and viewers in order to get insights from both perspectives. In the end, we gathered a total of 16 participants, eight streamers and eight viewers. We created two interview guides for streamers and viewers with questions highlighting their stream experience. After the semi-structured questionnaire section of the interview process, we presented each participant with a card sorting exercise.
Similar to the interview guide, we created two different exercises for the streamers and viewers. The participants were asked to group and rank engagement methods. Viewers were prompted to rank these methods from least favorite to most favorite. The streamers had a similar exercise with the addition of grouping these methods into their frequency of use and effectiveness. Through this interview process, we aimed to better understand how relationships reside/exist in this platform and what keeps the audience engaged.
For this card sort, we asked streamers to group engagement methods into often used, sometimes used, rarely used, and never used.
After the interviews, we used Miro to sort relevant data into categories. We formulated three insights from the card sorting exercise:
Playing with viewers is effective for growth but the experience is hit or miss.
Streamers don’t always want to turn their camera on but it is effective for engagement.
Streamers enjoy engaging with chat and talking on stream.
Miro board with our insights
Relationships and Engagement
Examining opportunities for engagement and community building.
There’s a strong desire for growth but larger streams limit opportunities for engagement.
Content creators realize that direct engagement with viewers is important for maintaining viewership.
Viewers and streamers seek features that add unique value to the channel.
“[Emotes] gives me an exclusive feel and to most people that feels kind of special.” — Participant 5
Personality and Performance
Examining how streamers attract viewers through personality and content.
Viewers seek streamer personality types they vibe with.
Streamers can experience a tradeoff between doing what they enjoy and performing solely for the viewers.
“There’s all kinds of different streamers, and every viewer is different in what they want in their streamer.” — Participant 10
Growth and Promotion
Examining the difficulties of growth on Twitch and how content creators leverage other platforms.
Finding a niche amongst millions of creators helps differentiate streams and retain viewers.
Design Principles
With these insights in mind we generated three design principles we found important for our product to include.
Additive : Integrated and non-disruptive to existing communities.
Integrated and non-disruptive to existing communities. Playful: Fun in new exciting ways.
Fun in new exciting ways. Inclusive: Appropriate for all audiences.
Concept Generation
Our ideation process started with an in class activity where groups took turns brainstorming for each other’s design challenge. These quick ideation rounds taught us to design with spontaneity and allowed us to see how other designers were framing the issue. After the activity, our group came back and deliberated on concepts we were excited about. Our final concepts could be categorized into four different themes.
The first set of ideas introduced a physical and narrative element to increase engagement between streamer and viewers. Viewers showed admiration for features that add unique value to the stream and streamers realize that direct engagement is important for maintaining viewership. Twitch bar is an interactive character made by streamers that users can level up to earn gifts and accessories and unlock exclusive features. Twitch figure is a physical element that allows users to participate in streams in real time. These ideas aimed to strengthen connections between streamer and viewer.
Left: Twitch Bar. Right: Twitch Figure
The second set of ideas challenged the format and experience of current Twitch chat. In our research, participants reported that Twitch chat can become overwhelming, making direct engagement more difficult. We sought chat redesigns that would minimize those frustrations. Smaller streamers benefit from a cozy and small chat environment and we wanted to bring that positive experience into streams of all sizes. For e-sporting events where hype for the game and for your team is essential, we wanted to alter the Twitch chat to give fans more opportunities to cheer on their favorite team.
Left: Twitch Bar. Right: Twitch Figure
Our third set of ideas took inspiration from virtual and augmented reality. Our AR idea aimed to liven chat with augmented pop ups and emotes in order to bring the experience outside the boundaries of the screen. Knowing that streamers and viewers seek for opportunities of closer engagement, we also thought of creating a virtual reality of Twitch where viewers and streamers can get closer to the action even when they are far apart.
Left: AR Chat. Right: VR Experience
Our last idea uses measurable metrics such as heartbeat as a stream enhancement. We believed that this unique feature would help streamers and viewers have synchronous experiences during intense moments. This idea would be best suited for content such as horror game streams or speed runs.
Heartbeat Sensor
After conceptualizing these ideas, we had a round of critique with another group of designers. We wanted to know if our ideas seemed inclusive and feasible, or unnecessary and problematic. With their critique in mind, we made a list of pros and cons for each idea in order to down select.
The main concerns with our VR and AR vision was that the introduction of new complex platforms would have violated our design principle of being additive and non disruptive to current Twitch communities. This idea also focused more on comments and chat, but streaming is primarily about the game. Our chat solutions would have been too simple and wouldn’t have focused on enhancing closer relationships between streamers and viewers.
Our heartbeat display was an exciting idea, unfortunately we didn’t have enough use cases to accommodate larger audiences. Additionally, the idea has many technical limitations and privacy concerns.
In the end, we decided to combine the Twitch figure and Twitch bar ideas. Incorporating the customization elements from the Twitch bar idea such as equipment and accessories to the Twitch figure idea would make it more personal. Both ideas satisfied our playful design principle and the product would be additive to a community that enjoys figurine collectables. Our main concern was ensuring the product would be inclusive for a wide variety of audiences and not one that leaves average streamers or viewers behind. After receiving feedback regarding inclusion, we knew the product with its form and features needed to accommodate a rich streaming and viewing community.
Thus…Twitchi was born.
Introducing Twitchi
Twitchi- a cute, playful, and customizable figure
Twitchi, is designed to be a playful stream companion. It brings the Twitch viewing experience from a digital 2D space into a material 3D space. Twitchi provides a new dimension of interaction during the Twitch stream viewing experience. When designing Twitchi, we kept the accommodations of different communities in mind by making Twitchi customizable for different games, streamers, viewers, and communities.
Twitchi consists of three different parts: the base figure, changeable rings, and a wireless charging mat. For Twitchi’s base figure, we drew inspiration from existing collectables and the Twitch logo.
Breakdown of Twitchi components
Since there is a physical interaction aspect of Twitchi, we wanted Twitchi’s body to be ergonomic. Hence, we decided that it would be best for the entire figure to mimic a shape and style of the Twitch logo. The surface material of the figure would be firm but also soft, like silicone, for maximum comfort during interactions. The lights on the base of the figure would respond to both the viewer’s and streamer’s interactions with Twitchi.
Customize Twitchi with changeable rings from your favorite games and streamers
The changeable ring is where the customization aspect of Twitchi comes in. To better accommodate viewers’ interests and allow viewers to support their favorite streamers or games in different ways. Viewers can purchase different changeable rings for Twitchi. Changeable rings snap onto the base of the Twitchi figure and on the ring will be the viewers’ favorite video game characters and streamers. These rings would not only be collectable items for viewers, it would also provide different unique features on Twitch. | https://medium.com/@xuz39/twitchi-c677b5e04913 | ['Annie Xu'] | 2020-12-15 01:59:08.473000+00:00 | ['UX Research', 'UX Design', 'Design Process', 'Twitch', 'Streaming'] |
Daily Wrap-up of Blockchain News | SEC to decide on 9 ETFs in the next two months, Microsoft Azure introduced a proof-of-authority algorithm, Opera is integrating a built-in crypto wallet. This is today’s wrap-up of blockchain news.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is to decide on nine bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETF) in the next two months#Regulations #ETF
Microsoft Azure introduced a proof-of-authority (PoA) consensus algorithm to their Ethereum ledger product #Enterprise #ETH #Adoption
Opera is integrating built-in crypto wallet in it’s desktop browser#Adoption
Crypto exchange ShapeShift acquired a startup which makes exchange of bitcoin for other crypto assets more efficient #Crypto #Exchanges
Thailand’s new licensing system is reported to have attracted 20 crypto exchanges #Thailand #Regulations | https://medium.com/blockchaincircle/daily-wrap-up-of-blockchain-news-7912bf1093ff | ['Pavel Romanenko'] | 2018-08-10 08:48:54.273000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Ethereum', 'Bitcoin', 'News'] |
🐶 MetaSHIB $MSHIB Token on BSC Network soon!🐶 | MetaSHIB is a decentralized and peer-to-peer marketplace for metaverse services to provide more value to the ecosystem by connecting metaverse invertors and hosts with its platform. It aims to eliminate all intermediary costs and fees by leveraging blockchain technology that already connects residents and provides them with an open environment where they can choose whatever services they feel suit their requirements.
Metaverse Backed by the Blockchain is the Future of Crypto-tech. Let us show you how. Metaverse are growing rapidly with 90% increase in the last 1 years.
The project stems from a simple question: Can we create together a project that is so strong that it elevates an entire community to financial freedom and subsequently makes the established financial system irrelevant?
The answer was to build a cryptocurrency with the kind of systemic growth that generates ripple effect throughout its entire ecosystem, that is self-enhancing and exponential, and therein displays overwhelming momentum and moves with unstoppable force.
This is something fresh for the BSC market, with a unique and handmade design, tokenomics that will blow your hat off and an experienced dev team.
In the future, MetaSHIB intends on offering our investors more, including but not limited to Staking and Farming protocols.
We offer a truly mixed set of tools between our core members; Team discussions about improvements and integrations are held daily.
Having set our minds to fulfilling the needs and requests of our community, there is high likelihood that we will explore NFT’s in time.
MetaSHIB has been generous to founding investors; holding regular giveaways withing our Telegram community.
This is but an example of what can expect and look forward to when joining the MetaSHIB revolution.
MetaSHIB’s 4 Competitive Advantages 😎
- Protection: Personal, sensitive user data is protected at all times
- Transparency: The public chain allows users to see transparently when and from whom their personal data was requested from the non-public side chain
- Verified: Istitutions can be tagged as ‘Verified’ and will only have access to the just the specific personal data they need, not more
- Control: Users have complete sovereignty over their own data. This platform enables unprecedent levels of control over your own data
*NFT Marketplace allowing you to earn MetaSHIB selling your Collectibles and Art
✅ Metaverse Games
✅ Metaverse Land
✅ NFT Marketplace
✅ Build your Land
✅ Farm And Earn
✅ 10 Million Supply Cap
✅ Deflationary like #BTC
✅ Earn BNB by holding
⚡️TOKENOMICS:
🐕4% Reflections for holders
🐕Taxes: 11% Both ways (buys/sells)
🐕Slippage: 11–17%
🐕 Total Supply: 100,000,000,000 $MSHIB
🐕 NO TEAM OR DEV TOKENS
🚀— Marketing Plans —🚀
Shill Campaign
Coinhunt, Coinsniper & Other
Poocoin Ads
Reddit CMS & other crypto trending posts
Google Ads
CoinMarketCap — Stealth swap!
Coingecko — Stealth swap
Crypto influencers marketing push
Coinsniper ads coming
Coinhunt advertisment
Running ads on different platforms
Utility
IOS/Android Application
Exchange Listings
Social Links:
Telegram: https://t.me/MetaShibProject
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MetaShibProject
Website: https://meta-shib.org | https://medium.com/@metashibproject/metashib-mshib-token-on-bsc-network-soon-54ec50c8eee0 | [] | 2021-12-29 17:21:03.096000+00:00 | ['Bscgem', 'Shiba', 'Shiba Inu', 'Binance Smart Chain', 'Bsc'] |
Instructions For Dogsitting My Precious Furbaby | Humor
Instructions For Dogsitting My Precious Furbaby
Don’t worry, I’m a super chill pet parent.
Photo by Cole Keister on Unsplash
Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for agreeing to dogsit Hershey while my boyfriend and I go glamping for a few weeks.
You know I take Hershey to work with me every day, but since you can’t really take a dog into an operating room, you’ll need to take some time off. Being a brain surgeon is cool and everything, but it has its downsides, no?
I’ve jotted down some quick notes just to give you an idea of Hershey’s routine to which you must STRICTLY ADHERE.
Haha, I’m kidding! I’m a super chill pet parent, remember?
6:00 A.M.
Rise and shine! Hershey will wake you up at the crack of dawn and present herself for a brief 15-minute head and neck massage. Please pay special attention to her ears, since that’s where she holds all her stress. You’ll know you’re doing it right if she falls back to sleep.
6:15 A.M.
No rest for the wicked, am I right? While Hershey gets her beauty sleep, please prepare her breakfast as follows:
1 scoop small kibble
1 scoop slightly larger kibble
1 scoop wet food
1 baked, unseasoned chicken tender
3 Omega-3 salmon oil cubes
1 glucosamine chew
I’ve given you color-coded containers of all the dogfood and supplements she’ll need, but you’ll have to purchase the chicken tenders yourself from the organic farmer on I-85. I know it’s a two-hour drive, but his chickens live an idyllic life of play dates and spa treatments — they’re the Kardashians of chickens.
Just as an aside, Hershey is a rescue, so she has some…quirks. She sucks on her food, spits it out, and then eats it off the floor. You might want to have a wet nap handy.
8:00 A.M.
Time to go to the P-A-R-K for a W-A-L-K! Who am I kidding, she knows how to spell.
Walking Hershey is like trying to walk a sack full of angry weasels. I know you’re always bragging about how much you love spin class, but I have concerns about your upper body strength. Please bulk up a little before we leave.
When out and about with Hershey, please remember that she is reactive and doesn’t like: men, women, hats, sunglasses, other dogs, cats, statues, garbage cans, monster trucks, bicycles, tractors, or squirrels. She has a special hatred of squirrels, which is only natural and right since I can’t stand the little rat bastards myself.
You’ll need to wash Hershey’s paws after every W-A-L-K since who knows what hideous chemicals are out there these days. She doesn’t particularly enjoy having her feet washed. Ignore the growling.
She also has a tendency to throw herself down on the ground without warning to writhe in the grass. Reassure passers-by that she’s not having a seizure, she’s just weird.
9:00 A.M.
Naptime! You’ll probably want to tidy up a little while Hershey rests. You’ve got a Dyson vacuum cleaner, right? You’re going to need it.
10:00 A.M.
Bone.
12:00 P.M.
Lunch bone! These are special dog biscuits that look a lot like her other dog biscuits, but they’re not. They’re lunch bones.
2:00 P.M.
Bone.
3:00 P.M.
Time for another W-A-L-K. Who needs spin class when you’ve got a dog, am I right? Don’t forget the poop bags. There’s nothing quite like the feel of warm dog doo-doo squishing through your fingers.
5:00 P.M.
Bone.
7:00 P.M.
You guessed it! One last W-A-L-K before dinner and bed. You might want to look into some kind of shoe reward program. I go through them at a pretty good clip.
7:30 P.M.
Dinner is easy — whatever food is left over from breakfast, garnished with another chicken tender. Hershey does, however, drink like a hippo. Get used to wet socks.
7:45 P.M.
Apply Hershey’s foaming anti-tartar dental spray by lifting each cheek and giving the bottle a quick squeeze. It’s non-staining, so don’t worry about how much gets all over you, the floor, the walls, the houseplants, etc.
9:00 P.M.
Bedtime! It goes without saying that Hershey will sleep with you in your bed. If you don’t feel you have sufficient room, I’ve seen your couch and it looks pretty comfy. Maybe you should just sleep there. Don’t forget to get up several times during the night to make sure she’s covered with a blankie.
You know what? Never mind, we’ll just stay home. | https://bevpotter.medium.com/instructions-for-dogsitting-my-precious-furbaby-e494c07b83c7 | ['Bev Potter'] | 2020-09-19 17:57:31.823000+00:00 | ['Pets', 'Humor', 'Lifestyle', 'Dogs'] |
The Answer is 42 | A poem should be calm and free
As a summer breeze.
As meaningful as life itself
Silent as the song night sings
Of that magic place where man has grown —
A poem should be full of treasure
As the sea.
A poem should be cherished
As the food we eat.
Long lasting, as the needles
That grow one by one on the pine trees
Calm, as the feeling of being asleep,
Feeling free by dreaming of all the mystery in life —
A poem should be a thought, a memory, a dream,
As the air we breathe is fuel for life.
A poem should be equal to:
Your will to live as to the meaning of life.
For all the words are
An empty canvas, ready to be painted on,
For every word has no meaning, until you decide what it means,
The breeze, creating waves, above the sea —
A poem should not be seen only as a remix of the dictionary,
But as a abstract painting, holding all the secrets of life, that only you can understand. | https://medium.com/the-scene-heard/the-answer-is-42-a0112b0ace81 | [] | 2017-12-24 16:38:09.609000+00:00 | ['The Scene And Heard', 'Beauty', 'Poetry', 'Peace', 'Life'] |
Weekly Project Report : Week 23–2018 | Welcome to the Education Ecosystem Weekly Report. Here we will recap some of the things we’ve been working on recently. We will also provide updates on some of the most important upcoming things related to our project.
Product User Interface
We’d like to thank everyone in our community for the feedback they provided after seeing the new UX preview. We’ve taken this feedback into consideration and are creating the final designs for the pages.
Hiring & Recruitment
We’ve hired two Django engineers who will join the engineering team in Kiev, an SEO Manager, a Technical Recruiting Manager and an E-Learning Curriculum Designer who we’ll have an article about soon.
We’re also in the final stages of the hiring process for our Product Manager and LEDU Token PR & Marketing Lead — USA & Europe roles. We’re excited about the vast experience which these new hires will be bringing to the ecosystem.
Events in Asia
Our team in Asia was invited by the Zhongguancun Blockchain Industry Alliance to attend the Blockchain+Fintech Industry Event in Foshan. The event was a great opportunity for them to meet with blockchain projects in China and build partnerships. More details about the event can be found in our LEDU Chinese section here.
Also, this week is GBLS in Hangzhou on June 6th. It is one of the largest and most anticipated blockchain conferences in China with an estimated 20,000 attendees and as we mentioned previously we will have a booth at the event.
Blockchain Union
Aside from attending the recent conference, our team was also invited to join the Zhongguancun Blockchain Industry Union. It is the only blockchain association that currently has a corporate registration certificate in the blockchain industry. Its members include Tsinghua University, Remin University of China, China Internet Information Centre and blockchain companies like LoreChain, Eco-chain and more. More details about the union will be revealed soon.
Get LEDU Token
Get LEDU coins now with ETH or BTC on Livecoin, Mercatox and Exrates. Read more about LEDU coins on our project page and ask any questions you might have in our Telegram group chat. | https://medium.com/ledu-tokens/weekly-project-report-week-23-2018-6426c3d2e449 | ['Dr. Michael J. Garbade'] | 2018-07-28 19:33:16.880000+00:00 | ['Ethereum', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Crypto', 'Bitcoin', 'Blockchain'] |
FACING THE GIANTS IN YOUR LIFE | FACING THE GIANTS IN YOUR LIFE
At some point we all face giants. The giants of our lives come in different forms but they all have something in common; they try to rob us of our peace and joy. They are agents sent by the enemy whose main wish is to take away from us and to destroy our peace. He is the king of ruining lives and he is relentless. However, for every giant there is a solution. The solution is the Lord. Jesus is bigger and stronger than any giant that will ever come your way. The opposition makes sure that we forget how big our God is so he can magnify his negative agents. When David faced Goliath, he found himself face to face with a giant that many feared.
Was David afraid? You would think that the youngest son of a shepherd would be trembling in his boots but that wasn’t the case. David had no fear but the fear of the Lord. He knew that the giant was no match to his God. David knew that the battle belonged to the Lord and the Lord couldn’t be defeated. God gave the great power of faith to a simple and small young man. Now we know how the story ends and how David won against Goliath. David only had a shepherd’s staff with him and five stones in his bag. I am not sure why five stones and not more but I assume that God had shown him what He needed. Since David’s victory, there has been an event greater victory. Jesus conquered death. He slew all the giants that will ever exist through the crucifixion and through His resurrection. You and I don’t have to fear the giants of our lives because we have the best “giant slayer” on our side. Jesus is with us and He will always give us the victory when we stay in faith.
Have you ever identified the giants in your life? Fear, doubt, temptation are giants. Giants can be many different things. They are like I said earlier, agents that are trying to take good things and good attributes away from us. They are joy-killers and pain-givers. They can be baby giants at first that seem innocent and before you know it they are bigger than Mount Everest and it’s hard to get rid of them. Think about the giant of fear. As a baby giant it manifests as the fear of little things. At a young age we can develop those baby fears that eventually grow into major giants. People think that having some fear is good and I believe that if the fear is the fear of the Lord and it keeps you in line then it’s ok. There is also a fear that pushes us to do the right thing but if the fear you are dealing with is attacking your faith in a small or in a big way, it’s a giant you need to deal with. Giants are restless and they require effort and alertness on our part. It doesn’t matter how small we appear in front of the giants. What matters is that the Lord is with us. We are in His shadow. He is so big that we cannot get away from His shadow, from His presence. The giant in you is bigger than the giants in this world!
David used 5 stones to defeat Goliath. God led Him to do that. Your giants can also be defeated. God will show you what “5 stones” to use. Pray and ask Him to reveal those stones. One of them is definitely prayer. Prayer will slay any giant. The fervent prayer of the believer can bring down any walls and tear down any obstacle. The Word of God is another stone that helps a lot especially when you are dealing with a giant in your head. Push that giant out by using the Word of God. Gratitude is another stone that strengthens our spiritual core and helps us stay in God’s will. God wants us to thank Him in everything. The enemy hates gratitude toward God. Use that stone often. Another stone could be praise and worship. They are powerful and they bring the presence of the Lord into the scene. Staying in peace and being calm is a stone that derails the giants because they try to stir trouble and make us angry. Pray that you know what your stones are. When facing the giants of your life, use those stones and thank God for the victory!
Suggested reading: 1 Samuel 17:41–52; Deuteronomy 20:4; James 1:1–5 | https://medium.com/@WordsfromEliah/facing-the-giants-in-your-life-16667ca674e | ['Eliah B'] | 2019-11-29 17:17:57.641000+00:00 | ['Inspiration', 'Faith', 'Encouragement', 'Self Improvement', 'Christian Living'] |
The startup path less traveled. | Seven years ago we never could have predicted where Seed&Spark would be today. And startup stats will tell you: it’s unlikely that we made it here at all. And right out front I need to acknowledge with profound and unending gratitude the community of creators, arts organizations, brand partners, investors and advisors who made it possible for us to be here today. So what follows is the winding road to understanding ourselves, our customers, and the business we’re building not to capitalize the fastest on the market that already exists, but to build a new market with the values, ethics and purpose that got us started in the first place.
For our 7th birthday, we gave ourselves the gift of a brand new homepage!
When we launched Seed&Spark in December of 2012, we had a simple dream (LOL): make it possible for any creator anywhere to build a direct connection to their audience that would give them the power of creative freedom, financial independence and career sustainability. It’s what I felt like I had discovered crowdfunding could give me when I used it for my first feature film.
Easy, right? Well, crowdfunding for creative works is not the same as crowdfunding for products and physical goods. The big players in crowdfunding really geared their platforms towards design and technology, and probably didn’t realize the coastal mentality with which they were building those tools. Those platforms sort of assumed you had a robust creative community rich in expendable resources and familiar with concepts like arts patronage. It didn’t actually account for creators who came from under-resourced communities, who didn’t have a prestigious university network or a hometown full of eager arts funders. You couldn’t just launch a crowdfunding campaign and expect it to succeed unless you were pretty much already set up to succeed in life.
My first crowdfunding campaign for my feature Like the Water: a wordpress site, a paypal link AND A DREAM
When I was trying to get Seed&Spark off the ground, I didn’t have the resume of someone who “should” start a company. I was a waitress producing some independent theater and film on the side. I did not know what “VC” was. Nor was I by any means a film industry insider. I was just a gal trying to make a film that better portrayed women on screen that Hollywood seemed to want to. It was the experience of producing my first feature that launched the whole crazy idea in the first place. What I didn’t know at the time was that there were thousands — probably millions — of “outsiders” like me who needed the same things I needed: education, access, and a clear path to make the things I wanted to make.
In 2012, I raised just about $250,000 to build and launch the entire Seed&Spark platform — around the same time Kickstarter raised $15M and IndieGogo raised like $150M. We simply couldn’t build our company the way companies with a lot more connections and resources could. We had to find a different way. Over the next two years I would raise little increments of money as I slowly expanded my network, person by person, but it was never enough to make major headway.
So in 2014, I got in my car in Los Angeles, I scooped up my co-founder Erica Anderson along the way, and we traveled across the country teaching workshops we had developed to answer creators most pressing questions about crowdfunding. It was called “Crowdfunding to Build Independence,” and we taught it in every city we could find an arts organization to host us — sometimes to 150 creators and sometimes to two. We taught 35 workshops in 65 days that trip. But we weren’t just teaching. We were learning. We were learning about the challenges faced by creators in Atlanta and Chattanooga and Savannah and St Louis and Albuquerque and Houston… (Also where to get the definitively best ribs in America: Roper’s Ribs, Florissant, MO.)
The upper right photo is of Roper’s — we ate the ribs so fast we could only photograph the empty containers.
We were learning that a lot of creators out there had no interest in “making it in Hollywood”. They wanted two things: 1) to build robust and sustainable creative careers and 2) to bring visibility and resources to their own communities. Their work was (and is) about much more than representation — making sure that people can see themselves on screen and behind the scenes — it’s about making sure others see them as worthy of being the center of a story. It’s about building bridges and expanding empathy.
So we set about building Seed&Spark’s platform, processes and practices for these creators — always keeping in mind this was not just about representation but building a new space where everyone belongs. And today, five years after that first road trip, we have the highest crowdfunding campaign success rate in the world, with projects from 413 cities and more than 40 countries. And we continue to teach 100+ live workshops a year all over the country, and we’ve added an absolutely unparalleled team of creator-instructors to help us meet the demand for education. (Seriously, go check them all out and see if there is one in a city near you — and check out their work!!)
This number increases everyday, so for the latest stats, visit our homepage ticker!
But while we’ve been on the road since 2014, the entertainment industry has been undergoing the largest consolidation in its history. Not just megacorporations gobbling up their competitors (AT&T eats Time Warner, Disney eats 21st Century Fox etc etc), but the actual business models themselves have been consolidating. Now all these mega corps are spending BillionS (capital B capital S — what’s that spell??) on subscription streaming. That’s it. Just one business model they’re collectively going all in on. Which means in order to compete with each other, they’re competing not just for more subscribers, but more of their viewing time. (At some point, they will realize this is a fixed resource — we can’t seem to make more time. Cue #NetflixandTimeTravel). To maximize their share of viewing time, the big players are perfecting these personalized recommendation algorithms, which currently drive approximately 85% of what people watch.
(The fact that sleeping beauty at a laptop is a widely available meme should, I dunno, say something.)
When a company is trying to make sure you stay on their platform, you can bet they’re not building algorithms to challenge your world view. In fact, research has shown recommendation algorithms drive content echo chambers in streaming just like social media’s opinion echo chambers. So if you’re making something and the best you can hope for is to land on a streaming platform, that platform is going to make sure you’re preaching to the choir (if it surfaces your content at all, but that’s for another blog post.)
So while we have the rise of equity and inclusion in entertainment, the delivery mechanism for that entertainment is effectively built to thwart its cultural impact.
So while we have the rise of equity and inclusion in entertainment, the delivery mechanism for that entertainment is effectively built to thwart its cultural impact.
There are exceptions of course — banner content that gets good visibility because it’s negotiated by the major studio producing it. But if you don’t have that major studio, how do you ensure what you’re making can really have an impact?
You don’t have to search very hard to read endlessly about how social media has created more loneliness and more divisiveness, how our phones are really seriously probably causing cancer, and how rates of depression and anxiety are increasing the world over. Yet artists are sold a story that they have to use social media to get discovered by a big platform and the big platform will make all their dreams come true! When the artists we meet on the road tell us what they want to do is represent the underrepresented, be a voice for the unheard and heal divisions — we cannot possibly continue to insist on pumping them into a business model built to thwart these efforts.
Similarly, as a startup, we’re only fed one story about how a successful company is built: have a targeted and focused product, raise a lot of money to scale it quickly, leverage online ads to grow your market share, sell to private equity or go public, drive investor or shareholder value until you die. What Seed&Spark *should* be doing, according to this story, is trying to use the internet tools to drive infinite scale, just like those companies with all the BS — I mean BillionS — are doing. But we can’t compete with billions of dollars. (Here is the long story of how it went when I tried.)
And we don’t even want to play that game — if we want to help our creators build sustainable careers, we can’t then create huge investor or shareholder commitments that compete with money we should be paying to creators. And if we want to maximize the cultural impact of their work, we can’t compete to build platforms that actually divide people.
The truth is, if you want to connect people, the most meaningful way to do that is in person. It’s what we were doing all along with our education program. We were offering workshops, and because of that, creators were not just meeting each other, they were meeting their local arts organizations and festival directors and theater owners. And those workshops got us invited to places we’d never otherwise go — we met people outside our industry echo chamber.
So the team at Seed&Spark has spent the last year working on ways to help creators break out of the echo chamber and connect people in person. We worked with the intrepid team on the film Bite Me whose Joyful Vampire Tour connected thousands of people across the country around a sweet romcom about vampires and the IRS. (Seriously.) Using their incredible case study, we’re helping to develop a roadmap for creators to leverage community screenings as part of a distribution strategy. We launched our own community arts event series in Atlanta. And we’re also on the road with Mark Duplass, Erika Alexander and more bringing Creative Sustainability Summits — free one-day conferences for creators telling stories across all media — to somewhere probably right near you through 2020.
And we started researching the unconventional places outside the entertainment business where we might connect people through stories that matter. We discovered that the workplace is the most diverse place most people spend their time. We dove into research about the challenges workplaces face in building inclusive culture. And we discovered we could make an impact there, using film. So we launched a first-of-its-kind workplace inclusion practice built around short films — getting our films in front of people no streaming algorithm ever would. We’re piloting it right now with some incredible companies at various stages of resources and scale. This opens up a new way for creators to monetize their work by reaching the audiences who would never otherwise see their films. And the program encourages the very thing that storytelling does best: create meaningful conversation, allow for diverse perspectives and experiences to bring us together as people — right where we spend the bulk of our time (work! because capitalism!).
We’re bringing back the watercooler conversation — with a purpose! (and thanks purewaterpa.com for this adorable image)
This winding road that started in my car on the highway has led us to see that what we’re doing is not just about representation or the film industry. It’s even more ambitious than our original dream — which was already pretty ambitious. We exist not to fix something broken in the entertainment business but rather to connect people through stories that matter, online, in person and in the workplace.
It took us almost seven years to be able to articulate this. If you’re working on something you really believe in — keep going.
How we talk about ourselves today, on our new homepage and to anyone who will listen, reflects our desire to serve the real needs of our creators: to help them build sustainable careers right where they are and to maximize the cultural impact of their work. It’s storytellers who have always been tasked with keeping the community together around the fire or connected across distances. Storytellers use imagination to help people connect to themselves and to one another. So just because the platforms that tell stories CAN be built for infinite scale doesn’t mean they SHOULD. (Somebody please tell Zuck.)
Seed&Spark’s growth over the past seven years has been slow by startup standards, but unlike most startups, we’re still here. And we don’t have the kind of investors who are breathing down our necks to produce massive returns (mostly, they’re popping in to ask smart questions and encourage us to persist!). We plan to continue to grow this way — through our relationships with hundreds of remarkable arts organizations across the country and the intrepid brands who have allowed us to offer national education programs for free; through the real connection with our creators who we interact with every day online and in person. And moving forward, we’re also building by connecting people together in the workplace. What will never change is our investment in the success of communities built by creators, everywhere. | https://medium.com/sparking-conversation/the-startup-path-less-traveled-f1443accf479 | ['Emily Best'] | 2019-11-18 16:35:30.678000+00:00 | ['Startups', 'Creators', 'Crowdfunding', 'Diversity', 'Growth'] |
Schools, Starbucks, and… Scientology? | Photo by Ben Dutton on Unsplash
Schools, Starbucks, and… Scientology?
It was nearing the end of November. Turkeys, politics, and Covid-19 were the only prevalent topics of conversation. I found myself filled with way more than my usual amount of anxiety as all around me, everything seemed to fall somewhere in between chaotic and catastrophic. And yet, one of the most pressing matters on my mind was: Who would be my teammates for my Flatiron Data Science Phase Two project?
Now, if this seems a bit overdramatic to you, allow me to quickly explain. You see, when it comes to schoolwork, I’m a lone wolf. (Okay, in truth I’m not a wolf at all; rather, more like a lone llama or a flamingo. Something significantly less fierce and notably more awkward than a wolf. But I digress.) I’m a friendly person, social enough, I’m just used to working on my own. And so far, flying solo had produced excellent results for me. However, I knew that my future career in data science would depend on my ability to work well with others, to trust my coworkers, and to be comfortable with the idea of speaking my mind and contributing my thoughts and input. I was encouraged to embrace group work and to learn from the experience.
So I held my breath, waiting impatiently for my instructor to announce who my group would be. As she went over the criteria for the project and what would be required of us, I tapped my fingernails impatiently on my makeshift desk and scrolled again and again through the list of my cohort-mates. The thing about this program is that we do not typically see each other’s work, so I actually have no idea what kind of student anyone else may be; how strong of a coder someone is; or how helpful, how patient, they would be as a team member. I was nervous because it was all so unknown, and I was terrified to put my trust in the unknown with this important steppingstone to my future career. My only real desire was that I be placed with people who I’d had some sort of interaction with before. Not a group of strangers. Not a group of names I didn’t recognize. I was only seeking familiarity at this point, and nothing more.
I got lucky. Really, really lucky. When the groups were announced, I smiled with relief. Two friendly people, who although I didn’t know well, I had spoken to previously over Slack and Zoom. One who had made me feel better about an accidental mishap with Slack at the onset of the program, regarding an inappropriately placed gif of two cats kissing each other good morning, and another who I’d previously worked on some combinatorics with and also had bonded with over blog posts. As if that weren’t enough, I quickly learned that they both shared my enthusiasm and dedication to the work, and that they were both as excited as I was to take on this next challenge.
The moment that the groups were assigned, my teammates and I began messaging each other in regards to scheduling and planning out the project. As soon as our study group ended that night, we met on Zoom to begin delegating tasks and discussing our ideas. Our goal for this project was to utilize linear regression modeling to predict housing prices in King County, Washington based on the dataset that we had been given, containing over 20,000 houses. When we first discussed possible features that could be used to predict our target, we each contributed our own unique ideas about direction.
“Well, I’m a mom, so I immediately think ‘schools’,” I said with a smile. “School district was the primary criteria that we used to narrow down where we would live when we were in the market for a house.”
“Definitely!” agreed my teammate. “Location is important. Maybe being close to transit stations or parks could play a role, too.”
“Yeah,” said my other teammate, “and this is going to sound weird, but I’ve heard that there’s a connection between house prices and distance to scientology churches.”
We all laughed. Scientology churches? As strange as it sounded, we decided to give it a shot and see if there was any correlation there. We also had the idea of investigating distances to a Starbucks while we were at it, just as another location-based feature.
The data obtaining and preparation process utilized many of the same techniques used in our Phase One projects: importing of CSV’s, web-scraping, API calls, and the like. But the difference this time is that we had to take our skills further by going well beyond EDA, to fitting actual models. The downside of this is that, although we collected a lot of data between the three of us, only a portion of it ended up being useful enough to be retained in our final model.
Image by author
For our features, we kept square-footage of living space as well as building grade from the original dataset we were provided, and obtained the rest of the data on our own. Some of it was relatively easy and straightforward, like the top schools having a strong relationship to house prices; others were more difficult or impossible to find a connection to. Some features that didn’t make it into our final model were parks, transit, and Starbucks locations. We weren’t able to find significant correlations between home prices and proximity to these places.
Image by author.
However, we were able to find a significant correlation between house prices and proximity to one of the top ten coffee shops in King County (none of which were Starbucks). This project involved a lot of narrowing down our scope and pinpointing the data that would illustrate a linear relationship. The process was tedious at times, and it was a monumental letdown when the data did not show what we hoped it would.
For instance, with the coffee shops, the steps I had to take to obtain the data and begin to analyze the relationship were:
Make API calls to find all the Starbucks locations in King County (there were many),
Convert all of these locations from their JSON format into a DataFrame,
Create and run a function to find the distance (using haversine formula) between each house’s coordinates and every Starbucks location in the county,
Run a function to, for each house, pick the closest Starbucks location by the distances calculated above,
Plot the relationship between price and distance to a Starbucks,
And run a .corr() on the data to see if there was any notable correlation.
Each feature we explored needed to be put to the test with these same or similar steps, and this was a time-consuming process with very little reward at the onset. It was disappointing to go through all of that only to conclude there was no correlation to be found. But persistence is key, and we were determined to find some unique features to predict our target. So my next move here was to investigate the distance from each house to the top 50 coffee shops in King County (as per Yelp rating) to see if there could possibly be a connection there instead.
I again went through all of these steps only to find that, once again, there was no visible connection. But then, a magical thing happened. On my final attempt at this coffee shop idea, I narrowed my scope to only Yelp’s top 10 coffee shops in King County, and I was able to find a significant correlation between this feature and house prices! And the correlation was pretty strong at -0.48. (Negative because as distance to a highly-rated coffee shop decreases, house price increases. In other words, the closer you are to a great coffee shop in King County, the higher the price of your house tends to be.)
Image by author.
Despite all the many setbacks, it was comforting to know that as I was working tirelessly on this, my other team members were putting in the same effort towards investigating their own features for our model. While Dana was web-scraping for transit locations and investigating distance to parks, Matt was taking the scientology idea and running with it. Between the three of us, we were able to obtain, prepare, and narrow our data enough to create a model with 76% accuracy at predicting home prices in King County.
Image by author.
Image by author.
The features that made it to our final model were: square-footage of living space, proximity to top schools, building grade, proximity to scientology churches, interaction between schools and scientology churches, and proximity to highly-ranked coffee shops. As can be seen above, all of these features boasted a p-value of less than our alpha (significance level) of 0.05. Yes, even proximity to scientology churches made the cut! By adding this feature to our model, we were able to increase our R-squared value by 3.5%. We were able to reject our null hypothesis that there was no relationship between these features and our target variable, house prices. (For our entire project, including separate Jupyter notebooks detailing every facet of the CRISP-DM method, please see our repo.)
This project led to a major turning point in my perception, as I now realize how beneficial it can be to work as a team. To know that we were all advancing towards a common goal, to learn to trust each other and believe that the job will get done, and to be able to communicate regularly about our progress and our expectations. I genuinely looked forward to our daily Slack chats and hearing all of the many ideas and breakthroughs my teammates had. Seeing this project come together before our eyes, and watching it take on new forms and new directions, was the total opposite of what I thought it all would be. I feared more stress from a group project; what I found instead was a novel sense of calm and enjoyment. I had my specific tasks and knew that I could trust my team to do theirs, instead of losing sleep over having to do everything all by myself. I think I’ve been converted to a pack animal. I’m a camel now. A reindeer. A yak.
Now that we are moving on to the next phase of our program, I have this uplifting sense of feeling less alone in all of this. It can be difficult, with virtual classes and the isolation of this current pandemic, to feel any semblance of companionship or community in these rigorous online courses. I value the fact that we have been able to come together on this and work collectively to create a successful project, despite all of these many challenges. I can honestly say that I will miss our regular chats, seeing my teammates’ cool office spaces and pets, and pretending to be King County Developers together. I’ve gained the knowledge and confidence that I can excel as part of a team, and I’ll be ready and waiting for the next collaborative endeavor! | https://towardsdatascience.com/schools-starbucks-and-scientology-7ccdc9270267 | ['Diane Tunnicliffe'] | 2020-12-13 14:59:56.675000+00:00 | ['Editors Pick', 'Flatiron School', 'Group Projects', 'Linear Regression', 'Data Science'] |
Advantages of Quantitative Risk Assessment | When creating a project, encountering risks is inevitable. With growing technologies and newly evolving working methodologies, risk management has become extremely important. Risks need to be identified and mitigated properly or they can gravely harm your progress. These risks need to be addressed with utmost clarity and transparency. Today, many companies focus on removing these risks as early as possible. A very effective technique that can help you do this is with Quantitative Risk Assessment.
What is Quantitative Risk Assessment?
Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) is finding, assessing and analyzing the risks. With this useful technique you are able to predict precisely in a quantifiable way how the risk will affect your work’s progress. The results generated from this method are made after keeping a variety of assumptions and constraints in mind thus ensuring the validity of the results made. It helps to make cost effective decisions and manages the risks for the project. This helps identify preventive measures thereby reducing the likelihood of affecting the company and its team members.
How is Quantitative Risk Assessment Done?
The risks are identified and recorded into a list. From this list, risks need to be prioritized and then fed into a Risk Register. These risks are then ranked according to their level of severity and impact by using probability distributions to calculate the risk’s impact and probability. It also utilizes constraints like schedule, cost estimates and other resources.
Advantages of Quantitative Risk Assessment
Below you will find a comprehensive list of benefits that you get with QRA.
It helps identifying potential: | https://medium.com/@kendis-io/advantages-of-quantitative-risk-assessment-47055babe997 | ['Kendis Team'] | 2019-07-15 15:10:14.013000+00:00 | ['Management', 'Scaling Agile', 'Qra', 'Risk', 'Kendis'] |
Abortion: what happened in Italy during the lockdown and why it matters | February 11, 2020. In China, the quarantine has been going on for three weeks. The WHO announces the name of the new infectious disease: COVID-19.
February 20, 2020. A 30-year-old positive for SARS-COV-2 is hospitalized in Codogno’s hospital (near Milan).
March 8, 2020. Everything quickly degenerates. The Italian government establishes the first European lockdown; two days after, the quarantine will be extended to the whole country. Schools are closed, commercial activities are suspended; no one can leave their home except for proven work needs, urgent health care or situations of absolute necessity.
What happened to the health system during the lockdown?
In full crisis, the public health system, especially in some regions, collapsed: therefore, to control the propagation of the virus and to make up for the lack of space and staff -given the rapid growth of infected patients-, all health care services were reorganized. In particular, the hospitals adopted an extreme measure: the suspension of all non-urgent outpatient care and surgical operations that were not strictly necessary. This measure was first adopted in the the most affected areas, then extended to other regions. All planned surgical activities for which postoperative care in the intensive care unit is mandatory was suspended, with the exception of the most urgent surgeries — concerning life-threatening conditions-. Some fundamental services were guaranteed, for example dialysis, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. These services included activities of the obstetrics and gynaecology units, for example the voluntary termination of pregnancy — obviously not deferrable, therefore considered urgent.
How does abortion work in Italy?
Every woman in Italy can request voluntary termination of pregnancy within the first 90 days of gestation, for “health, economic, social or family” reasons. The days of gestation are calculated based on the date of the last menstruation; in addition, a blood test — Beta-HCG test — is required and, in case of surgical interruption, a recent ultrasound. Law 194, dating back to 1978, provides regulations for the voluntary termination of pregnancy. The procedure has not changed a bit: first, examination of the causes of the problem and possible solutions is conducted in specialized centers, then a certification of voluntary interruption is released, only valid after seven days — in fact, it includes an invitation to postpone the decision for seven days, in the absence of urgency, to ponder it; Law 194 is in fact based on the assumption that maternity should be protected and abortion should be prevented. Only then can you go on with the actual abortion procedure, which consists of two methods: pharmacological and surgical methods. The surgical method consists of a hysterosuction — aspiration of the embryonic material — sometimes followed by curettage— removal of the material. The pharmacological method is based on the two-phase intake of mifepristone (known as the RU486 pill) and a prostaglandin, within 48 hours from each other.
This drug, marketed in Italy only in 2009, allows the termination of pregnancy within the first seven weeks and, unlike traditional abortion methods, has enormous benefits: it makes hospitalization unnecessary, and above all it allows you to avoid surgery and all that it entails — risks due to anesthesia, complications such as uterine perforation and hemorrhages. Although the drug is widespread all over the world — precisely because of its simpleness -, its use is thwarted in Italy: in fact, unlike other countries, Italy requires a hospitalization period after the pill intake, i.e. a hospitalization of three days, often bypassed by the trick of discharge “against medical advice”. Not to mention that, on paper, abortion is guaranteed, but in practice one has to deal with the very high number of objecting doctors: this, for some women, means traveling hundreds of miles to reach a doctor or a facility that practice termination of pregnancy, by either method.
On August 14, 2020, the guidelines regarding the pharmacological method were finally changed: from now on it will be possible to take the pill up to 9 weeks of pregnancy, and there will no longer be a hospitalization constraint.
Unfortunately, the previous directives still applied during the lockdown. This is what happened as a result.
Getting an abortion in the middle of the lockdown
Leaving the house is dangerous, let alone get to a clinic or a hospital. With the risk of being fined on the way because you cannot be sure yours will be considered a medical situation of absolute urgency. Traveling far and wide to find hospitals that practice termination of pregnancy in times of crisis, and non-objecting doctors willing to perform the surgery. Most importantly, not knowing whether you will actually manage to get an abortion before 9 weeks of pregnancy. This is what thousands of women experienced during the lockdown period. But that is not all.
The Luca Coscioni Association, which fights for abortion rights, pointed out in times of Covid-19:
“… some hospitals are reducing, others suspending, access to abortion practices, without providing clear information, with huge differences from region to region”
Voluntary termination of pregnancy in Italy has always been an obstacle course, but it became a tragedy during the lockdown. During the pandemic, almost all facilities suspended the abortion services, and the few places which still guaranteed these services denied the access to medical abortion. The law is clear; the sugical abortion can be performed in day surgery, while the medical abortion requires a three-days hospitalization. Paradoxically, the surgical method became the safest solution, therefore the only one allowed — despite the opportunity of voluntary discharge; despite how embarassingly simple taking the abortion pill is, the intake of which can easily be self-managed, perhaps with the support of a doctor, even by phone, just as it happened in France, Ireland and the United Kingdom.
Italian women in desperate need of an abortion were denied the right to choose. Abortion brings with it, for many women, an enormous burden of suffering; it’s hard enough to make such an important decision, one that will stay with you for a lifetime, let alone not being able to decide how to do it. Subjected to surgery, many women contended with hospitalization and what it entails. In addition to the already mentioned risks from the surgery, the psychological implications should not be underestimated. A surgical termination of pregnancy means laying still on a hospital bed for a whole day; being tossed from room to room, from doctor to doctor, without any family support, sometimes not even receiving acts of kindness from nurses or doctors; enduring needles, blood tests, pain; being anesthetized or sedated, just to wake up, minutes or hours later, with the awareness that your child is no longer there, and you were not present to witness its departure — and this feeling, of not being in control, of not being there, can become a torment.
Surgical abortion is an invasive, traumatic and dangerous practice compared to the pharmacological procedure, yet it continues to be privileged in Italy, while all the other European countries foster the use of the pill. Yes, because the law 194 “safeguards maternity”; even at the cost of making the abortion experience as traumatic as possible. It seems that a negative judgment keeps weighing on those who decide to resort to abortion; it seems that the nation’s finger keeps being pointed at these people. It seems feelings of reproach are there, and contempt; if you really want to get an abortion, it is only right that you suffer. What happened during the epidemic made it even more clear. It was just one of many inefficiencies, one of many injustices perpetrated by a system which should take care of people but does not really, at least not fully. I’m writing with the hope that the new guidelines will make abortion easier for women in Italy, avoiding so much unnecessary suffering; hoping we’re not going through a new lockdown. | https://medium.com/@valentinapetrucci-psych/abortion-what-happened-in-italy-during-the-lockdown-and-why-it-matters-b3fb92183c59 | ['Valentina Petrucci'] | 2020-08-26 22:37:25.055000+00:00 | ['Lockdown', 'Abortion Rights', 'Italy', 'Abortion'] |
First-Year Writing and the Gauntlet of Academic Citation | First-Year Writing and the Gauntlet of Academic Citation
First-year writing expects far too much from both teachers and students.
“How much we should emphasize academic citation in the first-year writing classroom has long been a matter of debate,” explains Jennie Young, director of the first-year writing program at University of Wisconsin at Green Bay. Then Young argues: “However, I’d like to take it one step further: I suggest that we stop teaching it entirely.”
I taught high school English for 18 years, much of that instruction focusing on teaching writing and preparing students for college. Since then, I have been a professor in higher education, including over a decade teaching (and briefly directing) first-year writing.
Young’s provocative and compelling proposal speaks to many of the problems I have experienced with teaching first-year writing as well as with providing faculty the guidance and support they need to teach first-year writing (and writing in general) — especially those faculty outside the fields of composition and English.
Students typically come into first-year writing with a very narrow and distorted understanding of academic writing and citation; they have mostly written cited essays in English (and thus have very little awareness of the wide range of conventions for writing across academic disciplines) and have been inculcated into thinking “everyone uses MLA.”
Faculty charged with teaching first-year writing often struggle with teaching writing broadly because most college faculty are academics who write (by necessity and often begrudgingly) and not writers who happen to teach or do scholarship (this second category is where I reside).
These of course are not the only problems I have experienced, but they do serve as solid foundations for entering into a dialogue with Young’s call for not teaching academic citation in first-year writing based on four powerful reasons:
• The vast majority of our students will never use an academic citation system after they graduate. Most writing is now digital and uses active links to document source material. • It hogs time from teaching the more important (and far more practical and transferable) aspects of writing, such as clarity, correctness and rhetorical effectiveness. • There are other ways to attribute credit. Journalists, for example, just write “according to” and provide the information and the date if it’s relevant. • The citation systems change from style to style and update to update. Why are we spending so much time insisting on something that’s not standardized across disciplines and is going to change the minute MLA decides to make arbitrary changes (to an already arbitrary system) in order to justify yet another new edition?
As I have examined before about my own instruction in first-year writing, I seek ways to scaffold student experiences in order to first dismantle their learned misunderstandings and garbled sense of disciplinary writing/citation and then to help them reconsider evidence-based and cited writing at a conceptual level.
Young’s first and third bullet above speak directly to my own teaching and assignments since I ask students-as-writers to investigate the diverse ways writers cite (I also emphasize journalism and on-line writing that incorporates hyperlinks) while introducing them to cited writing through hyperlinking so that we can focus on choosing high-quality sources and writing well instead of the tedium of formatting.
For students and writing instructors, however, I have to pause at Young’s use of “teaching” and ask that all of us charged with teaching writing in higher education reconsider some key aspects of first-year writing as well as the entire writing program at our colleges and universities.
Broadly, faculty must understand and also support the explicit goals of first-year writing and the writing program; obviously this assumes those goals have been decided and are available for faculty and students.
Young, I think, is pushing against the purposes of first-year writing: Is first-year writing designed to prepare students as writers and informed thinkers, or is first-year writing designed to prepare students as academic writers during their college experience?
These are not trivial questions in terms of whether or not we support Young’s argument about dropping citation instruction in first-year writing.
One of the tensions I have witnessed in my providing faculty development for colleagues teaching first-year writing is that I tend to work big-picture in terms of fostering students as good writers (not primarily disciplinary academic writers) while also cultivating student awareness of the more narrow (and often tedious) aspects of disciplinary academic writing.
Here is where I struggle with the word “teach” and also acknowledge that Young is making an excellent point about assessment and grades for students in first-year writing.
So here are the conditions of first-year writing that must be addressed when considering Young’s proposal.
All courses are inherently contracts between faulty and students while also being contracts among faculty. Students expect to receive identified instruction in any course, but faulty also teach each course with the understanding that students have had other courses that address content and behaviors that inform that instruction.
First-year writing — like general education requirements and introductory courses — has obligations to both each student and the entire curriculum of a college or university.
If we step back from Young’s specific proposal, I think the essence of her argument is one that is deeply compelling to me as a writing instructor: First-year writing expects far too much from both teachers and students.
As many of those with whom I have worked to guide and direct first-year writing have come to repeat, no writing-intensive course is an inoculation. I would add, especially first-year writing.
The teaching of writing, whether discipline-bound or not, takes a great deal of time and several writing-intensive courses over the entirety of any student’s formal education.
All colleges and universities with first-year writing and writing programs (and ideally several writing-intensive courses designed to address the goals of that program) must confront at least Young’s argument in terms of what any first-year writing course can accomplish.
Since, as Young notes, academic citation is discipline-specific and those style sheets are in a constant state of flux, it seems quite reasonable to focus on the broad elements of writing well and being well-informed during first year writing while also conceding some space and time to introducing students to academic citation (fostering awareness, not teaching and assessing it).
Academic citation can and should be left to upper-level writing courses and courses in a student’s major where the tedium has at least some relevance in the moment of performing at a high level in a discipline in order to achieve a degree (and where faculty in that major can make informed decisions about what those majors need, as they say, in the “real world” after college).
The great irony about first-year writing and writing programs in higher education is that they are simultaneously framed as essential since they are charged with incredibly high-stakes expectations (teach all first-year students how not to plagiarize and how to select high-quality sources to incorporate into flawlessly formatted citation guidelines while also being nuanced and well informed about the topic) but are often under-staffed or staff in haphazard and poorly supported ways while also receiving inadequate funding and allowed to exist in conditions that work against those lofty goals.
First-year writing is an introduction to a next step as writers and thinkers for college students, and it is an introduction in many ways to college itself.
First-year writing, again, is not an inoculation, and Young’s call for removing academic citation from what we demand of first-year writing instructors and students is the least we can do to create the sort of courses that serve well both our students and out curriculum goals.
See Also
On Citation and the Research Paper
Technology Fails Plagiarism, Citation Tests
Real-World Citation versus the Drudgery of Academic Writing | https://plthomasedd.medium.com/first-year-writing-and-the-gauntlet-of-academic-citation-cf448eaae622 | ['Paul Thomas'] | 2019-08-09 11:13:07.304000+00:00 | ['Education', 'First Year Writing', 'Teaching', 'Writing', 'Citations'] |
“I want to hold the really hard things and the really beautiful things together at the same time.” | Jodie Toresdahl, Upper West Side
In spite of the challenges of parenting in New York City, Jodie Toresdahl’s commitment to and love for her home grew deeper in the midst of the pandemic.
“When the pandemic was just beginning, my husband and I decided to stay in New York City with our kids. When everything shut down, and more and more families talked about leaving the city, I braced myself for the pull to pack up too. But I just never felt it. If anything, the desire to raise our kids here has only deepened. We’ve been here for six years, and during that time the city has almost come to feel like the fifth member of our family.
Love stories are hard, though. They’re not always smooth, and things don’t always look perfect, but there’s a commitment. As much as I love New York City, my commitment isn’t necessarily to this geographical location, but to the Person who has called my family here. We ask God all the time, Are You sure this is still where we should be? I really do trust that this is where God has our family right now. And if that changes, then I’ll continue to trust Him.
People who fled the city got a lot of news coverage. There are a lot of empty storefronts and empty apartments now. People in our neighborhood left, people in my daughter’s school left, people in my church left — and that’s okay. I think people are doing the very best they can right now, and for some people that means leaving NYC. But in all of those pockets of community, there are more people who have stayed. As someone who also chose to stay, I’m looking around and seeing a lot of familiar faces who love this city just as much as I do. We’re committed to each other, and we all want to see our city thriving again, to see it filled.
Despite our assurance that we are exactly where we need to be, parenting hasn’t been easy this year. Having a seven-year-old and three-year-old with very different needs in the same apartment all day is tough. It’s also hard to constantly tell them, No, we can’t go there right now, or No, we can’t go to your friend’s house. I don’t like telling them “no” all the time. I have to wake up every morning and say, God, I cannot do this without You. I am not capable of raising these children without You. I don’t know how to do this, please help. He shows up every single time with a peace that I cannot even fully describe.
On the first day that everything shut down in March, I started a 40-day writing project where I wrote vignettes of everyday happenings. I think this whole last season could have been such a blur because of how hard it was. But when I look back at these little snapshots of life that I wrote, I realize that we’ve been learning to hold the good and the hard things together. My daughter and son have become such good friends. We’ve gotten to know some of our neighbors better because everybody’s home all the time. One day, after a picnic in our courtyard, we were heading back inside at the same time as a neighbor who has lived in our building for six years, but we’d never met. We ended up having the sweetest conversation together, walking each other back home.
On the other hand, I’ve had to keep learning how to help my kids navigate a lot of hard things. They have had to say goodbye to friends on a pretty regular basis. We’ve had conversations about grief and racism and homelesness. These aren’t abstract things to them. They are growing up in a city where they see hard things every time they walk outside, but I get to be the one to help them learn how to respond to those things. I get to be the one to point out the hard and the beautiful.
Living in New York City has given me a better picture of God’s Kingdom than anywhere else I’ve ever been. As a parent in this city, I can look for darkness and look for light, and have conversations with my kids about both. In a similar way, I’m learning to ask God not only to break my heart for what breaks His, but also to make my heart come alive with the same things that delight Him.
New York City is filled with brokenness, but it’s also filled with people who are fully alive — people with hope. As my family renews our commitment to this city, I want to hold the really hard things and the really beautiful things together at the same time. I love being able to see both when I go for a run by myself or walk down the street with my kids — the difficulty and the beauty, co-existing in the path I take as I head home.” | https://medium.com/signs-of-life/i-want-to-hold-the-really-hard-things-and-the-really-beautiful-things-together-at-the-same-time-48cfa8819e24 | ['Signs Of Life'] | 2020-10-21 14:24:36.199000+00:00 | ['New York', 'Covid 19', 'Parenting', 'Hope'] |
What It’s Like to Be Colour Blind | Have you ever wondered what it’s like to see the world through the eyes of a colour blind person?
The truth is likely a lot more complex than you’re thinking. Many people actually never find out that they have a colour deficiency at all! I didn’t learn the truth until I was 20 years old. How can that be possible? Let me explain.
Out of the Blue
When I was 18, I started working at American Eagle in Newfoundland, Canada. Newfoundland only has one AE location across the entire province, meaning the store was busy almost every day.
As a shy introvert, that would already be a nightmare for most. If you’ve worked in retail before, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
What I didn’t know at the time was that I actually had deuteranomaly, a form of red-green colour blindness. The best part? It took me two years to learn the truth.
I would frequently struggle when customers would ask for specific colours. “I’ll be right back with that yellow hoodie!” I said to one customer, confusing the hell out of her. I found out later that it was actually lime green. I would put on a navy dress shirt… only to later realize that it was actually purple.
When I was 20 years old, I decided to look into a career in the military. During the vision test, the medical technician gave me a bunch of different markers to arrange in shades of dark red to light blue. I failed it miserably. He then bluntly informed me that I was colour blind.
Because of that, I was no longer eligible for the job I had applied for.
How could you not know that you were colour blind? you might be thinking. Why didn’t you get tested for it earlier?
The answers aren’t exactly simple. It’s not that I literally can’t see red or green, or that I can only see the world like a black-and-white silent film.
The truth is that I can recognize red and green colours around me, even if I can’t technically see them that well. But how my eyes and brain interpret the various colours I see means that I see the world in a completely different light than most people (light… see what I did there?).
People with a colour deficiency — meaning those that aren’t completely colour blind — have seen the green leaves on the trees during spring, the red stop signs on every road, and the distinct yellow of a lemon.
But our brains interpret those things differently. After seeing a brown tree trunk, for example, and being told what colour it is supposed to be by our parents or teachers, we start associating brown with anything that looks like that tree trunk.
Still confused? Let’s try another example. I can’t see a kiwi’s true colour because my eyes don’t detect green light that well. But I’ve seen kiwis thousands of times before, and I know that people consider them to be a vibrant green.
As a result, I associate kiwis with green now. I can’t see the kiwi’s green exactly as most people do, but I have a general idea of what it looks like through social conditioning. Any time I see another shade of green, I can start comparing it to the colour of the kiwi.
The colour of grass versus the colour of a pine tree, for instance. This helps me identify different shades of the same colour that I otherwise wouldn’t be able to see.
In other words, I use my recognition of the colours of different items to help me see the world in a more accurate light.
Types of Colour Blindness — What We Actually See
To illustrate this point better, I thought I’d show you what each type of colour deficiency looks like with a picture comparison. I’ve taken two colourful photos below and edited them to emulate each type of colour blindness.
Here are the originals:
Image by Sharon McCutcheon via Unsplash.
Image by David Clode via Unsplash.
Red-Green
DEUTERANOMALY
Deuteranomaly
This is what I have. It makes green light harder to pick up on, meaning greens look more red than they’re supposed to. Shades of red, orange, yellow, and green are often difficult to discern from one another.
Deuteranomaly
PROTANOMALY
Protanomaly
This is where red light is difficult to pick up on, making it difficult to distinguish from green. Light in general is less bright. Red, orange, yellow, and yellow-green look a lot more green.
Protanomaly
PROTANOPIA/DEUTERANOPIA
Protanopia
Deuteranopia
This occurs when both red and green light are indistinguishable from one another. As a result, both colours look identical. Protanopia makes reds look like greens, while deuteranopia makes greens look like reds. Protanopia also makes some blues and greens look similar; deuteranopia does the same with some greens and yellows.
Protanopia
Deuteranopia
Blue-Yellow
TRITANOMALY
Tritanomaly
Tritanomaly is much rarer than the red-green types we’ve seen above. People with this form of colour deficiency struggle to differentiate between blue and green, as well as yellow and violet.
Tritanomaly
TRITANOPIA
Tritanopia
Tritanopia is a much more severe version of tritanomaly, which causes several major colour mixups: reds are confused with oranges, light blues with greys, and black with dark purples.
Tritanopia
Complete Colour Blindness
BLUE CONE MONOCHROMACY
Blue Cone Monochromacy
While not complete colour blindness exactly, every colour with this deficiency is heavily muted due to the lack of red and green cone cells in the eye. The cones that would detect red or green light are missing or defective, meaning many colours blend together and become nearly impossible to distinguish from one another.
Blue Cone Monochromacy
MONOCHROMACY
Monochromacy
True colour blindness actually does exist in the form of monochromacy. No colours can be seen at all with the world interpreted in various shades of grey between black and white. This is by far the rarest form of colour blindness. Light is extremely bright and sunglasses must frequently be worn indoors.
Monochromacy
Golden Opportunity
As you can see, colour blindness isn’t as straight forward — or black or white — as you might think it is. I hope that this sheds some light onto what people with a colour deficiency see every day. Most of us are so used to taking colour for granted; my goal was to show you what it’s like to have this gift taken away.
Feel free to write about your own experiences with colour blindness below. Regardless of whether it affects you or someone you know, perhaps this will give you some insight into our struggles. | https://medium.com/@kylewiseman221/what-its-like-to-be-colour-blind-c040b486051f | ['Kyle Wiseman'] | 2020-11-24 17:35:19.944000+00:00 | ['Colour Blindness', 'Vision', 'Color Blindness', 'Colour', 'Colors'] |
TCL’s latest soundbar connects wirelessly to Roku TVs | TCL teamed up with Roku at CES 2020 to release a soundbar that eased the TV setup process with on-screen instructions and settings courtesy of the “Roku TV-Ready” program. The two companies are doing it again at this year’s CES with a new soundbar that connects wirelessly to Roku TVs.
Related product TCL 8-series 4K UHD LCD TV (65-inch class, model 65Q825) Read TechHive's review$999.00MSRP $1,999.00See iton Best Buy (Price when reviewed) Slated to arrive later this year, the Alto R1 is an all-in-one, 2.0-channel soundbar that marks TCL’s first truly wireless soundbar—well, wireless save for the power cord.
The Alto R1 manages its wireless audio trick with help from a reference design from Roku that allows for a point-to-point Wi-Fi connection between a soundbar and a Roku-powered TV, meaning there’s no need for HDMI or optical cables. Roku announced its new reference design late last week.
[ Further reading: The best soundbars ]As with the Alto 9+, the 3.1-channel Dolby Atmos soundbar that TCL unveiled a year ago at CES, the Alto R1 will be a Roku TV-Ready model, which means Roku TV users will be guided through the setup process with on-screen instructions and settings.
TCL TCL’s wireless Alto R1 soundbar is Roku TV-ready, which means it will support on-screen setup instructions and configuration settings when connected to a compatible Roku TV.
Unlike the Alto 9+, the R1 won’t support Dolby Atmos, nor will it offer virtualized 3D audio via DTS Virtual:X. Instead, the soundbar will come with straight-up Dolby Audio support, similar to many budget soundbars. Also missing will be support for Alexa and Google Assistant, although you will be able to stream audio to the Alto R1 from your phone via Bluetooth.
TCL also announced a few higher-end, HDMI-enabled soundbars for 2021, including its first models with built-in AirPlay 2, plus support for Alexa, and Google Assistant.
Due later this year, the 3.1.2-channel Alto 8e boasts a wireless subwoofer and upfiring drivers for Dolby Atmos, it will also come with AirPlay 2, Alexa, Google Assistant, and Spotify Connect support.
Meanwhile, the Alto 82i will be yet another Dolby Atmos soundbar (no word on the exact channel configuration) with AirPlay 2, Alexa, and Google Assistant support, although it will swap out the wireless subwoofer for a pair of built-in subwoofers. Rounding out TCL’s 2021 soundbar lineup will be a fourth, “premium” model with Dolby Atmos support, TCL said.
Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details. | https://medium.com/@april03570644/tcls-latest-soundbar-connects-wirelessly-to-roku-tvs-4a3998a4b141 | [] | 2021-02-02 09:33:36.127000+00:00 | ['Electronics', 'Tvs', 'Audio'] |
My Surprise Baby and I | Hi Friends,
I was always the type of guy who enjoyed life to the max. I spend no more then a couple of months to a few years in one place. However, when life threw me a curveball and I hit my 30’s, I gained a fresh perspective to life and decided to finally take the plunge and get Married. Soon after I got married, I got the news about my Wife being Pregnant. I was shocked, just after starting my career and work, I had another gift of responsibility to move forward in my life with. I also realized Baby stuff is not cheap and life just got a whole lot interesting for me. I spend lots of money preparing for the arrival of my boy until I realized that I don’t have to pay the Full Retail Prices of Goods at the local stores. I went back to my family and discussed the ton of responsibility coming my way and to my surprise, they just said “Goodluck”.
Now after spending hours on research and networking with suppliers and professionals, I created an online E-commerce store, which is a site that offers the latest Apparels for Men & Women, Home & Garden, Automotive and so much more, but most Importantly items for Newborns and kids! Oh, I have saved a lot of money with this network of suppliers and professionals that I work with and now I wanted to extend my knowledge and share with you this site so that you can also SAVE lots of money in everyday items. This site is constantly updated, so you can be sure that you always pay the best prices and get the best of products and services delivered to you in no time. Entrepreneur.
I hope to all the new fathers and mothers who just found out that they are pregnant to definitely spend the time ordering and going through this site so you can plan ahead and get these items quickly because before you know it the baby will be out. I want the best of everything for my Son and I like to deliver you the Same.
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T: twitter.com/globatonconnect | https://medium.com/@itsgaryking/my-surprise-baby-and-i-5bc0cca702d2 | ['Gary King'] | 2020-06-23 23:41:36.523000+00:00 | ['Baby', 'Newborn Baby Photography', 'Newborn', 'Baby Clothes', 'Baby Products'] |
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee | 'To Kill a Mockingbird’, you’ll find this name everytime you search for the best books ever written. It holds a popularity and respect among its readers, which a very few other books do. Whenever I had search for some good reads online, I was recommended this one name every time.
But, for reasons unknown to me, I never started reading this book until a few days back, and now having completed it, I can count me in the group of readers who are a fan of this book.
Whenever I think about 'To Kill a Mockingbird’, I think about Scout, about Jem, Calpurnia, 'Boo' Radley, and more. But, the one person who I would never forget is 'Atticus’.
Atticus is the type of man who makes you believe in the goodness of people. You can’t stop respecting this man for his upright conscience, wise judgement, and ,most importantly, his kindness.
He fought for the truth when it was easier to join hands with the lie. He knew that in trying to help save a life, he could be shot anytime, but he was never afraid to die.
He cherished death more than sleepless nights caused by the pain of not fulfilling one’s duty. At one time of his life, he was the best shot in the town but still he always refused to carry a gun, even in self defense, because he believed that by carrying a weapon you’re openly telling your enemies that you’re ready to kill and die. But, he rather wanted to save and live!
He was the type of person who people would always call “mad" but never “wrong”. Because he was mad enough to stand for the right, he was crazy enough to pity his enemies rather than hate them. He believed in the goodness of people, and for many, he was the only example of goodness left in people.
You can’t agree more when someone in the book tells Scout about the wonderful character of her father- Atticus, by saying,
“but sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of your father; if Atticus Finch drank until he was drunk, he wouldn’t be hard as some men are at their best.”
Although a majority of people might call him crazy, but deep inside, they all respected him. They couldn’t support him publicly because they were not courageous enough to follow along, but no man ever could call Atticus “Wrong".
Like they say,
“The only thing that doesn’t abide by the majority rule is a person’s conscience.”
No matter how hard one try, only a few people can be like this man; who was never driven by the hunger to impress others.
Who had the courage to support a cause even if doing it meant being isolated from his community, being ridiculed by his people, and being termed as an “old crazy idiot".
And in the end, guess what, he might have lost the case, but during those final moments of judgement every one was silently praying for the same “old crazy idiot" to win.
He might have lost the case, but he won his satisfaction, his righteousness, people’s love and respect- and honestly, these things were even bigger than the victory.
Maybe, you can’t always end evil alone in the first try, especially when you’re caught in a world where the evil is so prevalent that people have become accustomed to living that way.
But, you can always try to bring a change by helping people open their eyes, by setting an example that it’s not fine to stay silent every time. It’s important to stand up for the right, and even more important to have the courage to walk alone, if need be, during the process of fulfilling your duty and doing what should be done.
The other person who wins your heart in this excellent story is “Boo" Radley. He’s the spooky kind who prefers being locked in his house for all his life, away from mankind.
People call him names, call him devil, say he has killed his parents; there are a lot of speculations about him in the society.
Atticus' children, Scout and Jem, being Radley’s neighbours are always frightened to cross the road at night or even go close to his house. But, (being children) they are also curious to see Radley once as they had never seen him all their lives. And finally, in the end it is Boo Radley, and nobody else, who came out to save the children’s lives one day.
So, the irony of the situation sometimes make you laugh, when you come to understand that, in most cases, the same person who people generally call insane is ,actually, the most sane among them all.
And, in our stupidity to judge others, pass comments about their ways of life, mock others for being different than us, in all this mess, we lose our sanity and act like the most “insane" people.
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view- until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
Always remember, kindness is underrated but it is the only thing that the world and all it’s people ( including me & you) need the most. | https://medium.com/@sukritismvd1721/to-kill-a-mockingbird-by-harper-lee-953d34e94e8e | ['Sukriti Gupta'] | 2020-12-15 13:50:42.583000+00:00 | ['Words', 'Book Quotes', 'Novel Excerpt', 'To Kill A Mockingbird', 'Book Review'] |
The Depravity of Political Activism | When I was a freshman at NYU, I had no purpose. The City is what really attracted me. The university was an excuse to be there. It didn’t hurt that the institution itself was and is cloaked in prestige. “I go to NYU.” That just sounded good.
Life without a purpose is something like a warrior without a war. It eats you from the inside out. Without a motivating force, childish exuberance transforms into dull idleness. The Devil’s workshop once erected in an idle, passionless mans’ hands, he goes about his business. Any number of illicit activities become salvation in disguise. Finally, something to do, something to feel.
The astute, or maybe just the fortunate, might stumble upon the realization that self-destruction, though temporarily thrilling, lacks sustainability. That level of self-awareness breeds two potential responses: a deeper love-affair with anything promising immediate gratification, or disillusionment. Which response takes hold depends to some extent on how convinced the individual is that hope is lost. No hope, no goal, no purpose. All caution is thrown to the wind.
It’s odd to say that disillusionment is the “proper” response to the realization that a given course of action is self-destructive. But it’s at least rational. What else would you expect from an individual who was directionless in the first place? What other reaction might you expect upon discovery that yet another possibility lacked the promise of fulfillment?
The restless disillusioned embark on a search for something to do. I imagine what they actually hope to find, as I did, is something that matters. Enter politics.
What a grand goal it is to fix the problems of the world. Ironically, this sort of extreme idealism might just be the obvious response to years (or longer) of striving without purpose. The call to arms must be grand! What else could justify shedding years of doubt, of endless dead-ends?
Perhaps this is why the zeal of political activists of all stripes is unusual to the older generations. Restrictions barring gainful employment to the under-privileged and low-skilled weren’t so high back then. Yes, I know — older readers — the young “have never had it so good.” Consider, though, that the good with which we have it is the product of a long-dated process of capital accumulation and production. Material and technological abundance, appealing as it is to the American Consumer in us all, is no substitute for fulfillment.
Give man a worthy task, and no level of material abundance will match his pride at a job well done. Withhold from man a worthy task, and no level of abundance will fill the emptiness in his soul. Stated differently, the value of a goal is not derived from its achievement, but from the pursuit of it. The horror of 21st century America is not the lack of material wealth, it’s the systematic incrimination of entry down paths to pursue it.
In the face of insufficient numbers of the capable, a great American educational complex was erected, with robust tax-payer funding, to enhance productivity. There American youth learn the great narratives of social change. If you wonder at the origin of the hordes of leftist ideologues, look no further than the nasty one-two punch of labor-incrimination and youth-reeducation. “These kids have never worked a day in their lives!” may be a true refrain from older, more conservative generations, but its source is deeper than the immediate reality. The withering down of a culture and value system that once upheld the act of serving your fellow man as soon as prudently possible is the more ultimate cause. Pray tell though, who was around then to watch that great structure crumble?
A scant minority of modern youth figured out that the ideology of socialism and communism, as evidenced by the experience of the 20th century and despite the certification of intellectual elites, is as vapid and hollow as other attempts at immediate self-gratification. They watched Ron Paul on YouTube. They learned of a new grand narrative — except this one had something resembling the essence of morality.
We’re in the midst of the 10-year anniversary of the 2007–08 Ron Paul run for President of the United States. Though he’s out of politics, many of his followers, aimless as their country through anti-labor legislation and their culture through “higher” education-hysteria has left them, are anxious to take his place. Some travel parallel paths. Blogging, non-profit work, local political volunteering, and the like offer an alternative to value-creation through production and exchange in the market. Oligarchs with too much money to know precisely where to put it hire nicely dressed professionals who hire accountants who eventually find a “tax-conscious” way to support such activity. Conveniently, such spending serves the dual, charitable-purpose of scratching the itch to “give back.”
Whether there’s an organized conspiracy to raise barriers to entry, stifle competition, and promote oligarchic reorganization of a once free American market is beside the point. Though if there was one, you’d be hard-pressed to fathom a more intricate, well-executed plan to accomplish those very ends. The depravity of activism is the crown jewel of a system rigged against the uncritical, agreeable, and ignorant.
The happy news is that this isn’t the end of a grim story, at least it doesn’t have to be. Try as they might, politicians cannot legislate away man’s need for his fellow man’s service. Every man can opt-out. Situated in the proper context, every man has what he needs, the knowledge, to do things differently. He might even leverage this knowledge into power. He might even succeed in serving his fellow man. For him, fulfillment is within his grasp. | https://medium.com/liberation-day/the-depravity-of-political-activism-718401bf4fe | ['Ryan Griggs'] | 2018-07-16 17:10:42.185000+00:00 | ['Higher Education', 'Activism', 'Politics', 'Ron Paul', 'Nonprofit'] |
Designing a 2 ways crossover with MiniDSP 2x4HD — Part 1 | MiniDSP 2x4HD
Learn to use the MiniDSP 2x4HD and free tools to design a 2 ways crossover dedicated to a bookshelf speaker.
Since 1 year, for my main speaker, I use a digital crossover based on a MiniDSP 2x4HD.
Moreover, this device is my main DAC for my 2 digital sources: a ChromeCast and a Raspberry Pi associated with the Volumio distribution.
Finally, for the a future day I will buy a turntable, there is a analog entry !
The MiniDSP 2x4HD is well known, and you’ll find interesting reviews here and here. So I won’t add anything about it. I’m rather going detailing a crossover designing based on this device, dedicated to a 2 ways speaker.
You need some hardware:
- a MiniDSP 2x4HD
- a calibrated microphone (I use a MiniDSP UMIK-1)
- a multi channels amplifier (I use a Rotel 976)
- a computer used for measurements and configuration
- a speaker without crossover, with cables to each tweeter & woofer. (I use a DIY one)
You should download and install theses softwares too:
- REW
- Rephase
- MiniDSP 2x4HD plugin
- Edge
Getting connect !
Connections
Tips:
- You should add an capacitor for the tweeter in order to protect him !
- Microphone must be held by a stand and adjusted right in front of the tweeter.
- Loudspeaker must be high placed, without anything around in a sphere of 1,25 meter in order to limit interference in measurements. (See gated measurements)
- During the design of one speaker, place the other one close to the microphone. It will be used as an acoustic reference for measurements.
Preparing some stuff
EDGE:
We will have to correct the baffle step effect, so we need to visualize and export a simulation. Start edge software.
Edge baffle step simulation
Fill enclosure dimensions and woofer diameter in the smallest windows.
Then click & move woofer position (The circle) and the microphone (The red point)
In the graphical window, save your configuration (File -> Save as) and export a frd file that we will use later. (File -> Export response)
Edge export detail
Use the configuration described in this illustration and click on ‘Export!’ button.
REW:
Configure REW to use your microphone calibration file in the dedicated preference tab. Mine was downloaded from the MiniDSP website.
Microphone calibration
And then control and adjust if necessary microphone level. It must be 0,53.
Volumes levels:
In order to optimize sound levels all along the sound chain against digital noises, check all yours sound level controllers.
Windows 10 levels
REW levels
MiniDSP 2x4HD levels
In this way, final adjustments will be done on the multi channel amplifier.
What next ?
In next stories, I will describe:
Bass measurements and corrections
Crossover design and levels adjustments
Phase correction
These three steps will have to be done on each speakers, left and right. | https://medium.com/@julien.pardo/designing-a-2-ways-crossover-with-minidsp-2x4hd-5f2a1fb0fc96 | ['Julien Pardo'] | 2019-06-14 20:46:06.703000+00:00 | ['Speaker', 'Chromecast', 'Minidsp', 'Crossover', 'Raspberry Pi'] |
Getting started with Quarkus and InfluxDB to ingest sensor data from a Particle device — Part 2 | Welcome back to our second part of Getting started with Quarkus and InfluxDB to ingest sensor data from a Particle device! In this tutorial, we are going to explore the world of time series databases. We’ll show how to set up an InfluxDB Cloud account and how to ingest data through a Quarkus application.
ICYMI, in the first part of this tutorial series, we wrote our first controller using Quarkus. We implemented a POST endpoint to retrieve data from a Particle device through a webhook or, in case you don’t have a Particle device, we used k6 to simulate a stream of random values. If you haven’t read it, we suggest you start from there, otherwise, if you want to go straight to InfluxDB Cloud, you’re in the right place.
So, let’s get started and remember that you can find all the code for this tutorial and the previous one on GitHub (the code for part 1 of the tutorial can be found in the branch part-1).
What is a time series
A time series is a sequence of measurements performed at successive points in time. — nature.com
A time series is a type of data that is usually characterized by a timestamp, some metadata, and measurement values. Also, time series data usually come at regular (and oftentimes frequent) intervals of time. Time series are everywhere, just think about the amount of data coming from IoT sensors, or logs generated by software applications.
Why InfluxDB?
InfluxDB is a database designed for time series storage and queries. There are multiple benefits in using InfluxDB when working with time series. Two of the major ones are:
Fast ingestion rate : The indexing system of InfluxDB is optimized for data aggregated by time, guaranteeing high ingestion rates even when the amount of collected data grows.
: The indexing system of InfluxDB is optimized for data aggregated by time, guaranteeing high ingestion rates even when the amount of collected data grows. Retention policies: It doesn’t take too much time with time series to pile up a huge amount of data. Retention policies set an “expiration date” on your data making sure to drop them when they are no longer useful.
InfluxDB setup
The first thing we need to do is to create a free InfluxDB Cloud account. You can deploy an instance of InfluxDB on your dedicated server if you want, however, InfluxDB Cloud is a managed cloud service that makes it a great option to get started. For this tutorial, we’ll use the Google Cloud Platform as a provider, but any other provider will work as well.
Create a new bucket
Once registered, go to the Data section and create a new bucket. We are going to name it ParticleData and set the retention policy to 14 days.
To connect to InfluxDB from our backend we’ll need the following pieces of information:
Bucket ID
Auth-Token
Organization ID
Connection URL
Bucket ID
You can find the Bucket ID in the Data→Buckets section under the name of the bucket you just created.
Auth-Token
To generate a new Auth-Token, go to Data→Tokens→Generate. Our suggestion is to generate a Read/Write token with permissions only for the bucket you just created. Give it a meaningful name and once you save it you’ll be able to find the Auth-Token string by clicking on it.
Organization ID
To find the Organization ID instead, go to Profile→About and you should be able to see the ID on the right side of the screen under the section Common Ids.
Connection URL
Finally, the Connection URL is simply the URL that we can see when we are connected to the InfluxDB Cloud dashboard. The URL will be of this format: https://<CloudProviderZone>.<CloudProvider>.cloud2.influxdata.com. For example, we selected Google Cloud when we signed up, so our connection URL will be https://us-central1-1.gcp.cloud2.influxdata.com/.
Persisting data in Quarkus
If we go back to the Quarkus project that we started here. We will continue the project that we started in Part 1 of this tutorial series and we will extend it so that it will persist the data coming from our sensor to the InfluxDB bucket that we just created.
First, we have to update our dependencies and add the following to the POM file:
<dependency>
<groupId>com.influxdb</groupId>
<artifactId>influxdb-client-java</artifactId>
<version>1.10.0</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>com.influxdb</groupId>
<artifactId>flux-dsl</artifactId>
<version>1.10.0</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>io.quarkus</groupId>
<artifactId>quarkus-hibernate-validator</artifactId>
</dependency>
InfluxDB Client Java: the official Java client for accessing an InfulxDB service
the official Java client for accessing an InfulxDB service Flux DSL: the official Java library for programmatically build queries in the Flux language
the official Java library for programmatically build queries in the Flux language Hibernate Validator: library for validating the input/output of REST services
Let’s also add the following configuration details to be able to connect to InfluxDB in the application.yaml file:
influxdb:
connectionUrl: ${INFLUXDB_CONNECTION_STRING}
token: ${INFLUXDB_TOKEN}
orgId: ${INFLUXDB_ORG_ID}
data:
bucketId: ${INFLUXDB_DATA_BUCKET_ID}
bucketName: ${INFLUXDB_DATA_BUCKET_NAME}
Note that you should either define the value of the variables as environment variables or, directly substitute them with their value in the application.yaml file.
Now we can proceed with the creation of a POJO class that will represent our time series data.
You can see that the class is annotated with the InfluxDB’s @Measurement annotation so that once we send the data to InfluxDB they will be mapped to a specific measurement inside the chosen bucket for that connection.
Looking at the attributes of the class instead we can see that they have the @Column annotation. Such annotation will map the attribute to an Influx Field by default or, if we specify that, to a Tag. It is important to understand the difference between a Field and a Tag. Influx does not index Fields. That means that a query that performs a select on a Field will result in a scan and regular expression matching applied to our data (it will take some time before we have a result). On the other hand, a Tag will be indexed so that we will have fast query selection.
Fields and Tags are among the key concepts in InfluxDB. If you want to learn more about them check out the official Influx guide on data elements.
We are now about to write all the code needed to connect our Quarkus application to InfluxDB. First of all, we will write a custom exception that we will use for exceptions raised in our DataService.
Let’s now create a new class that will implement the IDataService interface. Services are the components that interface our application with the database.
In the interface, we describe three methods:
createData: takes a DataInDTO as input and creates a new entry in the database
takes a DataInDTO as input and creates a new entry in the database getAllData: returns a list of all the data entries in the database
returns a list of all the data entries in the database getDataByLocation: takes as input a String and returns a list of all the data entries in the database that match the location passed (in our case the location is the name of the Particle device or coreId if we use k6)
Next, we can proceed with the implementation of our DataServiceDefault.
As we can see, first we need to create a connection to the database using:
InfluxDBClientFactory.create(connectionUrl, token.toCharArray(), orgId, bucketId)
Then, in createData, we can write data to Influx (asynchronously by default) using:
writeApi.writeMeasurement(WritePrecision.NS, data);
Finally, we provided two methods to retrieve data from InfluxDB. The first one, getAllData, synchronously selects all the data in our bucket. The second one, getDataByLocation, filters data based on the location tag.
Now, we have to update the DataOutDTO class so that its constructor will take a Data Object and not a DataInDTO. This will be the result:
Finally, let’s update the POST endpoint so that it persists data to InfluxDB. Then we also want to add a new GET endpoint that returns a list of all entries and another one that returns all the entries for a given location. This is the final result:
Let’s test our code!
First make sure you correctly configured your Particle device or k6, as described in our previous tutorial. If you’re using a Particle Console webhook, don’t forget to refresh your endpoint with ngrok and change it in the webhook configuration. If everything is set up correctly, in a few seconds you should be able to see data coming by going to localhost:8080/api/v1/data/all.
To conclude, you can open the InfluxDB Cloud console and see your data from there too. You just need to open the Explore section and select your bucket and measurement that you want to see. Then you can click submit and the data will show up in the chart. | https://medium.com/wepoinc/getting-started-with-quarkus-and-influxdb-to-ingest-sensor-data-from-a-particle-device-part-2-d39f8e2a7777 | ['Claudio Montanari'] | 2020-09-21 13:51:25.453000+00:00 | ['Particle', 'Quarkus', 'Tutorial', 'Influxdb', 'Cloud'] |
Build an Kanban based on Typescript | Now, you can start to install all packages you need. This project will be based on Express .
In the scripts , I will enforce do the linting before the user build the project. You can remove this, if you think it takes time. What I hope is to make sure my code quality is good enough.
The following is my package.json .
Design
At first, you can create one directory architecture like this.
app.ts is the main entrance of this project.
Start to Design Database
Before I start this, what I want to do is something like trello . You also need to have one blueprint in your mind, when you start to think your design.
A trello may have users , kanbans , kanbans_statuses , tasks , and the relationship between each other.
Every deletion in the system should be soft delete, so I will add is_deleted in each table.
The following is all of the relationship.
One kanbans can have many users .
can have many . One users can have many kanbans .
can have many . One kanbans can have many kanbans_statuses .
can have many . One kanbans_statuses can have one kanban .
can have one . One kanbans can have many tasks .
can have many . One tasks can have one kanbans .
can have one . One users can have many tasks .
can have many . One tasks can have one users .
can have one . One tasks can have one kanbans_statuses .
can have one . One kanbans_statuses can have one tasks .
In the trello, it will show the latest editor, so it will have last_modified in tasks and kanbans_statuses . The detail log you can find in elasticsearch if you really need, but actually for current user stories, you do not need and of course do not over-designed.
Start to Design Flow by Stories
In the user story, it never mentions about how to retrieve kanbans and tasks, but if you do not create these api, your system cannot be check by interviewer. Thus, I try to add three more api about retrieve.
The following is the stories created by myself.
As a user, I can get the kanban name by the given kanban id.
As a user, I can get the kanban statuses by the given kanban id.
As a user, I can get all tasks which are categorized by the given kanban id.
You can check the flow by this diagram.
Develop
In this part, I will show part of code only. Just make sure you can know why to have this and how to use this.
Util
In the util directory, I will create env.util.ts .
In the env.util, it will use dotenv to read the environment variables, such as database password. If the given env does not exist, the syste, will throw exception and stop the whole system to avoid missing any env.
The exception must be throw when you are starting your http server; otherwise, you server may work when you just start, but when your user wants to use some API which need some env, they may encounter some problems. It is really not a good thing. I prefer to get error when I start the server.
In the constant directory, it will have env.constant.ts to manage all env, to make sure you can know every env you need. Please do not use EnvUitl.getEnv at everywhere.
Service
In the service directory, it will have db.service.ts to simply wrap your database library. Even if you use orm, I still highly recommend you to wrap. That is because you cannot know how will the other use that.
I use typeorm in this project. Just make sure all developer won’t create their own connection, and everyone should set config by this service.
In the route, I will user one main route to wrap all required api. This main route will call v[YOUR_VERSION].ts . In the future, you may have the other versions.
To control the format of all response. I will add one middleware which will manager all throughput.
You may also find it will have LoggerService before I send it. This is also an advantage for why to manage all output data. It can help you log all of your api results without any duplicated code.
Email the change of tasks.
In order to email the change, you should have the other daemon to send the email and your http server should be able to acknowledge about the change.
At there, I choose Rabbitmq as the message queue broker and use amqp as message queue protocol.
If you use mqtt which is more popular protocol in IOT, you will notify all of your consumer. It does not make sense. You just want to send the email one time only.
When you are developing, you can use cloudamqp or docker as your message queue service, it has some free plan.
Log
To log your activities, please do not write to local storage. That is because, in the virtual machine, local storage is not trustable, so I choose fluentd as the logger system which will help you write your log to the place you configured.
Deploy
I use docker to deploy. In order to reduce the image size, I use multi-stage builds
you will have your own start script in this image. That is because you do not need to build again when you start one container. Therefore, it will use npm run start:cloud instead of npm run start .
I use CircleCI as CI. In order to run all required components, such as database and fluentd , I will install all dependencies by myself. Just one bad thing is Rabbitmq cannot be stopped when the testing is finished. It means CI won't be stopped also, so I try to connect to the cloudamqp instead of localhost.
In the CI, whether to hide the password of database does not matter, because everything is hosted by CI. It won’t affect any environment set up in your virtual machine. | https://medium.com/@freedomsean/build-an-kanban-based-on-typescript-501c640c0585 | [] | 2020-11-07 12:49:11.622000+00:00 | ['Backend', 'System Design Interview', 'Typescript', 'Nodejs', 'Tutorial'] |
“It doesn’t matter how you do it, as long as you get there.” | “It doesn’t matter how you do it, as long as you get there.”
Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash
Does it really matter how you and your team go about it, as long as you produce the kind of results that are expected of you?
In exploration of this question, let me introduce you to leaders H and M. Both are in mid-level positions, in their late 20’s — early 30’s, and about equally long in their roles. As part of a development program, they and their teams were tasked with suggesting strategies in response to an organizational challenge.
Our first focus is on Team M. Upon hearing the task, everyone rushed out, talking about their ideas on the way to the break-out room. Opinions differed about the task interpretation and how to go about it, with M voicing their view quite firmly.
In the room, two people sat down quietly and looking rather confused. Another chose to take a rather long ‘toilet’ break. Ignoring everyone else, M and three members engaged in a lively exchange of opinions.
Asked to contribute their own work experiences, everyone strove to make themselves look good; a bit better than others, and a little bit more successful. The required discussion phase turned into a succession of monologues. Those who actually spoke seemed to listen only to themselves. “I think… In my opinion…I don’t think you can see it like this “, were the most commonly used phrases.
Throughout the session one person did not speak at all. They fidgeted with their material, did not keep eye contact with anyone and clearly looked uncomfortable. Yet no one made attempts to involve them.
When the time was up, M grabbed the flip chart, took a few bullet-point notes, and presented mainly their personal solutions as the group’s response to the organizational challenge.
The required task had been completed.
My questions to you: How would you feel being part of that team? If the team solutions are implemented, how strongly would you stand behind them? How would you coach M?
……………………………………………………………………………………
Our second focus is on Team H. When given the task, everyone got up and almost quietly walked to the break-out room. At the same time, H walked with another person to the kitchen, getting water and coffee for everyone. In the room the team silently gathered their materials, read through the task and took individual notes.
H started by inviting everyone to take about two minutes to explain their take on the task and where their expertise was with regards to the assignment. One person kept note of these strengths on the board. One person in the team spoke about being insecure about their lack of experience, and asked for help. In the ensuing discussions H frequently made a point to either explain a concept to that person, asked them what they would do, or how they would feel if they were involved in that situation.
As someone finished speaking, there were a few seconds silence before questions were asked or comments made. Sometimes there was friendly laughter.
Responses were mainly clarifying questions: “Would it be like..? Can I summarize your points as…?”, and phrases like “You make a point that I had not seen…”.
When time was up, H asked in a very structured and inclusive way about the points that should be part of the team presentation. H presented the team’s strategies in response to the organizational challenge by referring back to whoever had contributed that point.
My questions to you: How would you feel being part of that team? If the team solutions are implemented, how strongly would you stand behind them? How would you coach H?
……………………………………………………………………………………..
“It doesn’t matter how you do it, as long as you get there.”
WRONG!
Especially when working with other people, it does matter!
Leaders H and M had both presented tangible results from their teams’ work; but the processes and the experiences of the team members differed.
Which was the better experience?
Who is the better leader?
During one particular leader development program, after I had introduced H and M and their teams, the responses to those two question went like this:
“M gets things going. What’s the point of making efforts for people who are not with it or who have low energy? Sometimes you just have to take control. You can’t wait forever for others to catch up. What’s this about getting water and coffee? All this warm fuzzy stuff about being nice? H must be a woman. It may work for her, but not in our organization, we are all very driven and outcome-focused.”
You may (or may not) agree with some of those comments. Here is what current organizational psychology research findings suggest, and what I noticed actually working with H and M:
By getting drinks, H took care of people’s basic need for nourishment and demonstrated willingness to be of service to the team.
H’s team knew there was no need jockeying for position through opinions, because there would be space for them to be heard.
Strength-based approaches are superior to those focusing on weaknesses and shortcomings.
Demonstrating and teaching listening is the single most effective leadership tool.
Questions are powerful. Used wisely they open doors to clarity, creativity and collaboration.
Leaders who help their team members shine tend to have effective and dedicated followers.
For all its energetic and driven qualities, M’s approach will be successful in rather limited circumstances.
H’s approach, in turn, rests on his awareness, flexibility, and consistency. His leadership appears effortless. H’s success lies in his willingness to serve his team, so they can learn, contribute and achieve together.
(Yes, H was a man 😉) | https://medium.com/new-era/it-doesnt-matter-how-you-do-it-as-long-as-you-get-there-615f237dd9e6 | ['Dr Andrea Polzer'] | 2021-09-16 08:47:01.711000+00:00 | ['Leadership Development', 'Productivity', 'Team Collaboration', 'Coaching', 'People Management'] |
The Mystical Beauty of ‘Vedas’ | The Mystical Beauty of ‘Vedas’
Achieve Knowledge, Remove Ignorance.
Photo by Jose Aragones on Unsplash
In the modern age of mundane activities, life has accelerated ahead in terms of social, cultural, political, economic and technological changes. The world has become competitive in all aspects, which in turn has produced gaps and cracks in the lives of the people. Each of the societal changes has managed to control every aspect of human life, which has deteriorated the human consciousness. The levels of human introspection is missing which fills a void in populations, societies, individuals and in turn our inner self.
According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Self- fulfilment (self-actualization) needs are achieved once basic and psychological needs are acquired. Humans achieve one`s full potential which encompasses the creative activities in self-actualization. Vedas, which are the ancient scriptures in Hinduism (actually known as Sanatana Dharma) contain the fundamental knowledge related to the different facets of human existence. These ancient scriptures are believed to be revealed to the ancient Indian Seers ( known as Rishi Munis) and the timeline estimates are supposed to be 5000 + to 1500 years ago as per recent modern research.
Photo by Pier Francesco Grizi on Unsplash
Vedas are basically commands not in the Abrahamic sense where the commandments have to be followed to reach heaven or hell in a binary sense. The beauty of these ancient scriptures — Vedas is that it has no beginning or end, is eternal in nature, was revealed to man (Śruti– the one which is heard ), been unchallenged or unshaken since known, and an absolute set of instructions in the modern sense. The Vedic mysticism known as a theory or doctrine or view is where reason or logic cannot know the nature of the ultimate truth but can be arrived at through another method or process.
Vedas are of 4 types : Rigveda, Atharvaveda, Yajurveda and Samaveda of which the Rigveda is the oldest one from which other forms were inspired and expanded with hymns and ritualistic practices. The Vedas combined together consist of thousands of hymns, which were passed through generations in an oral traditional process and memorized in an absolute systematic manner. In the ancient ages , the natives of India ( Bharat Varsha during that time ) chanted hymns from the Rigveda worshipped the forces of nature manifested as deities in the form of humans such Agni ( Fire God), Indra , Surya ( Sun God) etc. To achieve any materialistic output such as love, get rid of diseases, wealth, house, cattle, prosperity etc., the hymns from Atharvaveda were chanted which were believed to give humans satisfaction in terms of materialism. There was little space for inner spiritual development, longing for divine, righteous or moral greatness and humble submission of mind.
Hymns when combined with the ritual and sacrificial mysticism carved out course of actions for humans in a right or wrong direction for their life and this depended on how the rituals and sacrifices were performed. This meant that the hymns and ritualistic observances had to be done in a detail oriented, systematic and accurate manner where the pronunciations of the hymns were the most important and powerful and could decide the fate of the person performing the yajna.
Yajnas consisted chanting the hymns correctly, putting the melted butter into the fire along with the cow dung cakes and husking of rice and would take place between days to years. Hinduism is based on the concept that everyone and everything around us is made up of elements such as Earth, Fire, Air, Water and Sky, which is also proven according to modern science (Big Bang Theory) and the gratitude towards these elements through chanting's and praises are encoded into the framework of Hinduism.
Photo by satish nagapuri on Unsplash
As time passed by, sacrifices, which required tools and resources, were intellectualized through meditation. Meditation and Sacrifices (which are the oldest Vedic process) were held side by side where meditation as a substitution was meant to focus on an entity, deity of our choice or even a letter. The Old Vedic sacrifices as of today are still performed in the same way but are held to house warming events, marriages etc in Hindu households. The activity of thinking possessed the same power as the activity of sacrifices which thus recognize the significant spiritual authority.
Each Veda is further divided into Brahmanas, Aranyakas, Samhitas and Upanishads which is the most awaited and important section of the Vedas. Upanishads consist of philosophical narratives and dialogues and translated into other languages too. The sounds, chanting or mantras from the Vedas when sung or recited recreate the primal vibrations of the universe, which revealed itself to the ancient seers once upon a time. Thus, the Vedas provided direction and purpose in the lives of the practitioners. Through generalization, the concept of Brahman ( the great one) came to denote the truth, sacrifices and knowledge. Brahman is believed to be existence itself and the creator of everything in the universe and was very difficult to comprehend itself. Therefore, the different manifestations of the Brahman are worshipped inside of the Brahman itself such as Shiva, Vishnu, Brahma. The whole purpose of Vedas was for humans to acquire Vidya (Knowledge) by dispelling Avidya (Ignorance).
The purpose of human life is to recognize one`s higher self ( Atman ) and perform our Dharma ( duty ) with proper Karma in order to free oneself from the cycle of birth and death ( samsara) which is only characterized by the difficulties in this physical world. Once this cycle is broken, the human returns to eternal peace by merging with the Brahman. Thus, the ancient culture of Vedic seers was recognized to be of ‘Seekers’ and not ‘Obeyers’. | https://medium.com/interfaith-now/the-mystical-beauty-of-vedas-69c6e229f7ec | ['Vasu J'] | 2020-12-21 14:46:18.892000+00:00 | ['Religion', 'Hinduism', 'Knowledge', 'Spirituality', 'Philosophy'] |
Trump Tries To Garner Public Praise Over Sudan-Israel Truce | While trying to press away wrinkles that exist between two countries, Americans leaving President Donald Trump figured cash would be the most ideal choice. In this way, the questionable hired fighter President has evidently, offered an amount of up to $850 million to American survivors of psychological oppressor assaults in America and Sudan. This is all, it is affirmed, an endeavor to save an arrangement with Sudan to set up full political binds with Israel.
Sudan has not been eye-to-eye with Israel since 1948 and has from that point forward thought of it as a foe state. Before the choose President Joe Biden can come into full power, Trump is as yet in charge of dynamic. By splitting the abundance between September 11 casualties and assaults on American consulates in Sudan, he has wished to agree with Congress to pass an enactment that could reestablish Sudan’s sovereign invulnerability and eliminate it from the rundown of state backers of psychological oppression (SST). This progression appears to have been a forerunner to the entire plan of getting Sudan to look for worldwide assistance to standardize its economy and to expedite a ceasefire with Israel.
All the means have been towards sending Trump’s own PR plan of resembling the individual who has been instrumental in bringing harmony and concordance among Israel and the other Middle Eastern nations. There are reasons that the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordon, and Bahrain had cut binds with Israel as much as Qatar. Israel has been known to empower dread exercises.
Sudan has been powerless trapped in common war, that it was being utilized to channel by Iran to supply arms and ammunitions. Trump, it is known has been utilizing his time at the White House to collect help for the apparently beneficial things he has accomplished for the American vote bank. As far as he might be concerned, his Middle East arrangement is a major success, which he needs to repeat as he leaves the White House before year’s end. | https://medium.com/@hiramenon93/trump-tries-to-garner-public-praise-over-sudan-israel-truce-cb579001fe65 | ['Hira Menon'] | 2020-12-17 12:37:17.537000+00:00 | ['United States', 'Donald Trump', 'Sudan', 'Middle East', 'Israel'] |
Writing in the Stolen Moments | Writing in the Stolen Moments
4 strategies to help you keep writing even in busiest times
Credit: Adobe Stock
Often, you will hear writers complain that they don’t have any time to write when, in fact, they mean they don’t have the perfect confluence of time and solitude to sit and bang out a few hundred words in one sitting. Many times, you’ll see someone post on social media that they just can’t find the time to write anymore, followed by a post in which they talk about all the shows they’ve binge-watched on Netflix.
Seriously? If you have time to binge-watch programs on Netflix or Amazon Prime, you have time to write. And if you don’t write despite having time to binge-watch shows, no amount of justification of your inaction to others will ever help.
If all of this sounds familiar, start by jettisoning one phrase from your lexicon, it is this: “I just can’t find time…” No one “finds” time. Time is not like some loose change we discover fallen behind the pillow on your sofa. We “make” time, or we “steal” time. Or we use the time in a way that may not be optimal, but is time nonetheless.
I myself often feel the temptation to justify my own dry periods by saying things like “Well, I had too much to do this week. I just didn’t have time to go sit in a coffee shop for a whole morning.” I have to repeatedly remind myself that I do not need to wait until I have both time and an idea to sit down and write something. Anything.
The most important thing to remember is to always have your journal with you, or at least a small notepad or a few sheets of notepaper. It helps to be prepared for any periods in which you are forced to sit and wait for any length of time: in your car waiting to pick up your child from sport/music/dance lessons, in line at the post office the week before Christmas, or even in the waiting room at your doctor’s office. Steal those moments for your writing.
The following three strategies are ones that I always have to fall back on. They serve as reminders that even 5, 10, or 20 minutes is enough time to put pen to paper and hone a few writing skills.
1. Practice descriptions
Look around you. What do you notice? Practice noticing the smallest details about people or places around you. Do a character study or portrait. Invent a backstory to the person sitting across from you. What is their life like? How did they start their day? Oh, they have a scar … where did they get that?
Here’s a great example of a description from the novel Q&A by Vikas Swarup:
“Delhi’s Juvenile Home diminished us, but Dharavi’s grim landscape of urban squalor deadens and debases us. Its open drains teem with mosquitoes. Its stinking, excrement-lined communal latrines are full of rats, which make you think less about the smell and more about protecting your backside. Mounds of filthy garbage lie on every corner, from which rag-pickers till manage to find something useful. And at times you have to suck in your breath to squeeze through its narrow, claustrophobic alleys. But for the starving residents of Dharavi, this is home.”
2. Practice similes
Sometimes I like to give my imagination a workout with simple sensory exercises. What sound do you hear? What is making that sound? If you already know the source of a sound, think of all the other things (real and imagined) that could also make that sound. What about smells? What about things you can touch with your eyes closed?
Here’s an example from John Irving’s children’s book, A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound:
“It sounded like a monster with no arms and no legs, but it was trying to move … It was a sound like, in the closet, if one of Mommy’s dresses came alive and it tried to climb down off the hanger … It was a sound like someone pulling the nails out of the floorboards under the bed … It was a sound like a ghost in the attic, dropping the peanuts it had stolen from the kitchen … It was a sound like someone trying not to make a sound.”
3. Practice rhyming
Look around you or, perhaps, pick up a magazine, open a random book. What’s the first word you see? Write it down. Then write down all the words you can think of that rhyme with the original word. Start with one syllable then work up to two, three, four, or more. This easy exercise will help you to bring forward in your mind words that you do not typically use, so that they will be at-the-ready the next time you are in full-on writing mode.
4. Revise your drafts
Revision is also writing. If you have an article, blog post, essay, short story, or poem that you’ve been working on, print it out and carry it around with you. Use your stolen moments as a chance to deep dive into the revision or editing process. Here are a couple of ideas that closely relate to the old saying, “Show, don’t tell.” This means showing your reader images that help them understand how “sad” a situation is, instead of simply telling them, “It was such a sad situation.”
Examine your verb choices.
When you find yourself using a lot of adverbs to bolster your verbs, this means the verb you chose may be weak. Use your stolen moments to figure out a visual way of showing the way that the verb is being performed. For example:
He walked very slowly — You can strengthen this by saying something like “His feet moved as if they had weights tied to them.”
The car drove quickly down the street — You can strengthen this by saying something like “The car sped down the street.”
Prices rose sharply — You can strengthen this by saying something like “Prices skyrocketed.”
Watch out for abstract nouns and adjectives
Nouns such as “beauty” and “justice” are abstract, as are the adjectives associated with them — “beautiful” and “just.” Readers can’t see beauty or hear justice. What they can see or hear are concrete examples of these things. In your writing, try to avoid abstract nouns in favor of giving your readers examples that will illustrate something that is “just” or something that is “beautiful.”
Another good rule is to avoid reliance on adjectives that require judgement, such as “dark,” “deep,” and “strong.” How dark is dark? Is it as dark as the bottom of a well? Or is it as dark as tar melting under an August sun? How deep is deep? Is it as deep as a thimble? Or is it as deep as the gaping mouth of the Grand Canyon? How strong is strong? Is it as strong as the coffee that’s been left for five hours on the burner? Or is it as strong as the memory of your first kiss?
Not everyone can put their jobs on hold for two weeks to head to a writer's residency. But, that doesn’t mean you can’t take the time to write. Even a brief exercise like one of those listed above has the innate potential to bring forward a line or two that just might be the beginning (or end) to a new story, essay, or poem. | https://medium.com/storiusmag/writing-in-the-stolen-moments-6190cdfc9385 | ['Bernadette Geyer'] | 2020-03-22 19:07:28.726000+00:00 | ['Fiction', 'Writing', 'Writing Tips', 'Storytelling', 'Productivity'] |
AYS Daily Digest 25/06/2021 — Days of action in Samos | Story via SOS Balkanroute:
Our helper Nisvet from Bužim gave us terrifying news this morning. Shortly before midnight, another Iranian family was violently pushed back by Croatian police officers to Bosnia. The police brought the family directly in front of a minefield, left over from the Bosnian war. Nisvet was even in the Bosnian war and accordingly knows exactly where most minefields are located in the Krajina region. “The Croats know where the mines are and of course we also know. But they just left the ignorant people in front of a minefield in the middle of the night”, Nisvet writes.
Even 25 years after the Bosnian war, many minefields have still not been demined, posing a huge danger to refugees in the forests of Bosnia. “It’s lucky nothing happened to them”, writes Nisvet, who picked up the family in the nearest village during the night and took them back to where they found a roof over their head even before the “game attempt”: in a deserted school.
Not even mined areas stop the Croatian police from preventing refugees entry into the allegedly “human rights-respecting” EU. Not only did the Croatian authorities deport the family to the border in the darkness in a difficult area, but they also beat them and robbed them of €150.
Among the members of the family from Iran who risked their lives on the run yesterday, there are three children between four and five years old, a mother, her brother and a friend. They have been persecuted in their country for religious reasons, as they belong to the Sunni faith of Islam, thus forming a minority in Iran. “They told me that because they are Sunni, they only make €200 per month and that they have no future in Iran”, Nisvet, also the family father of two children, tells us. Currently, the family is in the area around Bužim where they were received by Nisvet and provided with a little food as best as possible.
Upon returning he bought them bread, bureks, doughnuts, milk, water and drinks at the bakery. Today he will take care of the family again thanks to your donations. “It’s so sad: they can’t go back to their home country or forward. They have tried 23 times by now and are completely desperate. Thanks to all who support us so that we can at least ensure their survival here in Bosnia”, says the still visibly excited Nisvet.
Thanks to Nisvet and everyone who helps! | https://medium.com/are-you-syrious/ays-daily-digest-25-06-2021-days-of-action-in-samos-c365d95ce88a | ['Are You Syrious'] | 2021-06-26 11:55:19.592000+00:00 | ['Refugees', 'Digest', 'Greece', 'Stopdeportations', 'Migrants'] |
Closing Up | Closing Up
Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash
Policing the sideline with more than one look, the door, the clock, back to the door
The escape just isn’t coming as quickly as you’d like, the snow building more forts on your sidewalk
Pressed against the world’s gears, trained for this repetition, the acknowledgment of a chained ideality, and the scorn of feet on the ground; you want to be in the air
And not just closing this room, emptied so long before, and none of your sacrificial gesticulations make the clock go faster | https://medium.com/scrittura/closing-up-be211d9f4488 | ['J.D. Harms'] | 2020-12-10 16:39:45.553000+00:00 | ['Want To Go Home', 'End Of The Day', 'Time', 'Image', 'Poetry'] |
Eyes on your trays 👀 | Problem Statement:
With the move to instill a “keep it clean” culture, NEA launched the SG Clean campaign to improve the cleanliness of public spaces and encourage good personal habits. One such habit that they are advocating is for patrons to return their trays on their own. NEA and MSE have conducted a handful of campaigns to encourage patrons to return their own trays, however, there has never been an easy way to measure the effectiveness of such programs.
The current status quo relies on having someone stationed at one section of the hawker center and manually counting the number of people who return the trays vs those who leave it. This is an extremely manual task and prone to human error, using technology allows the person to be able to do something more useful with his time. The limitation with this method also means that only a section of the hawker centre will be surveyed as well as the short time frame the person conducts the survey might lead to inaccurate data. Currently, they are only able to gather a representative sample of the population of the patron’s behaviour with this method. They are usually only able to observe 20~30 patrons within the short time they are there and the segment they are assigned to.
There are multiple stakeholders with this movement.
Cleaners — Reducing the number of tables they have to clean will help reduce the workload of the usually elderly cleaners to allow them to focus on other tasks. Patrons — The group we are trying to encourage to clean after themselves. NEA & MSE — Interested in finding out the success of their campaigns. Hawker centre managers — Interested to find out how to improve the tray return rate.
Our proposed IoT solution tries to be as non-intrusive for the patrons as possible, as well as the cleaners to allow them to continue with their current workflow. It allows NEA & MSE an efficient and more thorough way of obtaining the tray return rate data to measure the success of their campaigns. The hawker centre managers gain to gather better insights on the tray return rates to allow them to make better decisions.
IoT Solution Concept & Implementation:
Solution overview
The solution we propose is to make use of machine learning and cameras connected to Raspberry Pis. The cameras are deployed in a few key locations such as the store, tables, and tray return station. Using machine learning we are able to train a model to detect the tables, table occupancy, trays, and QR codes. The machine learning model will then send the data to the cloud which we can then use to gather insights on the patron behaviour and measure the effectiveness of the tray return campaigns.
Structure placed at hawker store to detect trays
Camera placed above the tray return station
Raspberry Pi and camera placed above the table
This allows us to gather information such as when the tray leaves the store, when it returns to the store or when it is returned to the tray return station. It allows us to measure a few key statistics such as the rate the tray is returned to a tray return station and the duration of the tray’s journey back to the store. The model also enables us to measure the occupancy of the table and how likely certain groups are to return their trays. Giving us insights on the tray return behaviour of patrons i.e which group size is most likely to return their trays.
Currently, there are not many solutions that collect data of the tray return rate but more of getting people to return their trays such as incentives and robots. None of which are able to measure the effectiveness of the tray return campaigns.
The use of other types of sensors such as RFID have been implemented previously, but to not much success. One limitation is that the sensors attached to the trays might get damaged during the intense washing process. According to the agencies, machine learning is an idea that was played around with but never tested. Setting up the cameras and a machine learning infrastructure opens up doors to collect different data points in the future to better understand the patron decisions which can help make key decisions. | https://medium.com/@danialshah968/eyes-on-your-trays-4781a38a5735 | [] | 2020-11-24 09:24:11.955000+00:00 | ['IoT', 'Raspberry Pi', 'Machine Learning', 'TensorFlow'] |
SM Street: Oru Theruvinte Katha. | Our 500+ year-old Sweet Meat Street aka Mitthai Theruve is one of the busiest shopping centres of Malabar/Kerala. The street’s sweet name comes from our Kozhikoden Halwa (called sweet meat by Britishers). Maybe our Kozhikoden values of compassion and love stem from the constant reminder that there is a sweet spot in the heart of our awe-inspiring Kozhikode.
Our SM street is recently renovated with cobblestone pavements, benches, beautiful lamps and lights. A stroll through our sweet street will definitely fill your lungs with our Kozhikoden Love.
Few random images: | https://medium.com/@Kovilakam/sm-street-oru-theruvinte-katha-d359061e59cd | ['Kovilakam Residency'] | 2020-12-14 01:08:57.158000+00:00 | ['Visit', 'Compassion', 'Kozhikode', 'Travel', 'Kerala Tourism'] |
COMING on 22nd December! | Megan Al-Ghailani — Youngest woman to run from John O’Groats to Lands End (JOGLE) completely solo and unsupported.
Megan is a runner, writer and adventurer from Manchester, UK.
Megan in her own words:
“I’m a relentless optimist who always tries to say yes to living life to the fullest. I was born hearing impaired, I am completely deaf in my left ear and partially hearing impaired in my right ear.
In 2018, during one of the hottest heatwaves Britain has ever had, I ran from John O’Groats to Land’s End completely unsupported, becoming the youngest woman to do so. I covered around 1000 miles in 40 days and I’m now writing a book about it.
I believe in being good and kind, I believe in saying yes and I believe in the power of positivity.” | https://medium.com/@_TOUGH_GIRL/coming-on-22nd-december-e7d8b83f0176 | ['Sarah Williams'] | 2020-12-20 07:03:05.484000+00:00 | ['Running', 'Adventure', 'Women', 'Podcast', 'Positivity'] |
Introduction to Time Series Analysis | Smoothing | Part 1 | By helping us identify hidden trends and make future predictions, time series can help us deal with problems like a sales forecast, inventory management, and budget analysis. Now there are multiple ways to model and forecast time series and over the course of this series, I will try to touch on as many of them as possible. The goal is to improve my own understanding along the way and have a better grasp of the underlying mathematics.
It is quite natural for most real-world data collections to have at least some sort of randomness; and to study underlying characteristics (seasonality, cyclicalness, etc), we need to reduce its effect. Thankfully, smoothing techniques like averaging and exponential smoothing allow us to achieve that.
Let’s say we have the past data of how many items were sold on our website every day, and we want to use to it to take some business decisions. (I am hoping this ambiguous statement hides my ignorance well)
Averaging
The simplest way to make some sense of this data would be to smooth it so that we can find average numbers of items sold daily. Maybe, we can use it replenish our inventory.
We just sum all the values and then divide them by the number of days.
items_sold = [7,6,1,8,10,9,8,11]
average = sum(items)/len(items)
It seems we are selling 7.5 items every day, and it is time to make our first data-driven decision by order 750 items for the next 10 days.
Now let’s see how well we did by evaluating our result using mean squared error.
Delta of actual versus average values
Square of this difference
Sum of this difference
And finally, a mean of this sum
error = [(actual — predicted)**2 for actual in item_sale]
[0.25, 2.25, 42.25, 0.25, 6.25, 2.25, 0.25, 12.25]
And on taking a mean of the sum of these errors, we get:
8.25
So that’s our error.
Now, it has been a good start but there is a very obvious problem with just using the average. Say Jake Peralta and Captain Holt are seen ordering items from our online store, and, in no time, we are the hippest place in the town. However, our sales don’t shoot up, but they do increase steadily.
Suddenly, our one-trick business intelligence falls on its face. Our mean squared error increases and we are clueless why items are out of stock even though we ordered 170 of them for the next 10 days.
Well, the problem is apparent; our averaging technique gives equal weight to all past observations and is thus not quite effective when it is dealing with trends.
Single Moving Average
Single Moving Average is an averaging technique — which instead of taking into account all the previous observations — uses the mean of only the recent items. If the size of our moving window is 3, it will use the average of the last 3 items.
The results we get are more encouraging, and our MSE(Mean Squared Error) falls to 41 from 139. This is expected since this new technique is able to forget our dark, pre-fame days.
An insightful observation here would be why not place the mean of the three items in the middle of the averaging set, i.e. the first average should be added against Day 2 instead of Day 3. This, in fact, would be a more sensible approach and is known as Centered Moving Average.
But what about the times when our window length (M) is even? The middle of the set would then be 1.5,2.5,3.5….
The solution is to apply moving average on already averaged values with a window size of M = 2.
Unfortunately, these averaging techniques are not suitable for forecasting when our data shows a notable trend. In this case, a more effective approach would be to use double moving averages, i.e. get a second moving from the first moving average using the same window length. This is known as Double Moving Averages for a Linear Trend Process and allows us to make future predictions.
Exponential Smoothing Techniques
In real-life, one sure way to stagnate is by becoming a complete slave to history, and it needs extra care to avoid that. We need a similar kind of caution when it comes to time-series where we give more importance to recent examples. One popular way to do is by through Exponential Smoothing Techniques. Here, as we move to previous observations, we exponentially reduce the weight given to them using different smoothing parameters.
In the following sections, we would go over Single, Double and Triple Exponential Smoothing.
Single Exponential Smoothing
In this type of smoothing, we need a time zero smoothed value and a rate of decrease. This first value can either be the actual initial value, or maybe an average of the first few values, or through some other method. One thing to remember is that smaller the value of the exponential rate, the more significant is the effect of this initial value.
Some Mathematics
This is what the basic equation of exponential smoothing looks lie:
`St = a*yt_1 + (1- a)*St_1`
and the rate at which the weight of previous observations decreases is determined by the smoothing factor (a) which can have a value between 1 and 0.
Say a is .7, this means the value at time t would be equal to a sum of percentage of the actual (a*yt_1) and the smoothed ( (1- a)*St_1) value at t - 1.
Now, if we expand St_1 further, we see the
St = a yt-1 + (1 — a) [ayt-2 + (1 — a)St-2]
If we continue expanding it, we would see something like this for say t = 4
a*[(1-a)⁰*y3 + (1-a)¹ *y2] + (1-a)³*S2
Where S2 is the initial value we started with. We can note that the weight of the previous samples decrease exponentially (1-a)⁰, (1-a)¹, (1-a)²…..
The general form we get is:
Example
Say, we collect the following values over a period of 10 days.
6.4, 5.6, 7.8, 8.8, 11, 11.6, 16.7, 15.3, 21.6, 22.4
Using our small exponential smoothing snippet
We get the following results
Single Exponential Smoothing
While this is much better than equal averaging, we can note that this method is really bad at predicting future values in case of a trend. See how after the 10th day the graph flattens.
Now to fix that we might have to upgrade our basic equation so that it takes into account the delta in previous values by using Double Exponential Smoothing Technique
Double Exponential Smoothing Technique
In this technique, we use another γ constant along with the smoothing factor constant α.
What for Single Exponential Smoothing Technique was
St = a*yt_1 + (1 — a)*St_1
Now becomes:
St = a*yt_1 + (1 — a)*(St_1 + bt_1)
Where we add the previous trend — bt_1 — to our smoothed value.
But how do we find the trend at a time period? It definitely would include the delta between previous values to see the average historical difference. And we see the same in the trend equation
b_t = γ*(St - St_1)+(1−γ)*bt_1 St — St_1 : Difference between the current and previous smoothed values bt_1 : Trend at t-1
It seems that this would perform better on our last example. However, before we proceed we need to find the initial value of the trend factor b. While there are various powerful methods to find an optimal starting point, we can use the first difference, or average of the past differences.
Example
Applying this technique on our previous dataset using the following code:
Applying Double Exponential Smoothing
we get a much better result:
And our mean squared error falls to 3.17 from 8.88 we got with single exponential smoothing.
Forecast
Up till now we have looked at ways to smoothing our data so that it is easier for us to interpret. But what if we want to see into the future?
For double exponential smoothing, we can sum the current smoothed value and the trend value to predict the next value. In general, the forecast can be found using:
Forecast at time t+M = Smoothed Value at time t + M*Trend Factor at time t
In case of Single Exponential Smoothing, future predictions is a horizontal line since it gives us the last prediction for all future values. This, as shown previously, means it is not a great technique when trends are involved.
The following graph shows a comparison of future forecast for the two techniques
The winner is pretty obvious here.
Woohoo!!!!
Now that the initial euphoria is over, we realize that our predictions are going to show a drastic increase. Now what if we had not only a trend but also seasonality.
References
Github Repo: https://github.com/Bazarovay/timeseries | https://medium.com/@meikadasaaz/introduction-to-time-series-analysis-smoothing-part-1-f445b59889c4 | [] | 2019-06-14 10:50:45.976000+00:00 | ['Time Series Forecasting', 'Time Series Analysis', 'Machine Learning'] |
Have Scooter, Will Travel! | I’ve been feeling guilty about using the store carts when shopping with the hubby, but I simply can’t do a store without my muscles seizing up and screaming. If I am alone I have no problem as I am filling the basket on the cart with groceries.
Now, with my scooter, I can shop with hubby and leave the carts for others who need them. There have been times when we’ve gone to Costco and I’ve had to wait for a cart to free up. Now I don’t.
photo by author
I have the freedom to zip downtown to hit the Saturday Farmer’s Market and not have to take the car, find a parking space, and end up having to leave before I get halfway through because of the pain. Downtown is less than a mile from my house.
I can do roughly 17 miles on a charge, which means I can get just about anywhere in town I want to go. I will be getting a collapsing basket to mount on the back so I can load up my camera gear and whatnot and take off for a day of photography or go shopping by myself.
photo by author
I went with what is the company’s ‘Cadillac model,’ it has the features and durability I need and want. I have 3-speed modes. ECO for slow, EV for walking speed, and SPT for WOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! I clocked in at 8 mph on that one. I use that speed for crossing the street and occasionally when I have to use the road when there is no sidewalk or the sidewalk sucks so badly it ain’t funny.
We picked up a carrier for when we travel out of town or when I go shopping with the hubby. Last Friday we went down to Lewiston and back. Discovered a number of issues of having the carrier on the back of a Subaru Forester with a heavy scooter on it. There are a LOT of driveways and alleys we have to seriously avoid.
photo by author
Having the carrier also means if I run out of juice, the hubby can come to rescue me. | https://medium.com/fattitude/have-scooter-will-travel-7893a6a71b1a | ['Jean Crawford Evans'] | 2020-09-16 23:01:21.429000+00:00 | ['Accessibility', 'Disability', 'Living', 'Fat', 'Activism'] |
Rule the words! | Many years ago, I received an apology from my high school French teacher. He apologized for getting me in trouble with my father. I remember being surprised since I was completely unaware of anything I’d done wrong. After school that day I asked my Mom about it. I’ll never forget her words. She said, “Your father sometimes can scare people when he takes command of a conversation.” I learned that my father would sometimes take charge in an effort to gather the information he needed or to quickly get to the point. My Dad had called my French teacher to ask about a particular grade I’d received on an assignment. His direct questions were not meant to convey any particular emotions, but rather to skip the fluff and excuses to get straight to the point, in other words, “what happened?” My father got his information and relayed it to me, telling me to pay more attention to my work in French class. For me? This was par for the course. He wasn’t upset, or angry, he was informed and made sure I was too. My French teacher was a wonderful man and a great teacher, but not exactly an alpha male. The directness of my father's conversation caught him off guard, but it did achieve the desired result. My father got a truthful answer without any excuses or fluff.
Many years before that conversation, my Dad had been on a meteoric rise in a major East Coast insurance firm based in Boston and NYC. He’d graduated with a degree in Business Administration and his no-nonsense work ethic and his “damn the torpedoes” attitude had put him on the fast track to become the managing underwriter, in his division, for the entire Eastern Seaboard. As a man in his late twenties and early thirties, he was young for his position. One trait that helped him get there was his ability to lead and his ability to take command of a conversation helped him greatly in that leadership role.
Now, let me clarify. The incident with my French teacher took place over the telephone. Given the nature of the mode of communication, you cannot see the set of a jaw, the smile on a face, the body language, or the eyes as someone delivers direct questions and succinct answers. It’s easy to see how my teacher was led to believe that I had gotten into trouble at home. In the end, we all had a good laugh. I asked him to be present at my Eagle Scout awards dinner that year, as an honored guest, for his influence on my life at the time. He was one of many who inspired me to become an educator.
Taking command of a conversation is not to be confused with dominating a conversation. If a man wants to command a conversation, he subtly steers the words of the parties involved to stay on point to reach the desired outcome. This does not mean that he tries to force people to say certain things or to try and curry favor, but rather to get them to speak effectively and to convey their ideas as he listens.
In my day job, I’m a technology administrator and a STEM teacher for a public school. We are knee-deep in the global pandemic and, as a result, technology has been thrust to the forefront with the need for remote learning. Yesterday I got a phone call from a frustrated parent. His first words were, “Hey, what’s going on!” (Expletives omitted) No introduction or anything. I had no idea who the caller was. My response was, “I’m not sure what you’re referring to, but perhaps you could start by letting me know who this is.” He replied and then began to list the multitude of problems that were going on with his daughter’s Chromebook computer. After about 30 seconds, I cut him off and began asking pointed questions to get to the bottom of the matter. His diatribe against me, the school, the computer, COVID-19, and probably global warming, was getting us nowhere. He clearly wanted to continue listing the problems in his world, but after my questions, I had enough information to be able to say, “Well, bring it in and I’ll take a look at it. If something is actually wrong, I’ll issue her a different laptop. Bring it in tomorrow if you can.” That caught him off-guard and he muttered, “Ok I’ll get it over to you tomorrow,” and hung up.
In this particular case, I wasn’t going to listen to his problems. I needed to take control of the conversation, get the answers I needed, and get to the conclusion so I could move on to my next task. I’m not telling you to be rude or that you shouldn’t listen to people, but rather to know the difference between listening to value and reason or listening to whining and complaining.
Conversations, left unchecked, can quickly dissolve into small talk, gossip, or even arguments. Listen intently, be present, consider other ideas and new information, but in the end, take command if needed. You will find that people appreciate when someone can get the conversation back on track.
How do you take command of a conversation? Start with a smile. Smiling is disarming. Seriously. Be confident and project that confidence. Nervousness is very easy to spot and can derail your intentions very quickly. Approach a conversation as if you own it. If you do, you will. Look others in the eye when listening. Listen intently and thoughtfully. Focus on others and encourage them to talk about themselves. Ask thoughtful questions. Use your body language to your advantage. Keep your hands out of your pockets. Stand straight and tall. Look confident and use gestures in a positive manner to indicate things such as who should speak next.
If you’re in a group discussion and someone is monopolizing the conversation, use some strategy to help steer things in another direction. For example, try lobbing a question to the boss to move things in another direction.
Don’t answer a question, but rather respond to a question. Answers to a question are nothing more than boring recitations of data whereas responding is all about providing the data with a bit of a bonus. Responses provide opportunities for you to add a unique story or reveal talents. Responses can even be inclusive and therefore provide an avenue for others to become more engaged in the conversation. Here’s an example…
The boss: “Hey Jim. How many laptops did we order for the shipping department?” Jim: “32”
Pretty boring, huh? Let’s try responding instead.
Jim: “We ordered 32, however, I’d also like to add that Bob thought it would be a good idea to get a few tablets to help those who tend to be more mobile around the warehouse. Personally, I think it’s a great idea and it should make them more productive. We have the funds in the budget and I’m sure Barbara might be able to weigh in with more specific information.”
See the difference? We’ve gone from boring data to an interesting idea that gives credit to another person for a great idea and also brings a third person into the conversation to give her a sense of purpose and a chance to contribute.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, right? Double your conversation power by using your body language to help paint that picture. Effective communicators use all the tools in their arsenal. Use your hands to make subtle, but powerful gestures to convey meaning, diffuse tension, or to emphasize the importance of a point. Learn to read the body language of others. Are they open and inviting? Perhaps they’re closed, distanced, or are they simply neutral? Noticing these nuances can help you in bringing them out of themselves and into the conversation or it will guide you in what type of conversation you should be having. Reading and effectively using body language is helpful in many situations including work or office scenarios to dating and relationships. Remember, as a man, your body language is key and often sets the tone. Be strong and confident in your attitude and in your body language.
Let us all educate our sons to be fearless. Fearless and confident. Our boys should grow up to be men who can walk up to anyone and ask a question or start a conversation. Teach them to be open, honest, and approachable. Most of all we should help them to understand that true strength is not derived from being the loudest and most boisterous, but rather from simply listening, speaking what is necessary, and being present.
Be positive. Be interesting. Be encouraging. Be confident. Be humble. Be open. Be a man.
Rule the words… | https://medium.com/@lifelessonsfromadad/rule-the-words-7b1695974ae4 | ['David Trask'] | 2020-12-11 13:03:57.656000+00:00 | ['Dads', 'Men', 'Conversations', 'Fatherhood', 'Confidence'] |
Rockwall Investment Review: 4 Things You Should Know Before Investing | Welcome to my Rockwall Investment Review.
Is Rockwall investment a scam? Is it legitimate?
Can I trust them to deliver on their promises?
These and many more questions have come pouring in my mail and as a response; I decided to gather as much information as I can on Rockwall, and I am glad to share my findings with you.
Before going further, I will like you to be aware of the fact that I am in no way affiliated with Rockwall or any of its services. All information you will find in this review are products of thorough research, intended to give you a better understanding on what Rockwall is about.
This Rockwall investment review will illuminate the grey areas, secrets and hidden features that the admins of this platform want hidden from you.
In the end, you will have a better understanding of what Rockwall is about, so you know what to expect should you choose to get involved with them. | https://medium.com/nigeriabitcoincommunity/rockwall-investment-review-4-things-you-should-know-before-investing-29d99e5cbcd3 | ['Nigeria Bitcoin Community'] | 2020-10-21 07:56:40.535000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'Scam', 'Scam Alert', 'Review', 'Crypto'] |
Research in reverse: My guide to becoming a test user | What To Expect: Debunking Misconceptions About User Testing
When I started looking into user testing platforms, I came across plenty of disillusioned reviewers. However, I quickly realised that many of their complaints were to do with the nature of user testing itself, not the specific user testing platform they were using.
So, before I recommend any user testing platforms, let’s make sure you know what you may (or may not) be getting into!
User testing is not a full-time job.
No matter what user testing platform you’ve signed up to, it might be a while before you receive an invitation to a test you can take part in. This happens for a couple of reasons.
An example test invite from Userlytics.com.
Firstly, you can only take part in tests you meet the requirements for. A UK-based takeaway delivery service that wants to improve their website, for example, will look for UK-based users who regularly order takeaways online. If you don’t meet those requirements then you won’t be able to do the test. This is why user testing platforms ask for your demographic details during the sign-up process.
Not meeting these requirements can look like completing an initial screener survey (something which checks to see if you’re the right kind of person for the test) only to receive a politely worded rejection message. It could also look like not getting a lot of test invites. Your demographic details may not match what companies on the platform are looking for (yet!).
Secondly, if you don’t get screened out from the test, there’s still a significant chance that the study quota has already been filled up by other viable users. That takeaway company, for example, only needs a certain number of test users out of the many people who sign up to user testing platforms.
Userlytics.com has had a lot more practise at explaining this than I have. Heed their words!
This means that user testing does not have the same time requirements as a 9–5 job. The work is sporadic and there are often large gaps of time in between finding tests that you’re eligible to complete. If you don’t like the sound of that, don’t do it.
User testing is not a get rich quick scheme.
The most I’ve ever earned from completing a single user test is £30.52. I received this money after taking part in an hour-long session with a professional researcher (and excitedly grilling her about her journey into UX), waiting the requisite number of days for my test to be approved and for the funds to be transferred to my PayPal account, and then transferring the funds from my PayPal account to my bank account. I learned a lot from the testing process as a newbie UXer, but it was not quick.
A completed test notification on Ferpection.com.
How much you earn from a test depends on a variety of factors including but not limited to:
The user testing platform
The test duration
The type of test you’re doing
It’s typical to earn around $10 for a standard 20 minute test, give or take currency conversions. You’ll earn more for longer tests (in theory) and live sessions with researchers (sometimes known as moderated tests).
It’s always worth weighing up your reasons for doing user testing with what you want to get out of the experience. In my case, I want to learn while earning. I refuse to spend time on lengthy tests that pay under the $10 average, but will happily spend 5 minutes on a few questions that I know will earn me about 50p.
Screenshot of full user tests on Ferpection.com
User testing is not a replacement income. It’s not even a reliable income — it’s a very occasional income boost.
The user testing platform is not your boss.
In the context of user testing, you are your own boss. You decide what work you do or don’t want to take on. The platform merely acts as an intermediary between you and the client you’re doing the test for (e.g: a takeaway company).
You’re essentially working as a freelance contractor. This means that you have to manage your own taxes for any money that you earn through user testing work, if you end up earning enough to pay tax on it (which is unlikely, but I guess you never know).
Example FAQ from UserCrowd.com
Again, your mileage may vary according to the user testing platform you use, so it’s worth checking the platform FAQ for more details. Also, bear in mind that I’m based in the UK. Taxes might work differently in your country! | https://bootcamp.uxdesign.cc/research-in-reverse-a-guide-to-becoming-a-test-user-c6e17f7c7799 | ['Hazel Meades'] | 2020-12-27 18:25:29.095000+00:00 | ['User Research', 'Usability Testing', 'User Testing', 'Market Research', 'User Experience'] |
Why the Phone Gets Hot While Charging and How to Avoid It | Why the Phone Gets Hot While Charging and How to Avoid It James Will Aug 13·3 min read
Maybe we all had the experience that the phone always gets hot when charging. But why is it so?
Why The Phone Gets Hot
The processor is getting hot
The processor is a highly integrated SOC chip. It integrates the CPU central processing chip and GPU graphics processing chip and a series of important chip modules such as Bluetooth, GPS, and radiofrequency. When these chips and modules operate at high speeds, they will dissipate a lot of heat.
2. The phone is getting hot
When the phone is charging, the resistors inside are battling with the incoming current. Heating is definitely inevitable, and it is mainly concentrated on the battery and PCB board.
3. The battery is getting hot
Kind reminder: It’s best not to use your mobile phone to make calls, play games, or watch videos when charging. This will cause the voltage to become unstable and generate more heat. In the long run, it will also shorten the life of the battery. This behavior may even increase the probability of a battery explosion.
So, does that mean the mobile phone is only in a healthy state when it is not heating up? In fact, this is not the case. As long as the mobile phone stays within the normal temperature range, usually below 60 degrees, there’s nothing to worry about. Actually, if your phone is not heating up at all, then there’s probably something going wrong. Remember that not being hot on the surface does not mean that the phone is not generating heat. It is likely caused by the lack of heat dissipation graphite patch or poor thermal conductivity, and the heat accumulated inside cannot be dissipated. In fact, it will even cause certain damage to the phone.
How To Avoid It
So, what should we do if the phone is getting hot while charging?
1. Avoid playing games, watching videos, or talking while charging.
2. If you have to talk on the phone for a long time, please keep the mobile phone away from your cheek. Try to use the handsets or earphones.
3. Close the redundant apps that you are not using right now, especially games and video apps.
4. Turn off the automatic download and automatic update functions
5. Avoid using a protective case with poor heat dissipation, or remove it when the phone is hot.
6. Heat can be transferred when held in the hand or in the pocket. So try to put it in a ventilated and heat-dissipating place. If there is air-conditioning, let the phone gets some cool air too.
7. Avoid long-term use of high-energy-consuming app programs.
8. If the phone is already hot, cleaning up the memory will effectively cool it down.
9. If the steps above don’t work, then turn off your phone and let the phone temperature return to normal before continuing to use it.
About Author:
Distributor of electronic components. Sharer of knowledge.
My recent article: https://www.utmel.com/components/bc556-pnp-transistor-pinout-datasheet-and-equivalent?id=373
If you are interested in knowing more about electronics, come and play!!! | https://medium.com/@james4042021/what-caused-the-phone-getting-hot-while-charging-e7b062234d7c | ['James Will'] | 2021-08-13 09:15:36.380000+00:00 | ['Phon', 'Charger'] |
Write DRY Code Using Reflection | Write DRY Code Using Reflection
Photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash
In this article, I’ll show you a scenario where using Reflection can help improve the readability, maintainability, extensibility, and the DRYness of your code.
The Scenario
You’ve written a web app for a car dealership which prints reports about the cars in stock, and what cars have been sold.
Current State Of The Code
Here is what the code looks like at the moment. It’s a simple ASP.NET Core MVC application with one Controller called Home, and two classes for generating the reports.
The CarInfo class generates a report for the cars in stock:
The CarSales class generates a report for the cars that have been sold:
Running The App
The report type is sent as a query string in the URL.
If you run the app and navigate to https://localhost:<yourPortNumberHere>/Home/GenerateReport?reportType=CarSales you will see the output below:
You’ll get a similar report if you replace CarSales with CarInfo in the URL.
What’s Wrong With This Code?
The code works. But what if your boss asked you to add another report for the 2nd-hand cars the dealership has bought?
You’d need to add another else if block in the GenerateReport() method.
What if you needed to add more properties to the CarInfo or CarSale class like TransmissionType ? You’d need to add another set of 3 AppendLine() method calls in the DisplayReport() methods.
Imagine if the boss kept asking for more properties and more reports, the code would get larger and it would become a nightmare to maintain.
This code is not extensible, and does not adhere to the DRY principle because you would be repeating similar lines of code.
Improving It With Reflection
I’m going to use Reflection in two areas:
Working out what report class to use Displaying the properties of the CarSale and CarInfo objects
HomeController
In the HomeController , the class containing the logic for the report is instantiated based exactly on the value in the reportType string. No need for any if statements.
This has halved the number of lines of code!
CarInfo
Here we’re using Reflection to iterate through all the properties of the Car class. This means we no longer need to worry about adding more AppendLine() calls every time a new property is added to the class.
We now only have three calls to AppendLine() , instead of nine.
CarSales
The code change to CarSales is almost identical to CarInfo , and the benefits are exactly the same:
Summary
People tend to be scared of Reflection because it can be expensive. Most of the time, the performance hit is unnoticeable, and unless your application is performance critical, the benefits you get from readability, maintainability and extensibility far outweigh the performance hit from using Reflection.
Resources
The gists used in this article can be found here. | https://levelup.gitconnected.com/write-dry-code-using-reflection-e4b9bd8581ea | ['David Klempfner'] | 2021-02-07 23:01:34.942000+00:00 | ['C Sharp Programming', 'Software Development', 'Software Engineering', 'Dotnet Core', 'Programming'] |
Gradient Descent Unraveled | Gradient Descent Unraveled
In the current era of Deep Learning, you might have heard the term gradient descent before. If you didn’t understand what it is and how it works, this post is for you. In this post, I’ll be explaining what is it and how it works.
Maxima vs Minima and Global vs Local
First, let us begin with the concepts of maxima, minima, global and local.
I’ll explain these concepts for functions of a single variable because they are easy to visualize. However, they extend to multivariate cases.
Let us start with a few definitions. [1]
Global Maximum : A real-valued function f defined on a domain X has a global (or absolute) maximum point at x∗ if f(x∗) ≥ f(x) for all x in X.
: A real-valued function f defined on a domain X has a global (or absolute) maximum point at x∗ if f(x∗) ≥ f(x) for all x in X. Global Minimum : A real-valued function f defined on a domain X has a global (or absolute) maximum point at x∗ if f(x∗) ≤ f(x) for all x in X.
: A real-valued function f defined on a domain X has a global (or absolute) maximum point at x∗ if f(x∗) ≤ f(x) for all x in X. Local Maximum : If the domain X is a metric space then f is said to have a local (or relative) maximum point at the point x∗ if there exists some ε > 0 such that f(x∗) ≥ f(x) for all x in X within distanceε of x∗.
: If the domain X is a metric space then f is said to have a local (or relative) maximum point at the point x∗ if there exists some ε > 0 such that f(x∗) ≥ f(x) for all x in X within distanceε of x∗. Local Minimum: If the domain X is a metric space then f is said to have a local (or relative) maximum point at the point x∗ if there exists some ε > 0 such that f(x∗) ≤ f(x) for all x in X within distanceε of x∗.
Graphics tend to make the concepts easier to understand. I’ve summarized these four type of points in the following figure.
Image by Author
As the name suggests minimum is the lowest value in a set and maximum is the highest value. Global means it is true for the entire set and local means it is true in some vicinity. A function can have multiple local maxima and minima. However there can be only one global maximum as well as minimum. Note that for Figures (a) and (b) the function domain is restricted to the values you are seeing. If it were to be infinite then there is no global minimum for the graph in Figure (a).
Now that we understand these concepts, the next step is how to find these extremum points.
Turns out derivatives in calculus are useful for finding these points. I won’t be going into the details of derivatives. However, I’ll explain enough to understand the following discussion.
Image by Author
Derivative gives you a rate of change of something with respect to something. For example, how quickly a medicine would be absorbed by your system can be modeled and analysed using calculus.
Now, let us understand what is a critical point.
Image by Author
So we know that at these critical points there will be a either a local or global maximum or minimum. The next step is to identify which category it belongs to.
Image by Author
You can use either of the two tests i.e. the first and second derivative test to classify the maximum and minimum values. When I was in my high school I used to find the second derivative test faster since I’d calculate only one value (without using a calculator). I’ll show you one example of how it is actually done.
Image by Author
For finding whether the point is global you’ll have to evaluate the function at all the critical points and see which point is the lowest. In our examples, we have seen a polynomial function. It is smooth and differentiable. There were limited points to test for and evaluating the function is easy if you have the equation.
However, now let us move to the real world. We never know the actual equation of the real life processes that we deal with. Additionally, there are several variables involved in the equation. These tests won’t be useful in those cases. For training a neural network you need to minimize the loss with respect to the network parameters. This is a multi-dimensional surface and multiple factors come into play. And the tests I discussed above won’t be effective. So we turn to optimization for this task.
Optimization for finding minima/maxima of a function
What is optimization?
Maximizing or minimizing some function relative to some set, often representing a range of choices available in a certain situation. The function allows a comparison of the different choices for determining which might be “best.”
Common applications: Minimal cost, maximal profit, minimal error, optimal design, optimal management, variational principles.
In mathematics, computer science and operations research, mathematical optimization or mathematical programming is the selection of the best element (with regard to some criterion) from some set of available alternatives.
Optimization is a vast ocean in itself and is extremely interesting. In the context of deep learning the optimization objective is to minimize the cost function with respect to the model parameters i.e. the weight matrices.
What is a Gradient?
Gradient: In vector calculus, the gradient is the multi-variable generalization of the derivative. The gradient of a scalar function f(x₁, x₂, x₃, …., xₙ) [hereafter referred to as f] is denoted by ∇ f, where ∇ (the nabla symbol) is known as the del operator. It packages all the partial derivatives information into a vector.
∇ f is a vector valued function and points in the direction of steepest ascent. Imagine if you are standing a some point in the input space of f, the gradient vector tells you which direction you should travel, to increase the value of f rapidly.
If you are interested in learning more. Khan academy is a wonderful place to learn about gradients and mathematics in general.
https://www.khanacademy.org/math/multivariable-calculus/multivariable-derivatives/gradient-and-directional-derivatives/v/gradient
Gradient Descent
This is a type of optimization technique where you move towards the minimum in an iterative manner.
The steps involved are as follows:
Guess a point (randomly or through some technique). Choose a step size which in deep learning is called the learning rate ρ and is also one of the most important hyper-parameter in deep learning. Calculate the gradient of the function Move in the opposite direction by subtracting this from the initial guess. This is because we want to descend and gradient gives you steepest ascent direction. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for n times or until a stop criterion is reached
In equation form for deep learning applications it can be written as:
ρ is the learning rate and governs how much you dampen the gradient value while taking the step.
β is a network parameter.
One more point to mention here is that unless the function is convex the algorithm can get stuck at a local minimum instead of converging to the global minimum.
Image by Author
In mathematics, a real-valued function defined on an n-dimensional interval is called convex (or convex downward or concave upward) if the line segment between any two points on the graph of the function lies above or on the graph. This means that the function itself has one minimum for the strictly convex case.
In summary, the gradient descent is an optimization method that finds the minimum of an objective function by incrementally updating its parameters in the negative direction of the gradient of the function which is the direction of steepest descent.
Gradient Descent 1D Example
Let us look at few examples. We will start with a 1D case, since it is easiest to visualize. The equation used is the same as the one I used earlier in the maxima and minima section.
I’ll show how to manually implement the code in python using numpy and matplotlib.
The graphs of various combinations of the start point and learning rates are shown in the following figure.
Image by Author
Few observations
The equation under consideration has two minima. We want to find the global minimum using the gradient descent algorithm. I’ll be explaining the figures filled by row. The number of iterations is kept as 10 for all the examples. I’ve varied the learning rate and the initial start point to show you how it affects the algorithm. First five plots show that if start point and the number of iterations is kept the same, larger the learning rate faster the algorithm descends. But in those cases, the algorithm got stuck at a local minimum. In plot seven we see that due to the large learning rate coupled with the steep slope at the start point the algorithm took a large jump to the global minimum.
Even though large learning rates can cause faster convergence, there are chances of your algorithm moving away from the minimum because of the large effective step size. Take a look at the last figure, the starting point enabled the algorithm to go to the global minimum but the large learning rate caused the algorithm to diverge. One more case is shown in the second last figure. The point was initialized at a critical point which has a zero derivative at that point. No matter how large your learning rate or how many steps you take the algorithm won’t move from that point.
From the above examples, we see that learning rate has to be chosen such that it is not too low so that the gradient is over-damped or too high for the gradient to blow up the step size. The initialization of the start point is crucial can get you the global minimum or the local. The number of steps to be taken also matter.
Gradient Descent 2D Example
Now let us walk through a few 2D examples.
The first examples are of a paraboloid and its equation is as follows.
I’ll be using sympy for this tutorial. This allows you to do symbolic computations on equations. Even if you don’t know calculus, you can use the code to try out different equations and experiment around.
Following code creates a function f1 using the symbolic representation of sympy and calculates the partial derivatives w.r.t. x and y to calculate the gradient. Which is then used to perform gradient descent by updating the x and y values using the appropriate components.
The following figure shows two views of the 3D plot.
Image by Author
One thing immediately evident from the plot is as the algorithm reaches near the minimum the gradient value decreases and therefore the step size decreases. As I mentioned at the start of the post, the technique remains the same for n dimensional case. The observations that we draw in lower dimensions can be almost always extended to the higher dimensional case with little or no modifications.
To give you a flavor for different surfaces, following are two more examples of 2D gradient descent. As discussed earlier the initialization matters and will ultimately decide where you end up at the end.
Image by Author
Image by Author
Python utility to try out different gradient descent parameters interactively
I’ve made a python utility that lets you play around with the learning rate, a number of iterations and initial start point to see how these affect the algorithm performance for the 1D example. The code for this, as well as the 2D function plots, is available at the following repository.
https://github.com/msminhas93/GradientDescentTutorial
Image by Author
So far we’ve seen the algorithm and taken 1D and 2D examples to analyse how their choice affects the convergence.
Gradient Descent in Deep Learning [2]
In the context of deep learning gradient descent can be classified into following categories.
Stochastic Gradient Descent
Mini-batch Gradient Descent
Batch Gradient Descent
Stochastic Gradient Descent: Suppose you want to minimize an objective function that is written as a sum of differentiable functions.
Each term Qᵢ is usually associated with the iᵗʰ data point.
Standard gradient descent (batch gradient descent) is given as follows.
where η is the learning rate (step size).
Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) considers only a subset of summand functions at every iteration. This can be effective for large-scale problems. The gradient of Q(w) is approximated by a gradient at a single example:
This update needs to be done for each training example. Several passes might be necessary over the training set until the algorithm converges.
Pseudo-code for SGD:
Choose an initial value of w and η.
Repeat until converged.
Randomly shuffle data points in the training set.
For i = 1,2,3,…,n, do:
w = w − η ∇ Qᵢ(w)
Let us consider the following equation:
The objective function is:
The update rule for SGD then is as follows.
Mini Batch Gradient Descent:
Batch gradient descent uses all n data points in each iteration.
uses all in each iteration. Stochastic gradient descent uses 1 data point in each iteration.
uses in each iteration. Mini-batch gradient descent uses b data points in each iteration. b is a parameter called mini-batch size.
Pseudo-code for Mini-Batch Gradient Descent:
Choose an initial value of w and η.
Choose for example b = 10
Repeat until converged.
Randomly shuffle data points in the training set.
For i = 1,11,21,…,n-9, do:
Discussion on the three types of Gradient Descent
Few points on the three variants.
SGD is noisier than the other two variants because it is updated per example.
SGD is often called an online machine learning algorithm because it updates the model for each training example.
SGD is computationally more expensive than the other variants because it per example.
SGD is jittery and causes convergence to a minimum difficult.
Mini-batch gradient descent allows you to take the advantage of your GPU and process multiple examples in one go therefore reducing the training time.
Batch gradient descent is practically infeasible unless you have a small data-set which can fit into the available memory.
Choice of mini-batch size parameter b depends on your GPU, data-set and the model. A rule of thumb is to choose a size in multiples of 8. Generally, 32 is a good number to start with. If you choose your number too high or low then the algorithm can become slower. In the former case, computations could become slower because you are putting a lot of load on the GPU. While in the latter case, lower mini-batch size underutilizes your GPU. Finding the right balance for your case is important.
Tuning the learning rate η:
If η is too high, the algorithm diverges. If η is too low, it makes the algorithm slow to converge.
A common practice is to make ηₙ a decreasing function of iteration number n. Following are two examples.
ηₙ = k/(n+c) , where k and c are constants.
ηₙ = η₀ e⁻ᵏⁿ, where η₀ is the initial learning rate and k decides the steepness of the exponential decay.
One can use interval based learning rate schedule too. For example:
where n is the iteration number.
The first iterations cause large changes in w, while the later ones do only fine tuning.
There is something called as cyclical learning rates where you use a periodic function for scheduling. You can read more about it here.
This wraps up the discussion for Gradient Descent.
To summarize:
Gradient descent is an optimization algorithm that is used in deep learning to minimize the cost function w.r.t. the model parameters.
It does not guarantee convergence to the global minimum.
The convergence depends on the start point, learning rate and number of iterations.
In practice, mini-batch gradient descent is used with a batch size value of 32 (this can vary depending on your application).
Hope this was useful. Your suggestions, feedback and comments are welcome.
References:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxima_and_minima
[2] University of Waterloo STAT 946 Deep Learning Course https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEAYkSg4uSQ0MAdcjYsKFEo3guPTuUH66 | https://towardsdatascience.com/gradient-descent-unraveled-3274c895d12d | ['Manpreet Singh Minhas'] | 2020-11-16 15:47:07.443000+00:00 | ['Editors Pick', 'Gradient Descent', 'Deep Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Optimization'] |
“Brain, wider than the sky” — Neuron Sculpture | We had been quite busy in the last months, due to the deployment of 13 interactive installations for the Brain exhibition in Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon, and also the construction of a massive neuron sculpture. This project occupied all of our team members, and we had to change the configuration of all the rooms in our headquarters to be able to develop, test and assemble everything.
This video shows only a tiny part of the efforts that were made to materialize “The Neuron”.
video author: João Ribeiro
Eric da Costa, the mastermind behind this “the Neuron”, did a lot of research around many types of neurons, their behaviour and characteristics. This sculpture should have controllable inside-light, we also wanted it to be reactive to visitors. For the lights, there were different demands, through the different parts of the neuron.
I will try to describe the neuron anatomy. Bear in mind that I am not a neuroscientist, so if any information does not match scientific facts, sorry about that.
Let’s start with the dendrites, they are the branches that connect to other neurons.
These branches “charge” the neuron nucleus, we call it “the core”. It gathers energy until a certain point, when this point is reached it triggers a spike that fires up the axon.
This spike goes through the axon until the terminals.
These terminals connect to the next neuron.
Eric designed the whole piece in 3D, planned how each section should be sculpted, assembled, illuminated, transported and deployed.
Eric also sculpted the whole piece, while João Ribeiro and José Pedro aka ‘Coias’, did a masterwork with fibreglass, assembly, transportation and deployment. | https://medium.com/artica/brain-wider-than-the-sky-f5d7720a5938 | ['Guilherme Martins'] | 2019-06-13 10:16:11.501000+00:00 | ['Neuroscience', 'Technology', 'Art'] |
Lessons from a Mexican Church | It was August 12, 2019, a day I won’t soon forget. It would be my first day with a new employer. And for this new job, I got off a plane, went through customs, and was suddenly taking in the sights and sounds of a bustling third-world airport.
I had done something that I could not have imagined just weeks earlier. I had taken a job with a Mexican company. On this day, I would meet my new boss — in Mexico’s third largest city: Guadalajara.
My role with the company would be based in the United States, but frequent trips to the Central Mexican metropolis would be par for the course, that is, until a global pandemic suddenly halted travel in March of 2020. Prior to that, however, I would visit Guadalajara about a half dozen times.
During my visits I was delighted to learn that a core group of my Mexican co-workers were Christians and attended Iglesia Del Centro, translated “Downtown Church,” a local fellowship of believers in the reformed tradition.
The church was started by Josef Urban an Ohio-born missionary who felt called to start a church in Guadalajara before he spoke a lick of Spanish. Urban is now stateside, active in study and ministry in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Pastorate of Iglesia del Centro has been turned over to a Mexican native who is an amazingly gifted expository preacher.
Over the course of my half dozen or so visits in 2019 and early 2020, I had been invited to attend Wednesday night services at the church. I declined at the time and used rationale ranging from travel fatigue, the long workdays I was putting in while in Mexico, or concern that I would glean little from a Spanish language gathering of believers.
In late 2021, I was finally planning my first visit to Guadalajara in 23 months. I would work on projects with the team, visit customers, and attend the company posada. It would be a typical long and tiring work week, capped off by a 2:15 AM wake up time to catch my early Friday morning departure. Something was stirring in me, however, to extend my visit.
This was the year that I had finally read David Platt’s book Radical, a decade-old book at this point. It had been in my possession for several years as I had ordered a copy after it was recommended by a family member. I always find myself in “reading debt,” and this title for whatever reason sat gathering dust while I plowed through numerous other books ordered after it. Perhaps it was because I knew it would be a book that would challenge me versus my typical “joy reads” through topics that interest me such as economics, politics, and history.
The timing was in the providence of God.
In this work in which Platt challenges Christians to “rescue their faith from the American dream,” he lays out a multifaceted challenge at the end of the book, which he calls The Radical Experiment. One prong of the Radical Experiment is to spend one week in another context, meaning outside of America. On this part of the experiment, Platt gave the following prediction for those who followed his challenge:
“Here is where your heart is going to be touched, possibly in a way that it never has before.”
The Lord graciously enabled Platt’s call to find fertile soil in my heart, and so, on this trip to Mexico I would fly in the Friday before my scheduled workweek. I would commit to worshiping with this body of believers in Central Mexico. And I would trust God to work out whatever he had planned.
What God did in my soul as I worshiped with these Mexican brothers and sisters in a simple stucco-covered brick building with an A-shaped tin roof is not something that I can even begin to describe in this short blog post. The power of God was so active in their midst that I was buzzing for most of that Sunday with a sense of the Holy Spirit’s presence. At one point, which I will describe later, I was altogether overwhelmed. If anyone doubts whether Platt’s above-mentioned challenge is worth trying, let me assure you most definitely that to ignore it is to deny your soul one of the richest experiences available on this earth.
In the coming weeks, I hope to describe in greater detail why this experience made such an impact on me. I also will outline some of the key lessons I took away from this Mexican church. To whet your appetite a bit, I will list them below. I’ll then write more expansively on each in future posts.
Lessons from a Mexican church:
1. They provide an effective and attractive counterculture.
Guadalajara is a very dark place. It is largely secular or lapsed Catholic. It is known as the “San Francisco of Latin America,’’ and I am sure you can draw your own conclusions as to all such a label entails. It is filled with mysticism and even dabbling with the occult. For these reasons, there is not much of a Christian culture that this Mexican church can look to in their own context. Unlike their neighbors to the north, that will take cues from the decadent consumerist church that exists ubiquitously in America, these brothers and sisters look long and hard at the New Testament and exposit a model for themselves that I would argue much more closely resembles the 1st century church.
2. They are people of persistent and unrelenting prayer.
“I’ll pray for you” is largely a cultural pleasantry in most quarters of American Christianity. Just like most who say “Merry Christmas” do not intend to celebrate the arrival of Messiah, most who “send thoughts or prayers” intend very few thoughts and even fewer prayers. When this group of believers pledge prayer for you, however, they fully intend to go to war for you in their prayer life.
3. They actually believe that Jesus is Lord
In my short time with these Mexican Christians, I saw radical submission to Christ and his church. If such submission was merely suggested at an American church most congregants would reach for their pitch forks and lanterns, Gadsden flags, or worse yet, concealed carry weapon.
4. The difficult passages of scripture are lived out amongst these believers
Jesus said that, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple (Luke 14:26, ESV). In the conversations I had on that Sunday, it became clear to me that this is being lived out literally within this body of believers. I met with one young woman whose parents disowned her and refused to attend her wedding when she became a Christian and married a young man in the church.
5. ‘The sixth doctrine of grace’
As I looked at the wall clock to discover I had already been at church for more than four hours, a young man training for ministry quipped, “we believe in the sixth doctrine of grace: irresistible fellowship.”
I hope that I have sufficiently whetted your appetite for learning more about my Lessons from a Mexican Church. Please hit the “follow” icon and stay with me these next several weeks as I go into more detail on each of these five lessons and the implication for American Christians.
If you enjoy this content, please hit the “like” button and share this article in your social media feed. It is a small task for you but has big implications for growing the distribution of this story. My goal in sharing this experience is to hopefully, by God’s grace, spark a “great reassessment” amongst American believers. | https://medium.com/@jason.a.dekker/lessons-from-a-mexican-church-99700dc50fc4 | ['Jason Dekker'] | 2021-12-29 18:09:57.439000+00:00 | ['Mexico', 'Reformed Worship', 'Guadalajara', 'Reformed', 'Mission'] |
COVID 19 Journal Entries Part 4 | Journal Entries 3
April 15, 2020
My continued attempts at making a homemade mask for my son and I is not going well at all. I have found that while I am good at certain things like writing and art I really suck at sewing. I finally had to reach out to those on Facebook to help me out with a couple of masks. It’s gotten to the point where masks are being enforced in the community and you are denied entry if you are not wearing one. I have found myself afraid to go out. Perhaps it’s because everything has become much clearer to me. This virus is indeed real and people are indeed dying and yes I am scared. I don’t show my fear because I have learned to hide it well. I have always had to be the strong one in my family and I can’t show any weakness now. As I continue to do research and educate myself I remain an advocate for my fellow healthcare workers who are still putting their lives on the lines. Unfortunately I am beginning to see a world that is becoming divided.
April 16, 2020
People are starting to protest and my fears are coming true. I have seen reports of people carrying guns and demanding that the ban be lifted. It’s amazing to me that during a crisis such as this pandemic that there are still people who believe that violence and intimidation is the answer. I know people are upset because they want to get back to work. People are scared. Many such as myself are still waiting to hear from unemployment. Many are starting to panic. Yes many of us received a stimulus check but by the time you pay your rent and bills there is very little left. We are indeed struggling to survive. Though I am just as scared as everyone else and though I am trying to budget my money carefully to get through this I remain determined to make it through this battle.
April 18, 2020
I am slapped in the face by the cold reality of this virus and the fear it is spreading. When your own father is afraid to get close to you and afraid to be near your son it becomes more real. It began when I had to take my car to the garage after discovering that the brakes were bad. I needed someone to follow me to the garage so I could drop it off then take me and my son back home. My father wore a mask the entire time and barely spoke. He was afraid to get close to us. My son didn’t understand why grandpa was so distant and I explained to him that grandpa is just practicing social distance but even at twelve my son just doesn’t understand. I can’t blame my dad for his fear but it’s something I am not used to. Just as I was feeling low however I was notified by the garage that a person who asked to remain anonymous noticed my vehicle outside the garage and decided to stop in and pay on my bill. I was blown away by this person’s kindness and whoever they are I want to say thank you.
April 20, 2020
Hatred continues to spread across our country. It isn’t that surprising to me anymore for I see so many posts on social media stating that this virus isn’t real. People believe it’s the government’s way of controlling us. That’s the thing about being forced to stay home your mind begins to wander. You begin to question what is real and what isn’t. A large group of people protested in Harrisburg demanding that the ban be lifted. However, this wasn’t a pleasant protest. Healthcare workers were being verbally assaulted by strangers. Healthcare workers were being reduced to tears as hatred was tossed at them from every angle. I have been told that even those who go into stores or gas stations wearing their uniforms are being harassed. I can’t understand what is happening to this world. It’s so frustrating because I am still considered a healthcare worker myself and I work with a lot of hardworking nurses, aides and first responders. They don’t deserve to be treated this way. No one does. | https://midcenturymodernmag.com/covid-19-journal-entries-part-4-97e81a72b7eb | ['Destiny Pifer'] | 2020-04-23 19:16:52.381000+00:00 | ['Journaling', 'Pandemic', 'Pandemic Diaries', 'Covid 19', 'Protesting'] |
On Love | Love is the feeling of the reality of unity made possible by the illusion of duality.
The pretense of lover and beloved gives rise to the feeling of love because the truth of unity, which cannot be totally concealed, arises and reveals itself in the attraction that the apparent part feels for the illusory other part.
While the lover pretends that the beloved is other, the ground of their being, which is one, insists at the level of the emotions, and the thought arises that we are one.
Fear is the temporary condition in which the illusion of separation becomes so strong that the feeling of unity is completely suppressed.
Other seems to threaten self and the realization of the truth lies submerged.
Self appears to behold not-self and the risk that not-self will annihilate self looms, blocking the light of reality.
Ego is our vulnerability. The threat that other appears to present is the struggle of ego to maintain its illusion of separate existence. The reality is that we are fundamentally invulnerable while at the same time we constantly die again and again, arising anew as another. From moment to moment the ground of our being is unchanged and outside those moments: eternal; the apparent separate self is continually subject to modification while pretending to remain unchanged behind the name “I.”
We are love because love is the self-realization of our fundamental unity and that self-realization is what we are.
Consciousness aware of itself.
Love is like peekaboo.
The parent hides behind the hands, but the hiding is a public display that says “I am here” while it pretends to conceal.
Love pretends that unity is not here and then parts its hands to reveal that unity was hiding here all along.
The self plays peekaboo with itself.
What is fear of love? Fear of love is the memory of the temporary ascendance of the sense of separation and an accompanying pain that ego suffered.
But love removes the fear of love.
Love reveals the truth and self is the innocent victim that dies the death of purification.
Fear burns in love.
But love cannot be burned by fear because love is the truth and fear is an error.
Fear can conceal love for a time but love remains the fundament of our existence. We are love. We are one.
Trust is the hand extended toward the truth before the truth is in hand. Trust is the germ of the truth that makes itself known in secret. Trust is John the Baptist preceding Jesus. Trust points to the truth before the truth has arrived. Trust knows before knowing can be. Simply trust. Trust in yourself. Trust in life. Trust in the reality that is our life and being.
— Richard S. Bogartz | https://medium.com/@bogartz-89733/on-love-b9783728e7f5 | ['Richard S. Bogartz'] | 2020-12-11 20:59:05.395000+00:00 | ['Fear', 'Unity', 'Love', 'Reality'] |
First Impressions | I loved season 1.
I seriously doubted if the second season could hold us without Beck (Elizabeth Lail). But Love (Victoria Pedretti) does not disappoint. She comfortably fills in the role of ‘you’.
In fact, I have almost started wondering if they would be good for each other. Yup, Joe is a natural match for her.
Love (Victoria Pedretti), Joe (Penn Badgley)
There are moments that show how Candace (Ambyr Childers) is chasing Joe (Penn Badgley). He looks pretty concerned about her. There maybe some serious trouble headed his way because of her.
Of the two episodes I have seen, the backdrop for major drama has been setup well enough. Joe runs into people that he needs to be careful about. He finds a woman who deserves his complete attention. And there is a woman that smells his guts and tries to mark her territory.
The one major change, this time around is, Joe has admirers that don’t even require him to make an effort. They love who he is. This is new for him, and he is liking it.
Also, dude is pretty casual about crossing obstacles this time. I am guessing there is a satisfying struggle toward the end, which would be more intense than the previous season. Things are escalating. | https://medium.com/@anabkk2922/first-impressions-you-season-2-netflix-1836fa483920 | ['Vignesh Vijay'] | 2020-01-05 15:32:10.701000+00:00 | ['First Impressions', 'TV', 'You', 'Kk'] |
Erik Skogquist Explains How Youth Can Become Involved in City Programs and Government | Learning about his family history in the Anoka County as a child inspired a lot of Erik Skogquist’s passion for volunteerism in the community. After studying political science and urban studies at the University of Minnesota, Skogquist returned to Anoka to start a family with his wife and fellow Anoka native, Amanda. Today, he works as a property appraiser in the area but also volunteers his time to several community functions including Cub and Boy Scouts, school activities and the Anoka County Historical Society. Erik Skogquist is also a member of the Anoka City Council, where he contributes his knowledge of urban planning and local history for the betterment of the community.
As a father and coming from a family dedicated to local history, Erik Skogquist understands the importance of getting young people involved in their communities during their formative years. “Civic responsibility starts at a young age,” he says. Luckily, there are many ways youth can get involved in their local city programs and government: through youth councils, volunteerism, and even in school.
Youth Council
In Minnesota, there are groups of dedicated youth working towards civic improvements across the state. In particular, Erik Skogquist recommends young people check out the Minnesota Youth Council, which was formally recognized in 2013 by the Minnesota Legislature for its work in the community. The council supports young people looking to make a difference through specific projects as well as general advocacy. It works through a youth-adult partnership model that allows for mentorship, guidance, and support, empowering young people to make their voices heard. There are subcommittees for every interest, including health and wellness, environmental justice, education equity, and juvenile justice.
Volunteerism
If joining a council is a little too big a leap for the youth in your life, Erik Skogquist recommends getting them involved with volunteer activities. Most towns and cities are regularly looking for individuals to help facilitate their programs. Local old age homes are often looking for an extra helping hand or visitor while many sports programs that run through the city require people to organize games and referee.
For those interested in taking a more independent approach, organizing park clean-ups with a group of friends within the community is a great way to get started. No matter the activity, Skogquist believes that offering one’s time to the betterment of the community not only benefits others, but helps build responsibility, a sense of belonging, and confidence in youth.
In School
While children often learn about government and their various functions in school, Skogquist recommends encouraging your local schools to take education a step further. Student councils, environmental awareness committees, and mock trials are all great ways youth can test the waters of government functions in a safe and educational environment. For Skogquist, it’s also an opportunity to pique students’ interest in local history and the governing bodies that inform it. For example, Erik Skogquist was heavily involved in creating a local walking tour for school children that focuses on the history of the town through the Anoka County Historical Society. The tour was a success for students at Lincoln Elementary School, who even got to learn about the history of their very own school building.
Conclusion
No matter your particular interests, there are ways to get involved with government and city programs right at home or even on the broader state level. Whether you join a youth council, volunteer or work in a city program, or get involved at school, Skogquist believes participating in these programs helps build confidence and leadership and communication skills — all highly valuable no matter what you end up doing in life! | https://medium.com/@erikskogquist/erik-skogquist-explains-how-youth-can-become-involved-in-city-programs-and-government-15a8461b32a1 | ['Erik Skogquist'] | 2020-12-18 14:55:36.386000+00:00 | ['Youth Development', 'Program', 'Government', 'City Living', 'Youth'] |
“Who would we be if Whiteness never dictated who we are? If Whiteness never set a goal that we had to live up to?” | “Who would we be if Whiteness never dictated who we are? If Whiteness never set a goal that we had to live up to?” GEN Editors Dec 2, 2020·1 min read
In her new book, Ijeoma Oluo breaks down the origins and the devastating legacy of the mediocre white male in America. In an interview with Zora, she talks about how she set out to “battle the collective gaslighting regarding White supremacy.” | https://gen.medium.com/who-would-we-be-if-whiteness-never-dictated-who-we-are-acf984127928 | ['Gen Editors'] | 2020-12-02 16:16:35.178000+00:00 | ['White Privilege', 'Men', 'Race'] |
«Muss ich als Designer*in programmieren können?» | 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://blog.dreipol.ch/faq-dreipol-designjobs-cb7258eb8e27 | ['Sarah Hefti'] | 2021-01-05 09:55:56.078000+00:00 | ['Dreipol', 'FAQ', 'Design', 'Hiring', 'Recruiting'] |
My very own version of the coffee rant. | I’m a man of many cups of coffee. The first one is almost always the most pleasurable but also the quickest one — it’s the first sip of a ritual that starts every morning. Then comes the second, rushed, as if trying to make up for its lackluster second-character. The third and fourth are indulgences. They don’t need to be there, but they’re the most loyal, sticking together with me as I go do other things on my day.
There was of course a time when I used to have only one cup, or more precisely two shots of espresso lost in a cup of hot milk. That first dreaded serious attempt of getting caffeine-fixed because one day you just couldn’t have planned that your daily twenty-four hours could slip away so fast. And so along comes the latte, conceptually simple, the milk hugging the coffee grounds in all its fat and sugar as firmly as it can. The Red Bull of the environmentalists? The Adderall of the conscious?
From the many paths one can take to reach purity, the capuccino, for instance, being a gentle one, mathematically defined as a reduction in milk to the proportion of coffee, the sugar road is definitely the longest and rockiest of them. It offensively fights the naturally bitter kick of the pure form, and takes you from the patient two, three-cup ritual to a marathon of sheer frenzy that urges your senses to dismiss any calculated thought. A genocide of delicate ideas and sensations.
Some theorists argue that coffee is a “grown-up drink” because it’s elevated in bitterness, known as a taste modality we take the longest to develop and appreciate. I, on the other hand, posit that it is so because, perhaps for being bitter and requiring a slower drinking pace, it’s a drink which sets an initial calmer scene to only slowly take you to a sharper state of mind. And what sugar does is completely eliminate that first considerate moment that adults very much need to think the hard things through. It’s like when you’re trying to have a dream but there’s music playing on the background, and while you want to go somewhere different you just get led up to these known, trivial situations that the music reminds you of.
When you finally make it to the pure form where milk, sugar and, God forbid, syrup are completely out of the picture, you will eventually find yourself wandering through the varietals, origins and brewing methods. A whole new world will have opened up to you. Be aware, though, as some of the choices you’ll make going forward will likely impact the rest of your life.
You find out that there’s velocity to coffee, and that each brewing method goes in a different slot of your day. I used to rush through the coffee shop in the morning and get a cup of the already-brewed first batch, only to have the time to glacially walk to class. Or I can go out in the middle of the afternoon with coworkers, and ask for a pour-over because it takes enough time for me to catch up with someone. Or I press an espresso after lunch because it’s quick and small enough it won’t interfere with my satiety.
Later you learn that some geographies can produce earthy, more chocolate-like tastes, others more fruity, sour finishes, and altogether they can be so creepily specific that they’ll record some sort of memory inside, just like food does. The exact flavor of my Hebrew classes on Wednesdays. Ethiopia. The one corresponding to my mornings in Miami. Nicaragua. The one I drink when I visit my parents. Brazil. And sadly we don’t control memory; the one I mistakenly ordered on a plane, the unimpressive one at a lavish hotel, or the various, torturous ones when I ran out of my subscription plan.
Anyway, all I’m saying is there are many ways to make memories in this life, but drowning them in 2% fat milk is just not going to give you very precise ones. There are many versions of freedom, but the best one is likely not to choose from almond, oat, or cow. There are braver fights for sugar to fight, just not against bitterness.
Some say pineapple doesn’t belong on a pizza. I don’t have a dog in this fight. For tomorrow morning, I’d like to believe in a new chance to create a moment: Colombia poured over. What will that possibly remind me of?
I take my coffee black, no sugar or milk on the side.
Winter, 2020. | https://medium.com/@danielfonsecayarochewsky/my-very-own-version-of-the-coffee-rant-da8f55baf4a9 | ['Daniel Fonseca Yarochewsky'] | 2020-12-14 02:58:53.730000+00:00 | ['Morning Routines', 'Rant', 'Coffee', 'Thoughts', 'Lifestyle'] |
Another year of digitalising global RFx communication. | Another year of digitalising global RFx communication.
What a year it has been. With only a few days left, we wanted to take the time to provide a short recap of our 2020 journey, and share some thoughts with you. Jack Macfarlane Follow Dec 21, 2020 · 5 min read
It’s fair to say we had our fair share of lady luck in 2020: as the world went “remote”, the demand for our digital services to help these users communicate digitally to get RFx transactions done, became greater and more urgent.
We also saw greater attention being paid by companies to transparency and reducing friction costs within the supply chain. Our digital services help break down informational asymmetry between businesses, moving all RFx communication from thousands of opaque emails to a transparent and collaborative auditable digital platform.
Our puritanical product focussed approach continued: we obsess over shifting the paradigm for industrial business from only having access to clunky overpriced legacy systems to one where they have access to the latest agile user-focussed ones. Disrupting the market is at our core, and it has started to pay dividends, with forward looking partners joining us on our journey.
Our team in London doubled down on efforts and made the most of 2020 trends to deliver a record year
Highlights in numbers.
More active businesses than ever: 318 businesses were digitally onboarded in 2020, +169.5% vs. 2019 and we are ending 2020 with 697 active businesses
318 businesses were digitally onboarded in 2020, +169.5% vs. 2019 and we are ending 2020 with 697 active businesses Higher $bn spend facilitated than ever: in 2020 US$941mm of spend was transacted digitally (+79.9% vs 2019)
in 2020 US$941mm of spend was transacted digitally (+79.9% vs 2019) Culture shift: when you look at the second half of 2020, $mm spend on the platform was +482.1% vs. the first half and +714.1% vs. same period in 2019 — demonstrating how strong the culture shift in adopting agile digital technology in a remote working environment has been this year
when you look at the second half of 2020, $mm spend on the platform was +482.1% vs. the first half and +714.1% vs. same period in 2019 — demonstrating how strong the culture shift in adopting agile digital technology in a remote working environment has been this year Happy partners: Our 100% agile approach delivered 52 product releases this year
Our 100% agile approach delivered 52 product releases this year Ultra fast adoption: 3 week timeline of “hello” to “we’ve signed” in December, a new record
3 week timeline of “hello” to “we’ve signed” in December, a new record Lightning fast time-to-value: <1 day timeline for onboarding an entire buyer business unit (also in December), a new record
Agile partners helped reduce our sales cycle.
9–12 months (!) was the status quo in terms of expectations for industrial businesses going from “hello” to “we’ve signed” when engaging with enterprise software (the “sales cycle”)
This ultimately meant high software costs, the need for businesses to be “locked in” on long term contracts, and no incentives for software to cater for the actual users
We thought this was bad for everyone, so in 2020 we challenged it and stopped engaging with clients who couldn’t make decisions commercially and adopt an agile digital philosophy
Our sales cycle reduced from 9 months in 2019 to 3 weeks in 2020 (a decrease of 91.7%!) and increasing our licensed partners with 169.5% since last year.
RFx communication processes were broken for other industries.
We started in the energy infrastructure industries, being the most security — and compliance sensitive with large volumes of RFx communication being done on emails
It became clearer during 2020 that other industries also had a strong need for transparent, efficient and compliant communication within their RFx communication processes
Renewable batteries, offshore wind, shipping, telecoms and a number of other industrial businesses became new partners of DeepStream getting the same ROI and value from our software
Here are just some of our partners we welcomed onto our platform in 2020:
A few of DeepStream’s 697 active businesses on platform
Our Power Users are driving our business.
We launched a new class of users who were highly engaged on the DeepStream platform and our biggest cheerleaders: DeepStream Power Users
Instead of spending large amounts of money on sales for our business (the legacy software approach), we strategically took the decision to instead invest it in our software product
The basis was this that even if it would come with a lag, making our users super happy would ultimately drive new business for us (as well as our users being super happy)
Additionally, our Power Users were particularly active in providing feedback to shape the future of RFx digitalisation
Product: we proved that elegant simplicity beats bloated functionality.
A premise of our philosophy is that users are human beings who deviate to the path of least resistance — and in enterprise communication this is why emails are so widespread
As such, we take the opposite approach to legacy software — instead of adding complexity and functionality we aim to build something as simple and user-friendly as possible
In 2020, our users provided some concrete data points on why our assumptions were correct:
A front runner in renewable energy partner went from ‘source to award’ in 1.5 hours
Another partner, a leader in global energy infrastructure services, onboarded 44 new users organically
373 vendors joined the platform hassle-free without any assistance from DeepStream
In continuing to make DeepStream easier to use than emails, we also released 52 product features (= 1 release every 2 weeks) — all of this delivered as part of ongoing subscriptions with no additional costs — and below are some which we are particularly proud of:
Line items module rebuilt with new automated totalling, new fields, and summary view for ease of comparison
module rebuilt with new automated totalling, new fields, and summary view for ease of comparison Digital clarifications register removes the need to waste time using an Excel file back and forth over email
register removes the need to waste time using an Excel file back and forth over email Templates to quickly create new requests with a fixed structure and standardise the format of requests across a company team
Elegant simplicity beats bloated functionality
Snapshot from our CEO.
It has been a bit of a crazy year for all of us, in lots of different ways. Whilst we have had the benefit of a very successful one, it’s important to pay our respects to the swathes of the business world who have been effectively culled by global restrictions. Frictionless trade between businesses is core to what we try to achieve at DeepStream, and it has been painful to see it being curtailed for so many in the global economy.
We are also seeing the effects of technology disrupting labour markets first hand. Whilst FANG (the four most prominent American tech stocks) rallying take the limelight, at an operational level we are seeing this transformation from the analysis we do for clients around their returns on digital capital employed in supply chain processes. With the increasing adoption of more agile products by traditional corporates, the lines between human and digital capital are set to be increasingly blurred. Expect tax on technology — either directly or indirectly via capital gains — in the next few years. It’s going to get choppier out there.
Lastly I wanted to thank our partners and users who have been brave enough to embark on this journey with us. Swapping well trodden manual processes for nascent digital ones requires a dose of faith. Faith which we at DeepStream will do everything we can to repay with lower transaction costs between businesses exchanging goods and services for money.
Yours,
Team at DeepStream Technologies | https://medium.com/deepstream-tech/another-year-of-digitising-global-rfx-communication-62b49e75e190 | ['Jack Macfarlane'] | 2021-01-18 14:03:30.934000+00:00 | ['Supply Chain', 'Digital Transformation', 'Supply Chain Management', 'Rfx', 'Deepstream'] |
The Turn | Repentance is a Beautiful Thing
The Turn
Repentance is a Beautiful Thing
Repentance gets a bad rap. We don’t repent when we’re feeling fine; we do it when confronted with the grim reality that yes, we were in the wrong. It is a kind of turn — the choice to stop moving toward an illicit destination and start moving toward the right one. It is the prodigal son retracing his steps to the father (Luke 15:17–19); it is the sheep being returned to the sheepfold (Matt. 18:12–14); it is how we gain back our brother (Matt. 18:15). But through all the discomfort, repentance is lovely in a way that’s so easy to miss. It is lovely for what it reveals, where it leads, and the presence it brings.
Faith, Given Form
Repentance doesn’t feel good. Not at first. It is often accompanied by exhaustion, grief or shame. But these are only ancillary to the beautiful core formed by its process. As the encrustations of pride and idolatry are burned away by a humble return to God, what remains is lovely. The humiliation of admission and reversal undo the social facade we so carefully construct and grant a glimpse into our hearts.
And in the act of return, our faith radiates with clarity, giving tangible form to our authentic trust in the invisible God.
Homeward Bound
Repentance is lovely not only for what it reveals, but also for that toward which it propels. It is the counter-narrative that speaks a better word to the Great Lie we once believed: that our deepest satisfaction and significance is waiting out there, ready for discovery.
As we hear and believe this truer story, we set our sights once again toward home. And as long as we point toward the horizon of our native land, hope blossoms within, for we know that we return not to the searing shame of a furious master, but the warm embrace of our Father’s goodness.
Inviting Jesus Inside
But the experience of this presence is not merely a future one. Almost incredibly, He is there at the moment of our repentance. This is not theological generalizing; it is a promise, secured by chapter and verse. We hear it binding up Jesus’ instructions concerning church discipline: where two or three gather in His name, He stands there with them (Matt. 18:19–20). While this certainly means He is present through the terrible reality of disciplinary exclusion, it also means that He is present in reconciliation and restoration.
We hear it also in the letter to Laodicea. Jesus stands outside when He should be inside, feasting with His people. Oh, how He should be inside! And yet sin has shut Him out. But Jesus stands and knocks. Patiently. Until the music is turned down and the door is unlatched.
And what do we find when we crack the door to behold Him who loved us and gave Himself up for us standing in the hallway of our hearts? A look of shock and surprise at the gross foolishness of our sin? The end of His shaking, extended finger thrust inches from our face in rage? No. We see His smile and hear Him say, “Now, how about dinner?” (Rev. 3:20).
The glory of the gospel is that it creates space for authentic and honest repentance. Christ knows our sin. He felt the judgment for each and every transgression we committed. He bore each one in love. And when we repent, He is there, nail-scarred hands and all. | https://thebob.medium.com/the-turn-a03f83cb7be9 | ['Bob Stevenson'] | 2019-06-11 19:33:18.408000+00:00 | ['Christianity', 'Gospel', 'Discipleship', 'Repentance'] |
This is How You Need to Pick the Right Metrics for Your Product | This article will provide definitions on what metrics are, a framework for categorizing them, and recommendations of four basic rules to set useful metrics by using real-life examples.
Show me the data
As a Product Manager, you might have been in this situation: you are in a middle of a meeting with C-level, and they want to know how the new feature you have been working on helped the company goals. You start explaining how it’s improving the user experience, making it much easier to use and that it will attract new customers, but Management is not impressed: they want numbers.
Photo by Luke Chesser on Unsplash
As the old controversial motto says:
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” — Peter Drucker
That’s when the importance of data and metrics come in to place.
What you will find in this article:
Definition of a metric
A real-life case of focusing on the wrong metric
Examples of Engagement and Growth metrics for companies such as Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube
Four basic rules to follow for having useful metrics
What is a metric
But let’s start by defining what a metric is.
If we look at Investopedia financial definition, we have that metrics are “measures of quantitative assessment commonly used for assessing, comparing, and tracking performance or production. Generally, a group of metrics will typically be used to build a dashboard that Management or analysts regularly review to maintain performance assessments, opinions, and business strategies”
In other words, metrics are numbers saying what is going on with your product.
You might also have heard of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) or Key Value Indicators (KVI) if you are an adept of the Evidence-Based Management from scrum.org. If you are working for a tech company, some examples of metrics such as Monthly active users, Returning users, Churn, App store reviews might be familiar to you.
Example of metrics:
Monthly active users (MAU) and all their variant such as Daily Active User (DAU)
Returning users
Impressions
Earned Media Value
Revenue
Anything quantifiable and useful to understand if your business is going in the right direction could be used as a metric. Metrics can vary a lot according to your industry, your business, and even the stage of your product.
Let’s say you just launched your new Android app: it’s an MVP, and you want to gather as much feedback as possible to reiterate and add value for the end-users. You focus on the number of downloads: you want your app to be seen by as many people as possible. After some time, you think: what’s the point of people downloading my app if they don’t end up using it. From concentrating on the “app download metric,” you switch to usage metrics such as “number of logins,” “time spent by day,” etc. Once you manage to get your users to play with your app and interact with it, you can focus on maximizing value. From “usage” metrics, you switch to “satisfaction/happiness” metrics such as Net Promoter Score (NPS). Having in mind that the switch from one metric to another doesn’t mean you should forget about the previous ones; you could focus on happiness but still track and care about downloads and usage.
If you focus on the wrong metrics — s#$ can happen & fast
I lived the experience of being in a startup where our primary metric (our KPI) was revenue. We would do any promotion to generate sales, promo-code would rain, we would sell at a loss reducing the price drastically to be competitive. What only mattered was this: increasing the revenue and showing that our market was big.
The only thing that matters was increasing our revenue (at any cost)
Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash
Until we got new investors that thought our business was old enough (meaning 2+ years in the startup world) to start thinking about making money. Our new goal: being profitable!
As profit became our main KPI, we had to drastically change our strategy since our primary revenue driver was making us lose money. We had to cut sales to improve our margins and our capacity to make money.
When our new KPI switched to profitability the company had to change their strategy drastically
So the hardest part about metrics is defining which one would be the best to point out if you are on the right track or not.
Your role as a Product Manager: defining success through metrics
If you are an adept of Scrum and familiar with the Product Owner role (sometimes described as an Agile Product Manager) you know that the primary responsibility is to “maximiz[e] the value of the product resulting from the work of the Development Team” (scrum.org)
As a Product Owner, if you want to be successful, you must define what you want to hit. You create a vision for your Product, you set up goals to achieve, and you define what success would look like in terms of metrics.
Let’s say you work at Twitter, and one of the forms you define success is by stickiness — if your users keep coming back and how relevant is your app for them. Data from your analytics team show that users who follow 10+ users are 40% more like to still be active in a month compare to users who don’t (they follow 0 to 9 users). As you want to increase stickiness, you might think of a new feature that encourages to follow users: maybe you could rethink the onboarding when a user creates an account and force them to follow a minimum of users to continue. Your new goal and metric could be “Decreasing by 20% the number of new users who follow less than ten users”.
Growth metrics and Engagement metrics are the most used in Tech companies
Metrics can be categorized in all sorts of ways: growth, engagement, retention, etc. If you look at most famous current Tech companies like Twitter, Facebook or Youtube they would mainly focus on 2 types: Growth metrics and Engagement metrics.
Categories of metrics:
Growth and activation
Engagement
Retention
User happiness
Revenue
Growth metrics are used to examine a company’s historical growth and hopefully provide clues for the future. (ycharts.com)
Engagement metrics are used to track specific behavior from the users with your product, measuring how the user interacts with your product.
If we look at concrete examples for the previously mentioned companies, we would have
Twitter
Twitter Growth metrics
Total new users per month, week, day
Monthly active users, daily active users
Activated users
Twitter Engagement metrics
Multiple logins per day
Time spent
# Tweets by users
# like, retweet, follow by users
# message sent
Youtube
Growth metrics
Monthly/daily active users
Total new users
Activated users
Engagement metrics
Video views (at least 30s)
Average viewing time
What makes a good metric:
Now that we have defined the most used metrics, let’s see what the steps to chose useful metrics are.
Those are simple rules to follow when setting up metrics:
Understandable
Rate or Ratio
Correlation
Changeable
Understandable: You should easily be able to explain the metrics; it has to be something simple.
Rate or ratio: The metric should be a portion of a more significant number. For example, at Airbnb, the total number of nights booked is a number too big. If we look into the average number of nights booked per person, then we get to a metric that is more insightful for the team.
Correlation: You must take into consideration the correlation when looking at metrics. Sometimes there is a pattern that you want to follow, but in reality, assuming things that are not true. A simple example is the number of deaths in the swimming pool and the sales of electric fans. They follow the same pattern, but they are not correlated to each other: the common denominator is that they both happen in summer.
Changeable: You need to be able to have an impact on your metric. The metric has to be able to change; if no, there is no point in tracking it. Let’s say you are an e-commerce platform where your users only log in once a month to check the offers. It might be unlikely that you managed for them to connect more often. What you should focus on instead is trying to make them spend more every time they come to your e-commerce. | https://productcoalition.com/this-is-how-you-need-to-pick-the-right-metrics-for-your-product-cd817474a578 | ['Eduardo Mignot'] | 2021-01-17 20:23:34.477000+00:00 | ['Metrics', 'Kpi', 'Okr', 'Product Management', 'Analytics'] |
What Big Pharma Does Not Want You to Know | Health
What Big Pharma Does Not Want You to Know
Placebo or nocebo effects are nothing when you see what is really going on
Photo by George Pagan III on Unsplash
We all know about the placebo effect. Once we get the prescription, we are ready. It does not matter if it is the real drug or just an inert substance. Just take it and we will enjoy great health.
I love the placebo effect. Makes you want to give up all your meds. Go on, you will be fine.
We all know about the power of having an injection which is supposed to fix the backache. Whether it is a steroid or a fake substance, we will feel immediately better. If you want the inert substance you will need a fake prescription, though.
The trendy word at the moment is the nocebo effect. This is the twin brother of placebo and they make a great team. This time, the mischief-makers are out and you know that this darn drug (whether fake or real) is just going to cause you so many side effects that really, you would prefer not to take it at all!
So placebo and nocebo make a great team. In spite of them, Big Pharma seems to be doing very well. The nos have it.
Here are the other terms that nobody is talking about but there is a lot of secret research that Big Pharma does not want you to know about.
Chocebo effect:- Just eat chocolate and throw out the anti-depressants. Why do you think there are no massive research studies on this wonderfully happy sweet little thing? Or if there are, they have not been published.
Meatocebo effect:- Worried about antibiotics? Lots of antibiotics in the meat we eat. Just eat more and more beef burgers and you will be fine.
Trickcebo effect:- This is officially called a “random clinical trial” and all the subjects were drugged. They thought it was a sort of trick or treatment and they fell for it. They weren’t even paid!
Dopaminecebo effect:- No need for mood lifters. Just party more!
Vaxxcebo effect:- These people will live forever and ever, unfortunately. By the way, we now know that the Russian COVID-19 vaccine is the best one of all. Soviet.
Fatcebo effect:- Good fats, bad fats, and trans fats. You prefer a gender-free world so don’t fall for that bigotry.
HDLcebo effect:- Some meds are cholesterol intolerant so your bad or good cholesterol face discrimination. You don’t want to be like a fat alien, do you? They are also called extra- cholesterols.
By the way, Big Pharma has strenuously denied that all their statins are manufactured on Staten Island!
Cardiocebo effect:- Your heart and soul are free to do anything they want. Avoid the cardio meds because they affect your veins and vents. They might give you a cardiac arrest.
Finally, I am looking for ways to be a whistleblower on all these so-called drug trials which have never been published.
So, if you have fallen for the trick or treatment malarkey, just let me know! | https://medium.com/the-haven/what-big-pharma-does-not-want-you-to-know-2b37f8a33912 | ['Robert W. Locke'] | 2020-11-16 20:34:02.329000+00:00 | ['Satire', 'Big Pharma', 'Medicine', 'Health', 'Humor'] |
Engineering for Equity | Engineering for Equity
Software Engineering at Google
Editor’s Note: In order to be an exceptional engineer, you need to build products that drive positive outcomes for the broadest base of people. In this piece, Demma Rodriguez, Head of Equity Engineering at Google, discusses the unique responsibilities involved in designing products for a broad base of users. We’d love to hear from you about what you think about this piece.
In this piece, we’ll discuss the unique responsibilities of an engineer when designing products for a broad base of users. Further, we evaluate how an organization, by embracing diversity, can design systems that work for everyone, and avoid perpetuating harm against our users.
As new as the field of software engineering is, we’re newer still at understanding the impact it has on underrepresented people and diverse societies. We did not write this piece because we know all the answers. We do not. In fact, understanding how to engineer products that empower and respect all our users is still something Google is learning to do. We have had many public failures in protecting our most vulnerable users, and so we are writing this piece because the path forward to more equitable products begins with evaluating our own failures and encouraging growth.
We are also writing this piece because of the increasing imbalance of power between those who make development decisions that impact the world and those who simply must accept and live with those decisions that sometimes disadvantage already marginalized communities globally. It is important to share and reflect on what we’ve learned so far with the next generation of software engineers. It is even more important that we help influence the next generation of engineers to be better than we are today.
Just reading this piece means that you likely aspire to be an exceptional engineer. You want to solve problems. You aspire to build products that drive positive outcomes for the broadest base of people, including people who are the most difficult to reach. To do this, you will need to consider how the tools you build will be leveraged to change the trajectory of humanity, hopefully for the better.
Bias Is the Default
When engineers do not focus on users of different nationalities, ethnicities, races, genders, ages, socioeconomic statuses, abilities, and belief systems, even the most talented staff will inadvertently fail their users. Such failures are often unintentional; all people have certain biases, and social scientists have recognized over the past several decades that most people exhibit unconscious bias, enforcing and promulgating existing stereotypes. Unconscious bias is insidious and often more difficult to mitigate than intentional acts of exclusion. Even when we want to do the right thing, we might not recognize our own biases. By the same token, our organizations must also recognize that such bias exists and work to address it in their workforces, product development, and user outreach.
Because of bias, Google has at times failed to represent users equitably within their products, with launches over the past several years that did not focus enough on underrepresented groups. Many users attribute our lack of awareness in these cases to the fact that our engineering population is mostly male, mostly White or Asian, and certainly not representative of all the communities that use our products. The lack of representation of such users in our workforce¹ means that we often do not have the requisite diversity to understand how the use of our products can affect underrepresented or vulnerable users.
Case Study: Google Misses the Mark on Racial Inclusion
In 2015, software engineer Jacky Alciné pointed out² that the image recognition algorithms in Google Photos were classifying his black friends as “gorillas.” Google was slow to respond to these mistakes and incomplete in addressing them.
What caused such a monumental failure? Several things:
Image recognition algorithms depend on being supplied a “proper” (often meaning “complete”) dataset. The photo data fed into Google’s image recognition algorithm was clearly incomplete. In short, the data did not represent the population.
Google itself (and the tech industry in general) did not (and does not) have much black representation,³ and that affects decisions subjective in the design of such algorithms and the collection of such datasets. The unconscious bias of the organization itself likely led to a more representative product being left on the table.
Google’s target market for image recognition did not adequately include such underrepresented groups. Google’s tests did not catch these mistakes; as a result, our users did, which both embarrassed Google and harmed our users.
As late as 2018, Google still had not adequately addressed the underlying problem.⁴
In this example, our product was inadequately designed and executed, failing to properly consider all racial groups, and as a result, failed our users and caused Google bad press. Other technology suffers from similar failures: autocomplete can return offensive or racist results. Google’s Ad system could be manipulated to show racist or offensive ads. YouTube might not catch hate speech, though it is technically outlawed on that platform.
In all of these cases, the technology itself is not really to blame. Autocomplete, for example, was not designed to target users or to discriminate. But it was also not resilient enough in its design to exclude discriminatory language that is considered hate speech. As a result, the algorithm returned results that caused harm to our users. The harm to Google itself should also be obvious: reduced user trust and engagement with the company. For example, Black, Latinx, and Jewish applicants could lose faith in Google as a platform or even as an inclusive environment itself, therefore undermining Google’s goal of improving representation in hiring.
How could this happen? After all, Google hires technologists with impeccable education and/or professional experience — exceptional programmers who write the best code and test their work. “Build for everyone” is a Google brand statement, but the truth is that we still have a long way to go before we can claim that we do. One way to address these problems is to help the software engineering organization itself look like the populations for whom we build products.
Understanding the Need for Diversity
At Google, we believe that being an exceptional engineer requires that you also focus on bringing diverse perspectives into product design and implementation. It also means that Googlers responsible for hiring or interviewing other engineers must contribute to building a more representative workforce. For example, if you interview other engineers for positions at your company, it is important to learn how biased outcomes happen in hiring. There are significant prerequisites for understanding how to anticipate harm and prevent it. To get to the point where we can build for everyone, we first must understand our representative populations. We need to encourage engineers to have a wider scope of educational training.
The first order of business is to disrupt the notion that as a person with a computer science degree and/or work experience, you have all the skills you need to become an exceptional engineer. A computer science degree is often a necessary foundation. However, the degree alone (even when coupled with work experience) will not make you an engineer. It is also important to disrupt the idea that only people with computer science degrees can design and build products. Today, most programmers do have a computer science degree; they are successful at building code, establishing theories of change, and applying methodologies for problem solving. However, as the aforementioned examples demonstrate, this approach is insufficient for inclusive and equitable engineering.
Engineers should begin by focusing all work within the framing of the complete ecosystem they seek to influence. At minimum, they need to understand the population demographics of their users. Engineers should focus on people who are different than themselves, especially people who might attempt to use their products to cause harm. The most difficult users to consider are those who are disenfranchised by the processes and the environment in which they access technology. To address this challenge, engineering teams need to be representative of their existing and future users. In the absence of diverse representation on engineering teams, individual engineers need to learn how to build for all users.
Building Multicultural Capacity
One mark of an exceptional engineer is the ability to understand how products can advantage and disadvantage different groups of human beings. Engineers are expected to have technical aptitude, but they should also have the discernment to know when to build something and when not to. Discernment includes building the capacity to identify and reject features or products that drive adverse outcomes. This is a lofty and difficult goal, because there is an enormous amount of individualism that goes into being a high-performing engineer. Yet to succeed, we must extend our focus beyond our own communities to the next billion users or to current users who might be disenfranchised or left behind by our products.
Over time, you might build tools that billions of people use daily — tools that influence how people think about the value of human lives, tools that monitor human activity, and tools that capture and persist sensitive data, such as images of their children and loved ones, as well as other types of sensitive data. As an engineer, you might wield more power than you realize: the power to literally change society. It’s critical that on your journey to becoming an exceptional engineer, you understand the innate responsibility needed to exercise power without causing harm. The first step is to recognize the default state of your bias caused by many societal and educational factors. After you recognize this, you’ll be able to consider the often-forgotten use cases or users who can benefit or be harmed by the products you build.
The industry continues to move forward, building new use cases for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning at an ever-increasing speed. To stay competitive, we drive toward scale and efficacy in building a high-talent engineering and technology workforce. Yet we need to pause and consider the fact that today, some people have the ability to design the future of technology and others do not. We need to understand whether the software systems we build will eliminate the potential for entire populations to experience shared prosperity and provide equal access to technology.
Historically, companies faced with a decision between completing a strategic objective that drives market dominance and revenue and one that potentially slows momentum toward that goal have opted for speed and shareholder value. This tendency is exacerbated by the fact that many companies value individual performance and excellence, yet often fail to effectively drive accountability on product equity across all areas. Focusing on underrepresented users is a clear opportunity to promote equity. To continue to be competitive in the technology sector, we need to learn to engineer for global equity.
Today, we worry when companies design technology to scan, capture, and identify people walking down the street. We worry about privacy and how governments might use this information now and in the future. Yet most technologists do not have the requisite perspective of underrepresented groups to understand the impact of racial variance in facial recognition or to understand how applying AI can drive harmful and inaccurate results.
Currently, AI-driven facial-recognition software continues to disadvantage people of color or ethnic minorities. Our research is not comprehensive enough and does not include a wide enough range of different skin tones. We cannot expect the output to be valid if both the training data and those creating the software represent only a small subsection of people. In those cases, we should be willing to delay development in favor of trying to get more complete and accurate data, and a more comprehensive and inclusive product.
Data science itself is challenging for humans to evaluate, however. Even when we do have representation, a training set can still be biased and produce invalid results. A study completed in 2016 found that more than 117 million American adults are in a law enforcement facial recognition database.⁵ Due to the disproportionate policing of Black communities and disparate outcomes in arrests, there could be racially biased error rates in utilizing such a database in facial recognition. Although the software is being developed and deployed at ever-increasing rates, the independent testing is not. To correct for this egregious misstep, we need to have the integrity to slow down and ensure that our inputs contain as little bias as possible. Google now offers statistical training within the context of AI to help ensure that datasets are not intrinsically biased.
Therefore, shifting the focus of your industry experience to include more comprehensive, multicultural, race and gender studies education is not only your responsibility, but also the responsibility of your employer. Technology companies must ensure that their employees are continually receiving professional development and that this development is comprehensive and multidisciplinary. The requirement is not that one individual take it upon themselves to learn about other cultures or other demographics alone. Change requires that each of us, individually or as leaders of teams, invest in continuous professional development that builds not just our software development and leadership skills, but also our capacity to understand the diverse experiences throughout humanity.
Making Diversity Actionable
Systemic equity and fairness are attainable if we are willing to accept that we are all accountable for the systemic discrimination we see in the technology sector. We are accountable for the failures in the system. Deferring or abstracting away personal accountability is ineffective, and depending on your role, it could be irresponsible. It is also irresponsible to fully attribute dynamics at your specific company or within your team to the larger societal issues that contribute to inequity. A favorite line among diversity proponents and detractors alike goes something like this: “We are working hard to fix (insert systemic discrimination topic), but accountability is hard. How do we combat (insert hundreds of years) of historical discrimination?” This line of inquiry is a detour to a more philosophical or academic conversation and away from focused efforts to improve work conditions or outcomes. Part of building multicultural capacity requires a more comprehensive understanding of how systems of inequality in society impact the workplace, especially in the technology sector.
If you are an engineering manager working on hiring more people from underrepresented groups, deferring to the historical impact of discrimination in the world is a useful academic exercise. However, it is critical to move beyond the academic conversation to a focus on quantifiable and actionable steps that you can take to drive equity and fairness. For example, as a hiring software engineer manager, you’re accountable for ensuring that your candidate slates are balanced. Are there women or other underrepresented groups in the pool of candidates’ reviews? After you hire someone, what opportunities for growth have you provided, and is the distribution of opportunities equitable? Every technology lead or software engineering manager has the means to augment equity on their teams. It is important that we acknowledge that, although there are significant systemic challenges, we are all part of the system. It is our problem to fix.
Reject Singular Approaches
We cannot perpetuate solutions that present a single philosophy or methodology for fixing inequity in the technology sector. Our problems are complex and multifactorial. Therefore, we must disrupt singular approaches to advancing representation in the workplace, even if they are promoted by people we admire or who have institutional power.
One singular narrative held dear in the technology industry is that lack of representation in the workforce can be addressed solely by fixing the hiring pipelines. Yes, that is a fundamental step, but that is not the immediate issue we need to fix. We need to recognize systemic inequity in progression and retention while simultaneously focusing on more representative hiring and educational disparities across lines of race, gender, and socioeconomic and immigration status, for example.
In the technology industry, many people from underrepresented groups are passed over daily for opportunities and advancement. Attrition among Black+ Google employees outpaces attrition from all other groups and confounds progress on representation goals. If we want to drive change and increase representation, we need to evaluate whether we’re creating an ecosystem in which all aspiring engineers and other technology professionals can thrive.
Fully understanding an entire problem space is critical to determining how to fix it. This holds true for everything from a critical data migration to the hiring of a representative workforce. For example, if you are an engineering manager who wants to hire more women, don’t just focus on building a pipeline. Focus on other aspects of the hiring, retention, and progression ecosystem and how inclusive it might or might not be to women. Consider whether your recruiters are demonstrating the ability to identify strong candidates who are women as well as men. If you manage a diverse engineering team, focus on psychological safety and invest in increasing multicultural capacity on the team so that new team members feel welcome.
A common methodology today is to build for the majority use case first, leaving improvements and features that address edge cases for later. But this approach is flawed; it gives users who are already advantaged in access to technology a head start, which increases inequity. Relegating the consideration of all user groups to the point when design has been nearly completed is to lower the bar of what it means to be an excellent engineer. Instead, by building in inclusive design from the start and raising development standards for development to make tools delightful and accessible for people who struggle to access technology, we enhance the experience for all users.
Designing for the user who is least like you is not just wise, it’s a best practice. There are pragmatic and immediate next steps that all technologists, regardless of domain, should consider when developing products that avoid disadvantaging or underrepresenting users. It begins with more comprehensive user-experience research. This research should be done with user groups that are multilingual and multicultural and that span multiple countries, socioeconomic class, abilities, and age ranges. Focus on the most difficult or least represented use case first.
Challenge Established Processes
Challenging yourself to build more equitable systems goes beyond designing more inclusive product specifications. Building equitable systems sometimes means challenging established processes that drive invalid results.
Consider a recent case evaluated for equity implications. At Google, several engineering teams worked to build a global hiring requisition system. The system supports both external hiring and internal mobility. The engineers and product managers involved did a great job of listening to the requests of what they considered to be their core user group: recruiters. The recruiters were focused on minimizing wasted time for hiring managers and applicants, and they presented the development team with use cases focused on scale and efficiency for those people. To drive efficiency, the recruiters asked the engineering team to include a feature that would highlight performance ratings — specifically lower ratings — to the hiring manager and recruiter as soon as an internal transfer expressed interest in a job.
On its face, expediting the evaluation process and helping jobseekers save time is a great goal. So where is the potential equity concern? The following equity questions were raised:
Are developmental assessments a predictive measure of performance?
Are the performance assessments being presented to prospective managers free of individual bias?
Are performance assessment scores standardized across organizations?
If the answer to any of these questions is “no,” presenting performance ratings could still drive inequitable, and therefore invalid, results.
When an exceptional engineer questioned whether past performance was in fact predictive of future performance, the reviewing team decided to conduct a thorough review. In the end, it was determined that candidates who had received a poor performance rating were likely to overcome the poor rating if they found a new team. In fact, they were just as likely to receive a satisfactory or exemplary performance rating as candidates who had never received a poor rating. In short, performance ratings are indicative only of how a person is performing in their given role at the time they are being evaluated. Ratings, although an important way to measure performance during a specific period, are not predictive of future performance and should not be used to gauge readiness for a future role or qualify an internal candidate for a different team. (They can, however, be used to evaluate whether an employee is properly or improperly slotted on their current team; therefore, they can provide an opportunity to evaluate how to better support an internal candidate moving forward.)
This analysis definitely took up significant project time, but the positive trade-off was a more equitable internal mobility process.
Values Versus Outcomes
Google has a strong track record of investing in hiring. As the previous example illustrates, we also continually evaluate our processes in order to improve equity and inclusion. More broadly, our core values are based on respect and an unwavering commitment to a diverse and inclusive workforce. Yet, year after year, we have also missed our mark on hiring a representative workforce that reflects our users around the globe. The struggle to improve our equitable outcomes persists despite the policies and programs in place to help support inclusion initiatives and promote excellence in hiring and progression. The failure point is not in the values, intentions, or investments of the company, but rather in the application of those policies at the implementation level.
Old habits are hard to break. The users you might be used to designing for today — the ones you are used to getting feedback from — might not be representative of all the users you need to reach. We see this play out frequently across all kinds of products, from wearables that do not work for women’s bodies to video-conferencing software that does not work well for people with darker skin tones.
So, what’s the way out?
1. Take a hard look in the mirror. At Google, we have the brand slogan, “Build For Everyone.” How can we build for everyone when we do not have a representative workforce or engagement model that centralizes community feedback first? We can’t. The truth is that we have at times very publicly failed to protect our most vulnerable users from racist, antisemitic, and homophobic content.
2. Don’t build for everyone. Build with everyone. We are not building for everyone yet. That work does not happen in a vacuum, and it certainly doesn’t happen when the technology is still not representative of the population as a whole. That said, we can’t pack up and go home. So how do we build for everyone? We build with our users. We need to engage our users across the spectrum of humanity and be intentional about putting the most vulnerable communities at the center of our design. They should not be an afterthought.
3. Design for the user who will have the most difficulty using your product. Building for those with additional challenges will make the product better for everyone. Another way of thinking about this is: don’t trade equity for short-term velocity.
4. Don’t assume equity; measure equity throughout your systems. Recognize that decision makers are also subject to bias and might be undereducated about the causes of inequity. You might not have the expertise to identify or measure the scope of an equity issue. Catering to a single userbase might mean disenfranchising another; these trade-offs can be difficult to spot and impossible to reverse. Partner with individuals or teams that are subject matter experts in diversity, equity, and inclusion.
5. Change is possible. The problems we’re facing with technology today, from surveillance to disinformation to online harassment, are genuinely overwhelming. We can’t solve these with the failed approaches of the past or with just the skills we already have. We need to change.
Stay Curious, Push Forward
The path to equity is long and complex. However, we can and should transition from simply building tools and services to growing our understanding of how the products we engineer impact humanity. Challenging our education, influencing our teams and managers, and doing more comprehensive user research are all ways to make progress. Although change is uncomfortable and the path to high performance can be painful, it is possible through collaboration and creativity.
Lastly, as future exceptional engineers, we should focus first on the users most impacted by bias and discrimination. Together, we can work to accelerate progress by focusing on Continuous Improvement and owning our failures. Becoming an engineer is an involved and continual process. The goal is to make changes that push humanity forward without further disenfranchising the disadvantaged. As future exceptional engineers, we have faith that we can prevent future failures in the system.
Conclusion
Developing software, and developing a software organization, is a team effort. As a software organization scales, it must respond and adequately design for its user base, which in the interconnected world of computing today involves everyone, locally and around the world. More effort must be made to make both the development teams that design software and the products that they produce reflect the values of such a diverse and encompassing set of users. And, if an engineering organization wants to scale, it cannot ignore underrepresented groups; not only do such engineers from these groups augment the organization itself, they provide unique and necessary perspectives for the design and implementation of software that is truly useful to the world at large.
Footnotes
[1]: Google’s 2019 Diversity Report.
[2]: @jackyalcine. 2015. “Google Photos, Y’all Fucked up. My Friend’s Not a Gorilla.” Twitter, June 29, 2015. https://twitter.com/jackyalcine/status/615329515909156865.
[3]: Many reports in 2018–2019 pointed to a lack of diversity across tech. Some notables include the National Center for Women & Information Technology, and Diversity in Tech.
[4]: Tom Simonite, “When It Comes to Gorillas, Google Photos Remains Blind,” Wired, January 11, 2018.
[5]: Stephen Gaines and Sara Williams. “The Perpetual Lineup: Unregulated Police Face Recognition in America.” Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law, October 18, 2016. | https://medium.com/oreillymedia/engineering-for-equity-7e3aca2cdc38 | ["O'Reilly Media"] | 2020-12-08 16:05:22.836000+00:00 | ['Equity', 'Software Engineering'] |
Yousaf and Feroza | Yousef’s voice mingled with the other voices in the bazaar, and although he knew he needed to shout louder to be heard, he didn’t. He called out to customers half heartedly, gesturing at the beautiful rug he had hung over his shoulder for display, as he sat at the door of his shop, waiting to attract the attention of buyers.
As he listened to the voices of the bazaar drown his own out, he slowly fell into a daze and found himself thinking about Feroza, his beautiful, lovely, strong Feroza. How she would sit on the floor, and tie each knot on the wooden loom oh so carefully while humming softly. Her beautiful long braided hair falling on her back, she would glance at him from time to time and smile, and his heart would flutter.
Days and nights passed, and his Feroza would sit at the loom, humming and smiling and knotting, while Yousef would watch her in awe. Finally, the rug was completed one day and she handed it to him, and proudly sent him off to the shop where he could sell it.
𝘖𝘩 𝘍𝘦𝘳𝘰𝘻𝘢, 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘐 𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘳𝘶𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘰𝘯𝘦? He thought to himself, sighing. 𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘐 𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘮𝘢𝘥𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘣𝘦𝘢𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘧𝘶𝘭 𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘧𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘳𝘴’ 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘵? 𝘞𝘩𝘰 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘳𝘶𝘨?
Yousef was suddenly shaken out of his daze by the loud voice of the man in front of him, leering at the rug and asking “How much?”
Yousef was silent for a few moments, observing the leering man with disgust.
“It’s not for sale”, he finally responded. “It’s just a showpiece. I’ll show you more designs inside,” he said, gesturing towards the inside of his store.
The man scoffed and walked away, shaking his head and muttering angrily under his breath.
Yousef sighed, feeling a bit relieved. He adjusted the rug on his shoulder shouting half-heartedly once again, his voice getting lost amongst the other shopkeepers in the bazaar, and hoped that his voice wouldn’t reach anyone so that he could keep the rug for just another day. | https://medium.com/illumination/yousaf-and-feroza-f7d38461c738 | ['Khalil Ahmad Kakar'] | 2020-12-25 18:27:10.237000+00:00 | ['Lovestory', 'Life', 'Fiction', 'Love', 'Fiction Writing'] |
Motification Tribe — Top 3 Hot Bids On Rarible | What are NFT’s? — Non-fungible tokens are not at all easy to explain. It’s like explaining “what is mp3”. It’s a bit wider thing for all of us. You can bid for NFT’s on platforms like Rarible.
Here, this week top five “HOT BIDS” on Rarible are: —
Cryptables x Neon | Series 1 — Card 1 — “Corn Cassette” by Creator named “Neon”
The creator is living on this platform for approximately 28 weeks now. Also, the account shows a ‘tick mark’ so the creator is a verified user. The latest work of Neon is this NFT on Bitcoin dedicated to the dreamer of dreamer none other than ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’.
Image source: Rarible
2. Taste By Rariboy
The owner recently joined the platform. The latest masterpiece NFT is inspired by the power of “Black Excellence” by Tyga(creator) and open for bidding.
Image source: Rarible
3. CryptoCupcake #001 By SnaileXpress
The owner of CryptoCupcake NFT is SnaileXpress but its creator is Roger Kilimanjaro. The owner is living on Rarible for over 3+ days now and have present a number of amazing NFT’s in video format(mp4)
Image source: Rarible
We have covered the top 3 “HOT BIDS” NFT’s on Rarible.
Author Bio: My name is Sushant Gandhi. I am NFT Blogger. I have an interest in cryptocurrencies, books, music and gaming. You can join the Motification Tribe too. | https://medium.com/@sushantgandhi18991/motification-tribe-top-3hot-bids-on-rarible-77f86db62303 | ['Sushant Gandhi'] | 2021-02-23 09:39:26.205000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Cryptography', 'Crypto', 'Cryptocurrency News', 'Cryptocurrency Investment'] |
European community organizers respond to crisis | Participants in an online forum about organizing in the crisis.
EDITOR’S NOTE:
The following is from an October panel discussion organized by the European Community Organizing Network (ECON) as part of an on-going dialogue between organizers and members of the European philanthropic community. In April, ECON also organized a pair of sessions for organizers to think strategically about response to crisis. A write-up of that session can be found in this report.
This discussion was moderated by Romy Krämer of the Guerrilla Foundation. The text has been edited for length and clarity.
How has European community organizing evolved over the last year?
Dagmara Kubik: We started as organizers working with neighborhoods. But we realized that we needed to start working with concrete organizations that are taking up specific issues. For example, we started working in the area of climate, building relationships with movements in that space. In Poland, there are a lot of civic groups fighting stuff, protesting, but then they go home. Organizing can fill this gap, it can bring people together to do strategic work. Last year we started training movements and NGO’s to use organizing in their work. This started small, but a big change this year is how this work has grown. This year we are now organizing trainings on Zoom with 70 people on the call.
Maroš Chmelik: This last year was hell, but presented lots of opportunities. We started to think about scaling up in Slovakia. The questions I keep asking our organizers is what can we do so that the communities where we are not working will still benefit from our organizing? What kind of issues do we need take on with our communities to attack the systematic gaps? We should not just work with one Roma community that is lacking access to water — we need to go deeper. How many other communities are facing this, what are the systematic reasons for this? We want to take concrete issues and lift them up to things we can address at the national level.
Organizers in Slovakia showed up for their communities in the pandemic.
But…COVID raised so many issues that we needed to tackle right away. As organizers our role is to constantly monitor the situation and see what is changing. When we are working with vulnerable communities we still needed to be connected with them off line. However, we also needed to take care of our organizers. Because if we lose our organizers in this moment of crisis we lose the relationships and the connections they have.
“We trained others in the specific process of organizing: listen, build leadership, strategize, build an action plan. This first response to the crisis started to show results on a hyper-local level.”
Moussa Amine Sylla: It has been a challenging year. In North London where I work, we became part of a network of social action hubs. We trained others in the specific process of organizing: listen, build leadership, strategize, build an action plan. This first response to the crisis started to show results on a hyper-local level. People started organizing at street level around getting vulnerable people access to food, and we galvanized this energy organically. In this lockdown our local authority was absent. They are all professionals, they were all on home-work, and we were on the front line.
Ildikó Bárányi: If you are asking if there was an improvement in the environment for community organizing in Hungary over the last year, the answer is no. But in this crisis we have seen opportunities. I observed that in this situation we can show how important organizers are for the community. We are helping them practically. But charity is not our core business. We noticed how info is missing from the communities where we work — especially in marginalized communities. So we started printing out local info and posting the info around these areas. We are now enlarging this work to 60 places around Hungary. Through all these actions community organizers proved to be very useful to the community, and this proved to be a positive side of the crisis.
“As organizers it is important for us to be present, to think about what we can do, but not put pressure on ourselves that we are not doing enough. We need to take small steps. Stay calm. We need to continue to support our local groups to maintain their work even as the crisis is all around them.”
Vera Turcanu Spatari: During the lockdown in Romania we started to reach out to our local civic groups that we work with. We moved some stuff online, but not all of it could be transferred online. In September, we had local elections, and we decided to organize a candidate forum. We met with the top five candidates. There were 17 groups that helped organize the event and they helped shape the narrative of the forum. As organizers it is important for us to be present, to think about what we can do, but not put pressure on ourselves that we are not doing enough. We need to take small steps. Stay calm. We need to continue to support our local groups to maintain their work even as the crisis is all around them.
How does this work of mutual aid transition into community and political power?
Maroš: In our case, it was not a question of whether to provide humanitarian aid, but to what extent. As organizers we had to step out and get back to organizing. We pivoted back to working with the leaders in those communities. In times of crisis the issues in marginalized communities are even worse, so as organizers we had to find ways to move from the charity work and get back to pushing on the officials. If you did your homework in the community correctly, if you mapped who are the leaders, then you had the structure in place.
Organizers in Silesia, Poland organizing around climate and a Just Transition.
Dagmara: In our case, keeping some of our groups alive was a huge success in this period. That they would survive was not so obvious at the beginning of the crisis. But our organizers made the phone calls. They made sure the meetings happened. They went to leaders’ homes to help them connect online. Those actions meant we still have a group. Without that, we would be starting from zero when it comes to building power.
“We need to change stuff at the system level. Of course, they accuse us of ‘doing politics.’ But there is a difference. We are not doing work on behalf of a party. We are doing ‘public politics.’ To make these changes, we need to move legislation, and we need to pressure decision makers.”
Ildiko: We need to change stuff at the system level. Of course, they accuse us of “doing politics.” But there is a difference. We are not doing work on behalf of a party. We are doing “public politics.” To make these changes, we need to move legislation, and we need to pressure decision makers. In the elections last year in Hungary, local opposition won in many places. It turned out that many community organizers shifted over to becoming mayors and vice mayors in places. This can happen, and it is a very interesting shift, but is different than the public politics that we are doing in our local communities.
What successful frames are you using to orient the people you are working with to come out of this crisis stronger?
Dagmara: For us, COVID was a chance to experience our organizing differently. It was not all about pressure and action, in this period it was about holding the community together. It would have been so easy for our climate group to fall apart, but instead we were in a position to talk with our folks about the fact that COVID and climate have the same root cause. We pointed out the conditions in coal mines and how those are spreading COVID. We put that on the public agenda. At the same time, the government started to focus on closing coal mines. This was a very good time to start the conversation in Silesia about a Just Transition. People are now gathered around this issue, and the pandemic created this opening.
“Our organizing created the infrastructure where we can respond to crisis immediately, not react, and deal with local authorities as equals.”
Vera: Some of the work we were able to do was possible because there were local groups activated around other issues. Because of that work, we had developed relationships and identified local leaders. This fits into a bigger movement. Our organizing created the infrastructure where we can respond to crisis immediately, not react, and deal with local authorities as equals. ||| | https://medium.com/@stahughes/european-community-organizers-respond-to-crisis-bc5fdbc0b081 | ['Steve Hughes'] | 2020-12-07 08:44:33.704000+00:00 | ['Climate Action', 'Civicspace', 'Civic Engagement', 'Community Organizing', 'Community Organising'] |
The (Probable) Story Behind the Tesla / Maxwell Deal — 5 minute charging. | Maybe not to the stars, but a 5 min charge? Even better.
A week ago, Maxwell Technologies announced that they were being acquired by Tesla for $218MM. That’s a 55% premium on what the market thought the company was worth. In the most basic sense, this means that Tesla isn’t buying the business (i.e., Maxwell’s current customers or probably even products), they’re buying the technology.
The thing that surprises me, is that no one is talking about the most likely reason why.
Yes, this is speculation, but if I’m right, it’s the most exciting thing to happen in transportation since the Model T.
OK, so, some background. Tesla, as you know makes electric cars. Electric cars suck because you have to spend about an hour every 300mi charging them up. There are some people working on this (Porsche is all excited about their fast charging), but these efforts are largely meaningless. Charging a chemical storage battery will always involve a chemical reaction. These take time, and there’s a limit to how much they can be sped up. They (probably) won’t ever be as fast as filling up a tank with gas.
Maxwell technologies makes ultracapacitors. These are energy storage devices that charge quickly. They have numerous drawbacks, they don’t hold their charge for terribly long, and they have a low energy density. (Sidebar: energy is measured in kW, whereas power is energy over time measured in kWh ).
So, if you think about the implications here, this kinda sucks. Batteries will always be slower than just transporting energy, since you’re converting the energy, and ultracapacitors probably won’t ever be a workable long-term storage device.
Everyone has been saying that Tesla is going to switch to solid-state batteries. Maybe, but no time soon. I think that Tesla’s real plan here is to not try to fight the time that batteries take to charge, but instead to take the charger with you.
Imagine a car with a traditional chemical storage battery but that also has an ultracapacitor. Theoretically, you plug in for the minute or two that it would take the ultracapacitor to charge, and then you unplug. Normally, now you could access the energy in the UC to drive, but what if we use the ultracapacitor to charge the battery instead.
Now you’ve got a system where you get the long(er) storage life and higher energy density of a chemical battery, but you get the benefits of the fast charge of the capacitor.
My guess is that a system like this could result in an EV that charges as fast, or faster than a gas vehicle, and certainly much much faster than any other EV that’s anywhere near the market. This is probably why we haven’t heard much about Supercharger V3 lately, even though everyone has been crowing about how fast they charge their cars.
One major caveat — the power density of ultracapacitors currently on the market (and in academic literature) is an order of magnitude lower than what would be needed to achieve a plan like what I describe above. However, it is completely possible that a breakthrough like that has already happened within Maxwell Technologies, and that’s what they’re selling on.
Tesla doesn’t seem to be the sort of company to invest in pure research — they’re more about putting together technologies that already exist to make great products (they’re more like Apple than Google that way — and yes, Autopilot is a notable exception). Given that, I’m going to further guess that this kind of tech is a lot closer to market than anyone thinks. I wouldn’t be surprised if the 2020 Roadster (or maybe 2022 realistically) would feature not only the much vaunted 600mi range, but also a charge time of less than five minutes.
I have no inside knowledge of Tesla, and I could be completely off base, but I would place a considerable bet that Tesla is moving toward hybrid solid state / chemical battery technologies.
DISCLAIMER: I do own a Tesla, and I do hold some of their stock in my personal portfolio. | https://medium.com/@stefann/tesla-maxwell-might-mean-5min-charges-f2a0692e84d9 | ['Stefan Nagey'] | 2019-02-12 16:09:41.620000+00:00 | ['Electric Vehicles', 'Tesla', 'Transportation', 'Battery', 'Cars'] |
Plasma in 10 minutes | Today Vitalik Buterin and Joseph Poon released a working draft of Plasma project.
Let me explain how it should work. I hope it will save you a little time.
There is a Lightning Network implementation (still not production ready) for Ethereum that is called Raiden.
The basic idea is to switch from a model where all transactions hit the shared ledger on the blockchain (which is the bottleneck) to a model where users can privately exchange messages which sign the transfer of value. Raiden uses a network of p2p payment channels and deposits in Ethereum to preserve the guarantees expected from a blockchain system. Raiden is implemented as an extension to Ethereum. A Raiden node runs alongside an Ethereum node and communicates with other Raiden nodes to facilitate transfers and with the Ethereum blockchain to manage deposits.
Even if you send millions of transactions off-chain, your gas fees are still very low, because only a small number of on-chain transactions is needed to secure the settlement (say, you send tx to the chain once in 24h).
Transactional capacity is increased dramatically as channels are net-settled on the blockchain. Payments can be routed across a network of these channels. But Lightning Network approach is not limited to payments only. It can be used to scale smart contracts’ state changes too. So this is what Plasma is all about…
Welcome the new layer to the Ethereum architecture:
Blockchains in Blockchains
Similar to the Lightning Network, Plasma is a series of contracts which runs on top of a root blockchain (i.e. the Mainnet Ethereum blockchain). The root network contract processes only tiny amount of commitments from child blockchains that are able to do an incredibly large amount of computations in most cases. Commitments are broadcasted periodically to the root blockchain from the child. One can view the root blockchain as the Supreme Court from which all subordinate courts derive their power.
However, since not all data is being propagated to all parties (only those who wish to validate a particular state), parties are responsible for monitoring the particular chain they are interested in periodically to penalize fraud. In the event of attack, participants can rapidly and cheaply do a mass-exit from the child chain to a root chain.
Blockchains can be hierarchically arranged in a trees. That will allow to create a well balanced system to maximize data availability/security and minimize costs. Mining is done with full security only on the root, with security and proofs flowing from the root.
Extra scaling comes from eliminating the requirement to watch the chains one is not economically impacted by, one should watch the chains where it is needed to enforce correct behavior.
There are many systems like Cosmos/Polkadot that arrange blockchains in a hierarchy, too.
Each child blockchain can have its token (just like a cryptocurrency reward paid to a miner) to incentivize validators of this chain to keep it running and to provide protection from faulty states that are checked by Fraud Proofs rules. Once Fraud (“withholding attack” or generalized as “data availability problem”) is detected -> the deposit (i.e. the bond) is lost by a rogue validator.
Fraud proofs
All states within this child blockchain are enforced via fraud proofs (smart-contract logic) which allows any party to enforce invalid blocks, presuming block data availability. The fraud proofs ensure that all state transitions are validated. Also these fraud proofs enforce an interactive protocol of fund withdrawals. Similar to the Lightning Network the withdrawal requires time to exit.
Resume
Plasma is one of the many solutions to the blockchain scaling problem (sharding, PoS, LN, etc). I hope it will be released soon. Some companies have already declared that they would use Plasma —
The technology is very interesting and i will be writing more articles on that. Stay tuned!
I left out many cool features and details of Plasma as the idea of this article was to give you a quick glance at the technology. Please refer to the original paper for more details.
p.s. We are currently building the “Microcompany Tokenization Platform” here — https://web.thetta.io
We are going to use some Hybrid DApp approach (Plasma-like) to increase the throughput of our DApp.
We need your help. Become a part of our team/community (+bounties and +rewards) and deliver great product together with us! | https://medium.com/chain-cloud-company-blog/plasma-in-10-minutes-c856da94e339 | ['Anthony Akentiev'] | 2018-02-03 09:42:01.493000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Ethereum', 'Blockchain'] |
Assertions considered Harmful | Assertions are the go-to checking mechanism in unit tests. However, when applied to testing interfaces, specifically GUIs, I consider them to be toxic. Thankfully, there is a promising alternative.
JUnit was a huge success, being the single most used library in all of Java. And JUnit brought with it the famous Assert.assert… statement. This mechanism is designed to only check one thing at a time in isolation. And when testing a single unit, this is the most sensible approach: we want to ignore as much volatile context as possible. And we want to focus on ideally checking only a single aspect of only the unit under test. This creates maximally durable tests. If a test depends only on a single aspect of the code, then it only needs to change if that aspect changes. Assertions are a natural and intuitive mechanism to achieve that. Being “inside” of the software during the test, where practically all of the internals are exposed in one way or another, all else wouldn’t have made sense.
Because of its success, JUnit is considered the state-of-art of test automation—and rightfully so. As such, its mechanisms were also applied to non-unit testing, i.e. they were applied to interface testing (e.g. GUI testing). And intuitively, this makes sense. Because, as the individual features stack up towards the interface, the interface become very volatile. Testing only individual aspects of the system seems to solve this problem.
Except that it doesn’t. It is already hard, albeit still feasible, to achieve that grade of separation on the unit level. On the interface level, where integration is inevitable, it is outright impossible. And practice shows exactly that. One of the reasons of the shape of the famous test pyramid is that tests on that level tend to break often and require a lot of maintenance effort.
A practical example
Imagine that you want to test a single aspect of the code—the calculation of the number of items a single user has ever bought. On the unit level, all you need is a user object and some associated items or transactions. Depending on the complexity of the system, you can create these objects either on demand or mock them. Then you can test just the code that counts the items.
However, on the GUI level, you first need to log into the system with an existing user. Then you need to navigate to a certain page where the relevant information is shown. So even if you create only a single assertion to check the number of items, your code still depends on a working persistence layer, a predefined state (e.g. user existing, and correct number of items), on the ability of the user to log in and on the navigation. How well is this test isolated?
In an integrated test, it is basically impossible to ignore context. Involuntarily, we always depend on numerous aspects that have nothing to do with what we want to test. We suffer from the multiplication of effects. This is the reason for the famous test-pyramid. However, if we cannot ignore context, maybe we should embrace it instead?
Embrace Context
Imagine, just for a second, we could somehow mitigate the multiplication of effects. Then we could check the complete state of the system instead of individual aspects. We could check everything at once!
So because interfaces are fragile, we now want include more context, making our tests even more fragile? Because instead of depending on single aspects, the test now depends on everything at once? Who would want that? Well … everybody who want’s to know if the interface changed. If you think about that, the same question applies to version control. A version control system is a system with which, every time you change about anything in any file, you have to manually approve that change. What a multiplication of efforts! What a waste of time! Except that not using one is a very bad idea.
True for both Manual and Automated Test Execution
Because people change things all the time without meaning to do so. And they change the behaviour of the system without meaning to do so. Which is why we have regression tests in the first place. But sometimes we really wanted to change the behaviour. Then you have to update the regression test. Actually, regression tests are a lot like version control.
With the mindset that software changes all the time, an assertion is just a means to detect a single such change. So writing assertions is like blacklisting changes. The alternative is to check everything at once, and then permanently ignore individual changes—effectively whitelisting them.
Whitelisting of changes vs. blacklisting of changes
When creating a firewall configuration, which approach would you rather choose? Blacklisting (i.e. “closing”) individual ports or whitelisting (i.e. “opening”) individual ports? Likewise with testing … do you want to detect a change and later recognise that it isn’t problematic, or would you rather ignore all changes except the ones for which you manually created checks? Google introduced whitelist testing, because they didn’t want to miss the dancing pony on the screen again. Whitelisting means to err on the side of caution.
Tools for pixel-based comparison aka visual testing
Of course I am not the first one to come up with that idea. In his book Working with legacy code, Michael Feathers called this approach characterization testing, others call it Golden Master testing. Today, there are two possibilities: pixel-based and text-based comparison. Because pixel-based comparison (often called visual regression testing) is easy to implement, there are many tools. For text-based comparison, there are essentially two specific testing tools: ApprovalTests and TextTest. But both pixel-based and text-based approaches suffer from the multiplication of effects.
Multiplication of Effects
On the GUI level, many things depend on one another, because isolation is not really possible. Imagine you wrote automated tests naively, as a series of actions. Then, if someone changed the navigation or the login screen, this single change would most likely affect each and every test. This way, the implicit or explicit dependencies of the tests potentially cause a multiplication of the effects of a single change.
How can we contain that multiplication of effects? One possibility is to create an additional layer of abstraction, as is being done by single page objects or object maps. But, in order to later reap the fruits in the form of reduced efforts if the anticipated change happens, this requires manual effort in advance. According to YAGNI, implementing that abstraction “just in case” is actually a bad thing to do.
What other possibilities do we have, to contain the multiplication of effects? When doing refactorings in programming, we happen to be in the same situation. One method is probably called in dozens or even hundreds of places. So when renaming a single method (please only do that in internal, not-exposed APIs), we need to also change every place where that method is called. For some cases we can derive these places from the abstract syntax tree. For other cases (properties files, documentation, …) we have to rely on text-based search and replace. If we forget or oversee something, this often shows only in certain situations—usually when executing the software. But for tests, this is different. Because tests, by definition, are already executing the software. So we get shown all the places where something changed (i.e. by failing tests). Now we just need a mechanism to “mass-apply” similar changes.
There are two different kind of changes: differences in layout and differences in flow.
Differences in Layout
If, for instance, the login-button now is called “sign in”, has a different internal name, XPath or xy-coordinates, this is a difference in layout. Differences in layout are relatively easy to address with object maps.
But, surprisingly, differences in layout are also relatively easy to address if we have more context. If we know the whole puzzle instead of only individual pieces, we can create one-on-one assignments. This makes for very robust object recognition.
Imagine, we have a form where some elements are added. And we want to recognize the “Accept” button to submit the form. If everything about the button changes, we can still recognize it, based on a one-on-one assignment of the remaining unused UI-components.
And mass-applying these changes is also easy. We can just apply every similar change. E.g. combine all instances of the change of “Accept” to “Save” into a single change, that needs to be reviewed only once.
With such a strong mechanism, redundancy is suddenly not a problem anymore. So we can suddenly collect many attributes of our UI-components, making our recognition of them even more robust.
So we can gather XPath, name, label and pixel-coordinates. If some of the values change, we still have the remaining values to identify the element. And mass-applying makes this still easy to maintain.
Differences in Flow
Sometimes, the use-cases or internal processes of the software change. These can be minor changes (e.g. if an additional step is required—filling a captcha or resetting a password). Sometimes these are major changes—a workflow changes completely. In the latter case, it is probably easier to rewrite the tests. But this happens seldom. More often, we need to just slightly adapt the tests.
Differences in flow cannot be addressed by object maps. Instead, we need other forms of abstractions: extracting recurring flows as “functions” or “procedures” and reusing them. This can be achieved with page objects, but requires manual effort and the right abstraction.
Instead, I propose a different approach: passive update. What do I mean by that? Traditionally, we have to actively identify all the occurrences of a specific situation in the tests and update them manually. So if we need to adjust the login process, we have to find all the instances where the tests log in. Then we manually need to change them accordingly. This is active update.
Passive update is to instead specify the situation we need to update together with a rule about how to update. So instead of finding all the login attempts, we specify the situation: the login page is filled with credentials and the captcha is showing. Now we add a rule about how to update a test script that finds itself in that situation — filling the captcha. We do this by deleting or inserting individual actions, or a combination thereof. Then that update is applied passively, upon execution of the tests. This means we are essentially turning the extraction of a procedure on its head.
This approach has various advantages: | https://medium.com/hackernoon/assertions-considered-harmful-d3770d818054 | ['Jeremias Rößler'] | 2018-01-03 09:45:51.455000+00:00 | ['Harmful', 'Testing', 'Test Automation', 'Quality Assurance', 'Software Development'] |
Why VetPark? | The Rescue by River (US Vet)
I’m building to help US Veterans receive the healing they need and the help they deserve.
My experience with PTS and Mental Illness has shown me that, to move forward I must accept and let go of the past.
Photography taught me how to frame, examine and capture the beauty of everyday life.
Practicing Creativity has provided me with permission and encouragement to imagine.
Being in nature reminded me that life is a succession of seasons and the importance of knowing the season I’m in.
Pet companionship has given me a dependable friend that shows love regardless of how I’m acting.
Practicing these activities helped me get back to enjoying life and making the most of my time.
VetPark is the vehicle I’m using to help my Battle Buddies get back to enjoying life.
My personal passion for the Arts fuel the business aspect of VetPark*
The helper in me feasts on the healing aspect of VetPark (AT)**
VetPark provides hope & healing for others.
VetPark is my Art, Therapy & Work.
Visit us at www.vetpark.us
Robert Dabney Jr, Founder
See this image and hundreds of other project created by our nation’s heroes on our Instagram page by clicking the link below!
The Rescue
*Concerts, Art Gallery, Competitions, Shows
** Music Therapy, Art Therapy, Meditation, Eastern Medicine, Hiking, gardening, Alternative Medicine, Writing, Story-telling, etc.
Share this post | https://medium.com/@rjscribblez/why-vetpark-327dd84b3732 | ['Robert Dabney Jr'] | 2020-12-10 18:03:12.750000+00:00 | ['Vetpark', 'Mental Health', 'Philanthropy', 'Veterans', 'Alternative Therapy'] |
Now in Android #28 | AndroidX
AndroidX libraries on GitHub
First of all, AndroidX has made more libraries available for contributions through GitHub.
We know that many developers prefer the familiar GitHub contribution flow to the AOSP+Gerrit system Android traditionally uses, and would be happy to see us use GitHub more.
Which is a great idea! But… difficult to do (given the infrastructure that we rely on). But we heard you and have started exploring this, making a small handful of libraries in active development available on GitHub, starting a few months back with Paging, Room, and WorkManager. Recently, we’ve also added the Activity, Fragment, and Navigation libraries. So check them out, and if you feel like contributing, see the details in the CONTRIBUTING doc for more information.
Stable releases
There were the usual plethora of alpha, beta, RC and minor stable releases, including this notable stable release:
MediaRouter 1.2.0: This version is interesting because it adds functionality that syncs with some of the new media functionality in Android 11.
Android 11 added a bunch of UI niceties for media players, sending the media controls into a new, dedicated space in the notification panel, to make it easier to control your media from one place instead of being interleaved with the rest of the notifications. This isn’t about new developer functionality, but rather a different presentation for notifications you are probably already creating; you can continue to use the MediaSession and MediaStyle APIs that have been available since the Lollipop release.
But there was some new functionality added in Android 11 for “seamless media transfer”, which allows users to change the playback device through the output switcher (shown below). This new release of MediaRouter allows you to interact with this new platform capability.
This new release of MediaRouter allows you to control which playback devices show up in the output switcher so your users can seamlessly move their audio around.
If you want to see the media changes in Android 11, check out Don Turner’s What’s New in media video.
Now in Alpha
I also wanted to call out a couple of interesting alpha releases. I don’t usually dwell on alphas because, well, they are alpha, and are therefore subject to change and iteration as the team continues to pound on them. But there were new releases for Paging and Navigation (just today!) that are interesting in terms of what they say about future development.
One of the questions we’ve been getting recently, as Jetpack Compose has been working through its alpha journey, is “What’s the future of [insert favorite Jetpack library here] in a Jetpack Compose world?”
Which is an… excellent question! The answer is that many of the architecture components aren’t specifically about Views or the existing UI Toolkit, so they will be equally necessary and helpful in the new world of Jetpack Compose. More than that, we’re building integrations to make it easy for different components to work together. Compose already offers integrations with ViewModels and LiveData and today marks the first release of both Paging and Navigation support for Jetpack Compose. | https://medium.com/androiddevelopers/now-in-android-28-7c7c28008bfb | ['Chet Haase'] | 2020-11-02 19:47:58.637000+00:00 | ['articles on Medium', 'Android', 'Android App Development', 'Now In Android'] |
Pandas on Steroids: Dask- End to End Data Science with python code | Pandas on Steroids: Dask- End to End Data Science with python code
End to End Parallelized Data Science from Reading Big Data to Data Manipulation to Visualisation to Machine Learning
Dask- Familiar pandas with superpowers
As the saying goes, a data scientist spends 90% of their time in cleaning data and 10% in complaining about the data. Their complaints may range from data size, faulty data distributions, Null values, data randomness, systematic errors in data capture, differences between train and test sets and the list just goes on and on.
One common bottleneck theme is the enormity of data size where either the data doesn’t fit into memory or the processing time is so large(In order of multi-mins) that the inherent pattern analysis goes for a toss. Data scientists by nature are curious human beings who want to identify and interpret patterns normally hidden from cursory Drag-N-Drop glance. They need to wear multiple hats and make the data confess via repeated tortures(read iterations 😂 )
They wear multiple hats during exploratory data analysis and from a minimal dataset with 6 columns on New York Taxi Fare dataset( https://www.kaggle.com/c/new-york-city-taxi-fare-prediction) - ID, Fare, Time of Trip, Passengers and Location, their questions may range from:
1. How the fares have changed Year-Over-Year? 2. Has the number of trips increased across the years? 3. Do people prefer traveling alone or they have company? 4. Has the small distance rides increased as people have become lazier? 5. What time of the day and day of week do people want to travel? 6. Is there emergence of new hotspots in the city recently except the regular Air Port pickup and drop? 7. Are people taking more inter-city trips? 8. Has the traffic increased leading to more fares/time taken for the same distances? 9. Are there cluster of pick-up and Drop points or areas which see high traffic? 10. Are there outliers in data i.e 0 distance and fare of $100+ and so on? 11. Do the demand change during Holiday season and airport trips increase? 12. Is there any correlation of weather i.e rain or snow with the taxi demand?
Even after answering these questions, multiple sub-threads can emerge i.e can we predict how the Covid affected New year is going to be, How the annual NY marathon shifts taxi demand, If a particular route if more prone to have multiple passengers(Party hub) vs Single Passengers( Airport to Suburbs).
To quench these curiosities, time is of the essence and its criminal to keep the data scientists waiting for 5+ minutes to read a csv file(55 Mn rows) or do a column add followed by aggregation. Also, since the majority of Data Scientists are self-taught and they have been so much used to pandas data frame API that they wouldn’t want to start the learning process all over again with a different API like numba, Spark or datatable. I have tried juggling between DPLYR(R), Pandas(Python) and pyspark(Spark) and it is a bit unfulfilling/unproductive considering the need for a uniform pipeline and code syntax. However, for the curious folks, I have written a pyspark starter guide here: https://medium.com/@ravishankar_22148/billions-of-rows-milliseconds-of-time-pyspark-starter-guide-c1f984023bf2
In subsequent sections, I am trying to provide a hands on guide to Dask with minimal architectural change from our beloved Pandas:
Data Read and Profiling
Dask vs Pandas speed
How is Dask able to process data ~90X faster i.e Sub 1 secs to 91 secs in pandas.
What makes Dask so popular is the fact that it makes analytics scalable in Python and not necessarily need switching back and forth between SQL, Scala and Python.The magical feature is that this tool requires minimum code changes. It breaks down computation into pandas data frames and thus operates in parallel to enable fast calculations.
2. Data Aggregation:
With absolutely 0 change from Pandas API, it is able to perform aggregation and sorting in milliseconds, Please note .compute() function at the end of lazy computation which brings the results of big data to memory in Pandas Data Frame.
3. Machine Learning:
Code snippet below provides a working example of feature engineering and ML model building in Dask using XGBoost
Feature Engineering and ML Model with Dask
Conclusion:
Dask is a powerful tool offering parallel computing, big data handling and creating end to end Data Science pipeline. It has a steep learning curve as the API is almost similar to pandas and it can handle Out Of Memory computations(~10X of RAM) like a breeze.
Since it is a living blog, I will be writing subsequent parts in Dask series where we will be targeting Kaggle leaderboard using parallel processing. Let me know in comments if you are facing any issues in setting up Dask or unable to perform any Dask Operations or even for a general chit-chat. Happy Learning!!!
Sources: | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/pandas-on-steroids-dask-end-to-end-data-science-with-python-code-1845d3722c8a | ['Ravi Shankar'] | 2020-10-21 12:27:47.251000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Python', 'Dask', 'Parallel Processing', 'Big Data'] |
What a team of 35 designers does at FIVE | I meet and talk to at least ten different US companies every month, and besides everything else I learn from them, I also learn about their organizational structure, their talent, and their internal processes. When it comes to the number of designers other companies have on staff, what I typically hear is two or five designers. Maybe even ten, but that’s quite rare. Unless you’re talking about shops that focus solely on design, those numbers are pretty standard.
So when we compare FIVE to other companies, it’s good to know that we’re a full-service agency that can take your product idea from zero to profits/traction, including strategy, design, development, project management, QA, and growth…
I knew that at FIVE our design team ratio is bigger than that of the average tech companies we usually work with. Still, when I heard from our COO that we currently have 35 designers working with us, I was surprised. But then, after thinking about it, those numbers absolutely make sense, and here’s why.
Design takes up 50% of project timeline
Example timeline for ~36 week long project (FIVE average in 2020)
At FIVE, product discovery is where high-level concepts, prototyping, and validation occur and take shape. From this, we get a high-level product roadmap and a well-defined MVP scope (Minimum Viable Product). You can learn more about FIVE’s take on product discovery here.
Then, in the UX/UI phase, we define all the user flows in detail and prepare screen specifications for development.
Half of the team on average FIVE projects are designers
Distribution of roles on an average FIVE project in 2020
FIVE handles Product Design at the highest level. We pay attention to every detail, user test, and we validate all user flows multiple times. Our UI designers follow the latest trends to give our products a slick and modern look and feel to impress our clients and their users.
The strong design team is crucial for FIVE’s growth
In ten years, we’ve grown from 15–20 people to more than 250. We rely heavily on the design team to win projects, impress clients, and rise above the rest — helping us become a leading NYC agency, something we plan on maintaining year after year. As a product consulting agency, we know that best-in-class design is essential for delivering high-performing projects to our clients.
Design team growth compared with revenue growth
Career development for designers at FIVE
Apart from employing tons of designers, we also pay lots of attention to professional career development, no matter the discipline. One recently launched initiative was a clear Career Path for each employee, which involves regular performance reviews and opportunities to acquire skills across all disciplines by working on world-class projects.
We want our employees to have endless opportunities to learn and grow at FIVE. There should always be someone or something you can learn from.
Our plan for the next five years
Honestly, I have no idea. Maybe 50, maybe 100 designers. Probably… most likely. If you want to jump aboard and join our fast-moving and ever-growing ship, now’s a great time. There are lots of open positions. Feel free to reach out. | https://medium.com/@fivenyc/what-a-team-of-35-designers-does-at-five-b9d1595c6eb9 | [] | 2021-03-29 09:09:16.193000+00:00 | ['Product Designer', 'Design Teams', 'Product Discovery', 'Design Project', 'Career Development'] |
Build Your Own Personal Runway | A Startup Runway
In the startup and venture capital world, there is a concept of a runway.
Runways for startups are typically measured in months, if you are lucky, in years.
A company that is building its technology and pre-revenue is burning cash each month hoping that when the technology is built and sales take off, that investment will pay off. To reach that turnaround point, the Company needs significant amounts of cash upfront. To fund their cash burn in those early years.
The simple calculation for a runway is the amount of cash you have on hand divided by your monthly cash burn.
i.e., if a Company has $1.2M and burns $100K a month. Then they have a runway of 12 months. By the end of 12 months, they better either be cash flow positive or have their next financing round lined up.
Or well, bad things happen.
Photo by Jp Valery on Unsplash
Your Own Personal Runway
A lot of people use this concept without calling it a runway. You are young; you want to go backpack Europe. You can save up $5K. You try to calculate what your expenses will be and think you can make it on $1.5K a month. So, you go backpack Europe for 3 months and have a little bit leftover at the end.
Well, why not apply this line of thinking to build your own personal runway. A runway to take you from your 9–5 to turning that side-hustle into a business. Or to become a writer, or programmer, or videographer, or whatever it is you dream of doing.
A Lot of People Feel Stuck
Do you feel stuck in a job you don’t really enjoy? Or perhaps even worse, dread getting up and going to every day. Or are you stuck in a career path you realized after working in for a while that it just isn’t for you?
Do you have a hobby, perhaps something you’ve even started making money doing? Or have dreamed about making money doing something you enjoy doing. Wanting to quit everything and become a ski instructor. Or maybe you want to get into a music career or writing career, open a CrossFit gym in Brazil, or whatever it is.
But you are stuck. Because you need a certain amount of money each month to pay the rent, car payment, credit card bill, etc. And you know that you will make nowhere near that amount of money each month if you quit what you are doing now and focus on your passion full time.
At least not in the beginning. Hopefully, one day the dream is you can make a living at it, of course.
Build a Runway to Where you Want to be
Well, that is where the runway comes in.
Suppose you find yourself perhaps treating yourself to luxuries. Perhaps racking up a bit too much in expenses at restaurants. Or feeling in order to survive this job, you need a really nice apartment downtown or a new SUV for commuting so at least part of your day can be spent enjoying something. Try a different approach.
Treat yourself to your dream instead.
Cut back on all that stuff you don’t need and start building your runway instead.
The Two Components
There are two parts to the calculation.
1) How much cash you have on hand
2) How much cash you burn each month
How much cash you burn each month drives how much cash you need to save. That is number two above drives number one.
So, cutting out those larger expenses changes how much you need to save as well. If you aren’t commuting to an office downtown every day, will you still need that expensive apartment in the most expensive part of town?
Suppose you are going to be doing something that can be done remotely. Say a blogger or vlogger, or freelance marketer, for example. You could drastically reduce your cashburn and thus decrease the amount you need to save.
If you simply cannot or are unwilling to cut back. Well, then you can still do it. Assuming your expenditures are currently lower than your income, of course. It will just take longer to save up what you need.
How many cushions — What Kind of Risk do You Have?
In the example above of the college student. They don’t need much cushion. If they miscalculated and spent $2K a month. Well, then they run out of money in the middle of month 3. They call home… Dad buys them a plane ticket home cutting the trip a couple of weeks short… and they move back in with Mom and Dad to regroup.
In the case of the startup company. Well, they have the exact opposite situation. Nobody is going to give a Company losing vast sums of cash every month sufficient funding without going through a lengthy process. And if they actually hit $0 in their bank accounts, payroll gets missed, all the employees will be gone by the next week, and the Company is done.
You are probably somewhere in between the two above scenarios, so plan accordingly.
Low Risk (Young, No Kids, Have Support)
If you are young and your parents have a spare bedroom. Perhaps, you can take more risk and don’t need to raise as much cash.
Want to become a programmer… but can’t find the time because you spend too much time in your cubicle in that job that isn’t leading anywhere?
Well, if I was in my twenties. I’d figure out the best online courses, move to South East Asia where I can live on $1K a month, and then spend 6 months to a year studying as if my life depended on it. Learn enough for that first job, move back in with the parents when I get back and then start job hunting.
You don’t have many risks at this point in your life. So, go ahead and live your life as if you don’t have many risks as well.
Higher Risk (Older, Have Kids or Family, No Support)
If you are older and perhaps have a family and are the sole source of income. You will need to do things very differently. If you think it will take you a year to replace your income with your side-hustle, you might want to make sure you have enough for that year, perhaps another in case it takes a little longer, and then perhaps another as your cushion. | https://themakingofamillionaire.com/build-your-own-personal-runway-95dd9fb326a5 | ['David Ferrara'] | 2020-12-04 23:14:07.747000+00:00 | ['Cash', 'Dreams', 'Saving', 'Life', 'Side Hustle'] |
Shit Sucks Sometimes | Yeah I said what we were all thinking. Shit sucks. Life sucks. It sucks less for some people, but I am not one of them. Now a lot of the people in this god awful small town I live in might argue that I put myself in this situation and to a certain degree I wouldn’t say they’re wrong. I really don’t think anyone is actually going to read this, but if you do. Hi, I’m MacKenzie. Although any of the friends I have left call me Cronin.
I don’t think my life is that spectacular, I live in a small judgmental town in northern Utah. Needless to say I’m catching the first flight out. My best friend is supposedly coming with me, but her newly found “love” is telling me different. I give it 6 months. I don’t actually believe in love. That’s kind of a controversial subject, but I don’t think us as a species is driven by an emotion like love. I think it’s lust, but that doesn’t sound as magical so we sugar coat it to make it easier to accept. Don’t get me wrong I wish love was real. There’s this boy in my hometown, we’ll call him Sully (like from Monsters Inc. I’ll tell that story later), that I would do anything just to watch him be happy; he would pour gas on me if I was on fire. Or maybe not. It’s all very confusing.
I know I said earlier that my life wasn’t that spectacular but being a blogger has always been something I’ve wanted to do, but not a extravagant, travel the world, look at me, I’m living the perfect life kind of blog. A real one, that shows me laying in bed all day in a messy room, my panic attacks, boy stories, experimenting with alcohol, and all my awful teenage decisions. Believe it or not I do have a few wild stories that I want to share. I want to show my growth as a person. So if anyone has made it this far. I Thank you.
See you next time bitches.
-Cronin | https://medium.com/@mackenziecronin/shit-sucks-sometimes-c7a6e4c80c08 | ['Mackenzie Cronin'] | 2020-12-18 21:30:28.024000+00:00 | ['Life', 'Fun', 'Teens', 'Blog'] |
How No Man’s Sky Helped Me Deal With Depression | How No Man’s Sky Helped Me Deal With Depression
Finding Peace in the Void.
One of the many beautiful vistas from my time playing No Man’s Sky
I was diagnosed with depression in my early 20s, but I’m pretty certain I had it long before that, at least since my early teens. Now 35 I’ve been knowingly living with it for 15 years and in that time I’ve tried many different methods of managing it.
Talking to professionals, going on medication, attending groups, journaling, CBT-ing, even meditating. I’ve tried a lot of different things and while some have worked better than others, for me the best way to manage my depression is to lose myself.
The phrase “to lose oneself” can conjure up a myriad of meaning, not all of them good. However, what I mean here is to lose yourself completely in a fictional world; to forget the reality around you and completely surrender yourself to the immersion of this new reality. Of course this can happen with any kind of medium; a novel, a comic, a film or TV series, a podcast or audiobook.
For me though, the medium in which it is easiest to lose myself is video games, in particular those that offer you a grand, rich universe to explore.
Such as No Man’s Sky.
If you’ve not heard of No Man’s Sky, in essence it is a game which presents players with an open world universe of 18 quintillion planets, all of which are procedurally generated. You literally have an entire universe to explore, no hyperbole needed.
While the game does have a story with missions and goals like traditional games, the true brilliance of No Man’s Sky, and I would argue the true joy of it, is when you put all those to the side and simply explore.
Every time you visit a new planet you are never sure what you are going to find. Perhaps it will be a huge seed pod large enough to build a little rest stop in, or a gigantic canyon through which you can fly your ship. Maybe you’ll come across the ruins of a previous civilisation and uncover secrets of the past, or find a hidden nest of creatures long thought to be extinct.
Sometimes you’ll happen across an abandoned communications station to find a distress call that has gone unanswered for decades. Investigating the source of the call will reveal a long-ago crashed starship, the final recordings of its pilot hinting towards greater mysteries.
If you explore the deepest depths of the universe, you may even discover the nature of reality.
One of the many strange and wonderful creatures you can discover.
The planets of No Man’s Sky range from peaceful green paradises to volcano-filled hell holes where the ground literally catches on fire. All of them are a joy to explore. There is something very satisfying about landing on a planet, jumping out of your ship, and beginning your trek across the landscape, not knowing what it is you’ll come across.
If I’ve had a bad day mentally, few things help me relax and get back into a positive mind space as well as exploring the universe of No Man’s Sky. I find it very relaxing to walk around the various planets, scanning all the flora, fauna and rock formations into my planetary discoveries database. Coming across a settlement or building is always exciting as they often hold something of interest, even if it’s just a store from which to buy the various resources to help on my exploration.
I recall one day that had been particularly bad. I was feeling extremely low and wanted nothing to do with the world. I sat down and began playing No Man’s Sky. I arrived on a new planet and after a half hour or so of exploring, I began to see something I’d not seen before off in the distance. It looked like trails of dust being kicked up from the ground. As I drew nearer I saw that about half a dozen such trails were criss-crossing over themselves. Puzzled, I continued up the small hill on which I saw them and when I crested the top I was met with an amazing sight.
The cause of the dust trails was a new type of fauna I had never encountered, despite my many hours of playing. They were creatures which I can only describe as organic corkscrews, playfully burrowing into the earth, travelling underground for a few seconds to then burst out again in curving arcs through the sky. Seeing something for the first time after playing the game for longer than most games take to complete was incredibly exciting for me, and spurred my desire to explore and delve into the universe further, leaving behind the troubles of my more mundane existence.
The planetary discoveries database record of the “corkscrew” creature.
I think this joy of discovery and exploration speaks to something deep within humans. From our earliest histories we’ve gone exploring, wanting to find what is over the horizon, or just beyond the next mountain range. While this has not always ended well for all the peoples of the world, humans as a species would never have grown as much was we have without the desire to discover. Now, with much of the world known, video games gives us the opportunity to explore and discover once more.
Escapism has long been the balm of the troubled mind, and it can be argued that video games are the ultimate form of escapism. The brilliance of No Man’s Sky, however, is that the escapism it provides can be as serene as one wishes. While there is combat in the game, as well as other obstacles the player must overcome, it is all optional. The game provides you with the information on how likely a battle is to break out, or if you’ll have to deal with a planet’s toxic environment. Thus, if you wish to simply relax and explore you can, and you can play the game for hours without having to worry about any of those aforementioned troubles.
My favourite screenshot I’ve taken throughout all my time playing No Man’s Sky.
No Man’s Sky is unlike any other game. In fact, the only other game I can really liken it to is the equally genre obscuring Myst series. The game allows you to play at your own pace and discover its universe as you wish.
With everything that’s going on in the world, to be able to simply explore and discover is an experience of pure joy.
No Man’s Sky has saved me mentally many times, and I’m sure it’ll save me many more. It’s pure escapism and it’s incredibly good for the mind.
If you need me, you’ll find me among the stars. | https://joemdouglas.medium.com/how-no-mans-sky-helped-me-deal-with-depression-de7642f874cb | ['Joe Douglas'] | 2020-11-11 09:32:43.184000+00:00 | ['Videogames', 'No Mans Sky', 'Mindfulness', 'Mental Health', 'Depression'] |
Building Breather (Part 1 — Bonus): Populating the UI with sample data, namespacing with enums and formatting the data with Swift Extensions | Populating the UI with sample data
I created some models that will hold the data that we need to display in this app:
The Breather models
I also made an extension that provides some sample data that I got by manually querying the APIs.
Some sample data
Now, in MainViewController, we can populate the UI with the sample data:
Populating the UI with sample data
This is a chunky piece of code, but basically we’re updating the UI with sample data on viewDidLoad and updating the air quality data when the segmented control value changes. The rest of the methods deal with appropriately formatting the data for display to the user. I will go through the parts that are the most worth mentioning.
Running the app with sample data
Namespacing with enums
You will notice some functions that are called like:
Asset.forIconCode(data.weather.iconCode)
Color.forTemperature(data.weather.temperature)
Text.forAQI(data.pollution.aqiUS)
Color.forAQI(data.pollution.aqiUS)
Color.forAsthmaRisk(data.asthma.risk)
These functions take the data and return the appropriate colour, text or icon.
This is a pattern that I like to use for constants that are used throughout the app.
I will give one example here and the rest you can find in the app.
Declaring constants with a Text enum
By declaring Text as an enum instead of a struct or a class, you prevent someone from trying to initialise an object from it. The only way to access it is through the static func that returns a String. So this is quite handy when you need to declare some constants in your project in a neat and safe way.
You can define Text in a separate Constants.swift file, or if you have a lot of constants, in a separate Text.swift file in a Constants folder.
In this example I gave it the common name Text, but if you’re planning for your code to be used alongside other people’s code, it’s better naming practice to prefix with your project’s name or initials, for example BreatherText or BRText or something, to avoid conflicts.
And you can of course define static lets instead of static functions, for example:
Namespacing with enum vs. struct
In this example you can also see that you get a compiler error if you try to initialise an enum.
And you can even nest enums to create a “Constants directory”:
Declaring constants with nested enums
Neat.
Encoding wind direction through a rotating UIImageView
The AirVisual API returns the wind direction in degrees like: North=0, East=90, South=180, West=270 and all the values in between.
To relay this information to the user, I decided to make a cute little compass icon and rotate it depending on the wind direction.
First, we need to convert the degrees to radians:
let rotationAngle = (CGFloat(data.weather.windDirection) * .pi) / 180.0
And then apply the transform.
windDirectionImageView.transform = CGAffineTransform(rotationAngle: rotationAngle)
Encoding wind direction with a compass (310 degrees)
Displaying a UILabel with subscripts
The final part is displaying the pollutants with the appropriate format.
AirVisual API returns the pollutants as codes for example “p2” for PM₂.₅.
First, we want to get the appropriate pollutant name and then we want to display it with the numbers in subscript.
To get the pollutant name, we add a handy static func to our Text enum, like before.
Main pollutant name for code returned by AirVisual API
These are the primary pollutants that pose a danger to human health. The riskiest pollutant at any given moment will dictate the AQI value, that’s why we have the main pollutant data. For example, if the API returns “p2”, it means the AQI value is based on the concentration of PM₂.₅.
PM₂.₅ is very frequently returned by the API as the main pollutant, because of its high danger to health. PM₂.₅ stands for particulate matter that is less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter. Because of its size, it can penetrate deep into the lungs and cause all sorts of health problems, including asthma, lung cancer, respiratory diseases, cardiovascular disease, birth defects, and premature death. A scary metric: Particulate matter pollution was estimated to cause 3.22 million deaths globally in 2010! Unfortunately, until we clean up our act as a species on this planet, there is not much we can do to protect ourselves on an individual level, other than to wear anti-pollution masks when we’re near traffic (my favourite one), or have a home filter if we live in the centre of the city. And of course, spread the word as much as we can, so change can slowly take place. We can also help by reducing our energy consumption, reducing our waste by reusing and recycling things, avoid buying excess stuff we don’t really need, buying second hand items where we can, switching to a renewable energy provider or installing solar panels, driving electric cars, planting trees, investing in clean projects and going out in the streets and shouting!
You’re probably thinking: “You still haven’t told me how to display a UILabel with subscripts.” and you’re right.
For this, I made an extension on UILabel with a function that sets the attributedText property of UILabel with an attributed string that displays all the characters at the given indices in subscript.
It’s used like this:
Using setAttributedTextWithSubscripts extension on UILabel
For finding the indices of the subscripts, I made another extension on String, that finds the indices of all the numbers in a string.
Displaying a UILabel with subscripts
Keep reading → Part 2: Refactoring with MVVM and RxSwift. | https://medium.com/@alexandrosbaramilis/building-breather-part-1-bonus-populating-the-ui-with-sample-data-namespacing-with-enums-and-78f1a7f80f60 | ['Alexandros Baramilis'] | 2019-11-10 11:01:31.901000+00:00 | ['iOS', 'UI', 'Swift', 'Environment', 'Pollution'] |
Can Vaccine Reluctance and New Mutant Strains Prolong the Pandemic? | Although the vaccine brings hope; the reluctance of many to get vaccinated and the recent recognition of new strains (mutations) of the virus may pose a few challenges. Herd immunity may not be as close, as first imagined.
Vaccine Reluctance
Kudos to the scientists for producing a vaccine in such a short period of time. Truly, a remarkable technological feat. However, this effort remains plagued (no pun intended) by myths, misinformation, and mistrust.
Vaccine reluctance isn’t new — long before COVID, we’ve had anti-vaxxers standing steadfast against all vaccines, including the yearly flu vaccine. And while it may seem that these views are concentrated amongst a small proportion of extreme thinkers, the reality is that this reluctance — especially regarding the COVID vaccine — is widespread. In fact, it seems that nearly half of the United States population is likely to delay or decline vaccination despite regulatory approval. Moreover, 1 in 5 are unlikely to get vaccinated at all, and 1 in 4 would like to wait until they are more certain about the vaccine’s safety. People are nervous; are there side effects that we don’t about? Did we produce this vaccine too hastily?
The simple and unequivocal truth is, no. This vaccine has met the highest regulatory standards to ensure efficacy and safety, while also saving lives. The misinformation and myths that are circulating the internet must be put to rest. This vaccine has been produced through thorough and deliberate research; it will not alter one’s genetic code and it will not cause autoimmune diseases. These mistruths have sparked conversations that could severely undermine the positive and necessary impact of this vaccine.
As good as it may be to propagate knowledge, the spread of this misinformation through social media has been unnerving. Social media has a way of overamplifying any complication or adverse event that may be observed, however rare, and consequently, we are seeing a wave of reluctance. Since thousands of frontline workers, clinicians, prominent politicians, and other trusted celebrities have already received the first dose of the vaccine, there is hope that their freshly photographed band-aids will instill the necessary confidence in those held back by misinformation.
But reluctance does not only stem from misinformation, much of it also comes from mistrust. For long, Black communities have endured countless social injustices and inequities, including in the delivery of healthcare. The Tuskegee syphilis experiment is an undeniable example of this: over the course of nearly 50-years (from 1932 to 1972), the US public health system withheld the known treatment of syphilis to nearly 400 Black men participating in the study. Unknowingly, these men were made to suffer severe complications, transmit the disease to loved ones, and in many cases, die from the disease. This blatant disregard for Black lives had evoked a strong sense of mistrust in healthcare, and particularly vaccines.
On top of this, social disparities and health inequities have continued to persist over the last several decades. In particular, the pandemic has exposed this messy underbelly of the US healthcare system; that has fueled the vulnerability of Black communities to the COVID-19 virus. Black people have a 4-fold increase in hospitalization and 3-fold increase in risk of dying from the COVID-19 virus.
And what about new strains?
We recently heard of a new strain of the virus in the UK, Netherlands and other European countries. This has created havoc, new lockdowns, and travel restrictions, all over again. So, what does this mean?
It is well known that viruses evolve; they mutate for their own survival. Most often this leads to an increase in transmission rate, accompanied by a decrease in virulence, or the severity of the disease. In this case, there is early evidence to suggest that the new strain is a result of a mutation in the spike protein of the virus. This is important, because it is the same region of the virus that is targeted by the vaccine. Scientists are actively culturing this mutant strain and examining if the antibodies produced by vaccines and a natural infection are effective in neutralizing the virus. It is a solvable problem, and not a new one. The influenza virus mutates so rapidly that every year there are new strains selected for vaccine preparation.
The fact that this mutant strain under investigation has found its way into distant lands, such as Australia, goes to highlight our inter-connectedness and our collective, global vulnerability. It is our moral and ethical obligation to ensure that the vaccine is disseminated globally. Of note, the distribution of the vaccine in lower middle-income countries is complicated and not without supply chain issues. This can mean years, possibly decades, before we achieve global vaccination.
Vaccine reluctance + New Viral Strains = Delayed Herd Immunity
Herd immunity requires a critical mass of the population to be immune, in order to halt the spread of the virus. Containment with vaccination is our best bet. But how much of the population do we have to vaccinate to achieve herd immunity?
The greater the infectivity, the more the number people need to be vaccinated. Importantly this can vary by region and country. The infectivity of the same virus is different depending on the density of the population. A larger number of individuals may need to be vaccinated in a high-density region to achieve herd immunity. It is here that vaccine reluctance can become an issue. In certain regions, more than 80% of the population need to be vaccinated while in others, just 50–60% may suffice. Moreover, if the new strains are not susceptible to the current vaccines, they will also pose a problem and delay the herd immunity.
So Where Do We Stand?
Fact is, the next couple of months are not going to look great. The cold weather coupled with family gatherings during the Holidays will cause an uptick in the number of new infections, hospitalizations and deaths. The roll out of the vaccine will help, but it will be a few months before we begin to see its impact. When considering vaccination, it is important to look beyond oneself. Besides protecting ourselves, and perhaps more importantly, we are preventing the spread of disease to our fellow human beings. In decreasing the transmission of the virus, we can protect the elderly, the chronically ill, and so many more of our loved ones.
We have two vaccines and soon, could have two more. We could have enough vaccines and a terrific vaccine dissemination plan, but if folks don’t get vaccinated, the pandemic is not going to go away anytime soon. We must promote vaccination by overcoming misinformation and making an effort to build trust. We must look beyond ourselves and understand that we, as individuals, do have the power to make a global impact. Get vaccinated, continue social distancing, and please continue to wear your masks. Together, we can overcome this pandemic. | https://medium.com/@jagsinghmd/can-vaccine-reluctance-and-new-mutant-strains-prolong-the-pandemic-ba48d187e326 | ['Jag Singh'] | 2020-12-22 19:41:07.007000+00:00 | ['Masks', 'Vaccines', 'Covid 19', 'Herd Immunity', 'Pandemic'] |
The Key Differences between Apple and Android Smartphones | Image taken from The Verge
If I held a poll between the choice of an iPhone or an Android smartphone, the results are most likely going to be a fifty-fifty. For the longest time, these two powers have gone through headline-worthy changes and evolvement, and became one of the best conversation starters as well as a few of the fiercest debates. While it is completely understandable that a proper amount of thought is needed for those getting a new phone, what is the reason then, for the countless forums and discussions surrounding such comparisons and making the weigh between these phones to be a classic talk of the town?
Well, it is due to none other than the contrasting systems that both brands work on. Where Apple relies on a close-sourced code, Android uses an open one instead. This basically means that developers hold no control with the operating systems of the iPhone while Android smartphones allow all sorts of tinkering with them. In turn, this is also equivalent to a completely different user experience with both smartphone types.
At the end of the day, it still boils down to one question: Which is better?
Design and Look
Image taken from Pocket-lint
The iPhone is a model that can be recognised anywhere. With the sleek appearance of its wide screens and thin casing, the design and look was clearly at the top of the list when Apple designed these smartphones. Even its starting model, the now-vintage chunky iPhone 6 does not stray too far from the looks of the latest iPhone SE, with the exception of its smaller dimensions with thicker widths. Off the bat, it is with no question that the iPhone is as consistently looking as it is an attractive one.
Image taken from androidcentral
With Android smartphones, designs and looks are in turn really an unpredictable factor. While there are gorgeous looking models like the Samsung S7, other ones, though cheaper, do not turn out as attractive. Moreover, with a huge market of different brands that are using Android as their operating system, just like how they have smartphones of a diverse price range, they also have models that are just as inconsistent.
Customizability
Image taken from iMore
One thing I hear a lot is how every iPhone pretty much looks the same. It comes to no surprise after all, with how identical every one of these phones look, not just in the appearance of its model, but even with what appears on its screens. Though various widgets are now included and interchangeable in the latest iOS update, the customization of the iPhone’s appearance is still a rather bounded one. From the fixed slide or push lock screen, the full one-page home screens, and down to the standard default apps, for its users, the design of an iPhone’s screen is a fuss-free one as much as it is universal.
Image taken from Extreme Tech
Conversely, what is seen on an Android smartphone’s screen is constructed by choice. Being much more flexible with its operating system, its users are given the ability to design its screens however they want. Whether it is to unlock these phones with varying manners, arrange widgets and applications all over the home screen, or to use third-party launchers for different-looking app icons, keyboards and fonts, the look of these screens are ultimately decided not by the manufacturer but rather personalized by the user.
Ecosystem
Image taken from TechSimplified
Just like living things, smartphones have an ecosystem as well — the goods and services offered by its company that are all connected to each other. The function of iCloud, Airplay and Airdrop has become household names due to its efficiency of continuity between iOS devices, especially proven by users who own other Apple products like the Macbook or Apple watch. Bought a product on your Mac? Pay for it with the Apple Pay on your iPhone. Have a file to be sent to another Apple user? Transfer it without messaging platforms with your Airdrop. Being its own company, brand and operating system, while seemingly exclusive, it is without a doubt that the Apple ecosystem is a tight and connected one.
Image taken from The Black Techies
While lesser-known, Android similarly has an ecosystem of its own, only that it is around 70% of its devices are supported largely by Google, our search engine best friend. Though the connectivity and continuity between Android hardware are not as strong as the Apple ones, the services it provides are equally as, if not more convenient. Think Gmail, Google Drive, Google Photos; these are applauded platforms that have been widely recognized to help with online group projects and personal mobile space for all kinds of data and files. Only with Android smartphones, these platforms are the expected piecing blocks of its mobile ecosystem.
Security
Image taken from igotoffer
The thing that comes along with management from a single company and keeping the source codes to the operation system confidential is a sense of connectedness and security. It is understandable that iPhone users might feel a lot safer knowing that they are using a device in which its systems are only accessible by Apple developers, and where privacy is recognized to be a priority to the company. Moreover, since there no interference from external phone carriers, any problems faced are met with an immediate and direct fix.
Image taken from Beebom
Where flexibility and openness are winning points with Android, the security with its smartphones in turn takes a step back. Its open-source code allows the modification from other developers, and in turn widen the possibilities of a weaker system with various forms of tinkering. Along with having a wider market with its various models and brands, its smartphones also become a bigger target for hackers. What results is lesser prioritized privacy and security with its user experience.
Applications
Image taken from 9to5Mac
Being a close-sourced code system, iPhones are much stricter with the applications that are not just released on the App Store, but also the ones that are downloaded by their users. Should an application be removed from the App Store, unless downloaded before, you won’t see it on any iPhone. Should an application not be approved by Apple, you won’t see it on any iPhone. Should an application belong to another source that is not Apple, say Google Play Movies using the Play Movies, as you guessed it, you won’t see it on any iPhone.
Image taken from Android Police
On the other hand, with an open-sourced code system, Android smartphones are much more flexible in regard to the use of alternative applications on its devices. Not only is the Google Play Store less stringent with the applications they approve of, but it also allows its users to download what they want from all external or “unknown” sources. Quality or not, there is no doubt that possibilities with the applications owned on an Android smartphone are a near limitless one.
Software
Image taken from Apple Support
One thing that comes with owning an iPhone is getting timely software updates with the mobile device. Whether it is fixing bugs, security or during the major updates, a complete change to the interface of the phone, iPhone users — at least for the models that are still supported — are guaranteed consistent prompts for all these latest features.
Image taken from Android Authority
Android smartphone users, however, tell a different story. Unlike the iPhone, where every manufacturing detail of these phones is handled by Apple, Android smartphones are supplied with its base operating system from Google, with the other upgrades dependent on the phone manufacturer. In turn, such forms of changes and developments hold the possibility of reaching these smartphones only when a new model under the same manufacturer is released. And that is considered the best-case scenario.
Expandable Storage
Image taken from Apple Support
While it is possible to buy more iCloud space, the backup storage for iPhone users, you can’t do the same thing with the space on the phone itself. This is so as to avoid the use of expandable storage that might be slower than the internal one that is already optimized and capped at the start. Rather, there are two options to ensure sufficient space utilized on the iPhone: Buy enough space at the very start of your phone purchase or to manage it by deleting excess files and applications.
Image taken from MobileFun
Android smartphones, in contrast offers the option of an expandable storage space. This is largely due to the flexibility of the open-source code that they run on, as well as the recognition to the limited storage that they contain. Expandable memory and removable microSD cards are easily found and available for purchase whenever more space might be needed with the use of these phones.
Audience and Direction
Image taken from TechGenyz
Apple’s mission statement is literally to bring the best user experience with their hardware and services provided. Whether it creates the best experience is ultimately up to the user, but it is rather evident that its operating system is heading in such a direction. Especially observed with the iPhone, with instances like an editable widget page added with its new software update, and an illustrated App Store filled with app recommendations and carefully written paragraphs with its refreshed renovation, Apple paints a picture of constant development for whoever who uses its products. What it is, is a likely necessity and third arm to all its users.
Image taken from Macworld
Android takes the other end of the spectrum, with the goal of creating an open software platform to allow innovation to better experience instead. As mentioned several times before, Android devices are commonly known and publicised for a form of result dependant on its users. From the ability for developers to tinker with its source code to the near-limitless customizability of its screens, these smartphones are a seeming “from scratch”. Rather than adding features or functions, they focus on developing technical aspects like its camera quality and Wi-Fi connections instead. If an iPhone is described to be a third arm, the Android smartphone is best seen as an individual’s aiding tool.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, both the iPhone and Android smartphone has its own pros and cons; after all, both markets are still on the road of constant development and consistent improvement to all its smartphone devices. Where the iPhone values its own sense of curation, Android smartphones puts more regard in its openness and flexibility instead.
With all these differences understood and in mind, to answer the question of which is better: there is no official better of both phones, but rather the recommendation of one that ultimately fits its user’s standards and requirements better. | https://medium.com/@JamesesTech/the-key-differences-between-the-iphone-and-the-android-smartphone-7ca947107418 | ['Jameses Tech'] | 2020-08-20 19:58:50.391000+00:00 | ['Mobile', 'Smartphones', 'Tech', 'Electronics', 'Technology'] |
Where Does My Autistic Son Belong? (Serialized) | In 2019, I published Where Does My Autistic Son Belong? that chronicles my journey of setting up a new life for Sebastien, my autistic son, after struggling with his aggression that erupted during his puberty and raged unabated for more than five years. This book has been very much a part of A Mother’s Wish initiative (amotherswish.com.sg) to educate parents, educators, and the public about how we can interact with autistic individuals out of genuine empathy and respect.
In the hope that as many people as possible will learn from my parenting mistakes, I will be serializing this book here. And if you do want to purchase the book, it can be found here. Funds are still being raised for A Mother’s Wish that supports programs and families of autistic individuals and Sebastien’s future.
PROLOGUE
“A-A-ARGH!”
Unleashing a blood-curdling scream, he hurtled towards me with the full weight of his body. Backing away from him, I grabbed an umbrella cane lying on the table behind me. I flailed and whacked at the flurry of blows and chilling screams of fury coming at me. All I could see was a blur of fingers, hands, arms, chest, and head. Then all of a sudden, it was over; it could have been a matter of seconds, not even a minute.
In this vacuum, a dazed and panting silence prevailed. No one entering the space at this moment could have surmised what had transpired just seconds before.
I wished that I could have gone along with the outward appearance that nothing had happened. Only the furious beating of my heart and the adrenaline still coursing through my veins held the temporary truth, but their hysteria would soon quiet down.
Or so I thought.
However, through my wavering vision, I saw something that shattered my blatant denial. I gasped: there was a swollen bump protruding from his forehead! It was not my intention, but I had done that. This injury constituted the irrefutable proof of the confrontation that had just erupted between us. There could be no escaping from the reality of the seconds-long confrontation.
I had inflicted that bump on my son. The last time he had a bump on his forehead, he was an active nine-month-old infant who would accidentally hurt himself, as he determinedly clambered up and down the stairs outside our apartment in Los Angeles. Every time it would happen, I would berate myself for being a remiss mother who had failed to protect her son from life’s pain.
Now, I was the one who had injured him. The refrain playing in my mind — “I had had to hurt my teenage son so that he could not hurt me” — offered little consolation. And as the horror of this reality began to sink in and the adrenaline petered away, I could feel the sting of the scratches and bruises on my arms, fingers, chest, and heart.
PART I
PARENTING PARADISE LOST
CHAPTER 1
EMBARKING ON THE HOMESCHOOLING JOURNEY
(August 2005 — December 2009)
Things were very different six years ago when I committed to homeschooling eight-year-old Sebastien upon our move to Singapore, my birthplace. Frustrated by the inadequacy of the “so-called” individualised curriculum Sebastien had experienced during his schooling days in the U.S., I decided that I could do no worse. That was the kind of proactive mother I had become after years of advocating for Sebastien’s interests in the U.S. and learning from some special needs teachers who showed me how to customise conventional worksheets to accommodate Sebastien’s unique learning needs. Most of all, I was a strong and feisty mother who firmly believed that her love for her son was so strong that nothing could ever break her resolve to help him grow up to be the best that he could be, despite his deficits.
Homeschooling an autistic child who struggled to grasp abstractions in literacy and numeracy, and thus scrambled away at the sight of worksheets, was no mean feat. My challenge was to design a meaningful programme that could engage him. By experimenting with creating “storybooks” based on Sebastien’s favourite places like Santa Monica Pier, where we spent most of his childhood in Los Angeles, and Las Vegas, I learnt that he could become motivated to learn when he could relate to the subject matter. Thus, I began to concretise his learning by incorporating the “adventures” of our daily life — routines such as shopping at the local bakery and excursions such as visiting the Singapore Science Centre — into a “curriculum” that I customised for him.
Through this integration of the concrete with the abstract, in which the abstractions had concrete correspondences, Sebastien’s academic curriculum literally “came to life”. Apart from the meaningful contexts to which Sebastien could relate, the worksheets consisted of “scaffolding” like hangman prompts (e.g., c_ _ for “car”); images such as clipart, drawings and photos, which could be cut and glued or coloured; and clue words to acquaint Sebastien with the part of speech (e.g., “preposition”). The scaffolding that I came up with through trial and error was designed to help Sebastien achieve independent learning, without needing me to sit by his side all the time.
Kah Ying’s self-designed customised literacy and numeracy template for Sebastien
Back then, my endeavour to teach as much literacy as I could to Sebastien was not so much about academic learning, but about instituting a tool for me to communicate with him and teach him. Through my customised curriculum, I was seeking to offer Sebastien a means of interpreting the world through this shared language with others including me. Even back then, I could already tell that formal languages (both verbal and non-verbal) would never be embraced by Sebastien as his true communication style.
Nonetheless, though I was the designer of Sebastien’s curriculum, Sebastien was my muse and collaborator. Every theme I selected and the scaffolding I incorporated into the worksheet templates were formulated with Sebastien’s personality, interests, and passions, interactions with his environment, learning preferences, and learning proficiencies in mind. As a result, the homeschooling programme was highly responsive to our life situations and Sebastien’s development, which were constantly evolving.
Ultimately, regardless of the amount of effort I put in to cultivate Sebastien’s literacy and numeracy skills, it became increasingly evident, with each passing year, that Sebastien, progressing at his pace, was still lagging more and more behind his peers in the areas of communication and academic learning. Although Sebastien was willing to engage in independent learning, he remained dependent on the scaffolding in my worksheets. Without it, he was unable to compose spontaneous sentences, let alone put together an essay. The abstractions of learning and the complexities of social interactions eluded him. Although I did not stop teaching Sebastien how to read, write, count, and converse, I suspended any specific expectations in these areas.
Instead of succumbing to fatigue, frustration, and hopelessness at this outcome when Sebastien was reaching puberty at about 12, I was undaunted. I prided on being a flexible and open-minded homeschooling mother of an autistic child who could adapt the programme to better match the realities of Sebastien’s ability. I shifted the focus of Sebastien’s homeschooling programme by introducing the cultivation of his hands-on life skills. I actively enlisted him in the performance of household chores like doing the laundry, sweeping and mopping the floor, as well as cooking on the stovetop.
In particular, I was particularly proud of teaching Sebastien how to prepare his lunch, which comprised multiple difficult steps. Sebastien had to learn how to slice a carrot into pieces; for some reason, he became adept at using my mother’s cleaver to do so. He also had to pour boiling water through a colander to drain the water from a pot of cooked noodles, which entailed overcoming the initial shock of the steam. Another difficult task was frying fish in a sizzling hot pan; this meant braving the unpleasant sensation of the hot oil drops hitting his skin. Sebastien even rose to the occasion of learning how to use chopsticks to pick up the cooked fish from the frying pan to lay them on the plate.
Eventually, we even took over the task of preparing Sebastien’s “designer noodles”, mixed with vitamins and supplements, from my mother. Making one month’s supply of noodles involved performing the following steps. First, Sebastien had to peel the skin off the cloves of garlic. Next, he would pound 30 vitamin tablets into powder with a pestle in a mortar. After we used the blender to mix together all the wet ingredients, we had to massage the mushy mixture to form the dough. Finally, he was responsible for turning the crank of the noodle machine to produce thin strands of noodles.
Another change in the homeschooling programme, which took place during the pubertal phase, was the introduction of structured physical activities. After encountering several mothers who lamented about their once-scrawny autistic sons ballooning during puberty, I was concerned that the same would happen to Sebastien. Apart from getting Sebastien to exercise with me, I signed him up for an inline skating group class with Coach Randy. An acquaintance had recommended him as an experienced coach who was adept at teaching autistic children. Using few words and explicit visual gestures, Coach Randy was highly effective at communicating with Sebastien.
Subsequently, I hired him to conduct weekly functional training sessions with Sebastien. As Sebastien lacked the understanding to engage in sports, the performance of repetitive moments in functional training offered an ideal alternative for him. Thanks to Coach Randy’s exposure of Sebastien to various strengthening exercises with a weighted vest, a medicine ball, dumbbells, and barbells, as well as ball-throwing and coordination exercises, Sebastien was transformed not only in his fitness but also in his self-confidence. You could see his positive body image in the way he carried himself and the way he moved his body.
Therefore, in my homeschooling journey of Sebastien, I was determined to bring up an exemplary young man whom people would be willing to help. Just because Sebastien was a moderately autistic young man with significant communication and learning delays didn’t mean he couldn’t contribute to mainstream society. I truly took heart in Sebastien’s capacity for acquiring hands-on life skills that far exceeded his ability to acquire academic learning.
However, Sebastien’s learning deficits were not the only challenge I faced. He also displayed a nasty streak of aggression that first reared its ugly head when he turned five. Sebastien had finally begun to imitate sounds and realise that speaking could get him what he wanted. If I didn’t deliver what he wanted fast enough after he had said one little word, he would pinch or pull my hair. At the time, I even wondered whether Sebastien’s extremely limited speech was too high a high price to pay for having a little “monster”.
Despite being small for his age in the American school, Sebastien’s propensity for aggression was legendary. At one school, Sebastien pinched and scratched his way out of the grasp of a portly teaching assistant who insisted on wrapping her arms around him and holding his hand to complete worksheets he could barely understand. On another occasion, his lovely occupational therapist came out whimpering about him pulling out her eyelashes.
Most chilling of all in my memory of Sebastien’s childhood aggression was a playdate Sebastien had gone on when he was six years old. When his playmate fluttered around him one too many times while he was doing the Etch-a-Sketch on a couch, he bit down on her chin so hard that it took a week for the bruise to heal. To this day, I am still haunted by the recollection of Sebastien plonking himself down in front of the television, while the young girl shrieked inconsolably on her mother’s lap. All the helpless “sorrys” I was muttering couldn’t mitigate the utter dearth of remorse or interest on Sebastien’s part.
Cognizant of the depth of Sebastien’s aggressive nature, I felt as though I was in a race against time to root out his aggression, while he was still small in stature. Already, it was unpleasant and embarrassing to handle an eight-year-old who would suddenly push, pinch, or pull others in public. The prospect of him doing it when he was older motivated me to be consistent in my application of the behavioural management approach of using rewards and consequences method to restrain his aggression.
In embracing this approach for managing Sebastien’s behaviour, I had not solely considered it to be an extrinsic motivator for getting people and animals to do things that they were not wont to do, but also as a tool for teaching Sebastien about the complex realities of life. For example, when Sebastien was procrastinating in his work, I would remind him that I would cancel his outing for the day if he didn’t do his work properly. And when he persisted despite the warning, I would cancel his outing, no matter how hard Sebastien cried. To me, this experiential way offered a concrete way for me to communicate expectations to someone who lacked the verbal ability to grasp abstract concepts. Moreover, this behavioural management approach also conveyed the cardinal rules of life that everyone was expected to abide by, i.e. facing the consequences of our choices by having to take responsibility for them. Therefore, by following through with my rewards and consequences, I was training Sebastien for the realities of life.
Between the ages of eight and 12, Sebastien was almost like a model child. I could count on him to follow my rules of conduct and understand my expectations without fail. I prided myself on being a seasoned parent who had a multitude of behavioural management strategies up her sleeve to whip out in response to Sebastien’s deviant conduct in a heartbeat. Back then, I was certain that my consistent adherence to behavioural management would guarantee that Sebastien would grow up to be a manageable young man who understood the rules of life and make the “right decision”.
My training of Sebastien was particularly vigorous in the fluid and dynamic real-life theatre of life that involved spontaneous interactions with members of the public. In the real world, characterised by the vicissitudes of life events and the presence of others with their own agendas, an autistic child could be easily thrown off-keel. In my desire to raise an exemplary young man, I set high standards for Sebastien: essentially, he needed to conform as close to the norms of the outside world as possible to enjoy the “privilege” of going out. He was thus expected to restrain his atypical behaviours and tendencies so that he would not attract negative attention or risk losing his privilege.
Setting such high expectations on Sebastien also placed a tremendous onus on me. I took my role as Sebastien’s life mentor very seriously. Every time, before stepping out of the house, I would put on my “game face” and brace myself to stay vigilant to Sebastien’s interactions with his environment. Whether we were walking on the congested thoroughfares of Singapore or riding on the public transport, I would be watching how Sebastien manoeuvred his way around people with an eagle eye, while scanning the surroundings in anticipation of obstacles or problems that might occur. Along the way, I rapped out terse two-word instructions like an army sergeant, “Eyes looking”, “Elbows in”, and “Walk Straight” to make him aware of his actions and behaviour. In crowded and noisy surroundings such as the MRT — the local commuter system, where these commands could not be heard, I would employ customised and highly exaggerated gestures to facilitate Sebastien’s understanding of my expectations from a distance. For instance, I would shake my head vigorously and issue a look of alarm when he hummed loudly. When he looked agitated or anxious, I would pump my hands, with palms facing downward, to signify “calm down”.
Cultivating Sebastien’s awareness of the people around him was particularly challenging in a densely-populated place like Singapore with constant pedestrian traffic. When walking through underpasses and passageways, there would be people streaking across our paths from all directions, jostling to get to where they wanted to as quickly as they could. Manoeuvring one’s way smoothly through the crowd, without bumping into another person, could seem a bit like a video game. While the instances of one bumping into another were quite inevitable, I was hyperconscious of every instance when Sebastien bumped into someone and every glare he received because he did not say “sorry” or “excuse me” when these minor collisions occurred. The brevity of such encounters often did not allow me to explain or the person to realise that Sebastien had special needs. Without me there, I feared that one day, someone would really take offence at Sebastien and hurt him. He would not be able to defend himself or defuse the situation with words.
My standard for Sebastien’s behaviour, due to his inability to communicate, was thus far stricter than what most pedestrians would have to adhere to in Singapore. In fact, very many of them often brush past you brusquely without ever stopping to apologise. Yet because of Sebastien’s verbal deficits, I placed the preponderant burden on Sebastien to be the “better person” because he couldn’t afford to slip up like the others. So I was relentless in thrusting the existence of the human world into Sebastien’s consciousness when we were out and about in the public space. Whenever he committed any “walking” transgressions or did things like pushing past people to get on the commuter train first, I would immediately pull him out of the stream of traffic, look him in the eye, and admonish him about what had happened.
I performed my role as Sebastien’s life mentor with tremendous intensity. It was what got me out of day every day with a sense of purpose. I was fighting for an outcome that most would dismiss as a lost cause so that Sebastien could have a real fighting chance in this life. Each and every moment was driven by the deadline of my unknown, but inevitable, death sentence. My mission was to get Sebastien ship-shape and ready for life before I had to leave him: he needed to be “teachable” and “lovable” so that he could attract good people into his life.
Over time, through my immediate feedback and strict implementation of the rewards-consequences system, Sebastien showed signs of progress. While he still twitched his fingers and squinted his eyes — telltale signs that he was “different”, Sebastien had learnt to adjust his walking pace in the human stream and overtake others fluidly without elbowing them or stepping on their toes. I could see how he resisted his desire to pick up every piece of garbage, at least when I was watching. All the time, I was acutely aware that he was walking on a tightrope — wavering between following his own inclinations and meeting his needs or conceding to my expectations.
In retrospect, I can see now that I had erred on the oppressive side as a parent in my anxious endeavour to help Sebastien assimilate into mainstream society. I had the perfect justification of every parent of a child with special needs: it was for his own good. Since we lived in the mainstream society, highly outnumbered by neurotypical people who could adhere to social norms, Sebastien had no choice but to obey its rules, regardless of how far they deviated from his nature. This was a fundamental reality of life that I could not change. All I could do was to build Sebastien’s social awareness and skills so that he could navigate through life more smoothly.
Thus, I was even proud of Sebastien’s capacity for withstanding my daily onslaughts of reprimands and still bouncing back with a radiant smile day after day. I even considered it to be an exercise for building the strength of character. On the good days when Sebastien was remarkably well-behaved, I would feel encouraged that I was making headway in my ambitious endeavour to sculpt Sebastien into an acceptable member of mainstream society.
In truth, my efforts belied the reality that Sebastien’s conduct would never be “good enough” for some in the mainstream society, no matter how hard we tried. Even when Sebastien the nine-year-old child was just quietly humming or pressing the sides of his face near his ears, he would still be drawing unkind stares from commuters. I would wrap my arms around Sebastien while imagining that my embrace was a dominant force field that was repelling all the negativity directed towards him. Still, the commuters would continue to stare at us with seemingly baffled and confused expressions that seemed to convey these sentiments: How can anyone display affection for such a child? How can a mother be happy when she has a child like this?
What these individuals do not realise is the sheer effort that we, mothers of special needs children, make in our pursuit of happiness. It is not just in the daily grind of coping with the challenges of our children, but also in the fact that we do so in a world that insists on enshrouding us in veils of sadness and tragedy. Even as these individuals strive to find their own happiness, they have simply decided that people like me cannot possibly hope to be happy in this life with my special needs child.
I had always been tempted to confront them with this message: all human beings are built with a proclivity for happiness: every nerve and fibre of our being strains for it. I am no different from you. It is not possible for us parents to go through our lifelong journey of raising our special children without feeding our need for happiness. This is why we are adept at finding happiness with our children in the tiniest of accomplishments, their goofy grins, and their unique ways of expressing love with their eyes and gestures. This is how we manage to stake our claim to our small doses of happiness, however mysterious it may seem in the face of an overwhelming majority of uncomprehending “outsiders”. It bears testimony to the extraordinary power of a special kind of love.
However, I never said anything. I didn’t think that they would understand. Instead, my sole act of defiance would be to hug Sebastien tighter and broaden my smile even more. And during these moments, I would feel at once the strength and fragility of my love for him. On one side, I was convinced that my love was strong enough to repel this unwarranted hostility, the fear of the different. On the other, I would feel helpless, knowing that I could not be there forever to fend for him.
Upon a more in-depth examination of my past behaviour, it is evident that my single-minded dedication to the mission of transforming Sebastien into a model young man was all about giving me a false sense of control over Sebastien’s life to keep my fear of his challenging future at bay. At a practical level, it endowed me with a sense of focus that shaped how I lived and saw myself in terms of the roles that I played as Sebastien’s mother.
I didn’t know it back then, but this period, when Sebastien was between eight and 12 years old, would be my “honeymoon years of parenting an autistic child”.
* * * * *
At the time, there were no signs that things were going wrong. In fact, I even thought that I had struck a perfect balance in my guidance of Sebastien when he began forging his own sanctuaries in the worlds of inline skating and painting. I considered his pursuit of these activities where I had interference to be the proof that Sebastien’s life was not entirely ruled by my expectations.
Although I had introduced him to these activities, Sebastien showed his inclinations for them by putting his own unique stamp on them. In skating, there was no stopping Sebastien, once he overcame his initial trepidation. However, instead of assuming the conventional low stance of the skating pose, with body crouched forward and knees bent, Sebastien stayed fully upright, swinging his torso and limbs in a fluid and free motion, as though he were just taking a casual stroll. He came up with his own moves like jumping on his skates without falling to touch the ceiling or making a turn with one foot lifted onto a kerb even as the other rounded the corner on the ground.
What was so remarkable was that for the first time in his life Sebastien was picking up a skill quickly and even faster than most of the neurotypical novices. During the skating drills, all that Coach Randy had to say to Sebastien was “Follow me” and Sebastien would be able to manoeuvre past the tiny cones with enviable ease. This was in stark contrast to many of us who stumbled and fell. In the realm of skating, it was the “neurotypicals” who did not “get” the “rules” of lateral motion, while Sebastien grasped them as quickly as the act of talking was for us.
Yet what I loved most of all about Sebastien’s skating was seeing him glide along with carefree ease. From his shiny bright eyes and explosive giggles, one could see that he skated purely for the love of skating, exulting in the freedom that came with the flight of unobstructed motion. Thus, when Coach Randy suggested that Sebastien was ready for speedskates after one year, I did not hesitate to fork out the hefty sum of money to purchase them for him.
Just as unexpected was Sebastien’s creation of his “painting sanctuary”. After years of sloppily covering entire pictures with a single colour in a lacklustre fashion, Sebastien invented his signature style on his own initiative when he turned 12. Marking out carefully-proportioned boxes on a picture with markers and covering it with a rainbow of colours, without respecting the contours of the drawing, Sebastien would strip the picture of its original identity and redefine it with his vision. From this starting point, Sebastien went on to experiment with watercolours and water, playing with their unique properties to produce one-of-a-kind abstract watercolour paintings of vibrant hues and dynamic energy.
People often ask me what Sebastien’s paintings are about. Can he explain or describe them? When I reply that he does not, they are invariably disappointed. But to me, Sebastien “speaks” by communicating his essence — his willingness to push boundaries, his fiery passion, and his larger-than-life personality — through his paintings, loud and clear. The problem lies in the fact that we don’t understand it, because our own communication is limited to words.
But right from the very start, Sebastien’s immersion in painting wasn’t so much about producing something, but about the process. In fact, much of Sebastien’s early works were soaked with so much water that they would end up in the trash chute. Adamantly unguided and self-taught, Sebastien derived his pleasure from immersing in the sensory experience of experimenting with water and paint. Even more importantly, painting offered him a sanctuary from life. Whenever he painted, all his being was fully focused on the task at hand: there was no fidgeting, no strange mannerisms of squinting his eyes or pressing the sides of his face.
And then two years later, Sebastien’s interests would further expand when Jerome, my then-boyfriend, entered our life and exposed Sebastien to the joys of travelling. Over the subsequent years, Sebastien would consistently wow us with his ability to undergo adventures, both planned and spontaneous, such as bounding up the volcanic mountain of Krakatoa, even after throwing up profusely on a rocky three-hour boat ride that should have taken half the time. He endured gruelling night train journeys that entailed waiting for them at ungodly hours at train stations and getting up just as early to catch sunrises at monuments like Borobudur and Mount Bromo.
All in all, Sebastien exuded a fiery zeal for life, which pulsated through his bounding strides that always made you think that he was about to take flight with every step he took. And when Sebastien flashed his infectious smile that stretched from cheek to cheek, with his eyes glowing with delight, he could light up the world around him and make you smile for no reason whatsoever.
Thus, for the first four years of the homeschooling journey, Sebastien resonated with tremendous potential. I felt privileged to be an intimate witness of his transformation from an insecure, reserved, and withdrawn boy into a confident, expressive, and dynamic youth with a passionate appetite for life. I thought that we were on track in our mission of turning Sebastien into an extraordinary autistic individual despite the constraints that his communication and learning delays placed on his development.
Even though homeschooling an autistic child without respite was tiring, I fought hard for this narrative to have a happy ending. So even on the bad days, when I would wish that I hadn’t made this homeschooling commitment, I could always convince myself that my homeschooling journey was worth it. Ultimately, back then, the good days far outnumbered the bad ones. All I needed to do was to remind myself to take a step back and celebrate the progress he was making, however slow and tortuous it was.
Chapter 1 to be continued… | https://medium.com/@kahyingchoo/where-does-my-autistic-son-belong-partially-serialized-e8f39b777609 | ['Kah Ying Choo'] | 2020-12-07 11:38:29.407000+00:00 | ['Parenting', 'Autism', 'Anxiety', 'Parenting Teenagers', 'Autism Spectrum Disorder'] |
PM Modi Lays Foundation Stone for World’s Largest Renewable Energy Park at Kutch | Yellow Haze Energy | On 15 December 2020, prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi laid foundation of of the world’s largest Renewable Energy park in Gujarat’s Kutch. The Renewable Energy project will account for a large chunk of India’s ambitious target of generating 175 GW in renewable energy by 2022 and 450 GW by 2030. In march 2020, India’s Ministry of New & Renewable Energy (MNRE) had unveiled plans to setup two Ultra Mega Renewable Energy Parks of 25 GW each, one at Kutch in Gujarat & other at Jaisalmer in Rajasthan.
Khavda Ultra Mega Renewable Energy Park
This 30,000 megawatt capacity hybrid renewable energy park, spread over 1,80,000 acres, will be built along the Indo-Pak border at Khavda using both wind and solar energy. The mega project will not only help in better utilisation of a vast patch of desert, but also in securing the land border.
There are two zones of this park. The first zone will be a hybrid park on 49,600 hectares of land, which means it will use sunlight and wind to generate electricity. The second zone will be spread over 23,000 hectares of land and will be wind power based only. The park will be constructed between Khawda and Vighakhot villages near India-Pakistan border. While the hybrid park will be just six kilometres from the international border, the wind park will be located at a distance of 1–6 kilometres from it.
Largest Solar Park in India: Bhadla Solar Park
Presently, Bhadla solar park, with a total capacity of 2245MW, is the largest solar park in India . As from the name, the solar park is located at Bhadla, a sandy, dry and arid region with an area of about 45 km 2. located in the Jodhpur district of Rajasthan. Bhadla is about 200 km north of Jodhpur and about 320 km west of Jaipur. Before Bhadla Solar Park, Pavagada Solar Park in Karnataka with a capacity of 2,050 MW was the largest solar park. In March 2020, with 2,245 MW of solar project, Bhadla solar park has become the World’s largest solar park. | https://medium.com/@shauryathor/pm-modi-lays-foundation-stone-for-worlds-largest-renewable-energy-park-at-kutch-yellow-haze-8c8179a64acb | ['Shaurya Singh'] | 2020-12-16 12:35:23.212000+00:00 | ['Mnre', 'Renewable Energy', 'Renewable Energy Projects', 'Solar Energy', 'Solar Power'] |
Deep Dive into Support Vector Machine | Consider the above classifiers. There are two classes:
Class ‘ +1 ’: Dark data points.
’: Dark data points. Class ‘-1’: Light data points.
So, what’s wrong with the above classifiers??? If we look over the classifiers in figure 1, we cannot determine the proper regions for the two classes.The hyper plane (hyper plane is the plane that classifies the two classes. Here, the dashed line) in classifier A looks very closer to class ‘-1’. Hyper plane in classifier B looks closer to class ‘+1’. And hyper plane in classifier C looks closer to class ‘-1’. It seems that if the hyper plane is closer to a class then it is favouring that particular class more than that of the another class. And if it is so then the chance of making mistake by the classifier would be more as shown in figure 2.
Figure 2: The red coloured data point is mistakenly classified by the classifier
It can be observed that the best classifier would the one in which the hyper plane is in equal distance from the two classes (No favouritism). And it would be much better if the distance between the class and the hyper plane is maximum. And this is what happens in case of SVM as shown in figure 3. NOTE: The idea of favouritism is just for understanding the intuition. No such idea is used for formulating SVM.
Figure 3: The red coloured dashed line is the optimal hyper plane. The green coloured dashed lines define the boundary for each class. And the data points with green coloured thick outline that are on the boundary of the class are called support vectors. Hence, the name Support Vector Machine
The caption for figure 3 well describes the figure. The interesting thing about SVM is that only support vectors are considered to determine the optimal hyper plane. We will soon prove this statement.
Problem 1 : What if the data points can’t be separated by a straight hyper plane as in figure 3???
Figure 4
If we consider figure 4, no hyper plane exists in two dimensional space that can classify the data points shown in the figure. But, SVM has a solution for it that is why SVM is interesting. In such situations the given space is transformed into higher dimensional space so that the data points are separable in the new space. So, the data points are classified in the higher dimensional space and mapped back to the original space. This concept seems to be tricky. So, look over the visualisation shown below carefully.
Figure 5: Visualisation of transformation from given space to higher dimensional, classify data points in the new space and then map everything back to the original space. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3liCbRZPrZA
The visualisation in figure 5 gives a clear idea about the transformation from given space to higher dimensional space. In the above visualisation the pink coloured hyper plane can linearly classify the data points easily in the higher dimensional space. So, data points in figure 4 can be classified as shown in figure 6.
Figure 6
Role of Kernel Functions and Problem 2
Another problem in SVM is that the process of transforming into higher dimensional space, then determining the optimal hyper plane in the new space and then transforming back to the original space is very complex and costs high overhead. Say, for example, if there are 1000 features in a 100 dimensional space and if the 100 dimensional space is transformed into 1000 dimensional space then each feature vectors will have 1000 components and 1000 * 1000 computations (so many computations because hyper plane is described as W.X + b = 0, where X is feature vector) would be required to determine the optimal hyper plane and again the hyper plane will have to be mapped back to the original space. And this whole process costs high overhead.
The solution to above problem is the kernel function. The interesting fact about kernel functions is that kernel functions does the above mapping without actually going to the the higher dimensional space. In other words the kernel functions does the above mapping without actually performing all the above computations in the higher dimensional space.
The transformation in visualisation shown in figure 5 is done using a polynomial kernel function ϕ((a, b)) = (a, b, a² + b²) as shown in figure 7.
Figure 7: Training example of SVM with kernel given by ϕ((a, b)) = (a, b, a² + b²). Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Support_vector_machine
Please note that kernel functions is only applicable if the problem consists of dot product or inner product. And fortunately, the formulation of SVM depends on dot product (Will be proved in coming sections). | https://towardsdatascience.com/deep-dive-into-support-vector-machine-654c8d517103 | ['Anupam Sharma'] | 2018-12-31 20:17:03.657000+00:00 | ['Support Vector Machine', 'Svm', 'Machine Learning', 'Data Science'] |
Subway Surfers Download Free Adventure and Strength Game | Subway Surfers ⭐ fun endless running game developed by Kiloo & SYBO Games / Subway Surfers download free adventure and strength game… Read More | https://medium.com/@downloadsoft/subway-surfers-download-free-adventure-and-strength-game-9f6335416db3 | ['Download Soft'] | 2020-12-21 08:24:28.893000+00:00 | ['Freegames', 'Images', 'Free'] |
4 Graphic Novels That Will Take Your Knowledge About Countries and Their Culture to a New Level | 4 Graphic Novels That Will Take Your Knowledge About Countries and Their Culture to a New Level
Novels that paints unforgettable portraiture of the daily life of people through the most engaging and informative illustrations Lokajit Tikayatray Follow Jun 22 · 7 min read
Image by Ylanite Koppens from Pixabay
I love reading books, especially those with pictorial narratives. All through my childhood, every month, I eagerly waited for the issue of Chandamama, a classic Indian children’s magazine famous for its stories with illustrations.
I relish reading books about life, society, culture, and human nature in general. Books on these subjects help me learn about beautiful people and their culture that I would have otherwise remained ignorant of.
Combining my preference of topics and the yearnings for good illustration, no wonder I crave reading graphic novels.
To date, I have the privilege of reading many wonderful authors that have portrayed countries and their culture through vivid graphical images in their novels. These books have helped me broaden my understanding of people and their circumstances in different parts of the world.
Here are four great graphic novels amongst them that I am sure you will love to read. | https://baos.pub/4-graphic-novels-that-will-take-your-knowledge-about-countries-and-their-culture-to-a-new-level-131a5d365919 | ['Lokajit Tikayatray'] | 2021-06-22 04:32:40.567000+00:00 | ['Books', 'Novel', 'Reading', 'Graphics', 'Book Recommendations'] |
Deploying a Rails + React.js App to Heroku | Heroku Platform
So you have a finished application that runs on your localhost machine. It’s time now to make your application public and available to users on the web; in essence, to move out of development and into production stage. This isn’t a straight forward task and usually requires some careful tweaking to make sure everything runs smoothly on the web.
For this article, in an attempt to save you some headaches and countless trial and error commits and erroneous deploys, I will go in-depth on deploying a Rails with React.js application using Heroku.
Before starting, I’m assuming you’ve done a few things:
You have a working Rails application with React.js as the client on the same stack that can run on your local environment You used the rails new –api command to build the app in API mode (best practice in this case) You used create-react-app to build the React client Your Ruby version is 2.4.0 or above Your Rails version is 5.x You know what Heroku is and have set up an account and have their CLI installed You have Yarn or NPM installed (we’ll use Yarn in this article)
Before you can even attempt deploying the app, you must first make some changes to the default configurations in Rails and the overall project in general.
I suggest you create a separate git branch for these coming changes in case you want to keep your original development version. Once your deployment/production version is complete, you can merge to your master branch.
Ok, let’s get to it!
Changing the Rails Database
By default, Rails uses SQLite3 for its database, however, SQLite is not intended as a production-grade database. Heroku works with PostgreSQL, a more robust database. If you’re not familiar with PostgreSQL, I encourage you to research it; it’s really powerful and used by many applications.
To move from sqlite3 to postgres , open your Gemfile and remove or comment out the sqlite3 gem and add the postgres gem:
# gem ‘sqlite3’
gem ‘pg’
Alternatively, you can group your gems on their respective environments if you want to preserve your current database on the development environment:
group :development do
gem ‘sqlite3’
end group :production do
gem ‘pg’
end
At this point, if you don’t have one, I suggest you create a seed file based on your current database. This will allow you to move or recreate your current data into the new PostgreSQL database. If you plan on having a blank production database, then this won’t be necessary.
Once your gemfile has been updated, re-install the dependencies by running bundle install in your terminal.
By adding the postgres gem, we’ve told Rails to start using PostgreSQL as the database. For this to work, you need to change the database adapter from sqlite3 to postgresql in the database configuration file config/database.yml :
development:
adapter: postgresql
database: my_database_development
pool: 5
timeout: 5000
test:
adapter: postgresql
database: my_database_test
pool: 5
timeout: 5000 production:
adapter: postgresql
database: my_database_production
pool: 5
timeout: 5000
Note: This setup makes all environments use PostgreSQL. If you want to keep using SQLite on development, leave the development adapter pointing to sqlite3. Also, make sure you substitute “my_database” to your app’s root directory name.
At this point, you should commit your changes to your production branch.
ActiveStorage Changes
Rails’ ActiveStorage allows you to attach files to ActiveRecord models. If you are using ActiveStorage to attach pictures, audio, or other files, you need to make some configuration changes before deployment. This is because Heroku uses an “ephemeral” disk that allows you to write files to it, however, those files won’t persist after the Heroku app is restarted.
Instead of storing uploaded files directly on Heroku, it is recommended to use a cloud file storage service such as AWS or Google Cloud. In this article, we’ll use Google Cloud Storage as it’s very straight forward and it’s free to use for the first year.
Go to https://cloud.google.com and sign in with your Google account or create one. You’ll be taken to the Google Cloud Platform where you will create a new project. Name the project as your application’s name:
Next, open the Google Cloud Platform menu on the left side. Under “Storage”, hover over “Storage” and click on “Browser”. Click on the “Create Bucket” button to create a new “bucket” for your project:
A bucket is where your data is held on the Google Cloud. The name must be globally unique across Cloud Storage. For the settings, select Regional storage class, choose your location, and create:
Your bucket is now created. Now you have to give it access to your Rails backend. To do so you need to get an authorization key. On the main menu, under API’s & Services”, click on “Credentials”. This will open up a new page to create new credentials; create a new Service account key:
Pick a name for your service account, select Project Owner as the Role, and make sure the Key Type is in JSON format:
After clicking “Create”, a public/private key pair is generated and downloaded to your computer. Make sure to keep this in a safe place as it is the only copy of it you will have.
You now have a working Google Cloud project to upload and host your application’s files. Now let’s set up the Rails backend to work with it:
You need to let your app know about the authorization keys you just saved. First create a secrets folder inside your app’s config folder.
Add config/secrets/* to the app’s .gitignore file. This will prevent the contents of the secrets folder to be included in git version control, and uploaded and shared to git remotes.
Now rename the downloaded .json file to: your-app-name.json and move it into the config/secretes folder.
You now need to configure Rails to use the Google Cloud Service. First, add the Google Storage gem to your gemfile:
gem "google-cloud-storage", "~> 1.8", require: false
And run bundle install in the terminal.
Next, change the app’s storage configuration file config/storage.yml . Make the following changes:
google:
service: GCS
project: your-app-name
credentials: <%= ENV['GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS'] %>
bucket: your-app-name
Note: Make sure you add your corresponding project and bucket names instead of “your-app-name”.
Now, tell Rails to use :google for the production environment. In config/environments/production.rb , make the following change:
config.active_storage.service = :google
Note: Your development environment will continue to use ActiveStorage. If you want to use Google Cloud for development environment as well, you need to configure Rails to do so:
google_dev:
service: GCS
project: your-app-name
credentials: <%= Rails.root.join("config/secrets/ your-app-name.json ") %>
bucket: your-app-name
config/environments/development.rb :
config.active_storage.service = :google_dev
At this point, if this was a single Rails application, you could create the database and do your migrations, and then deploy it to Heroku. But since we have a React.js client, we need to change a few more things on the backend. This would be a good time to commit your changes.
Building the Production Client and Setting Up Rails for Deployment
Just as with a single React.js application, the client needs to be built to create a build directory that will hold the app’s production static files. Included in these files will be index.html , which will be served to visitors of the site. These files will be contained on the public folder of the Rails backend, which is what we want to deploy to Heroku. We can use Yarn (or NPM) to create the build and deploy scripts that will prepare our app for production.
Heroku works very good with Node.js applications and will recognize such apps if it sees a package.json file in the root of the application. Let’s create that file:
In your terminal and in the project’s root directory, execute yarn init and follow instructions.
This will add the package.json file to the Rails backend that Heroku will then use to build and deploy the app. It will look something like this:
{
"name": "my-awesome-package",
"version": "1.0.0",
"description": "The best package you will ever find.",
"main": "index.js",
"repository": {
"url": "https://github.com/yarnpkg/example-yarn-package",
"type": "git"
},
"author": "Yarn Contributor",
"license": "MIT"
}
We now need to add the scripts that will be executed for such actions:
"scripts": {
"build": "cd client && yarn install && yarn build && cd ..",
"deploy": "cp -a client/build/. public/",
"postinstall": "yarn build && yarn deploy && echo 'Client built!'"
},
When we push our repo to Heroku, Heroku will run npm install while deploying the app to make sure all necessary dependencies are installed. With the scripts above, we are telling Heroku to run the postinstall script after it initially runs npm install . The postinstall script runs the build script which will run yarn install in the client directory to install any dependencies the client may have, and then run yarn build to create the build folder that will hold the static files. Then the deploy script will run and will copy all the build files into the public folder for deployment.
Heroku also needs to know your version of Yarn, NPM, and Node. To find them use these commands in the terminal:
yarn -v && npm -v && node -v
Then add an engines object to the Rails’ package.json :
. . . "scripts": {
"build": "cd client && yarn install && yarn build && cd ..",
"deploy": "cp -a client/build/. public/",
"postinstall": "yarn build && yarn deploy && echo 'Client built!'"
},
"engines": {
"yarn": "1.21.1",
"npm": "6.11.3",
"node": "12.11.1"
},
With the above instructions, Heroku now knows how to build and deploy the app. We now need to tell it how to run the Rails server once the app is hosted on Heroku. To do this, we need to give it instructions via a Procfile:
In the app’s root directory, create a file called Procfile (it must be named exactly this way). In the file, write the following line:
web: bundle exec puma -t 5:5 -p ${PORT:-3001} -e ${RACK_ENV:-development}
This tells Heroku to run the Rails server on port 3001.
Note: You can set this port to whatever you want. Just make sure it is not the same port your client is using to connect, and that is the same port your fetch/ajax request are using to fetch data from the backend. More on this in the section below.
Connecting the React Client to the Rails API
By default, the Rails server runs on port 3000. So does the client development build when ruining in your local server, i.e. when running yarn start or npm start .
You might have been running two local servers by executing rails s –p 3001 in your terminal and on your app’s root directory, and yarn start on the client’s root directory. This will allow your client to run on the http://localhost:3000/ and the Rails backend/server on http://localhost:3001/.
This manual setup is ok while on development, but for production, we need to make sure that the client makes the server calls to the right port, every time. To do so, we must add a proxy to the client’s package.json file:
{
"name": "client",
"version": "0.1.0",
"private": true,
"proxy": "http://localhost:3001",
"dependencies": {
. . .
}
Next, we need to make changes to the client’s fetch requests.
You may have a component that makes calls to the Rails API/server. Something similar to this:
const apiURL = 'http://localhost:3001' export const fetchWorkouts = () => {
let data = {
method: 'GET',
headers: {
'Accept': 'application/json',
'Content-type': 'application/json'
}
} return dispatch => {
fetch(`${apiURL}/resources`, data)
.then(response => response.json())
.then(resources => dispatch({
type: 'FETCH_RESOURCES',
resources
}))
.catch(errors => errors)
}
}
A few things to note here. First, this is a React/Redux “API call action”. It uses ‘Redux-Thunk’ to handle the fetch request, but the same principles apply to use other tools like ‘Axios’ or vanilla fetch requests.
Second, note that here we have an apiURL variable that points to the Rails server. The variable is then interpolated into the fetch request address where it’s used to call on the “resources” endpoint. Although this is the correct way to handle these calls on your development environment, this wouldn’t work for a production build when deployed to Heroku. This is because we are “hard-coding” the path to our server, and Heroku –after deployment and once the app has been built on their server, uses its own HTTP routing stack with unique paths to the app’s Heroku server.
To fix this, you simply remove the apiUrl variable from the fetch request path and leave your resource endpoint. Something along:
//const apiURL = 'http://localhost:3001' export const fetchWorkouts = () => {
let data = {
method: 'GET',
headers: {
'Accept': 'application/json',
'Content-type': 'application/json'
}
} return dispatch => {
fetch(`/resources`, data) //removed hard-coded path
.then(response => response.json())
.then(resources => dispatch({
type: 'FETCH_RESOURCES',
resources
}))
.catch(errors => errors)
}
}
One last thing to consider, is the use of ‘React-Router’.
If your React client uses ‘react-router’ for its routing, you would need to make some changes to the Rails backend. Specifically, you will need to create a ‘fallback route’ for all routes or paths that don’t match or are not included in your client’s routes. In other words, you will tell your app to serve the client’s index.html for any path that is not included in your client’s routes.
To do so, in the Rails app/application_controller.rb file, add the following:
class ApplicationController < ActionController::API def fallback_index_html
render :file => 'public/index.html'
end
end
And in the Rails config/routes.rb file, add the following:
get '*path', to: "application#fallback_index_html", constraints: ->(request) do
!request.xhr? && request.format.html?
end
All right, that was a lot to do! But now our application is ready to be deployed. Next, we’ll create the Heroku app and deploy our Rails with React app to it.
This will be a good time to commit your work.
Deploying to Heroku
As a reminder, I’m assuming you have a Heroku account and have the Heroku CLI installed. If you haven’t, please go to https://www.heroku.com/, create an account and follow instructions on how to set up the CLI.
The first thing to do is to log in to your Heroku account. In your terminal, execute heroku login and fill in your credentials.
Now, create a new Heroku app:
In your terminal, and in your app’s root directory, execute the following: heroku create your-app-name
You can confirm the new Heroku app is connected to your Rails + React app by executing git remote –v . This will list all your remote depositories associated with your app directory. You should see Heroku listed there because Heroku uses your git repo to build your app on their server.
Next, you will tell Heroku how to build the app. Since the app uses Node.js and Ruby on the stack, Heroku needs to execute the correct buildpacks when building the app. To do so, execute the following in your terminal:
heroku buildpacks:add heroku/nodejs --index 1
heroku buildpacks:add heroku/ruby --index 2
You are all set!!
Commit all your changes and push them to Heroku:
git add .
git commit -m "first Heroku deploy "
git push heroku master
Note: the git push command takes in two arguments, a remote name and the local branch name to be pushed, i.e git push <remotename> <branchname> . You should push the branch name where all these changes took place. If you followed my suggestion to create a new deployment branch before making these changes, you will need to deploy that branch instead of master above.
When you push your app to Heroku, Heroku will run the scripts we set in the Rails package.json file to build the app. This process will take a minute or two. You can see the build and deploy scripts running in the background while this process takes place.
You probably have some .env variables in your development. Since these variables are usually protected and not committed to git , Heroku won’t know about them when we push the project to its master branch. To add these variable to your Heroku project, we can run the following command in the terminal AFTER the application has been created and uploaded to Heroku:
heroku config:set VARIABLE=VALUE
And finally!… since this is a brand new app hosted in Heroku, there won’t be a database set yet. You must create it, migrate it, and seed it (if you have a seed file). In your terminal:
heroku rake db:create
heroku rake db:migrate
heroku rake db:seed
And that’s it! You should now have a working production app hosted in Heroku.
You can open and test the app by running heroku open on the root directory.
One final note: if you find that your app’s images or styling aren’t loading properly, it may be because their corresponding static assets aren’t being processed while deploying. Check the Heroku logs to see which assets aren’t loading.
The quick fix is to pre-compile your assets before deployment. Note, however, that doing the following will slow down the app’s loading time. It’s recommended instead that you host the static assets on a CDN service.
To pre-compile assets, change the following lines in the Rails config/environments/production.rb file:
config.assets.complie = true | https://medium.com/how-i-get-it/rails-react-js-heroku-deployment-43d7469e122e | ['Alejandro Sabogal'] | 2019-12-20 22:08:42.308000+00:00 | ['Ruby on Rails', 'React', 'Deployment', 'Heroku', 'Reactjs'] |
2GT Coin Supply and Distribution 📊 | As previously announced, 2gether has started the presale of the 2GT Coin in Spain, and access will be opened to the remaining Eurozone countries in the following weeks. (Follow us on social media and don’t miss anything! 😉).
Today we’ll briefly explain the supply and distribution of the 2GT Coins. For an in-depth explanation, download the Whitepaper and Tokenomics paper, available on our web.
Summary:
2GT Coin total supply: 2,400,000,000 tokens
2GT Coins available in the 1st token sale: 400,000,000 tokens
Hard Cap of the 1st token sale: €20,000,000
Unitary price: €0.05
Bonus structure:
Bonus structure for the first €5M or until the 2GT is VFA approved
Accepted currencies: EUR, BTC, and ETH
Token delivery: in the investor’s Ether wallet within the 2gether app
Spain start date: January 14, 2019
Eurozone start date: H1 2019
Token supply and distribution
As mentioned above, the total supply of 2GT Coins will be capped at 2,400,000,000, and no more 2GT Coins will ever be created. But, how are they going to be allocated?
2GT Coin distribution
1st and 2nd token sales. The funds raised will be used to reach our business goals through 2021 and fund the 2GT rewards during the same period. To learn more about how we plan to use the funds, check out our upcoming Intended Use of Funds article. The 2GT Coins issued in these sales won’t have a lock-up period.
The funds raised will be used to reach our business goals through 2021 and fund the 2GT rewards during the same period. To learn more about how we plan to use the funds, check out our upcoming Intended Use of Funds article. The 2GT Coins issued in these sales won’t have a lock-up period. Community. These 2GT Coins will be used to create and boost 2gether’s client base, and they won’t have a lock-up period.
These 2GT Coins will be used to create and boost 2gether’s client base, and they won’t have a lock-up period. Partners. A strong network of partners is important to create a platform like 2gether — that’s why we’ll use these 2GT Coins to foster partnerships. Some of our partners already include A.T. Kearney, KPMG, Uría Menéndez, and Swiss Crypto Advisors. These 2GT Coins won’t have a lock-up period.
A strong network of partners is important to create a platform like 2gether — that’s why we’ll use these 2GT Coins to foster partnerships. Some of our partners already include A.T. Kearney, KPMG, Uría Menéndez, and Swiss Crypto Advisors. These 2GT Coins won’t have a lock-up period. Team. We have a really talented team that is working hard to make 2gether a reality and that plays a key role in the project’s success. The team members will have a four-year lock-up period with a 24-month cliff.
We have a really talented team that is working hard to make 2gether a reality and that plays a key role in the project’s success. The team members will have a four-year lock-up period with a 24-month cliff. Early investors. Some of them are former J.P. Morgan bankers or McKinsey partners, and they have helped craft 2gether. They will have an 18-month lock-up period with a 12-month cliff.
Some of them are former J.P. Morgan bankers or McKinsey partners, and they have helped craft 2gether. They will have an 18-month lock-up period with a 12-month cliff. Authorized Fund. A reserve to ensure that 2GT rewards are always distributed when accrued by a community member, and to raise further funds if needed, among other uses. The lock-up period will be managed by the smart contract following dynamic rules.
Token supply calendar
To limit potential volatility in the value of the 2GT Coin, we’ve implemented lock-up periods to ensure progressive token issuance following the 1st and 2nd token sales. The chart below highlights the predicted circulating supply year by year:
Predicted circulating supply
More info 👇
We’ve posted the Whitepaper and the Tokenomics documents on our web, where you can find more information about 2gether and the 2GT Coin.
We’ll also post more articles, such as the regulation around the regulations issued under Malta’s Virtual Financial Assets Act (VFAA) and the Intended Use of Funds, in the coming weeks.
In the meantime, follow us on Twitter and join our community! 🚀 | https://medium.com/2gether/2gt-coin-supply-and-distribution-d318855bea57 | ['Álvaro Bernabéu De Yeste'] | 2019-03-18 12:35:53.018000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Fintech', 'Crowdfunding', 'Blockchain', 'Technology'] |
In a world of image recognition and robots that can build cars and perform surgery, couldn’t we have industrial robot style arms, in our homes, mounted on tracks on the ceiling, that help us around… | Helping Hands: Industrial Robot Technology in the Home
In a world of image recognition and robots that can build cars and perform surgery, couldn’t we have industrial robot style arms, in our homes, mounted on tracks on the ceiling, that help us around the house? A robotic helper that could: fold and put away laundry, clean and tidy and even help with prep and cleanup in the kitchen. This would represent a significant increase in quality of life, especially for those who are unable to fully care for themselves for whatever reason. | https://medium.com/@big00pic/helping-hands-industrial-robot-technology-in-the-home-52d7110c8667 | ['Big Picture'] | 2020-12-03 03:33:25.432000+00:00 | ['Tech', 'Robots', 'Future', 'Futurism', 'Technology'] |
10 IMPORTANT USES OF BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY IN BANKING INDUSTRY | Blockchain technology has constructed hype from the day of its invention and it has gained a lot more attention in the last few years. Because of its transparency and flexible nature, blockchain is being adopted in many industries for its growth and development.
In recent days, the major issues which every banking industry faced for data protection. Blockchain plays a vital role here by increasing trust, transparency, and privacy in data sharing.
Nowadays, all those banking industry technologies are challenged by protecting security. By enhancing trust, transparency, and privacy in data sharing, blockchain technology may aid in the acceptance of digital protection solutions.
Blockchain technology completes its major years of running and still running successfully. This technology starts primarily with cryptocurrency bitcoin. Its big role is to provide a decentralized exchange of records. Blockchain technology has now expanded from finance to include the blockchain sector as well.
Here the most popular 10 important uses of blockchain in the banking sector:
Payments, Especially Cross-Border Payments
Stock Exchange and Share Trading
Trade Finance
Digital Identity Verification
Syndicated Lending
Accounting, Bookkeeping, and Audit
Credit Reports for Businesses and Individuals
Hedge Funds
Crowdfunding (ICOs)
Peer to Peer (P2P) Transfers
Here we explain about each benefit:
Payments, Especially Cross-Border Payments
Payments are the first and premier benefits of any banking and financial system. When it comes to blockchain finance, both central and noncentral banks all over the world are now tapping into this new technology in terms of payment processing and potential issuing of their own digital money. This trend also holds the cross-border payments, which have been powered mostly by Swift or Western Union until now.
Stock Exchange and Share Trading:
As you know, the traditional stock exchange processing time is very high and involves lots of stages and administration and can take up to 3 days. anyhow, the decentralized nature of blockchain technology in banking can remove all those unnecessary middlemen and enable trading to be run on computers all over the world. Never devoted servers unified into an interconnected network.
Trade Finance
Blockchain also plays a major role in the trade finance sector — financial ventures that are related to c international trade (not stock exchange trading). Even in the present day also the disruptive world of technology, many trade finance ventures still involve lots of paperwork, such as bills of lading, invoices, letters of credit, etc. Of course, mostly the order management system permits you to convey out all this paperwork online, but still, it consumes lots of time.
Digital Identity Verification
Digital financial transactions are impossible without identity verification. anyhow, this verification requires a lot of steps to be taken, such as:
Face-to-face verified. Authentication: The bank users need to prove their identity when they login into the service. Authorization: A proof of the user’s aim is needed.
every step needs to be taken for each new service contributor. Anyhow, blockchain makes it possible to securely re-modify identity verification for other services.
Syndicated Lending
Syndicated lending refers to giving loans to individuals by a group of lenders, typically banks (a syndicate). Due to several contributors involved, the traditional processing of such syndicated loans by banks can take up to 3 weeks. Bank has some following challenges of syndicate loans.
Know Your Customer (KYC) — user identity verification.
Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) — legal actions aimed at prevention, detecting, and reporting of currency laundering ventures.
Blockchain financial services can superpower this process and make it more transparent. With blockchain’s ledger, banks within a syndicate can distribute tasks related to local compliance, KYC or BSA/AML and link them to a single client block.
Accounting, Bookkeeping, and Audit
Probably that involves as much paperwork as accounting the traditional way, and it is digitalized relatively slowly. The reason behind that may be in strict regulatory requirements regarding data validity and honesty. Therefore, accounting is another domain that can be modified with the power of blockchain technology finance, from clarifying compliance to streamlining the traditional double-entry bookkeeping. As a result, the records are more transparent and any attempt at forging is almost impractical. Think of it as of an “electronic notary” verifying the transactions. In addition, blockchain’s smart contracts can be used to automatically pay tangled.
Credit Reports for Businesses and Individuals
Blockchain finance can also help separate and small businesses to quickly get loans based on their credit bygone days. It may take a long time for lenders to review the borrower’s loan bygone days. Traditional business credit reports provided by middlemen credit service are not available for small business owners. Beyond, paying companies to entrance their sensitive data sounds strange and insecure. Anyhow, blockchain can provide tools that will allow borrowers to make their credit reports more accurate, transparent, and securely shareable funds.
Hedge Funds
A hedge fund is investing cooperation consisting of a fund manager and a group of investors (limited partners). Anyhow, hedge fund contributors are traders rather than ordinary investors. The purpose of a hedge fund is to maximize investor returns and decrease risks.
Crowdfunding (ICOs)
Crowdfunding requires raising funds by asking a large number of people each for a small amount of money, typically digitized. This industry is a perfect suit for blockchain technology finance. Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), financial instruments that help to start young cryptocurrencies, are the most known example of blockchain-based crowdfunding. ICO tokens are the same as shares of an organization, though usually without fairness exchange. Instead, the investors buy tokens either for existing cryptocurrency, such as bitcoins or for physical currency, such as US dollars. Later, in case of success, they can sell these tokens on cryptocurrency markets. Like in crowdfunding, funds are raised to implement a concept at the stage when the company has no product.
Peer to Peer (P2P) Transfers
Peer to peer convey, clients can transfer funds from their bank account or credit card to another person’s account via the Internet or mobile phone. The market is full of P2P transfer applications, but all of them have some limitations. The mention before issues can be solved with blockchain-based, decentralized apps for P2P transfers.
The above I mentioned all benefits of blockchain in the banking industry. And also explain about it.
If you need blockchain in your banking industry. | https://medium.com/@brugusoftwaresolutions/10-important-uses-of-blockchain-technology-in-banking-industry-4bb8d601d18e | ['Brugu Software Solutions'] | 2020-11-18 13:23:01.600000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Blockchain Technology', 'Blockchain In Banking', 'Blockchain Startup', 'Blockchain Development'] |
[S1 — E1] I Am… Series 2 Episode 1 (Full Episode) | ⭐A Target Package is short for Target Package of Information. It is a more specialized case of Intel Package of Information or Intel Package.
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(Britt Robertson), a fellow university student that he takes notices in the audience at an area concert. Bookmark this site Falling for cupid’s arrow immediately, he introduces himself to her and quickly discovers that she is drawn to him too. However, Melissa holds back from forming a budding relationship as she fears it`ll create an awkward situation between Jeremy and their mutual friend, Jean-Luc (Nathan Parson), a fellow musician and who also has feeling for Melissa. Still, Jeremy is relentless in his quest for her until they eventually end up in a loving dating relationship. However, their youthful courtship Bookmark this sitewith the other person comes to a halt when life-threating news of Melissa having cancer takes center stage. The diagnosis does nothing to deter Jeremey’s love on her behalf and the couple eventually marries shortly thereafter. Howsoever, they soon find themselves walking an excellent line between a life together and suffering by her Bookmark this siteillness; with Jeremy questioning his faith in music, himself, and with God himself.
✌ STREAMING MEDIA ✌
Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a provider. The verb to stream refers to the procedure of delivering or obtaining media this way.[clarification needed] Streaming identifies the delivery approach to the medium, rather than the medium itself. Distinguishing delivery method from the media distributed applies especially to telecommunications networks, as almost all of the delivery systems are either inherently streaming (e.g. radio, television, streaming apps) or inherently non-streaming (e.g. books, video cassettes, audio tracks CDs). There are challenges with streaming content on the web. For instance, users whose Internet connection lacks sufficient bandwidth may experience stops, lags, or slow buffering of this content. And users lacking compatible hardware or software systems may be unable to stream certain content.
Streaming is an alternative to file downloading, an activity in which the end-user obtains the entire file for the content before watching or listening to it. Through streaming, an end-user may use their media player to get started on playing digital video or digital sound content before the complete file has been transmitted. The term “streaming media” can connect with media other than video and audio, such as for example live closed captioning, ticker tape, and real-time text, which are considered “streaming text”.
This brings me around to discussing us, a film release of the Christian religio us faith-based . As almost customary, Hollywood usually generates two (maybe three) films of this variety movies within their yearly theatrical release lineup, with the releases usually being around spring us and / or fall respectfully. I didn’t hear much when this movie was initially aounced (probably got buried underneath all of the popular movies news on the newsfeed). My first actual glimpse of the movie was when the film’s movie trailer premiered, which looked somewhat interesting if you ask me. Yes, it looked the movie was goa be the typical “faith-based” vibe, but it was going to be directed by the Erwin Brothers, who directed I COULD Only Imagine (a film that I did so like). Plus, the trailer for I Still Believe premiered for quite some us, so I continued seeing it most of us when I visited my local cinema. You can sort of say that it was a bit “engrained in my brain”. Thus, I was a lttle bit keen on seeing it. Fortunately, I was able to see it before the COVID-9 outbreak closed the movie theaters down (saw it during its opening night), but, because of work scheduling, I haven’t had the us to do my review for it…. as yet. And what did I think of it? Well, it was pretty “meh”. While its heart is certainly in the proper place and quite sincere, us is a little too preachy and unbalanced within its narrative execution and character developments. The religious message is plainly there, but takes way too many detours and not focusing on certain aspects that weigh the feature’s presentation.
✌ TELEVISION SHOW AND HISTORY ✌
A tv set show (often simply Television show) is any content prBookmark this siteoduced for broadcast via over-the-air, satellite, cable, or internet and typically viewed on a television set set, excluding breaking news, advertisements, or trailers that are usually placed between shows. Tv shows are most often scheduled well ahead of The War with Grandpa and appearance on electronic guides or other TV listings.
A television show may also be called a tv set program (British EnBookmark this siteglish: programme), especially if it lacks a narrative structure. A tv set Movies is The War with Grandpaually released in episodes that follow a narrative, and so are The War with Grandpaually split into seasons (The War with Grandpa and Canada) or Movies (UK) — yearly or semiaual sets of new episodes. A show with a restricted number of episodes could be called a miniMBookmark this siteovies, serial, or limited Movies. A one-The War with Grandpa show may be called a “special”. A television film (“made-for-TV movie” or “televisioBookmark this siten movie”) is a film that is initially broadcast on television set rather than released in theaters or direct-to-video.
Television shows may very well be Bookmark this sitehey are broadcast in real The War with Grandpa (live), be recorded on home video or an electronic video recorder for later viewing, or be looked at on demand via a set-top box or streameBookmark this sited on the internet.
The first television set shows were experimental, sporadic broadcasts viewable only within an extremely short range from the broadcast tower starting in the. Televised events such as the 2021 Summer OlyBookmark this sitempics in Germany, the 2021 coronation of King George VI in the UK, and David Sarnoff’s famoThe War with Grandpa introduction at the 9 New York World’s Fair in the The War with Grandpa spurreBookmark this sited a rise in the medium, but World War II put a halt to development until after the war. The 2021 World Movies inspired many Americans to buy their first tv set and in 2021, the favorite radio show Texaco Star Theater made the move and became the first weekly televised variety show, earning host Milton Berle the name “Mr Television” and demonstrating that the medium was a well balanced, modern form of entertainment which could attract advertisers. The firsBookmBookmark this siteark this sitet national live tv broadcast in the The War with Grandpa took place on September 1, 2021 when President Harry Truman’s speech at the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference in SAN FRAI Am… CO BAY AREA was transmitted over AT&T’s transcontinental cable and microwave radio relay system to broadcast stations in local markets.
✌ FINAL THOUGHTS ✌
The power of faith, love, and affinity for take center stage in Jeremy Camp’s life story in the movie I Still Believe. Directors Andrew and Jon Erwin (the Erwin Brothers) examine the life span and The War with Grandpas of Jeremy Camp’s life story; pin-pointing his early life along with his relationship Melissa Heing because they battle hardships and their enduring love for one another through difficult. While the movie’s intent and thematic message of a person’s faith through troublen is indeed palpable plus the likeable mThe War with Grandpaical performances, the film certainly strules to look for a cinematic footing in its execution, including a sluish pace, fragmented pieces, predicable plot beats, too preachy / cheesy dialogue moments, over utilized religion overtones, and mismanagement of many of its secondary /supporting characters. If you ask me, this movie was somewhere between okay and “meh”. It had been definitely a Christian faith-based movie endeavor Bookmark this web site (from begin to finish) and definitely had its moments, nonetheless it failed to resonate with me; struling to locate a proper balance in its undertaking. Personally, regardless of the story, it could’ve been better. My recommendation for this movie is an “iffy choice” at best as some should (nothing wrong with that), while others will not and dismiss it altogether. Whatever your stance on religion faith-based flicks, stands as more of a cautionary tale of sorts; demonstrating how a poignant and heartfelt story of real-life drama could be problematic when translating it to a cinematic endeavor. For me personally, I believe in Jeremy Camp’s story / message, but not so much the feature.
FIND US:
✔️ https://onstream.club/tv/91605-2-1/i-am.html
✔️ Instagram: https://instagram.com
✔️ Twitter: https://twitter.com
✔️ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com | https://medium.com/@iam-s02-e01-episode1/s1-e1-i-am-series-2-episode-1-full-episode-56dc65534d02 | ['I Am...', 'Episode Full Series'] | 2021-08-05 02:53:23.025000+00:00 | ['Plitvice Lakes', 'Covid 19', 'Technology', 'Plise Sineklik', 'Politics'] |
Block Chain, Off-Chain and On-Chain — The mass market buzzwords. | What are these most popular buzzwords?
“BLOCK CHAIN, Off-Chain and On-Chain”
The fact is that nowadays all these buzzwords are oversaturating in the digital mass market.
So, Are we ready to dive into this valuable digital marketplace??
Here we go!!!
BLOCKCHAIN is a system controlled by the different entity having an openly distributed transaction ledger.
A block is consisting of:
-The cryptographic hash of the previous block,
- Data of the transaction and
- Timestamp.
And the block is a record of every new transaction made.
Every new block is adding to the chain of blocks and creating a blockchain.
Now we will tend towards various ways of Blockchain Transactions.
One is Bitcoin (and now Ethereum too going popular), but there are still some drawbacks to the system.
And that’s why people starting rid-off from this technique and choosing the solution as in the Off-chain transaction. Still, most transactions are mainly On-chain, slowly Off-chain too is getting popular.
Which one is profitable between Off-Chain and On-Chain?
Let’s have Off-Chain vs On-Chain
1)Off-chain transactions genuinely take the value outside of the blockchain system.
But, On-chain transactions depends on the blockchain. Also responsible for modification in the blockchain to validate the transaction to get ensure that it won’t be reversed.
2)Off-chain transactions validate the transaction through multiple methods of getting records of the immediate transaction. And immediately ensuring that it won’t be reversed.
On-chain validates the transaction by modifying the blockchain. And that’s why it has to wait for confirmation by each node on the block.
But, Off-chain transactions reduces the time to wait for confirmations.
3)There’s a term Cross-chain transaction which means if you want to place a transfer from Bitcoin to Ethereum, you will need to convert the Bitcoin into Ethereum. But it is cost effecting and time- consuming like an On-chain transaction.
The solution of cross-chain transactions without going via a costly and time-consuming path is an Off-chain transaction. Because Off-chain providing you easy access and enable Cross-chain transfers, regardless of Which blockchain system you are using.
Payouts in Off-chain & On-chain Blockchain System
Payout, the most crucial aspect before adopting any technique.
The Off-chain transaction allows every user to make an instant payout because there is no need to wait for confirmation from each node.
But On-chain transaction delay in making instant payouts because it requires more time to wait for confirmations from third parties.
Privacy in Off-chain & On-chain Blockchain System
Mostly all the On-chain transactions are recorded publicly over the blockchain so it is very easy to reach out to the transaction data, linking addresses and the details to identify the user.
But the Off-chain transactions has the privacy because it is not recorded publicly.
Now,
Let me ask you about the answer to this question-
Which transaction is faster than another one and facilitate to attract more users to make instant payouts?
And the answer with the above elaborated valid reasons is- The “OFFLINE TRANSACTION.” Atlast, a pro-tip on how to gain security in Blockchain system?
By using some Cryptographic techniques such as Chaum Tokens, the user can make it impossible to get identified himself and another participant in this transaction from the third party and even from the operator of the system. | https://medium.com/maice/block-chain-off-chain-and-on-chain-a93614ef47fb | ['Priyanka Gehlot'] | 2018-08-25 19:01:03.101000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Technology', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Ethereum Blockchain', 'Bitcoin'] |
Adapt to the distance with AviaHire integration and solutions | Adapt to the distance with AviaHire integration and solutions
Now that the pandemic has taken full form, how do employers keep their team integrated amidst the distance and achieve the same results as before? Read on to find out! Aviahire Follow Dec 23, 2020 · 5 min read
There are certain things that are beyond human control!
The pandemic has taught this very well to all of us. Everyone was placed in situations uncalled for, some more than the others, and somehow everyone managed to emerge with the most innovative solutions. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way businesses used to function and has paved the way for increasing remote work. Adapting to this distance has now become the biggest challenge for most employers and employees. Conference calls, virtual meetings, and online working have become trends. We wait out uncertainty, hoping that organizations can aspire to come out of this as even more resilient businesses, with stronger cultures, and as better teams. So how should companies successfully utilize this distance to achieve the same before-COVID level of success?
Here’s a guide for all the working individuals to get used to this growing mode of work-from-home with easy to adopt solutions to problems!
Problem: Working collaboratively
Due to this increasing distance, working in collaboration with the entire team has become an issue for companies, who find it confusing, concerning integrating the entire team on one particular platform. Checking the availability of all the employees, fixing on meeting schedules, and organizing online conferences has become an almost every day task now, but there is always one individual for whom it is not the best time of the day, leading to awkward situations.
Solution
The easiest way out of this is to use applications such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Google Meet, etc that provide the options for scheduling video calls and meets with the entire team on board. Interviewing and hiring candidates via these online platforms has also become very common these days. They are much more economical and easy to execute as compared to physical interviews.
To make your work easier, Aviahire’s integrations with multiple video conferencing platforms enable recruiters and candidates to gain a vivid experience and enjoy hassle-free video conferences and collaborations.
Problem: Remote Hiring
Another important difficulty that almost all companies are facing these days is recruiting new talent online. With the option of physically screening candidates not viable amidst the pandemic, companies need to think of new ways to process applications, conduct interviews, and select the right talent for their companies.
Solution
With modern technologies in place, there is no need for recruiters to worry about hiring anymore. An Applicant tracking system allows recruiters to carry out all the processes of hiring in almost a few clicks. Right from posting of jobs, parsing resumes, scheduling interviews to sending offer letters- an applicant tracking system does it all. AviaHire’s Video proctoring allows recruiters to screen candidates online save it as a form of a document attached to the candidate’s profile. Not only tests which involve answering questions by selecting options or typing the answer, but it also has the additional option to create a question to which candidates have to record their video in the form of an answer. Aviahire’s integration with multiple job boards as well as video conferencing applications makes the work easier.
Problem: Onboarding Candidates
Integrating new employees into the organization becomes difficult when you are not present in the office physically. How would you as an employer make sure that the new employees get to know their team members, get used to the new work culture and their team members know them as well?
Solution
The best solution to this problem is having digital onboarding for candidates. Digital onboarding leverages the availability of digital tools and technology to make the onboarding process as cost-effective and efficient as possible. Digital tools also provide new hires with the ability to access information and get answers to questions on a 24/7 basis whenever they need it. Integrating the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) with the Human Resource Information System (HRIS) can also prove to be beneficial for employers as it can simply transfer information from one system to another. This increased transparency and fluidity can have multiple benefits. Managers and employers may also be able to access needed information from a single point, instead of having to log on to separate systems.
Problem: Candidate Communication
Juggling with all the candidates, their hiring status, and communicating with each person can be overwhelming. But the recruiters must stay in constant touch with all the candidates. The company’s reputation is at stake here and you don’t want to be named as a bad recruiter.
Solution
All you need is an Applicant Tracking System(ATS) which makes 2-way communication easier for you. AviaHire’s ATS feature also uses WhatsApp, your candidate will never miss an update. Once a particular stage of the hiring process is completed an automated email is sent to the candidate’s email id and at the same time, a WhatsApp message is sent to the candidate to check their email. Even if you are using automated mails make sure they have a human touch to them. AviaHire provides its customers with customizable email templates and personalized updates and messages on WhatsApp as well.
Difficulty: Customer Support
Providing proper support and guidance to all the clients of your company is just another step toward being a recruiter. Customers are bound to have numerous doubts and queries regarding the ATS and it is only the company’s responsibility amidst a crisis to address all such queries.
Solution
Be honest with your customers. This is certainly not the time to over-promise or mislead customers. Maintain an open dialogue with them. Tell them your team is equipped to face the situation, but there might be occasional delays. If you’re in e-commerce, and a product shipment has been delayed due to a supply chain bottleneck, tell your customer about it. They’ll understand. AviaHire is proud of answering all queries and questions by customers and providing them with a positive experience. | https://medium.com/aviahire/adapt-to-the-distance-with-aviahire-integration-and-solutions-14c2633e61ed | [] | 2020-12-23 10:35:49.332000+00:00 | ['Work From Home', 'Remote Work', 'Applicant Tracking System', 'Pandemic', 'Human Resources'] |
Investing in Debt: The New Bank | Debt. What comes to your mind whenever you hear or see this? Liabilities or opportunities? For me, it’s both. Debt is not really something bad. Sometimes we use debt to cover some unseen financial issues that come along the way. Debt can be also positive in a sense that it produces something valuable like — a profit.
Investing in debt can be one of the best ways to see debt in a different light. When we invest in debt, we are like a bank. We indirectly or directly provide money to our clients. Same with the bank, the main purpose is to earn a regular income for a period of time. However, it is not guaranteed that you will gain the desired outcome over time. There are various factors that need to be considered prior to investing in debt.
Risk is always involved in every investment you will make. Just like the bank, you have the power to minimize the risks in debt investment. Aside from the fact that you can maximize your opportunity to earn profitable earnings and cash flow. As the lender, you can provide terms that are beneficial to you. You also get to choose who is eligible for the debt you are offering. You can decline an applicant application without a problem. And these are your rights as the lender — the bank.
Interest…Interest
Another good part of being the lender, you get to collect interest from each deal. This again depends on the agreement signed between you and the borrower. The interest you collect is like a blanket that can cover your expenses without harming your funds. Isn’t it great, you do not need to spend from your budget, instead you can pay other bills just by collecting interest.
Normally, these interests add up to taxable income. As a business rule, we need to pay our taxes based on the income that we get. If your interest collection gets really high, then paying your taxes in a quarterly manner is advised.
Tip: Always check your investment income. In case you get a tax bill of greater than $1,000, you should create an estimated tax payment throughout the year to avoid getting tax penalties. Check IRS for more details.
Safety Nets with Debt
How do some institutions remain steady with “investing in debt” businesses? Strategically, they have placed safety nets. These are commonly known as the cosigners and collateral. What do they do? Basically they are called safety nets because they are the one protecting the business- the lender.
Collaterals can be something of physical value like cars or title of a property. In cases where the borrower cannot afford to settle the loan, these collateral can be seized by the institutions as payment as agreed upon by two parties.
Cosigners are people that act as a backup source for loan payments. They are also the ones who help us get our loans approved. If your cosigner has a good credit standing, your loan has a greater chance of approval. If you are thinking of investing in debt, make sure to put in place these safety nets to avoid business loss.
Know The Risks with Debt
Investing in debt can be risky like other investments. The most common is the interest rate risk. Since change is constant, it also affects the debts businesses. Interest rate risk happens when your money is being tied up to a long term agreement and the interest rate rises. Therefore, it is not always good to have a long term debt agreement especially if the interest is not so big.
Another risk I would like to mention is what I called quick cash risk or commonly known as liquidity risk. Liquidity in its simpler form, is the potential of the funds to be converted to cash. Houses and cars are samples of illiquid assets. It takes time to convert them to cash. When a debt was agreed to be in a longer period of time, the liquidity of the funds will be overtime as well.
Lastly, the most common of all — default risk. I say this is the common of all. When a borrower fails to pay the debt that is called default. All lending companies have records of default risks.
You can try to lessen default cases by placing safety nets and reviewing the credibility of the applicants. Read about DIY Credit Repair Book and secure your financial future.
We invest to make our funds more profitable resulting in achieving our financial goals that can give us a comfortable life in the future. Debt-based investment can have advantages or disadvantages depending on the individual and the business. Bottom line is, before you decide to move to your next investment story, know them first. | https://medium.com/@getyourcreditscore750/investing-in-debt-the-new-24233b0bb7ad | ['Leonard Hinton'] | 2021-07-06 06:45:37.247000+00:00 | ['Debt', 'Lending'] |
Interfaces in GOlang | INTERFACES
Before learning anything about what interfaces are, lets take a look at an example to clearly get the idea regarding why we need interfaces and how it could save us a lot of trouble while coding with GO.
Create a new directory and inside it create a main.go file. Paste the following code inside it.
package main import "fmt" type grade11Marks struct {
math int
physics int
}
type grade12Marks struct {
math int
computer int
} func main() { ram := grade11Marks{50, 80}
shyam := grade12Marks{60, 70} ram.printMarks()
shyam.printMarks()
} func (m grade11Marks) printMarks() {
fmt.Println("math: ", m.math, " physics: ", m.physics)
} func (g grade12Marks) printMarks() {
fmt.Println("math: ", g.math, " physics: ", g.computer)
}
Go ahead and run the code with the command go run main.go.
Basically, we declare two different types of struct grade11Marks and grade12Marks and with one variable for each ram and shyam respectively.
If you do not have knowledge regarding structs in GO please refer to the previous article that cover it.
We create a receiver function named printMarks() for each struct separately which are used to print the values inside the struct variable.
Now, these are two structs are very similar, and we could have a lot of common functions for these two to work together. Like, lets say storing in database, or even printing the values.
But one of the major restrictions in GO, is that it is a strictly typed language and we cannot pass two different type variables to a function, even if the action performed inside the function is very similar to both the functions.
Now, below is an example, where we can use an interface to represent both the types of struct grade11Marks and grade12Marks and pass both the values and perform actions on them. However, the example below might seem very trivial, but in bigger projects where there are a lot more functions and variables, this could be a very useful method for code re-usability.
Go ahead add the following code before the struct definitions:
type marks interface {
printMarks()
}
This is a definition of an interface type named marks. What this does is basically tell GO , that all the variables that have a receiver function which is named as printMarks, then they all belong to the type marks. So basically interface is a type in GO that incorporates multiple types.
If you do not understand concept behind receiver function please read the previous article regarding such.
Note: if the receiver function returns some value, then it is to be mentioned. Like, if our function had a return type of string then instead of just printMarks() we needed to write printMarks() string.
Now, add the following function, at the end of the code:
func print(b marks) {
b.printMarks()
}
What, this function does is, takes a value b of type marks, which is an interface that incorporates all the types that have the receiver function printMarks.
And, then we call the printMarks() function to perform this action.
There could be more complex situation here, that could save us a lot of code redundancy. But for the sake of simplicity we are simply calling the printMarks() receiver function.
Now, to actually use this function, remove the following lines:
ram.printMarks()
shyam.printMarks()
And, add the following lines:
print(ram)
print(shyam)
Now, run the program and see the output.The same output as before is seen. | https://medium.com/wesionary-team/interfaces-in-golang-2d675538f646 | ['Sajal Dulal'] | 2020-05-11 14:23:28.175000+00:00 | ['Interfaces', 'Development', 'Beginner', 'Golang', 'Tutorial'] |
Whisky Review: Bladnoch 10 “200 Years” Edition | This Bladnoch is new to me as a distillery, a new 2018 special OB release celebrating their 200th anniversary, and bottled at a decent strength as well! Non-chill filtered and ex-bourbon barrels.
Bladnoch 10 “200 Years” Edition / 46.7% ABV / $40
Tasted neat
Lowlands is experiencing a bit of a renaissance of late, so I was quite excited to give this one a try. One interesting feature is the decanter-style bottle with an extra thick glass base, which feels quite premium.
Color: pale gold (0.35)
pale gold (0.35) Nose: grass, cream, orange popsicle, and salt
grass, cream, orange popsicle, and salt Taste: vanilla, bright cut grass, petrichor, green apple, and thyme
vanilla, bright cut grass, petrichor, green apple, and thyme Finish: medium, angel food cake
This is excellent, young and bright, and very tasty. It reminds me of some young Linkwoods, and the characteristic of the spirit is quite promising. I look forward to exploring more Bladnoch in the future.
Rating: 82/100 | https://medium.com/@elliottback/whisky-review-bladnoch-10-200-years-edition-15a7a9b232ba | [] | 2020-12-19 15:29:10.198000+00:00 | ['Whiskey', 'Review', 'Alcohol', 'Whisky', 'Scotch Whisky'] |
This is how heartbreak begins | Heartbreak doesn’t begin when the relationship ends; your partners heart starts breaking when you are physically present but emotionally distant. | https://medium.com/@Lightoflights/this-is-how-heartbreak-begins-49780d9e06d4 | [] | 2020-12-21 17:11:29.371000+00:00 | ['Heartbreaking', 'Heartbreakissue', 'Heartbreak', 'Lightoflights', 'Heartbreaker'] |
Concept of Sales Pitch | Hello from Mr. Vijay Wankhede!
Mr. Vijay Wankhede- an entrepreneur, business consultant, writer, speaker and investor has come again this time with the Concept of Sales Pitch! Read the blog and understand how sales pitch work and how you can boost your sales pitch.
A sales pitch is a presentation of any product or service made by the sales person . Your sales pitch can make or break the deal, so it’s highly advisable to have that nailed down before meeting with your customer. It’s your opening line, your verbal business card, and the first thing your customer will hear when you call or meet with them.
In times like this, you just need a quick burst of inspiration to make the ideas flowing again. With that in mind, here are six sales pitch ideas that can refresh your marketing approach and drive those much-needed conversions.
Starting a pitch is arguably the hardest part. You have to grab your prospect’s attention so that they actually want to hear the value of your product and how it can help their business. But before you can share the product’s value, you have to hook the prospect.
When starting your pitch, integrate the following essential elements.
Start with the problem. Always start with the problem. Unless they know the problem you can solve, they won’t be open to hearing how your product is a solution.
Tailor the start of the pitch to your client’s vertical. No one wants to hear a general pitch that would apply to any business. Research their vertical and use the information you found to personalize the pitch immediately.
Offer Solutions- if they don’t solve the problem using your solution, what do they have to lose? You don’t need to state it in such clear terms — but alluding to the risks at the start of your pitch can help you secure buy-in straightaway.
Hope this guide will be helpful to you for finalising your business idea and to start your business journey. If you still have some doubts about any topic or need any help in your business journey you are free to contact us. We are here to help you to give you complete business assistance and Consultancy and to take your business to new heights. | https://medium.com/@vijay-wankhede/concept-of-sales-pitch-dc0ccb60122d | ['Vijay Wankhede'] | 2021-08-27 11:51:50.837000+00:00 | ['Business Consultant', 'Motivational Speaker', 'Entrepreneur', 'Vijay Wankhede', 'Investors'] |
Dar EL Mostakbal TaKeem | The secound wavies of corona need to make good clean to our Home and stay in our Home so you can apply our Help to save your Home we Make to save all Home in our country Good clean our country need Help to out from this problem so good clean is important we have good price | https://medium.com/@karimsalem806/dar-el-mostakbal-takeem-c16b6cda1daa | [] | 2020-12-13 09:16:40.461000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Compañerismo', 'Company Culture'] |
A Zen Parable For When You Forget What’s Important in Life | So let’s get to the real dilemma. How could this so-called Zen Master be so content that not only did he not feel exposed or embarrassed removing his clothes in front of a complete stranger, but he was able to willingly and even gladly hand them over to them?
Would you give the clothes off your back to someone who snuck into your house in the middle of the night?
Clothes maybe don’t hold the same value here as they do to an old hut-dwelling Zen Master. Most of us have wardrobes full of them. So instead of clothes, consider something that carries a similar sentiment: something that by giving it away would make you feel naked and exposed and vulnerable.
Would you give your laptop or heaven forbid your phone to the thief?
Would you give all your smartwatches and espresso machines and other devices to someone who turned up in your home and clearly needed them more than you?
Again, if you’re anything like me, the only thing you’re going to give them is a knuckle sandwich (more like a few panic-stricken slaps as I run for the door).
This person broke into your house and invaded your privacy. Not least they probably scared the heck out of you and put your family at risk.
Anyways, they’re probably high on glue and won’t remember any of this tomorrow.
So then, with all this in mind, how is it that the Zen Master still had the strength of will, the fearlessness, and the complete selflessness to not act like a maniacal and territorial caveman, but more like a saint?
Maybe he saw the poor lowly thief and took pity on him? Maybe he didn’t need clothes to keep him warm and dry because they’re impermanent and the moon is more than enough anyway?
In the flash instance in which the parable happens, there was no chance for Ryokan to consider any of this.
He merely responded to nothing other than what was happening.
This might sound careless. Short-sighted. Weak. A complete disregard for his own personal wellbeing and integrity.
But that’s not what was happening. It’s just an interpretation from one perspective of what may have been happening.
More specifically, it’s the narrative of, “Oh God! There’s one of those crime statistics in MY house and they are ruining MY life that I worked so hard for.”
This is a common storyline that’s drilled into many of us. Everyone has to take responsibility for their own actions and for their own livelihoods. If you don’t, no one is going to help you. It’s a cruel world out there and if you’re not tough enough, it will eat you alive.
And yet, in this parable, Ryokan showed none of this hostility towards the world. He didn’t reflexively see the person in his hut as a threat, or even see the situation as something “bad” or unfortunate.
This is because he didn’t see the event as happening to him. He wasn’t the helpless victim at the hands of some evil villain or the unlucky fool at the center of some terrible robbery. It wasn’t about him.
He held no pre-judgment or ownership over the situation. There was no robbery taking place. There was no thief in his hut. There wasn’t even a “his hut” that could be invaded or any “thing” of his that could be stolen.
One evening, while he was away, a thief snuck into the hut only to find there was nothing in it to steal. The Zen Master returned and found him.
All the Zen Master sees is what is happening.
And what is happening is there is most probably what appeared to be a scared, anxious, lonely-looking person in front of him who, in many ways, may have reminded him of himself.
In such a situation, the person is not an enemy because they have not intruded. They are not a stranger because they are a fellow, flawed human. They are also therefore not presumed to be dangerous and not immediately feared.
Strangely, for the person in the hut, they found themselves without anything to steal. Stranger still, even if the hut was full of goodies, it wasn’t even a robbery situation where they could unwillingly take something from someone else.
But still, they had gone in there with the intention to take something that belonged to someone else.
Or had they?
“You have come a long way to visit me,” he told the prowler, “and you should not return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift.” The thief was bewildered, but he took the clothes and ran away.
It’s rare that someone who finds themselves in such a situation has consciously chosen to be there. It’s unlikely they set out in life or even that night with the intention to steal from others and be a thief.
Ryokan sees this because he didn’t see the intruder through the lens of the many ideas and judgments that may have typically been bestowed upon them.
It’s easier to classify people by their actions and call them good or bad as opposed to seeing them as they stand. Inferring intent and, therefore, what kind of person someone is from their actions takes much less energy than acknowledging and holding all the complexities and disparities and paradoxes and injustices of life.
Life is much easier when there’s something or someone to blame and you don’t have to think too much about it.
So, to Ryokan, this was not some strange and malicious thief in his home. They were not a manifestation of all Ryokan had read in the news along with all his fears and insecurities. They were not another inconvenience, another stroke of bad luck, another reason why his brother’s or whoever’s life was going better than his.
It was a person clearly caught up in complex circumstances and in dire need. It wasn’t a personal attack on Ryokan. Even if it was planned. But at the same time, it was incredibly personal and intimate.
What led the person to end up in that situation is entirely unknown at this point and impossible to know. As is much of life, the circumstances may have largely been out of their hands. When you can see and accept this reality in yourself, you can see it in everyone. Who the thief was in the situation could have easily been the other way around.
The Master sat naked, watching the moon. “Poor fellow,” he mused, “ I wish I could give him this beautiful moon.”
Is sitting in the nude under the moon more spiritual than having material possessions?
Well, of course it’s not spiritual if it’s after a night of heavy drinking and you’ve somehow managed to lose or writhe free of all your clothes. It’s only spiritual if you chose to do it or if you sacrificed something to be there, right?
To think that the act of Ryokan is somehow following a universal law or hierarchy of importance is to miss the point. That one should always give to others if they are in need or that nature is more sacred than material things is not what Zen teaches.
On another occasion, or if Ryokan had more time with the person, he might have offered them some tea. Or, if he was quick on his feet, he might have tried to rob the robber themself. That would’ve really confused them.
There’s no ultimate lesson Ryokan was trying to teach. He wasn’t giving the person a moral lesson. To give them his clothes is simply what occurred to him at that moment, so he did it.
He wasn’t concerned with what might come of being stark naked (Although presumably, he didn’t give the person his undies, if he wore any). Maybe he needed new clothes anyway. Maybe a tailor would come along tomorrow and make him some new ones. Maybe he knew a tailor. Maybe he was a tailor. What happened afterward, the nudity and the moon-bathing, are beside the point.
There was nothing Ryokan could give to the person that would satisfy their hunger and solve their troubles. Not even the moon. He knew this. And therefore he wasn’t hindered by ideas about how he should treat this person or what he should do or what’s the best, most morally correct thing to do in such a situation.
He met the person as they were. Seeing them not by what is apparent according to their actions or the ideas of society or his own judgments about the world. But seeing them as they are, for who they are.
Who knows, maybe for the first time.
After all, where is the thief in a place where there's nothing to steal and no one to steal from?
Where is the stranger in a home that doesn’t belong to anyone?
Where is the trouble in a world where nothing you need can be given to you or taken away from you?
Living in such a world, Ryokan found himself in a position where he could offer someone something.
A kind gesture that had no purpose, no motive, no meaning outside of being fully present for that moment in which this person happened to come by his little hut and pay him a visit. | https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/a-zen-parable-for-when-you-forget-whats-important-in-life-bb05c5dd658c | ['Joe Hunt'] | 2020-10-23 18:55:16.130000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Mindfulness', 'Life Lessons', 'Life', 'Self'] |
Plus Size Pride, Political and Cause-Based Clothing | Plus size political, pride and statement making clothing can be really hard to find. When you want to back a cause close to your heart by wearing that t-shirt to say it to the world, not having an option that fits is really disappointing. Below I’ve highlighted some of the great options you might not even know exist.
Plus size For is a unique brand aimed at making progressive causes and candidates memorabilia to plus size people. 10% of all profits from this company get donated to Fair Fight, which is a voter protection company started by Stacy Abrams. Plus Size For offers t-shirts in sizes up to 6x and hoodies up to 5x.
With cause collections ranging from indigenous, LGBTQ+ to Race and Culture the Green Box Shop is black and LGBT owned. Not only that, there is no sweatshop labor used in the creation of the designs they sell. Sizes range from size small to 3x.
Plus size queer blogger Corrisa Enneking developed her own t-shirt and accessory line for fatties everywhere. Not only do the shirts go up to a size 6x, they were developed and cut specifically for the plus size body. This means they are some of the best fitting t-shirts you’ll ever find. I own a few of them!
Tomboyx is lesbian-owned and carries unisex bras, panties and boxers in sizes up to a 4x. Created sustainably, Tomboyx allows you to showcase your pride as loudly or quietly as you choose. They carry a year round pride collection which in addition to their staples includes: Sweatshirts, shorts, lounge pants, socks and more.
Be your queer and fabulous self in a faux fur coat from Plus Equals. Lined in bright orange, you will be the brightest queer walking down the street. Plus Equals offers sizes up to a 42 and makes made to measure in larger sizes for no extra cost.
Queer pride thigh socks in many pride color variations including asexual pride, transgender pride and non-binary pride. Sock Dreams donates $1 for each pair of socks sold to the PDX Q Center.
Etsy is full of small and large sellers making queer and political gear like this t-shirt from BootsTees that says “ask me for my pronouns.” This t-shirt is offered in up to a size 5x in the unisex version. Search for what you’re looking for and you’re bound to find it or find someone willing to make it for you on Etsy.
Equality by Design is a small business with the goal of making clothing to “spark a conversation, create moments of recognition, or ignite a revolution of acceptance, awareness and change.” With sizes up to 4x, they offer a few variations of t-shirts, hoodies, and other things. | https://medium.com/matthews-place/plus-size-pride-political-and-cause-based-clothing-e1c3681e8c29 | [] | 2020-02-03 20:57:41.886000+00:00 | ['LGBTQ', 'Pride', 'Clothing', 'Plus Size', 'Politics'] |
3 Methods to Clean a Glass Pipes | Here are 3 amazing methods of cleaning a glass pipe from wikihow
Method 1: Use of Rubbing Alcohol
Removing any loose filth from the pipe.
Simply hold the pipe in an up-side-down position, then tap gently to remove any of the loose particles. Use a pipe cleaner, mechanical pencil, needle, cotton swab or maybe a thin object to remove the large and easily extricated resin bits within reach.
Fill a sealable plastic bag with rubbing (isopropyl) alcoho l
Buy 90% isopropyl, it cleans the glass pipe even faster than a 71% watered-down solution. Ensuring it is fully submerged. Alcohol has the property to break down the resin and tar.
l Buy 90% isopropyl, it cleans the glass pipe even faster than a 71% watered-down solution. Ensuring it is fully submerged. Alcohol has the property to break down the resin and tar. Add one tablespoon of salt to the plastic bag
Here, the salt will act as the abrasive sponge on the pipe, thus scrubbing away resin in the places you could not reach using the brush or sponge. Kosher or coarse salt is the best option to use.
Here, the salt will act as the abrasive sponge on the pipe, thus scrubbing away resin in the places you could not reach using the brush or sponge. Kosher or coarse salt is the best option to use. Shake the pipe inside the bag, ensuring the salt reaches inside of your pipe
It’s advisable to shake the bag for about 1 to 2 minutes, or until the pipe becomes visibly clean.
Soak the pipe for long hours to remove very dirty pipes
Add a plop of fresh isopropyl then let the pipe sit, submerged inside the fluid for relatively many hours before you shake it again. For 71% isopropyl alcohol, you’ll have to add a little more salt.
Add a plop of fresh isopropyl then let the pipe sit, submerged inside the fluid for relatively many hours before you shake it again. For 71% isopropyl alcohol, you’ll have to add a little more salt. Rinse the pipe using hot water
After removing all the salt and alcohol from the glass pipe, discard everything else into the toilet.
Use cotton swabs or pipe cleaner to clean the remaining spots
Method 2: Use of Boiling Water
Remove any protracted ash or gunk
Perform a quick and basic pipe cleaning by knocking out all the loose resin with a cotton swab wiping and dislodging any larger gunk particles. Don’t use cold water.
Perform a quick and basic pipe cleaning by knocking out all the loose resin with a cotton swab wiping and dislodging any larger gunk particles. Don’t use cold water. Boil some water in a pot
Ensure the water is enough to cover up the whole pipe, if possible by about 3–4 inches to be safe.
Ensure the water is enough to cover up the whole pipe, if possible by about 3–4 inches to be safe. Submerge the pipe in water
The pipe must be fully submerged in the water, and as it boils and evaporates, be around to ensure your pipe do not remain alone inside the hot pan, it may crack.
The pipe must be fully submerged in the water, and as it boils and evaporates, be around to ensure your pipe do not remain alone inside the hot pan, it may crack. Let the pipe sit in simmering water for 20–30 minutes
Remove the pot from heat the check whether the pipe still has some residue. Since it will be so hot, use oven mitt to check it, but do not douse the glass pipe in cold water, it will shatter.
Use cotton swab or pipe cleaner to remove any excess residue
In case it has some water stains, soak the pipe in a mixture of lemon juice and 2–3 tablespoons of clean water and allow it to air dry.
Method 3: Use of Alternate Cleaning Solution
Use denture cleaning tablets
Place your pipe at the bottom of a Tupperware, then fill it with hot water covering the top. Then put in 2–3 denture tabs and allow it to sit and soak for about 30 minutes. Other domestic leaning methods include; salt and vinegar, baking soda and vinegar and sand and water.
Place your pipe at the bottom of a Tupperware, then fill it with hot water covering the top. Then put in 2–3 denture tabs and allow it to sit and soak for about 30 minutes. Other domestic leaning methods include; salt and vinegar, baking soda and vinegar and sand and water. Buy specialty cleaning solutions
Products such as simple green and formula 420 are meant for cleaning glass pipe resins. However, they are more expensive than the DIY solutions.
Products such as simple green and formula 420 are meant for cleaning glass pipe resins. However, they are more expensive than the DIY solutions. Freeze the pipe to eliminate hard buildups
Freezing the pipe makes the resin to harden and dry, and that makes them easy to dislodge. This should take about 30 minutes, then you can use some sharp or thin object to knock the resin. | https://medium.com/@hi420/3-methods-to-clean-a-glass-pipes-44fd4b14a9e5 | [] | 2016-02-12 04:50:00.300000+00:00 | ['Tips And Tricks', 'Cleaning'] |
AB5 Dive: Should Beauty Pros Be Worried? | Photo by Pham Khoai
The new AB5 law applies to all California workers. However, there are some industries and professionals who may be impacted more than others. Beauty service providers and salon business owners are definitely starting to get concerned. But should they be worried?
According to the Gig Worker Law that went into effect in January 2020, a business must go by the strict new ABC test to determine whether workers are employees or independent contractors (ICs). To classify a worker as a freelancer, a business must show that:
A. That the worker is free from the control and direction of the hiring entity in performing the work, both in the contract for performance and in fact B. That the worker performs work that is outside of the usual course of the hiring entity’s business C. That the worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as the work performed for the hiring entity
It is item B that will likely cause the most difficulty for salons and other beauty services companies. The ‘usual course of business’ of a salon is providing beauty services. Therefore, beauty professionals providing beauty services violate the second requirement. As such, beauty professionals must be considered employees of the salon where they work.
Fortunately, there are several job categories which are specifically exempted from this strict ABC test. And, yes, licensed beauty professionals are included. Unfortunately, workers in these exempt categories are not automatically independent contractors. Instead, beauty professionals must pass the Borello test (the test in effect before AB5 was enacted).
OK. So, now, you’re probably asking, “Which is it? Do stylists and nail technicians need to meet the ABC or Bolero test?” The answer is BOTH. Although the ABC test supersedes Borello in most cases, Borello is still in use when California AB5 is inapplicable or when exemptions apply.
Under the Borello test, the most significant factor is whether the salon has control or the right to control the worker both as to the work done and the manner and means in which it is performed. In addition, the following factors are to be considered:
Whether the worker is engaged in an occupation or business that is distinct from that of the hiring firm Whether the work is part of the hiring firm’s regular business Whether the hiring firm or the worker supplies the equipment, tools, and the place for the person doing the work The worker’s financial investment in the equipment or materials required to perform the work The skill required in the particular occupation The kind of occupation — whether, in the locality, the work is usually done under the hiring firm’s direction or by a specialist without supervision The worker’s opportunity for profit or loss depending on his or her own managerial skill How long the services are to be performed The degree of permanence of the working relationship The payment method, whether by time or by the job, and Whether the parties believe they are creating an employer/employee relationship
While no single factor in the Borello test determines how a worker is defined, the question as to whether the worker is engaged in an occupation or business that is distinct from that of the hiring firm is given the most weight. For salons, this obviously is an issue just as it was in the ABC test.
But, wait, there’s more. Aside from the Borello test, to be considered a freelancer, a worker must:
maintain a business location separate from the hiring firm — this may include the residence have a business license, in addition to any required professional licenses or permits be able to set or negotiate his/her own rates for the services performed be able to set his/her own hours (a) be customarily engaged in the same type of work under contract with another hiring firm, or (b) hold themselves out to other potential customers as available to perform the same type of work, and customarily and regularly exercise discretion and independent judgment performing their services.
There’s more… Specifically, licensed barbers, manicurists, electrologists, cosmetologists, and estheticians also qualify as independent contractors under this exception if they meet the above requirements and also:
set their own rates, process their own payments, and are paid directly by clients set their own hours of work and have sole discretion to decide the number of clients and which clients they provide services for have their own book of business and schedule their own appointments maintain their own business license for the services offered to clients, and issue a Form 1099 to the salon or business owner from which they rent their business space.
The good news is that the ABC test will apply to licensed manicurists on January 1, 2022. So, salon business owners, managers, and professionals have time to start looking for solutions like Rylyf.
The Rylyf App was developed to allow licensed beauty professionals and salon owners to comply with the new gig worker legislation without having to make drastic changes to their business structures. What’s more, this app provides appointment management, payment processings, and marketing built-in. | https://medium.com/@rylyf/ab5-dive-should-beauty-pros-be-worried-492e7064e9ed | [] | 2020-03-07 07:11:29.356000+00:00 | ['Salon Business', 'Nail Technician', 'Ab5', 'Freelancers', 'Gig Worker Law'] |
The Exeter — HealthWise Insurance App UX Review & Recommendations | The Exeter — HealthWise Insurance App UX Review & Recommendations
The business requested a review of the registration and login journeys to reduce user friction from accessing the core app landing page. Matthew Lawes Dec 17, 2020·2 min read
The brief
The HealthWise app allows policy members of The Exeter to access benefits such as virtual GP’s. For example, getting a referral and obtaining appointments with top quality doctors. Furthermore, the app provides access to physiotherapists and mental health specialists.
The Exeter needed to confirm that users actually have a policy upon registration. The system must look up and authenticate that this person is real, before allowing them to create an account and login.
The registration and login journeys are not as streamlined and efficient as they should be. Therefore, hindering users from accessing information and the core app landing page (my services, my history and my medical history).
Scope
The majority of content could not be touched. Any content past the register and sign-up journeys was out of scope for this project. The registration process calls to a database via an IPA. Information is fed back via webpages which are rendered as HTML. The login journey is native. | https://medium.com/@matt-lawes/the-exeter-healthwise-insurance-app-ux-review-recommendations-74d664c3c587 | ['Matthew Lawes'] | 2020-12-31 13:26:58.161000+00:00 | ['UI Design', 'UX', 'Projects', 'UX Research'] |
K3s Installation in Raspberry Pi k8’s Cluster. | Before starting with Kubernetes installation, let’s do a quick recap about our raspberry pi cluster and hardware architecture.
This article can be applied to any computer cluster, bare-metal, on the cloud, or virtualized with the virtual box or docker in docker.
In my case I decided to create a bare-metal cluster based on Raspberry Pi computational units, you can check how to do it here.
At this moment, we have a 4 node raspberry pi configured and communicating with each other via fixed IPs. We also configured other details like timezone and firewalls to start to install our cluster.
The picture below is a reminder of what we have configured so far, except the NFS part (it will be in a future article).
Install K3s
The only script I used here is the official k3s installation script, found at https://get.k3s.io.
Everything else was configured manually. After learning how to do it manually, it’s easy to automatize the process with one of the several tools available in the market.
Ssh to the primary node (pi-zeus in my case):
$ ssh [email protected]
K3s supports command flags or environment variables for the customizations; I used environment variables to have a “clean” command.
In the master node, the only one needed is the access configurations:
$ export K3S_KUBECONFIG_MODE=”644"
After that, just run the install script via curl, without any additional parameters:
$ curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | sh -
After a few seconds, you will be able to see the first node created:
$ kubectl get nodes -o wide
The master node is up and running, but there is another thing to do before starting with the workers.
To install the nodes, we need 2 pieces of information from the master:
The network address — That’s the IP of the host plus the port 6443. In this case (https://192.168.2.101:6443) The node-token — To get this one, we need to read the file inside k3s installation
$ sudo cat /var/lib/rancher/k3s/server/node-token
Take note of this information and start with the worker's installation
After ssh into the node, export the environment variables:
$ export K3S_KUBECONFIG_MODE=”644"
$ export K3S_URL=”https://192.168.2.101:6443"
$ export K3S_TOKEN=”K10db5dc4…6f2b0" (put the entire token value here.)
Then, run the same script you ran into the master node:
$ curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | sh -
After a few seconds, you can see the nodes connected to the master running the kubectl command:
$ kubectl get nodes -o wide
Here are some extra useful commands at this phase:
→ check the status of the master node
$ sudo systemctl status k3s
→ check the status of worker nodes
$ sudo systemctl status k3s-agent
→ uninstall k3s on the master
$ /usr/local/bin/k3s-uninstall.sh
→ uninstall k3s on workers
$ /usr/local/bin/k3s-agent-uninstall.sh | https://medium.com/swlh/yet-another-raspberry-pi-k8s-cluster-part-2-k3s-installation-fc93fb5313a1 | ['Fabio Fernandes'] | 2020-11-28 19:11:12.880000+00:00 | ['Homelab', 'Raspberry Pi', 'Kubernetes', 'K3s', 'Cluster'] |
How To Write Scroll-stopping Headlines: 7 Easy Hacks To Write Magnetic Headlines Within Seconds in 2021 | How To Write Scroll-stopping Headlines: 7 Easy Hacks To Write Magnetic Headlines Within Seconds in 2021 Anushka Dhar Nov 28, 2021·7 min read
Headlines are the FIRST thing your readers see. They have the power to make your readers either click on that blog post or scroll past them. No matter how informative, unique and SEO optimized your blog is, you wont get enough traffic if the headline isn’t attention-grabbing.
Photo by Ali Shah Lakhani on Unsplash
8 out of 10 readers read just the headlines while only 2 out of 10 readers actually click through. Hence, headlines easily become the MOST important element that can catapult your business online. Crazy right ? A good headline grabs the reader’s attention and makes them read the first line of the blog. I’ve been writing for two years and believe it or not, a good headline is not easy to write. Years of writing experience and many trial and errors and upskilling have led me to write these magnetic headlines. If only I knew these hacks that I know now, I would have saved more than 50% of my time. Don’t miss out on the traffic generated by the perfect headline and don’t waste your time worrying about how to write them. Use these 7 easy yet effective hacks to write scroll stopping headlines every time. 👇👇👇
Use numbers and data in your headlines :
Listicles are the MOST popular posts for a reason: they let the readers know how many exact steps will provide them the solution they are looking for. Numbers are “brain candy”. Including numbers in your headlines will definitely increase the engagement and social shares. Megan Golden of LinkedIn says “Using data or stats, especially up front, can imply instant credibility to your post or headline”.
Some important facts about using numbers.
Numerals, not just numbers, work like magic.
For example, “3 easy ways to lose weight” instead of “three easy ways to lose weight”
Odd numbers are more preferred than even numbers. Particularly the number 7 increases the click through rates by 20%. Have I included 7 tricks here on purpose ? What do you think ?
Smaller numbers have higher click through rates than larger ones. Pro tip, while describing a step by step guide, don’t include more than 9 steps.
Headlines with numbers aren’t always listicles. They can be data and statistics backed by research. LinkedIn conducted a campaign that tested headlines with and without statistics and turns out the headline with statistics got 37% higher clickthrough rate.
For example, “How to Increase Conversion Rates by 529%” or “101 Ways to Write Top 10 Lists that Increase Traffic By 21%”
2. Include 2–3 benefits in your headline :
If you want people to read your content, give them irresistible reasons to click on your blogs by adding the best benefits in the headlines itself. The job of a headline is to indicate the benefit of reading the blog. Promise your readers that you’re gonna provide them the ultimate solution in the headline itself and see how they cannot help but click on the post. 59% of readers share content without reading the whole blog first, so we have to make sure it reaches the right audience while providing an easy solution to their pain points.
The benefit should be easy enough to be scanned in the first 2 secs. Your readers have an attention span between 12 to 8 secs. The more specific the benefit, the more likely the visitor is to click. Barry Feldman of Feldman Creative says “The pulling power of a magnetic headline traces to its promise. Simply stated, it’s a benefit.”
For example, “Learn How to Write a Small Business Plan From Scratch” or “Buy one banana…get two free!” or “Step-by-Step Process for Writing a Small Business Plan in 30 Minutes”
3. Use power words in your headline :
Power words are emotionally triggering words that provoke the readers to take action. All words cannot evoke emotions. Using the right words at the right time can build momentum for you. Words like
Convey a sense of urgency. Derek Christian, founder of Cleaning Business Today, once said that “effective marketing boils down to creating a fear of losing out on an amazing deal.” Scarcity and urgency are two powerful elements in copy that persuade the customers to respond quickly.
For example, “Book Now & Get Extra $15 on JetBlue Airlines, Flights Tickets. Hurry!”
Use adjectives. Adjectives are great for pulling your readers into your content. Jeff Goins provided some interesting adjectives to use in your headlines.
Flag the reader in your headlines. Dan Kennedy introduced the flagging technique where you address the readers directly as “you”.
Add CTAs. Every headline must call for attention. Good headlines must lead to a reaction.
Warning! Don’t use power words for “clickbait”. Describe the solutions with the power words, make a promise and genuinely follow through. We want to rank higher and generate more traffic using good headlines and informative content, not by fooling our readers.
4. Make your headline easy to understand :
The language you choose directly impacts your traffic. Write in your customer’s language. The goal of the headline is to make people click, not to sound clever. Your readers have an attention span less than a goldfish. And the less time you take to explain your headline, the more chances of them clicking on the blog. Don’t use confusing headlines with difficult words and uncommon phrases. Instead, make your blog easy and simple for your readers.
5. Ask questions in your headlines :
Headlines with questions have two major benefits: they help to make the readers curious about the problems and they help to rank higher on Google. Asking questions directly speaks to the reader’s pain points as if the writer is reading their mind. Use the target key phrases in the beginning. A good headline works for both the readers and the search engines.
For example, Why are you still using Microsoft Word? — via Gizmodo
Could you pass a 1954 Home Economics class? — via Buzzfeed
Is bloody pink chicken safe to eat? — via Epicurious
Lars Loggren advises you to
6. Use proven headline formulas :
You wont always have to spend lots of time creating the perfect headlines. Rather follow these popular headline formulas formulated by previous copywriters and save your time.
John Caples’ Headline Formula includes the three elements of problem, solution and promise. Identify a problem, give the solution to the problem and promise that your solution is beneficial.
Bronn outlined a simple headline formula, “SHINE” that includes
S- Specificity
H- Helpfulness
I- Immediacy
N- Newsworthiness
E- Entertainment value
Orbit Media’s go to formula is
Target Keywords + colon + Numbers and/or trigger words + promise
Some other headline formulas include
✔Tips
✔Tricks
✔Lessons
✔Reasons
✔Ideas
✔Ways
✔Principles
✔Facts
✔Secrets
✔Strategies
7. Write 10s of headline, choose the best one :
Start by writing 10 headlines first. you won’t get the best headline on your first try. so so use all the hacks and all the formulas given in this blog and write multiple headlines and choose the one that stands out the most. Malcom Gladwell is famous for telling us that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert. The question here is how many headlines does it take to make a good one? If nothing else, we know that experience pays.
Great content starts with a headline that captures the reader’s attention. If you fail to make your headline impactful and clickable, every other marketing strategy will fail. Use these 7 hacks to create incredible headlines every time !! | https://medium.com/@frl-anushka/how-to-write-scroll-stopping-headlines-7-easy-hacks-to-write-magnetic-headlines-within-seconds-in-168e6b56ad4c | ['Anushka Dhar'] | 2021-11-28 09:24:05.865000+00:00 | ['Headline Hacks', 'Blogging', 'Headlines'] |
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