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Umbilical cord care Do’s and don’ts for parents | An infant’s umbilical string stump regularly tumbles off inside around fourteen days after birth. Meanwhile, treat your child’s umbilical string stump delicately.
Can’t help thinking about how to really focus on your infant’s umbilical rope stump? Follow these tips to advance recuperating.
Why your infant has an umbilical string stump
During pregnancy, the umbilical string supplies supplements and oxygen to your creating child. After birth, the umbilical string is not, at this point required — so it’s cinched and cut. This abandons a short stump.
Dealing with the stump
Your infant’s umbilical line stump gets out and at last falls dry — typically inside one to three weeks after birth. Meanwhile, treat the zone tenderly:
Keep the stump dry. Guardians were once taught to clean the stump with scouring liquor after each diaper change. Specialists presently say this may eliminate microbes that can help the line dry and discrete. All things considered, open the stump to air to help dry out the base. Keep the front of your infant’s diaper collapsed down to try not to cover the stump.
Stick with wipe showers. While there’s no damage in getting the stump wet, wipe showers may make it simpler to keep the stump dry.
Allow the stump to tumble off all alone. Oppose the impulse to pull off the stump yourself.
Indications of an issue
During the mending cycle, it’s entirely expected to see a little blood close to the stump. Similar as a scab, the string stump may drain a little when it tumbles off.
Be that as it may, contact your child’s PCP if the umbilical territory overflows discharge, the encompassing skin gets red and swollen, or the region builds up a pink damp knock. These could be indications of an umbilical rope disease. Brief treatment is expected to prevent the contamination from spreading.
Additionally, converse with your child’s PCP if the stump actually hasn’t isolated following three weeks. This may be an indication of a hidden issue, such a disease or resistant framework problem. | https://medium.com/@babycare7171/umbilical-cord-care-dos-and-don-ts-for-parents-721b261d14ab | [] | 2021-04-09 19:56:40.923000+00:00 | ['Baby Care', 'Umbilical Cord', 'Baby', 'Baby Boomers'] |
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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 Tin Star, 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, Tin Star’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/@watch-tin-star-3x2-online/watch-tin-star-series-3-episode-2-full-eps-4178b1695cec | ['Watch Tin Star Online'] | 2020-12-10 04:40:15.163000+00:00 | ['TV Series', 'Drama', 'Crime', 'Thriller', 'Startup'] |
Batch, Mini Batch & Stochastic Gradient Descent | In this era of deep learning, where machines have already surpassed human intelligence it’s fascinating to see how these machines are learning just by looking at examples. When we say that we are training the model, it’s gradient descent behind the scenes who trains it.
Machine Learning behind the scenes (Source: https://me.me/i/machine-learning-gradient-descent-machine-learning-machine-learning-behind-the-ea8fe9fc64054eda89232d7ffc9ba60e)
So let’s dive deeper in the deep learning models to have a look at gradient descent and its siblings.
Gradient Descent
This is what Wikipedia has to say on Gradient descent
Gradient descent is a first-order iterative optimization algorithm for finding the minimum of a function
This seems little complicated, so let’s break it down.
The goal of the gradient descent is to minimise a given function which, in our case, is the loss function of the neural network. To achieve this goal, it performs two steps iteratively.
Compute the slope (gradient) that is the first-order derivative of the function at the current point Move-in the opposite direction of the slope increase from the current point by the computed amount
Gradient descent (Source: https://medium.com/@divakar_239/stochastic-vs-batch-gradient-descent-8820568eada1)
So, the idea is to pass the training set through the hidden layers of the neural network and then update the parameters of the layers by computing the gradients using the training samples from the training dataset.
Think of it like this. Suppose a man is at top of the valley and he wants to get to the bottom of the valley. So he goes down the slope. He decides his next position based on his current position and stops when he gets to the bottom of the valley which was his goal.
There are different ways in which that man (weights) can go down the slope. Let’s look into them one by one.
Batch Gradient Descent
In Batch Gradient Descent, all the training data is taken into consideration to take a single step. We take the average of the gradients of all the training examples and then use that mean gradient to update our parameters. So that’s just one step of gradient descent in one epoch.
Batch Gradient Descent is great for convex or relatively smooth error manifolds. In this case, we move somewhat directly towards an optimum solution.
Cost vs Epochs (Source: https://www.bogotobogo.com/python/scikit-learn/scikit-learn_batch-gradient-descent-versus-stochastic-gradient-descent.php)
The graph of cost vs epochs is also quite smooth because we are averaging over all the gradients of training data for a single step. The cost keeps on decreasing over the epochs.
Stochastic Gradient Descent
In Batch Gradient Descent we were considering all the examples for every step of Gradient Descent. But what if our dataset is very huge. Deep learning models crave for data. The more the data the more chances of a model to be good. Suppose our dataset has 5 million examples, then just to take one step the model will have to calculate the gradients of all the 5 million examples. This does not seem an efficient way. To tackle this problem we have Stochastic Gradient Descent. In Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD), we consider just one example at a time to take a single step. We do the following steps in one epoch for SGD:
Take an example Feed it to Neural Network Calculate it’s gradient Use the gradient we calculated in step 3 to update the weights Repeat steps 1–4 for all the examples in training dataset
Since we are considering just one example at a time the cost will fluctuate over the training examples and it will not necessarily decrease. But in the long run, you will see the cost decreasing with fluctuations.
Cost vs Epochs in SGD (Source: https://adventuresinmachinelearning.com/stochastic-gradient-descent/)
Also because the cost is so fluctuating, it will never reach the minima but it will keep dancing around it.
SGD can be used for larger datasets. It converges faster when the dataset is large as it causes updates to the parameters more frequently.
Mini Batch Gradient Descent
We have seen the Batch Gradient Descent. We have also seen the Stochastic Gradient Descent. Batch Gradient Descent can be used for smoother curves. SGD can be used when the dataset is large. Batch Gradient Descent converges directly to minima. SGD converges faster for larger datasets. But, since in SGD we use only one example at a time, we cannot implement the vectorized implementation on it. This can slow down the computations. To tackle this problem, a mixture of Batch Gradient Descent and SGD is used.
Neither we use all the dataset all at once nor we use the single example at a time. We use a batch of a fixed number of training examples which is less than the actual dataset and call it a mini-batch. Doing this helps us achieve the advantages of both the former variants we saw. So, after creating the mini-batches of fixed size, we do the following steps in one epoch:
Pick a mini-batch Feed it to Neural Network Calculate the mean gradient of the mini-batch Use the mean gradient we calculated in step 3 to update the weights Repeat steps 1–4 for the mini-batches we created
Just like SGD, the average cost over the epochs in mini-batch gradient descent fluctuates because we are averaging a small number of examples at a time.
Cost vs no of mini-batch (Source: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/310734/why-is-the-mini-batch-gradient-descents-cost-function-graph-noisy)
So, when we are using the mini-batch gradient descent we are updating our parameters frequently as well as we can use vectorized implementation for faster computations.
Conclusion
Just like every other thing in this world, all the three variants we saw have their advantages as well as disadvantages. It’s not like the one variant is used frequently over all the others. Every variant is used uniformly depending on the situation and the context of the problem. | https://towardsdatascience.com/batch-mini-batch-stochastic-gradient-descent-7a62ecba642a | ['Sushant Patrikar'] | 2019-10-01 03:31:37.838000+00:00 | ['Optimization', 'Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Neural Networks', 'Gradient Descent'] |
Man Goes To The Dentist — You Know The Drill | Man Goes To The Dentist — You Know The Drill
Photo by Erick Tang on Unsplash
She leads you upstairs, points you to a chair near the window.
Won’t be long, she says. You smile, nod — say ok, whatever, no rush. Your palms are sweaty but you don’t feel nervous, why should you? Not like you haven’t been through it all before.
There was that time, as a kid, you remember, feel it coming back. In the old surgery, with the old dentist who smelled faintly of tobacco and always listened to Steve Wright in the Afternoon.
You needed a filling, came in with mum after school; it was already nearly dark, the fine misty rain that dad always insisted got you wetter than the usual drizzle. He was probably right, your trousers were sticking to your legs, itchy and scratchy. Your socks damp around the toes. You hated damp socks — still do. You saw the needle, Steve Wright was telling another true story, the dentist told you to lie back, open your mouth. You panicked, bolted, made for the door. Mum lunged, grabbed your arm. It’s okay, she said. I’m not going to hurt you, he said. Hello, said Sid the Manager, when he meant to say Goodbye.
Later, you had sweets.
Mr Hill? It’s time.
The dentist, a woman in her forties, sits on a stool, peers over her glasses at a computer that has an x-ray of your mouth on the screen. She looks up as you enter the room, smiles and asks of your well-being. I’m fine, you tell her. Really, you are.
You sit down as the dental nurse prepares a paper bib to tie around your neck, to protect your clothes from the blood and spit that will surely follow. She ties it around your neck, hands you some plastic glasses to put on.
So, she says, we’re going to dig out the decay in that tooth of yours and pop a cap on that’ll be there until we can get a crown for it. Pop a cap? That’s slang for shooting someone isn’t it? Maybe she didn’t say that.
You sit down, lean back against the seat, it’s comfier than you recall. Ken Bruce on the radio but you’ve missed Popmaster. Once, in a check up you called out an answer on Popmaster by accident; shouted Take On Me by Aha as the hygienist scraped plaque and nearly pierced your tongue. You’ve been prone to this all your life of course, inadvertently voicing that which was meant for internal monologue. Like the time you shouted yes at the television screen when Richard Prior asked a crowd of people if they wanted lunch in the film Brewster’s Millions.
You lie back as the seat reclines, staring up at the lamp, glowing above you ominously, as though looking back at you. A light with personality and sinister intent — it occurs to you that it looks like those alien thingys on War of the Worlds.
It’s not a reassuring thought.
The light is blocked by the appearance of two heads, two female women[sic] looking down upon you, gazing into the cavernous void of your mouth. You cleaned your teeth before coming, it seemed the courteous thing to do. But now you worry you’ve missed a rogue cornflake clinging to a molar at the back.
The dental nurse, quite young and really quite blonde is wearing what appears to be a Perspex welders mask. What the hell have they got planned? You try not to think of Saw or Hostel or Little Shop of Horrors or, eek, Marathon Man. The omens are not good, you were listening to an interview about Laurence Olivier only yesterday.
The dentist prods around in your mouth with the little magnifying glass and the pointy thing as you try not to look at either of the two women looking down at you, try to focus on the light and on Ken Bruce, who seems to be talking to someone — possibly Jeremy Vine.
You’ve never really been a big fan of Jeremy Vine — he’s never really filled the shoes of Jimmy Young and he’s really only the second best presenter of Eggheads behind Dermot. Jimmy Young, always reminds you of your nan, listening in the kitchen, the waft of lamb stew drifting from the bubbling vat on the stove as Young debated about the miners strike or abortion in between playing Buddy Holly or the Everley Brothers, while you wanted to watch Rainbow on the telly.
The dentist puts what appears to be a block of plasticine into your mouth. It tastes minty, a bit like toothpaste. You were always a Colgate child but moved to Aquafresh as a student. Now it’s whatever’s on offer, although it’s rarely Crest.
Do they still sell Gibbs SR?
It’s injection time. You see the needle out of the corner of your eye. It looks enormous, big enough to tranquilise an elephant. You brace yourself, hold the fingers of your left hand in the grip of your right. Be brave, you don’t want to wimp it now. There are ladies present. What the hell does that mean, anyway? It’s no time to go all 1950’s.
Here it comes.
A sting and a throb deep inside your jaw and then nothing. A wait. The dentist makes a show of doing something on the computer but you get the impression she’s just killing time, waiting for the anaesthetic to kick in. You talk about Christmas, about the stupid people who’ve already got decorations up; about impending parties and festive shindigs. But talking is becoming tricky as you start to lose all feeling in the left side of your head, a prod of the cheek — rubbery and numb, like poking a balloon. You worry you might be dribbling without realising it.
Time to crack on.
The dentist leans over you again, her face low, close to yours, her eyes fixed on whatever horrors lay within your trap. The nurse leans in, pops the plastic suction tube in that briefly sticks to your tongue. Noises all around, you close your eyes. The slurp of the suction device, a dog’s bark (he used to be worse, apparently), the faint Scottish burr of Ken Bruce and the drill.
Like Beechers Brook in the Grand National, the drill is the big bad daddy of the dentistry implements. It should come with its own theme music, like Darth Vader or Jaws, a chilling score to announce its arrival, the low descent to dental destruction. It whirs with a shrill, evil high pitch that grows higher as it encounters resistance against the enamel. Although painless you wince anyway, it seems appropriate. Your eyes flutter and close and you wonder whether it would be possible to go to sleep like this. Just nod off and wake when it’s all over.
There’s a fair bit of decay in there, she says, surely not expecting a response. Decay, the word makes you feel guilty even though you know you look after your teeth.
You just know you do.
Decay — you’ve allowed one of your teeth to decay you irresponsible, reckless bastard. Too many Wham! bars as a child. They still sell Wham! bars but they’re not the same — not as potent. Back in the day they were so chewy you could lose a tooth in the battle to bite a chunk and the green bits inside — wow, like biting into a landmine.
Instruments and gadgets, something that looked like ironing tongs and a couple of things that went beep. Minutes pass slowly, your mouth tiring of being kept prised open, throat dry from the suction tube.
All done, she says, the seat returning to its upright state, bringing you up with it. Have a rinse out, she says. You take the plastic cup, put it where you think your mouth ought to be, pour some mouthwash in, some dribbles out, along your chin and onto the paper bib. Somewhere inside your head there is an itch but you’re too numb to locate it. You notice that Jeremy Vine is talking on the radio, Ken Bruce long since finished. Your cue to leave.
It’s three hours before your mouth returns to life, the sudden, joyous realisation that you can feel again, that your tongue and your voice both work again. That you can chance a cup of tea without threat that you might miss and scold your ears.
You have to go back after Christmas — have the permanent crown fixed. But that’s okay — time’s have changed. There’s no dread anymore, no threat of making a break for it. You’ve moved on, grown up. Everything’s different.
You sit back and listen to Steve Wright in the Afternoon. It’s another true story. | https://garethjhill.com/man-goes-to-the-dentist-you-know-the-drill-f9baa12d6df0 | ['Gareth Hill'] | 2021-07-02 09:58:56.285000+00:00 | ['Humor', 'UK', 'Slice Of Life', 'Memories', 'Dentistry'] |
That’s it! It is Settled | Today’s Five-Minute Friday prompt is “Settle.”
My first response is DON’T.
However, taken in the context of my life and God’s thoughts flowing in me right now it is more:
Settle in your mind this is a battle, and you have to be involved on every level to enforce the victory that I have destined as yours.
This rings true in every single area.
I have made a few absolutely necessary changes in my life and it is still a battle to maintain but I know it is the right thing and sometimes all we need to do is settle it in our minds that this is the way it is going to be.
One particular challenge to my chosen life change means, I have to get up earlier to be able to incorporate in my life, otherwise life gets in the way and my whole day is: push, push, push.
So today as I was making time for the things that I needed to do the thought that came to my mind was,
I need to get up earlier.
Photo by Maks Styazhkin on Unsplash
Then quite the opposite to my normal self condemning response came,
Look at your alarm going off in the morning as your invitation to new adventures in your new day.
Wow!
If I could print that on my heart what a difference it would make!
When we make decisions in our lives and settle it in our mind that this is the way it will be, somehow it becomes doable and sometimes even enjoyable.
Thank you, Lord, that you care about everything in our life and you want to be involved in very concrete ways. Help us to just settle in our minds not to receive the negative I can't and hold fast to the word of God and His promises and settle in our spirit that we will trust and obey the Lord our God. | https://medium.com/koinonia/thats-it-it-is-settled-f52da927f0af | ['Sue-Ellen Howe'] | 2019-11-08 22:58:18.753000+00:00 | ['Obey God', 'Decision Making', 'Listen To God', 'Change Your Life', 'Christianity'] |
Running Bitcoin & Lightning Nodes Over The Tor Network (2021 Edition) | Running Bitcoin & Lightning Nodes Over The Tor Network (2021 Edition)
Preface
In 2018 I made a tutorial for getting a Bitcoin full node up and running on Linux, and I provided a complete step-by-step process, along with explainers for how to use & understand the bash shell, and what certain commands and their flags did. It’s been 3 years since, and what you’re reading now is the updated and next iteration of that.
This tutorial is 1 of 3 being published in tandem. The one you’re viewing currently is the primary one, and brings the other two together to run over the Tor network, and connect your phone’s Bitcoin & Lightning wallets to it using Zap iOS over Tor (if you do not have iOS you may skip the Zap aspects of this tutorial, or use the Zap desktop client). The other two function as standalone tutorials for both Bitcoin & Lightning respectively, and they completely break down the entire node installation process for beginners.
The Bitcoin & Lightning sections in this tutorial will be simplified. If you want more detail please reference the standalone guides for each:
Primary:
Running Bitcoin & Lightning Nodes Over The Tor Network
Standalone: | https://medium.com/@stopanddecrypt/running-bitcoin-lightning-nodes-over-the-tor-network-2021-edition-489180297d5 | [] | 2021-06-13 22:30:46.102000+00:00 | ['Node', 'Lightning Network', 'Bitcoin', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Tor'] |
Technical Analysis For The Day | As of now, price level of $6450 is holding strong support.
If bulls are strong enough to hold this level, expecting a price bounce again in upward direction. | https://medium.com/fynomics/technical-analysis-for-the-day-870172f889b0 | ['Akhil Nayak'] | 2018-07-06 09:31:02.894000+00:00 | ['Technical Analysis', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Crypto', 'Bitcoin', 'Btc'] |
Live In Moments | Live In Moments
Cover picture created by Canva (edit link)
Spectacles in surrounding beats
solitude in our life long synopsis
breathing air, living in the moment
inkless seconds continuously whisper
and my soul says in gratitude,
‘Thank you, Mother Gaya.’
Thanks to Sherry Kappel for this wonderful prompt:
And, of course to Kathy Jacobs, Harper Thorpe and the incredible Chalkboard team. | https://medium.com/chalkboard/live-in-moments-7ee66b0bf35a | ['Suntonu Bhadra'] | 2020-11-27 18:15:02.553000+00:00 | ['One Line', 'Poem', 'Chalkboard', 'Gratitude', 'Poetry'] |
How to Win in the Data Science World | In 2019, LinkedIn ranked “Data Scientist” as the most promising profession in the US with 56% increase in job demand, and has consistently topped Glassdoor’s best jobs in America for three years straight.
Sure, the COVID pandemic might have heavily affected the job landscape, but in the midst of businesses suffering enormous cuts lies a more pressing need for a data-driven culture. Having a strong data capability can reinforce better decision-making, with business goals and targets monitored and optimized.
For me and thousands of other aspiring data scientists, knowing what it takes to successfully break into the field would especially matter now, given the growing competition. So I ask, what do we need to do to stand out?
To answer this, I looked at the 2019 Kaggle Machine Learning and Data Science Survey results. Each year the “world’s largest data science community” conducts a survey among its users to obtain insights about the state of the Data Science and Machine Learning Industry. Looking at how Kagglers’ practices and characteristics influence salary should be a good starting point to answer my question.
I focused on the 2,013 data science professionals in the USA earning more than $30K annually, knowing that a lot of variation in salary can occur across geographies. Also, I excluded the professionals earning less than $30K to capture only those likely working full-time.
Most of the data science professionals have salaries within the $100K-200K range. This is way above the US median salary of $40K for 2019.
Salary Distribution of US Data Science Professionals in Kaggle (<$30K removed)
Are there major differences in salary among the different data science roles?
The sample is a mix of various data science professionals. The “Data Scientist” role tops the list (34%), followed by “Software Engineers” (13%) and “Data Analysts” (12%).
What are the job roles that have higher pay potential? I intend to answer this visually using heatmaps (and I will do this for the most part of this article). I figured that it’s a better way to show the distribution by role given that salary data was presented in ranges (rather than actual numbers).
From the heatmap we can see the obvious discrepancy between a Data Scientist and a Data Analyst, with the former showing a heavier concentration on the $100K-200K range, and the latter somewhere within $60K-125K. It seems that data scientists are paid much more than analysts.
Other professions such as Statisticians and Database Engineers tend to have more variation in pay, while Data Engineers are more concentrated in the $120K-125K range.
Note: Heatmaps used row percentages to account for differences in sizes among data roles.
What are the essential technical skills to do well in data science?
Do great data scientists need to be good at coding? A Glassdoor study suggests that it’s worthwhile because 9 out of 10 data scientist positions require at least one of Python, R, or SQL as a skill.
In this particular survey almost all Kagglers have at least one programming language that they use to do data science, and only .6% do not code at all. This isn’t surprising at all given the nature of Kaggle, where notebooks are the main way to share content.
But which particular programming languages are the most important to learn? The survey says that Python is the most popular with 30% using it on a regular basis. It is then followed by SQL (22%) and R (15%).
Looking at the salary heatmap we can see that while all the programming languages tend to bunch up in the $100K-200K range, software engineering-oriented languages such as Java, C++, and C have more dense representation in the $150K-200K range. Other noteworthy languages that relate to higher pay are Matlab, Typescript, and Bash.
On average, Kagglers use 2–3 programming languages on a regular basis. Does the number of languages used matter? Plotting the number of languages used according to salary range, we see that the number of languages used tend to increase as pay increases — up to the 125K-150K point. So yes, it may be worth learning more than 1.
Apart from programming, what other skills matter? From the salary heatmap we see a strong case for learning cloud-based data software and APIs. Those who use it appear to have a higher earning potential, most likely at $150K-200K, and even a high concentration of professionals earning more than $300K.
Does educational background play a huge part?
Data science professionals tend to be a highly educated group, with 72% having either a Master’s Degree or a PhD. The heatmaps do not really show anything remarkable, except that Professional Degrees have a high concentration in the $150K-250K bracket. This group only constitutes 1.3% of the sample, hence I would say this is inconclusive.
How much does continuous learning on online platforms help?
Aside from formal education, upskilling can be done through tons of online content, like what Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and online bootcamps offer. Majority (83%) of Kagglers use these platforms to learn data science. Coursera is by far the most popular, followed by Datacamp, Udemy, and Kaggle Courses.
Interestingly, Fast.ai skewed heavily on the higher income levels $125K-150K. DataQuest on the other hand are much more spread over the lower and middle income levels, which suggests that beginners tend to use this site more.
Apart from MOOCs and courses, data science media can also be good sources of skills and industry knowledge. Blogs such as Medium and Analytics Vidhya are the most popular, followed by Kaggle.
Not a lot of pattern can be observed in the salary heatmap — most are bunched within the $100K-200K range. Curiously, Hacker News appears to have more followers on the higher end with $150K-200K salaries.
Key takeaways:
To win in the data science field (AND if you define winning as having a high pay):
Code! Learning more languages will probably help. Apart from Python and R consider adding other non-data science languages such as C++, Java, and Typescript into your toolkit. Cloud-based technologies are worth learning. Get ready to explore those AWS, GCP, and Azure platforms for big data. Continuously upskill and update through MOOCs and online courses, and through media such as blogs and technology news.
A few disclaimers:
While technical skills are required to succeed in data science, soft skills are definitely indispensable. Unfortunately we cannot get a measure of that using just this dataset.
The Kaggle community is not representative of the entire data science industry, and might be geared towards a more specialized sample in the population (i.e. machine learning enthusiasts). Also, this is US-focused, and it will be interesting to see how the results would look like across various countries.
While these are primarily visualizations driving storytelling, it will be interesting to get more deep and do a predictive model to quantify the drivers to salary. | https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-win-in-the-data-science-world-fdb0bd9b4ce7 | ['Noemi Ramiro'] | 2020-09-15 01:16:20.366000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Data Storytelling', 'Data Science Job', 'Heatmap', 'Data Visualization'] |
Solace and reconciliation after the emotional rollercoaster of a Trump presidency | A letter to my Trump supporter friend
Like many liberals, I have experienced a breadth of emotions since the shock of Donald Trump’s ascent to the US presidency four long years ago, all of them on the negative end of the spectrum. First came denial and disbelief. I recall being one of the last folks to leave a bar in NYC’s east village where we’d all piled in to celebrate the election of our country’s first female president, a long overdue milestone. I sat in my perspired-through I’m with Her t-shirt, nursing the remnants of an artisanal beer I no longer wanted, and stared hard at the red CNN map thinking, no, this can’t be happening, there must still be a way. How did this despicable crony capitalist with no political experience win 304 electoral college votes, more than enough for him to overtake Hillary Clinton who — with her vast experience, and not to mention sharp intellect — we assumed was a shoe-in? Who on earth would vote for an unhinged megalomaniac whose widely documented history of sexual misconduct made Bill Cosby seem like a saint? How did an overt bigot and misogynist, who had made a pastime of circulating misinformation and lobbing herculean insults at everyone throughout his campaign, including mocking a disabled reporter, end up the leader of the free world, a role model for our children?
To put it more bluntly, how did this lunatic just end up in the White House?
It was surreal.
It was the darkest of nightmares, except it was our reality.
Sure enough, depression and self-pity followed soon after. Riding the subway to work the next day, tears streamed down my cheeks as I looked at my fellow commuters, mostly black and brown, seeming weighed down by life, all of us feeling like we were sucker punched in the gut.
Then came a cocktail of fury, frustration, anxiety, terror and sheer exhaustion, all of which I have felt on a near daily basis since November 2016. None of these feelings did wonders for my so-called mind / body / spirit, but none of us imagined that Trump would have lasted his entire term. In spite of illegal hush money payments, tax fraud, bank fraud, extortion attempts, high crimes and a myriad of misdemeanors (as well as warranted inquiries around his sanity and mental health), we were not able to get rid of him, even after an impeachment attempt. If the average US citizen had done any one of a dozen things that Trump has done, they’d be in jail by now.
So we all galvanized, we all became activists as much as we could, even as a preventable pandemic swept across our nation, taking lives and overtaking our lives, and we waited, with hope, with anticipation (but also with fear) for a landslide victory for Joe Biden on Tuesday. The polls indicated Biden was overwhelmingly favored to win, but we had been down that road before; we were cautiously optimistic but we also had rocks in our stomach. Trump had done more harm to the country, to our standing in the global order, than we could have ever imagined. We had become the laughing stock of the world. Surely, his supporters would see that, and if they couldn’t or if they didn’t care about that, if they were blinded by his swirl of lies, Trump’s dismissive and botched handling of coronavirus pandemic would be his final straw — viruses don’t discriminate against Republicans or Democrats. Surely enough Trump supporters would have lost loved ones to Covid-19. Couldn’t they see that all of Trump’s ‘super spreader’ events, his carelessness in the name of his own political agenda, meant that contrary to what they had long believed, he really didn’t care about their well-being nor that of their families? Donald Trump only cares about himself, and he was ready to bring the whole country down with him.
Yet when I crept into bed late Tuesday night knowing that millions upon millions of Americans still supported a man who encourages violence and condones white supremacy;
Still supported a man who has — through both actions and words — shown sheer contempt for humankind, in particular people of color, and the environment;
Still supported a man who had finally revealed his totalitarian and dictatorial aspirations in a deranged speech claiming he won the election before millions of ballots had been tallied, stoking distrust in our democracy and our electoral process —
All I could feel was heartbreak.
***
Yesterday, Joe Biden became President-Elect after a tumultuous week during which we were all on edge; I feel waves of elation, joy and relief. Like many people I know, I cried when I saw the CNN projection. Our children will have the future they deserve. I squeezed my baby girl, spun her around in circles and told her she too could be President one day — even if she is a woman, even if she comes from Indian and Persian bloodlines, a possibility that seems unlikely under a Trump-like administration. For months, I had nightmares; another four years of Trump would be like The Handmaid’s Tale — a bleak world in which women become sex slaves and are divested of all their rights.
We won, but we have so much work ahead of us. More than 70 million Americans cast their vote in Trump’s direction, in spite of what he stands for. We are so polarized as a country. And yet I am so tired of feeling angry and frustrated at Trump and his supporters. It’s unconstructive, and it hasn’t helped me. Yes — anger can catalyze; anger can serve a purpose, and I believe it has served us well here, especially when it came to voter turnout. But, like the Buddha said, it can also poison you. I don’t want to poison myself with anger anymore. I want to try a different approach, to reach out to a Trump supporter, and try to show them that maybe, just maybe, we care about the same things in the end. So here is my attempt below. A letter I have written to a friend in my orbit, a mother and neighbor, who supports Trump. We haven’t known each other long and we decided early on that to preserve our friendship in this polarizing climate, we wouldn’t go near the subject of politics.
If this resonates with you, please feel free to use any parts of the letter below and send it to your loved one, who may fall on the other end of the political spectrum from you.
— -
Dear Alison –
I know I have been out of touch over the last few weeks, and I apologize for that. I’ve been anxious about the election. There was so much at stake, for our children, the country, and the world even. You know what end of the political spectrum I’m on, and I didn’t want to accidentally say something hurtful to you. It’s true I’ve felt quite a bit of anger towards Trump supporters, but I want to move on and do whatever I can do to bring us together. As Biden said so eloquently yesterday, “This is the time to heal in America.”
I know that you must feel disappointed today — I can’t imagine. While I am admittedly relieved at the outcome of the election, I am not writing to gloat — that’s the last thing I want to do. I don’t know the specifics of why you support Trump but I do believe that we are not so different in terms of what we want for our children. All of this goes beyond the label ‘Democrat’ and ‘Republican’ — I don’t care about labels, and I would happily create a new party if it meant we could all make this country a better place, put the past behind us and move towards healing the nation.
First of all, I think we both agree that there should be no place for racism in our country. Yet what the last few years have shown us is that racism is alive and well in America, and Trump has emboldened these racists — to bully, to use the N word. I often wonder how you feel about that — I know you are white but your husband is Latino, an immigrant. Your child is beautiful, with her dark skin, dark hair, dark eyes. I loved when we photographed her at the lake last summer for the modeling portfolio you are creating for her. Yet I don’t understand how you could vote for someone who built a campaign around racist rhetoric and intolerance — his infamous Muslim ban, his failure to condemn white supremacy, the birtherism lies, his disdain towards non-white immigrants. Do you remember when he called undocumented immigrants “animals”? Mexicans rapists? I don’t want our girls to grow up in a country where racism is the norm, and I don’t think you would ever want your daughter to be discriminated against because of her skin color. If you want your daughter, a young woman of color, to be able to thrive in this country, we need leaders who prioritize racial justice, not stoke racism. We can agree on that can’t we?
I remember the day we walked along the river near our homes, how your daughter splashed in the water looking for rocks to skip while my one-year-old watched on in awe from the stroller. You were holding a special camera that you had purchased for your daughter so that she could take portraits of nature, and any wildlife she came across. I know that you, and every mom out there, wants their children to be able to breathe fresh air, to drink potable water, to be able to swim in uncontaminated water. Climate change is very real, and it’s leading to more hurricanes, heatwaves and droughts; it’s worsening air pollution, causing forest fires, and even increasing the number of infectious diseases. It is already affecting the way our children live, especially in poorer countries. We must protect the environment; it’s paramount to our girls living healthy lives. Pulling out of the Paris Agreement was a disastrous move (which will soon be reversed, fortunately). I hope you agree that, for the sake of our children, it’s important for us to choose leaders that take environmental responsibility seriously. You want fresh air and water for your daughter don’t you? We all need to be environmental stewards, and that means choosing leaders who don’t scoff at climate change but address it as the very real threat to our children that it is.
Even if you supported Trump because of tax cuts (and again I don’t know why you support him), is that more important to you then protecting the rights of women? As a mother of a daughter, I am infuriated that Trump was able to pack a Supreme Court with conservative justices who potentially want to roll back women’s rights and overturn Roe V Wade. What would come after that — would we lose the right to vote? It’s a slippery slope. Trump has shown us that he is a misogynist and sexual predator (with dozens of allegations of sexual misconduct including a hush payment made to a porn star), that he sees attractive women as disposable play toys that he can — in his own words — ‘grab by the pussy,’ and smart women who threaten him as ‘nasty women.’ I don’t want our daughters to think it’s okay to be treated that way by men, nor do I want young boys to grow up thinking the way that Trump speaks about women is acceptable. I’ll never ever be able to understand how women can support Trump (is it some sort of internalized misogyny?) but we can agree that women are equal — arguably superior — to men, and that we deserve the same rights, same salaries, can’t we? Don’t you want to help create a country where gender equity is the norm, so that our daughters no longer have glass ceilings? I’m thrilled about Kamala Harris being the new VP-elect, and I hope you understand how important that is for our daughters, to know that the sky’s the limit for them and that they can aspire to the highest offices in the country should they choose to.
I’m not a religious person, and as far as I know, neither are you. In my view, organized religion always has been and remains the greatest enemy of women’s rights. I believe people are entitled to their own religious beliefs but I think it should be left out of political discourse in this country in order for America to become the inclusive country envisioned by its founders, the kind of country we want for our daughters. I don’t know when we will be ready for that, and sadly we have taken several steps backwards under Trump. The separation of church and state — as encapsulated in the First Amendment — has all but collapsed under his reign. This principle is part of our constitution for a reason — so that the government cannot favor, provide funds or give privileges to religious organizations beyond what is available to nonreligious groups in similar circumstances. The irony is that Trump has never read the Bible, he is entirely ignorant of its contents, and yet he has used the Bible as a political weapon for the last several years. Christian evangelicals believe that God chose Trump to fulfill His prophecies, and yet behind their backs, it is widely reported that Trump speaks about these fanatical supporters with cynicism and contempt; he ridicules them, but they are too blinded by faith to see how he is using them. The Bible is loaded with ridiculous assertions that I won’t go into here (all of them serving to preserve the white patriarchy of course, while subjugating women). Can we agree that, for the sake of our daughters’ futures, right-wing religious conservatives should have zero influence over the law, and even though a handful have sadly made it into the Supreme Court, we need to work together to make sure that they never again get the same level of power and influence as they had under Trump and Pence?
Can we talk about guns for a minute? I would be surprised if you didn’t support gun control, but in case one of the reasons you support Trump is because he is pro-gun, pro-violence, we need to talk. Gun-related violence is at an all-time high. I live in fear of the day I have to send my daughter to school in this country — how can I ever be sure that she will be safe? The mass shootings in this country are reprehensible and the lack of prevention equally so. Yes, the right to bear arms is enshrined as a right in the constitution, something I wish we could revoke, but we don’t have the power to do that (I have a no use for a gun, and nor should anyone else in my opinion). We do have the power, however, to demand strict gun control laws. Let’s agree that we want our daughters to be safe when they go to school. That we want to create a society where we don’t live in fear of mass shootings. We are on the same page here, aren’t we?
And finally, can we talk about decency and character? Trump created an era of meanness, of bigotry, of using hate speech and inflammatory language. One of the many reasons you could probably hear the collective sigh of liberals when Biden was announced as the new President-elect yesterday is because we are so damn tired of this culture of hate. We are all humans sharing this planet. We should take care of each other! How does this culture of hate and divisiveness impact our poor children, when the man who holds the most prestigious job in the country behaves in this manner? I am so lucky that my daughter is too young to understand what transpired over the last four years, but I feel for those parents who have had to explain to their children that bullying is wrong, yes even if the POTUS does it all the time; mocking a disabled person or Gold Star family or anyone for that matter is wrong, yes even if the POTUS does it all the time; lying is a wrong, yes even if the POTUS does it all the time. Don’t we both believe in the integrity of truth-telling? Don’t we both want a role model in the highest office in the land, man or woman, who is decent and kind, who our daughters can look up to? Someone who can set an example for them — show them what it’s like to have empathy, to put the needs of people over a personal agenda? Yes, I do think that we agree on this. I really do.
I’m not sorry your guy lost. To the contrary, I think it’s time for a reckoning among Trump supporters — this was a very dark time for our country, for our democracy. I can’t force you to come around to my way of seeing things, but we need to make choices that put our children first. I hope you see why I am anti-Trump, and why I don’t align with the Republican party in general. I will always want strict gun laws (or a full ban), for the sake of our children; I will always support immigration (both my mother and my fiancé are immigrants!); I will always believe we should spend more money on social programs, or on helping the less fortunate or on protecting the environment than on supplying our military with more guns, on waging more wars; and I will always believe in a woman’s right to choose. It’s not because I’m elite; It’s not because I am a socialist. I’m just a mom with a little girl who wants the absolute best future for her.
We can agree on that, can’t we?
Yours truly,
Natasha | https://medium.com/@natashascripture-4294/solace-and-reconciliation-after-the-emotional-rollercoaster-of-a-trump-presidency-7afef0e75f67 | ['Natasha Scripture'] | 2020-11-08 18:47:05.528000+00:00 | ['Biden Vs Trump', 'Racial Justice', 'Children', 'Politics', 'Environment'] |
What Is The Triple-A Final Stretch? | Let’s be honest, more baseball is always a good thing. And that’s exactly what will happen at the end of September across Triple-A Baseball. This time it’s known as “The Triple-A Final Stretch.”
On July 14, Major League Baseball and Minor League Baseball announced 10 additional games for each Triple-A Club in lieu of a traditional playoff format. That means five extra games for the Sounds at First Horizon Park and five on the road.
The Triple-A Final Stretch begins on September 22 when the Sounds play host to the Columbus Clippers (Cleveland Indians). Following a five-game series from 9/22–26, the Sounds will enjoy back-to-back off days before finishing the season with a five-game set in Indianapolis from 9/29–10/3 against the Indy Indians.
“Why though” you might ask? This stems from all Minor League games being cancelled in the month of April, and Major League Baseball is trying to best sync the end of the MiLB season with the end of their own regular season.
So, here’s how this works as it pertains to crowning champions:
1) For each the Triple-A East (Go Sounds!) and Triple-A West, a 2021 Regular Season Champion will be named based on overall winning percentage through the originally scheduled championship season (Sept. 19 for the Sounds).
2) Among the 30 Clubs, a single 2021 Triple-A Final Stretch Winner will also be crowned based on the highest overall winning percentage during this 10-game stretch. What does the winning team get? Good question. We still don’t know the answer (*insert shrug and confused emoji*)
So, no playoffs across Triple-A Baseball in 2021, but y’all can giddy-up for the Triple-A Final Stretch! Get your tickets for the five home games here.
Want to get your Final Stretch tickets for FREE? Renew or purchase your 2022 Season Tickets and we will give you tickets and a Sounds jersey to enjoy the end of the 2021 season. | https://soundbytes.mlblogs.com/what-is-the-triple-a-final-stretch-cdb2672948d8 | [] | 2021-08-27 01:44:18.521000+00:00 | ['Baseball', 'Nashville', 'Milwaukee Brewers', 'Nashville Sounds', 'Milb'] |
Product management frameworks | There are many product management frameworks that product manager follows. I have listed out some of the frameworks that I follow at my work. Before we jump into frameworks, I wanted you to know framework does not fix all your problems. The framework will help you with these aspects.
Better understand your context Create a structure for problems Communicate ideas & solutions
I often use these frameworks in my product work, sometimes without realizing it.
3X framework by Kent Beck
A product can be in one of 3 stages. For product leaders, this is the most vital framework to understand because almost every important decision should account for the stage your product is in.
Explore — to overcome disinterest, try many small experiments.
Expand — to overcome bottlenecks to scaling, ease the limitations of the next rate-limiting resource.
Extract — to sustain growth, continually increase profitability while you finish growing.
The examples of decisions you can make more rigorously with the 3X framework:
— Optimize for inputs, outputs, or outcomes?
— Set more qualitative or quantitative goals?
— How to measure progress?
— What skills to look for?
— How to evaluate PMs’ impact?
5Qs for product rigour
This framework provides a useful structure for product proposals, reviews, etc.
1) Who is the customer?
2) What is the problem/opportunity?
3) What is the main customer benefit?
4) How do you know customers want this?
5) What is the customer experience?
Amazon uses this 5Qs framework for their product development.
ICE prioritization by Sean Ellis
The ICE framework may be the most popular useful framework when scaling and optimizing shipping time, developer ROI, user retention and funnel maximization.
What is ICE?
ICE is a combined evaluation of features based on three levers: Impact, Confidence and Ease. The impact is an estimation of the optimization of the effort, confidence is an estimation of the thoroughness of your hypothesis and ease is an estimation of the amount of effort by the time that will be required to ship the feature/ product. Each lever is graded on a scale of 1–10 and the feature worthiness is evaluated by multiplying each lever’s score.
ICE Score = (Impact +Confidence +Ease) / 3
Impact
The best way to measure impact is to understand how does it move a user/ customer across the funnel AARRR. AARRR (Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, Revenue) describes the five stages of converting a customer and maximizing ROI. Each stage has a series of drivers and metrics that allow product managers to quantitatively define and measure the impact of their efforts.
Confidence
Confidence also measured on a scale from 1–10, is a measure of the conviction required that warrants the feature build-out. Heavily weighted and biased towards experiments and customer evidence, confidence eliminates the anecdotal and subjective biases in feature priorities.
Ease
Ease is usually measured in time to determine how much work will be required for the feature to be shipped. Different companies have different methodologies to measure the ROI of their DevOps. For example, Manoj Chaudhary, CTO and VP of engineering at Loggly, uses the following ROI to measure the success of his DevOps’ team.
Release frequency: How fast code releases to production. Infrastructure recovery: How fast production recovers from “fires” Infrastructure resiliency: Reduction in downtime/problems with infrastructure. Infrastructure efficiency: How well resources are shielded from production deployment problems. Automation: Reduction in human intervention to fix problems.
Conclusion
I still experimenting with some of the frameworks in my product development. The most important goal is Better to understand, Create a structure for problems and Communicate ideas & solutions.
Thank you! | https://medium.com/@imvarathan/product-management-frameworks-fa52a82f1545 | ['Varatharaj Rajagopal'] | 2021-07-23 07:57:49.536000+00:00 | ['Product Life Cycle', 'Productivity', 'Framework', 'Product Management', 'Product Development'] |
I Need To See Your ID Before We Have Sex | I Need To See Your ID Before We Have Sex
The Time I Asked for Identification Before Having Sex With Someone
We were getting ready to undress and I was excited, filled with the anticipation of arousal, and ready for sex. I’ll be honest, I couldn’t wait to see her flesh completely bare, unshrouded, nude before my very eyes. I waited patiently to ask the question so we could get down to business and enjoy one another’s bodies — even if just for one night.
Several years ago I found myself in a hotel in Orlando, Florida, having just arrived from California to stay for a couple of months while I completed some work, and I was feeling aroused, bored, excited to be in a new city, and a bit of a hodgepodge of other emotions that resembled a gradient between excitement and wonder. The crisp air was getting cool, it was December, the perfect time for a trip to such a warm climate. Across the main road from my hotel room sat a Starbucks that served their usual coffee — you know, the kind that tastes like deliciousness poured into your mouth at four-hundred degrees Fahrenheit? The moment you take your first sip, you think to yourself, “Do they make this stuff the flavor of scalding flesh on purpose?”
It was the perfect thing to warm me up as the temperatures dropped about as low as Florida goes, which is about fifty-five degrees. Going there was a part of my daily routine and I spent hours collecting my thoughts and enjoying the richness of the bold, aromatic, roasted coffee and the sounds of organic jazz. The only thing better to compliment the falling temperatures, at that point, would have been a cuddle partner — or perhaps some hot, casual sex and then a cuddle partner.
Every day, I’d arrive and order as I sat and would listen to the sounds of the people chatting, those indistinct voices that seemed to blur together, myself only catching rudimentary and fragmented pieces of conversation, on occasion. As I sat, I’d observe the bustle of the establishment while having fragmented conversations of my own on Facebook, Instagram, and of course, Tinder.
I could tell it was the first time a man had asked her for ID before sex…
In those couple of months, I met some pretty amazing women, all of them were genuinely beautiful people inside and out. Life, at the time, was nothing more than enjoying myself with minimal responsibilities. I was single and unapologetically having fun. I met a girl who I found quite intriguing on Tinder and we eventually had coffee at that very same Starbucks, before we decided on going back to my hotel room for some conversation and possibly something naughty. The conversation about which types of sex we enjoyed had already taken place in juicy detail, streaming through the digital lines of communication that had connected us without cease…we both knew where this was heading…we were into each other and sex was imminent…
The moment came as her big, bright, beautiful eyes gazed up toward me and they met mine and locked. We were sitting across from one another in the chairs provided by the luxury hotel I had booked. We’d been chatting for about an hour, getting lost in silly conversation and shameless jokes, an impressive start for two people who’d only met one another in person a few hours earlier.
Her smile was more playful in person, yet sinister in a way, mischievous even, and her dark complexion was nothing shy of mesmerizing. I’d never been with someone from Morocco before and I must say, she was nothing shy of stunning — even before her clothes came off. Most of all, she was honest and direct. She was candid in a way that most other girls weren’t— she radiated authenticity in every gesture and every glance. She didn’t have to tell me that she was mostly interested in casual sex, in order for me to know it — it was just understood. I appreciated this honesty that she wore with every move.
“Would it be alright if I saw your ID before we have any physical contact?” I asked her directly and with the most assertive-yet-friendly tone possible, as I sat back into my chair and extended my legs to sit more comfortably.
“What?! Why?” She replied, slightly annoyed, but she did the thing where she nervously giggled a bit to try to cover up that fact.
“Listen, it’s not that I want to be rude or that I don’t trust you, I do, otherwise you wouldn’t be here in the first place, but I need you to understand that the consequences of me letting just one person slip through the cracks could be catastrophic for my life and arguably yours, too. I just need to see some state-issued verification that you are as old as you say you are.”
“Okay,” she said slowly, as she began to rummage through her purse after retrieving it from the ground near her feet, “If you insist…”
I could tell it was the first time a man had asked her for ID before sex…sure enough, she was nineteen, just as she’d said she was…
“Thank you, I’m sorry about that….I hope you can understand,” I said, continuing, “I really don’t see asking for ID and making sure that someone is over 18 as being all that different from asking to see an STD test or asking for other types of safe sex, like condoms, don’t you?” This caught her off guard…
“You know…” she said, before taking a long pause, “I’ve never thought of it like that before.” I could see the moment when it all clicked in those pretty eyes of hers. I was also surprised at how quickly her slight annoyance disappeared and was quickly replaced by the trust of learning that I was only after one thing: responsible, healthy sex.
From here, we had a few more laughs before I took my extended pointer finger and grazed it against the contour of her gorgeous jawline, beginning from the hinge of her jaw slightly beneath the ear and wrapping around front to her chin to nudge her face upward toward me as I stood above her, moving up from my formerly seated position. Her eyes pierced through mine and could have lit up the sky. I winced as if to cut right through her with a hungry stare of my own. From here, we launched into one another simultaneously like two objects collide wrapping our arms around one another and our lips pulsed and heads swirled for our first kiss.
Not only did we hit it off well from the beginning, but she knew from that point forward that I was someone she could confide in, someone she would probably be safe with, someone who would keep her information secure, and someone who was willing to sacrifice the chance of possibly hooking up with a really, very gorgeous woman if it meant protecting us both — all very powerful messages which can be communicated with a single question.
The sex was extremely good, we did it in a lot of positions and in all sorts of fashions; I think we ended up having sex twice back-to-back with a short rest period in between. It was so good that I got a little depressed instantly, afterward, knowing that this would likely be the only time we slept together or had any sort of real intimacy. She was a good girl from a wealthy family, I was a rebellious man with a world to conquer and cities to see, we were simply too different to try and mingle in the broader scope of our respective social lives, but the attraction and chemistry we shared alone were undeniable.
The sex was downright explosive. We couldn’t keep our hands off one another and the cuddling session afterward hit the spot. Sometimes, the people we come into contact with aren’t right for us but that’s no excuse to throw away a visceral attraction and rob ourselves of the opportunity for some spicy, unbridled sex just because we don’t have a future or our friends wouldn’t approve.
The point is that we should take care of one another in these moments, however, to look after one another, to help one another, and to do no harm. We are out for pleasure and connection, after all, right? Asking for ID was just one more step in the process of obtaining consent and I can only assure other men out there that it’s an intelligent move for us to make — it protects everyone involved. And being bold, being upfront about this, even asking to see ID communicates that you care about these things. Think about it, had she been a year and some months younger and lying to me, this story could have ended very differently. Had she been seventeen, two lives might have been ruined over a lie and a bit of irresponsibility. This wasn’t the only time I asked for ID, it was actually something I did often, and while I was always met with a raised eyebrow and a bit of confusion every single time, it was always worth it. No, I’ve never been rejected just because I asked a woman to prove that she was old enough to have sex with me. No one has ever stormed out and left me high and dry, nothing like that has ever happened to me. Should we normalize this practice? I think so. I think it should be taught to children who are coming of age that it’s just the smart thing to do.
Dear reader, I will let you decide… | https://medium.com/moments-of-passion/i-need-to-see-your-id-before-we-have-sex-46e8a6458ddd | ['Joe Duncan'] | 2019-10-15 23:48:22.622000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Sex', 'Sexuality', 'Relationships', 'Short Story'] |
Take Ownership of Your Life | There are many things in life that create the illusion of helplessness in all of us:
The companies that sell us products.
The pervasive idea that we all need to escape from our lives.
The constant stream of bills, letters, emails and calls that sometimes make it hard to breathe at night.
The pervasive, surround sound rhetoric that says we should all be more, do more, have more and back all that up with elusively perfect relationships.
All of these messages and pressures combined take away from one of the most powerful truths in life. That is when you look in the mirror you are looking at your hero, your savior and your go-to problem solver.
Not only are we all far more capable than we think we are, we’re also capable of surviving without perfect answers to our problems.
What happens if something in your life goes wrong or is wrong and you don’t know what to do? You make the best decision you can for the present moment and then act on it as best you can. We all need help from time to time, sometimes it’s just nice to have a supportive hand or shoulder along the way. That said, external forces are not where your defining power in life comes from. When something goes wrong or a decision needs to be made it’s you as an individual that should be the first point of call; before you look to external sources.
Sometimes problems can feel overwhelming, life can feel overwhelming. It can feel like a domineering enemy is standing over you and making you feel small.
How will you ever fix this mess?
How will you ever manage to achieve what you want?
Who’s going to listen to someone like you?
What if that person you like doesn’t like you back?
What if something goes wrong?
All of these questions trigger anxiety and fear. The way the world asks them suggests there is no answer within us and that disaster is certain. You’ve heard these questions in your mind before now and you’ve made it this far. If you need a solution or a new way of doing something, the person you need to ask is in the mirror. | https://medium.com/afwp/take-ownership-of-your-life-a7951a65117 | ['Stef Hill'] | 2020-02-27 15:31:01.656000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Motivation', 'Self-awareness', 'Personal Development', 'Life'] |
Jenkins: running workers in Kubernetes and Docker images build | We have a Jenkins instance that is running jobs in Docker containers on its host.
Eventually, we’ve faced with an issue when the current AWS Ec2 instance t2.2xlarge (8 CPU, 32 RAM) during peak workload periods was too overloaded — not enough CPU time, not enough memory.
So, the first solution could be to proceed with its vertical scaling for example up to c5.9large, and proceed running builds on the master-host, or by moving some jobs to external workers.
At this time, we have three such workers — Android-builds are running on a PC in our office with Android studio, in the office we also have a bunch of MacMini for iOS builds, plus we have an additional EC2 in AWS for our QA team to run their UI autotests.
Now, let’s add an ability to run jobs on workers in a Kubernetes cluster.
We are using AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service and in this post will check how to use Kubernetes Plugin for Jenkins.
Jenkins-master: spin up an instance
For the testing purpose, let’s create a dedicated AWS ЕС2 with Ubuntu 20.04, add a Docker there and set up a Jenkins master instance.
Docker install
Create an ЕС2, connect with SSH, install Docker:
root@ip-10–0–4–6:/home/ubuntu# curl root@ip-10–0–4–6:/home/ubuntu# apt update && apt -y upgraderoot@ip-10–0–4–6:/home/ubuntu# curl https://get.docker.com/ | bash
And Docker Compose.
Find the latest version on Github, at the moment of writing it was 1.28.4, download it:
root@ip-10–0–4–6:/home/ubuntu# curl -L “https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.28.4/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)” -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose] root@ip-10–0–4–6:/home/ubuntu# chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose root@ip-10–0–4–6:/home/ubuntu# docker-compose — version
docker-compose version 1.28.4, build cabd5cfb
Running Jenkins with Docker
Create a directory on the host to store Jenkins’ data:
root@ip-10–0–4–6:/home/ubuntu# mkdir jenkins_home
Write a Docker Compose file:
version: '3.5'
networks:
jenkins:
name: jenkins
services:
jenkins:
user: root
image: jenkins/jenkins:2.249.3
networks:
- jenkins
ports:
- '8080:8080'
- '50000:50000'
volumes:
- /home/ubuntu/jenkins_home/:/var/lib/jenkins
- /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
- /usr/bin/docker:/usr/bin/docker
- /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libltdl.so.7:/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libltdl.so.7
environment:
- JENKINS_HOME=/var/lib/jenkins
- JAVA_OPTS=-Duser.timezone=Europe/Kiev
logging:
driver: "journald"
Run the instance:
root@ip-10–0–4–6:/home/ubuntu# docker-compose -f jenkins-compose.yaml up
Open its URL in a browser:
Administrator password can be found in the Docker Compose output during startup, or you can get it in a /var/lib/jenkins/secrets/initialAdminPassword file in the container:
root@ip-10–0–4–6:/home/ubuntu# docker exec -ti ubuntu_jenkins_1 cat /var/lib/jenkins/secrets/initialAdminPassword
15d***730
Log in, run the initial installation:
Create a user:
Finish it and go to the Plugins.
Jenkins Workers in Kubernetes
Find the Kubernetes plugin:
Install it and go to the Manage Nodes and Clouds > Configure Clouds:
Check the Kubernetes:
Set the URL of your cluster’s API server and a Namespace:
Jenkins ServiceAccount
In the cluster, create a Namespace and ServiceAccount which will be used by Jenkins for authorization.
On a Production setup, it’s better to configure access via an EC2 Instance Profile with an IAM-role attached.
For now, add a Kubernetes RoleBinding mapped to the default admin role (or create your own — here the admin used just for simplicity as this is a PoC setup) in our dev-1–18-devops-jenkins-slaves-ns namespace:
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
name: dev-1-18-devops-jenkins-slaves-ns
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: ServiceAccount
metadata:
name: jenkins-slaves-service-account
namespace: dev-1-18-devops-jenkins-slaves-ns
---
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: RoleBinding
metadata:
name: jenkins-slaves-rolebinding
namespace: dev-1-18-devops-jenkins-slaves-ns
roleRef:
apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
kind: ClusterRole
name: admin
subjects:
- kind: ServiceAccount
name: jenkins-slaves-service-account
namespace: dev-1-18-devops-jenkins-slaves-ns
Deploy it:
$ kubectl apply -f jenkins-slaves-sa.yaml
namespace/dev-1–18-devops-jenkins-slaves-ns created
serviceaccount/jenkins-slaves-service-account created
rolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/jenkins-slaves-rolebinding created
Jenkins ServiceAccount, and kubeconfig
The next thing to do is to generate a kubeconfig, which will use this ServiceAccount.
To do it, we need to get an EKS cluster ARN, its Certificate authority, API server’s address, and a JWT token of the ServiceAccount.
Find a Secret created for your ServiceAccount:
$ kubectl -n dev-1–18-devops-jenkins-slaves-ns get sa jenkins-slaves-service-account -o jsonpath=’{.secrets[0].name}’
jenkins-slaves-service-account-token-jsbb7
Certificate authority and Cluster ARN can be taken in the AWS Console:
Get the token from the secret, decrypt it with base64 :
$ kubectl -n dev-1–18-devops-jenkins-slaves-ns get secret jenkins-slaves-service-account-token-jsbb7 -o jsonpath=’{.data.token}’ | base64 --decode
eyJ…s7w
Write a kubeconfig, for example as a jenkins-dev-1-18-kubeconfig.yaml file:
Check if it’s working:
$ kubectl -n dev-1–18-devops-jenkins-slaves-ns --kubeconfig ../jenkins-dev-1–18-kubeconfig.yaml auth can-i get pod
yes
Jenkins Kubernetes Credentials
Go back to the Jenkins, add a new Credential:
Check its connection — click on the Test Connection, must see the Connected to Kubernetes 1.18+ message:
Save the settings.
Jenkins Slaves Pod Template
Go to the Pod templates:
Fill the fields of the pod and its default container, set the jenkinsci/jnlp-slave as the Docker image:
Jenkins Job
Create a test job with the Pipeline type:
Write a pipeline’s script:
podTemplate {
node(POD_LABEL) {
stage('Run shell') {
sh 'echo hello world'
}
}
}
Run the job and check Jenkins’ logs:
…
jenkins_1 | 2021–02–26 08:36:32.226+0000 [id=277] INFO hudson.slaves.NodeProvisioner#lambda$update$6: k8s-1-b5j7g-glscn-v0tfz provisioning successfully completed. We have now 2 computer(s)
jenkins_1 | 2021–02–26 08:36:32.522+0000 [id=276] INFO o.c.j.p.k.KubernetesLauncher#launch: Created Pod: dev-1–18-devops-jenkins-slaves-ns/k8s-1-b5j7g-glscn-v0tfz
…
And the pod is creating in the Kubernetes cluster:
$ kubectl --kubeconfig ../jenkins-dev-1–18-kubeconfig.yaml get pod
NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
k8s-1-b5j7g-glscn-v0tfz 0/1 ContainerCreating 0 12s
Job completion:
Docker in Docker via Docker in Kubernetes
Our Jenkins is running as a Docker container, and it’s running its builds in Docker containers inside. It’s a good approach used by me for a long time as it gives us an opportunity not to install libraries on the host system more controlled way to setup build environments, and our developers can configure them as they wish.
So, now we need to realize the same — but in on the Kubernetes salves.
Install the Docker pipeline plugin to the Jenkins:
And create a new pipeline
Here we need for another Docker image — docker.dind , and for it, we need an another pod's template.
You can create it via Jenkins UI as we did it before, or we can describe it in the pipeline directly by using the podTemplate .
For example, let’s build an NGINX image:
podTemplate(yaml: '''
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
spec:
containers:
- name: docker
image: docker:19.03.1-dind
securityContext:
privileged: true
env:
- name: DOCKER_TLS_CERTDIR
value: ""
''') {
node(POD_LABEL) {
git 'https://github.com/nginxinc/docker-nginx.git'
container('docker') {
sh 'docker version && cd stable/alpine/ && docker build -t nginx-example .'
}
}
}
And run the job:
Done.
Useful links | https://itnext.io/jenkins-running-workers-in-kubernetes-and-docker-images-build-83299a10f3ca | ['Arseny Zinchenko', 'Setevoy'] | 2021-02-28 16:37:02.140000+00:00 | ['Kubernetes', 'Docker', 'Jenkins', '1.28.4', 'DevOps'] |
Communism | While nationalism was still young in South East Asia, Communism had entered the political arena as a third contestant, almost immediately after the Russian Revolution. Often it took sides with nationalist forces, partly out of its evident anti-colonial character, and largely to exploit the powerful urge of freedom for its own ideological benefits. But it did not hesitate to ally itself with colonial or reactionary forces, if Party considerations so demanded. It acted, as is well-known, not in the interests of the nation concerned but of International Communism. Asian Nationalism was to be the vehicle of Communism, for it was Lenin’s opinion that the victory of Communism in the West could be speeded up by nationalist revolutions in the territories which were then dependent on the European powers. He therefore suggested that the communist movements should unite with the nationalist movements for independence in their respective countries. (Nationalism and Communism in South-East Asia. A Brief Survey Author(s): D. P. Singhal Source: Journal of Southeast Asian History, Vol. 3, №1 (Mar., 1962), pp. 56–66) (Damien) | https://medium.com/glossary-of-southeast-asian-art/communism-a886cba840d6 | ['Elaine Ee'] | 2017-04-28 07:44:23.743000+00:00 | ['History', 'Islam'] |
Meet Daniel Lee, The Most Progressive Candidate for California State Senate District 30 | Elections
Meet Daniel Lee, The Most Progressive Candidate for California State Senate District 30
Recent local elections have demonstrated the importance of community organizing—activists have worked hard to ensure progressive voices are represented in public office. Thanks to the tremendously hard work of Los Angeles organizers, candidates such as Nithya Raman, Konstantine Anthony, and Daniel Brotman won their races in November 2020’s election cycle. Their presence in local politics has amplified the voices of Black, Brown, Indigenous and working-class people.
Although it may seem California’s most important state and local races ended in November, an important special election is on the horizon — with Holly Mitchell’s election to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, there’s now a vacancy in the California State Senate that could and should be filled by a progressive candidate.
That’s where current Culver City Council member Daniel Lee comes in. Lee is running for Mitchell’s spot in District 30 — which includes Culver City, Ladera Heights, Westmont, Crenshaw, Downtown LA, and Florence. A longtime activist and advocate for marginalized communities, Lee believes he can make a substantial impact at the state level.
Born in rural Alabama, Lee’s path to public office was borne from his mother and grandmother’s service to their community. Lee recalls both were always prepared to stand up for justice — Lee’s grandmother took part in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which inspired Lee’s work with Civil Rights activist Reverend James Lawson and the James Lawson Institute.
Lee’s own journey into social justice began when he was young. “The first thing I did, like in middle school,” says Lee, ”was send a letter to the president after gathering some petition signatures from my teachers and my friends to ban offshore drilling in Florida. Never got a response, but that was sort of my first foray.”
Lee didn’t always see himself serving in public office. After graduating high school, he wanted to enter the entertainment industry. He got into theater, went to film school, and eventually joined SAG after briefly serving in the military to help pay off student loans.
But soon, Lee started paying attention to local politics. He grew upset that “a whole lot of stupid people were repeatedly being elected and running the world.”
His final catalyst for becoming a full time activist was the Citizens United ruling in 2010. The ruling lifted restrictions on the amount of money corporations can spend on public elections, essentially classifying corporations as people with the same rights to free speech as individuals.
The Citizens United ruling inspired Lee to work with corporate power busting organization Move to Amend. He helped pass a Los Angeles City Council resolution in December 2011 that ended corporate personhood and restricted corporate spending on political campaigns.
Around the same time, Lee also got involved with Occupy Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) arrested Lee along with a group of his fellow activists when they raided an Occupy encampment outside of City Hall on November 29, 2011. LAPD arrested a total of 292 protestors that day. The Los Angeles Times ran an image of Lee with four cops accosting him — in an aside, he noted his mom, “really dislikes that picture.”
Through Occupy, Lee began to meet people who cared about environmental racism, police accountability, and gender justice. As he got more involved with progressive circles in LA, he realized it was time to leave the entertainment world behind and dedicate himself to social justice work. He went back to school to get his Master of Social Welfare at UCLA, where he grew even more passionate about community organizing.
Lee began considering a run for Culver City Council while he was at UCLA. He realized the progressive movement needed more than a “messiah” figure in national office — change stemming from electoral politics would require a whole crew of good people running and winning seats on local, state, and federal levels.
Initially, Lee considered running for a position above city council, but he changed his mind after viewing his run through an organizer’s lens.
“If you can’t really win in your local environment, you probably shouldn’t be thinking about higher office,” says Lee.
Lee lost his initial run for City Council in 2016, but he didn’t give up. He ran again in 2018 and won. He became the first African American ever elected to Culver City Council since its inception over 100 years ago.
Lee decided to run for California State Senate because he believes he can make a greater impact at the state level than he can at the city level. He wants to represent the interests of working-class people, especially the Black and Latinx communities that call District 30 home.
Lee is running on a progressive platform that centers six key policy points: healthcare for all, employment and housing for all, public safety as public health, ending environmental racism and the climate crisis, public pension reform, and people-centered economic development.
Specifically, Lee emphasizes his dedication to strengthening renters’ rights, supporting rent control, and getting rid of single-family zoning laws in an ethical way that doesn’t contribute to gentrification and displacement.
Lee also wants to redefine what public safety in California means. In particular, he’s interested in reallocating funds from law enforcement toward important services such as mental health crisis units.
Lastly, Lee is running to address environmental racism in District 30. He advocates for shutting down the Inglewood Oil Field and supporting a just transition for fossil fuel workers, who he wants to train in other fields.
If you’d like to learn more about Lee and his campaign for California State Senate District 30, visit his website at www.danielwaynelee.com. | https://medium.com/groundgamela/daniel-lee-progressive-candidate-for-california-state-senate-district-30-39418f2ed286 | ['Khristina Rhead'] | 2020-12-24 02:36:01.756000+00:00 | ['Elections', 'Politics', 'State Senate', 'California', 'Los Angeles County'] |
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Here’s What Buying Bitcoin On Robinhood Is Really Like | A painless buying experience
Pardon me if this reads like a love letter to Robinhood. It’s everything I want a crypto buying experience to be. Well, almost.
The Robinhood app itself is pretty slick. The Robinhood Crypto side has a Tron-esque, ‘80s-inspired neon aesthetic. It’s easily my favorite user interface of any crypto app.
It’s fun to use to track price movements in Ripple, Dogecoin and other major altcoins. Unfortunately, though, Robinhood only supports purchases of bitcoin and ethereum. Minor bummer.
I’d been a Robinhood account holder for about a year before I got access to Robinhood Crypto, so the app was already connected to my bank account. Transferring money to Robinhood is as simple as logging in to your bank and choosing a dollar amount. The money shows up immediately (up to $1,000), so there’s no waiting when you want to BTFD.
Unlike my experience with using a bitcoin ATM, Robinhood quoted me a fair, market price for bitcoin without any hidden fees. I can either buy a specific amount of bitcoin, or a specific dollar amount. I chose to buy $10 worth of bitcoin.
I placed a market order, so it was filled immediately at the April 2 bargain price of $7,065 per BTC. I was credited 0.00141689 BTC. Unlike my experience at Coinbase, there was no commission. (Coinbase would have charged me 99 cents for this same buy.)
Best of all, the bitcoin was available in my account immediately. At Coinbase, I needed to wait over a week to take delivery of my coins. | https://medium.com/finance-republic/heres-what-buying-bitcoin-on-robinhood-is-really-like-f914fb3026e4 | ['Fox Van Allen'] | 2018-04-30 21:53:29.155000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'Robinhood', 'Investing', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Robinhood Crypto'] |
How Pharma Analytics Solutions In Saudi Arabia Protect Your Hospital Insights During The Crisis Of COVID-19? | How Pharma Analytics Solutions In Saudi Arabia Protect Your Hospital Insights During The Crisis Of COVID-19? Russel David Nov 23, 2020·5 min read
BI#1 Pharma Analytics Solutions In Saudi Arabia is seeing a monstrous progress change, with the advancement in prosperity going standard rapidly. Removed patient noticing (EMR) advancement is starting this serious turn of events. Amidst the advancing Coronavirus pandemic, related prosperity and EMR have gone down to end up being more basic than whenever in ongoing memory, since they grant specialists to screen patients without having any quick contact with them, consequently hindering the spread of the pollution. EMR similarly keeps patients with less outrageous cases out of clinical facilities, directing bed space for patients with essential cases.
BI#1 Pharma Analytics Solutions In Saudi Arabia
How EMR Helps Medical Care Practices Grow Reach and Openness?
Pharma Analytics Solutions In Saudi Arabia amount of clinical consideration clients and the connected cost of organizations, strategies, and treatments make it dynamically difficult for specific patients to pick up induction to the thought they need. Likewise, life in common domains face an unpreventable and pressing issue; providers and experts are uncommon.
Settling these troubles will require the use of modernized courses of action, especially EMR devices. With Pharma Analytics Solutions In Saudi Arabia, specialists can reach and treat more patients, giving them better induction to gatekeepers and organizations since this development in every way that really matters, interfaces clinicians clearly with appropriate, continuous patient data, extending the capability and ampleness of their consistent changes, office visits, and timetables, helping with passing on quality thought.
ChristinaCare, a two-facility prosperity system based out of Delaware, is expecting to broaden Pharma Analytics Solutions In Saudi Arabia, which has been used to give privately arranged thought to chiefs to patients with industrious conditions. Specialists need to use that stage to offer consideration to Covid patients just as others with prosperity concerns who can’t safely visit a crisis center or office.
Reliably, patients use the Pharma Analytics Solutions In Saudi Arabia which streams biometric data to the tablet. Their furthermore answer tends to be related to their specific condition, or “pathway.” The course of action starting at now consolidates more than 90 pathways, for instance, congestive cardiovascular breakdown (CHF), diabetes, threatening development, smoking end, and reliance recovery. Patients similarly use the tablets to see disorder unequivocal informational substance, video meetings with clinicians, and get drug refreshes.
Pharma Analytics Solutions In Saudi Arabia calm data and responses look for examples and plans and unravel all that data for specialists by methods for an online section with simple to utilize dashboards. Thusly, clinicians can without a doubt develop their reach, screen data persistently, and intervene before minor results become huge ailments.
Coordinating EMR with your EHR will assist you with bettering see how you and staff can:
Pharma Analytics Solutions In Saudi Arabia is huge for work to measure ease. Working with game plans that can join into your present EHR will make it easy to get and pass on over your affiliation.
Fusing EMR with your EHR will help you with bettering perceive how you and staff can:
Track data for improved patient outcomes, ensure calm understanding of contraption use with the objective that they make more instructed decisions, redesign strong correspondence with and attract patients in a prevalent manner, keep a tab of treatment plans and assurance advantageous medication, help smooth out clinician work measures by supporting them with dull tasks, for instance, entering data into EHR structures over and over, and Direct careful charging for the organization.
When seen absolutely and experienced firsthand, these sections will make your present EHR undertakings indisputably more fruitful.
Critical Steps for Viable Blend of EMR in your Preparation
Significant Strides for Fruitful Coordination of EMR in your Training
Utilizing EMR with a Customized Tolerant Consideration Plan
Far away patient checking can help position with controlling your patient’s well being direct into their hands while furthermore keeping them instructed in regards to their game plan of care reliably. EMR devices can moreover help your patient feel both related with their thought gathering and drew in, further fortifying their relationship with the provider.
Recalling these things, it is extraordinarily essential to characterize a show for getting sorted out which patients should be checked to heighten open-minded bits of leeway. Consider putting together patients who are at an extended possibility or have been hospitalized before for conditions related to diabetes, circulatory strain, cardiovascular breakdown, or COPD. In spite of the way that noticing basic assessments alone can be instrumental, far away patient checking is best when used at the same time with a revamp lenient thought plan.
Picking the Privilege EMR Innovation
Finding the right advancement assistant that stays mindful of your gathering’s mechanical wellness and best suits your proposed goals is the route to a productive EMR mix. You should figure out whether your preparation will require an associate to screen billable time and submit declares each month or if that should be conceivable in-house.
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Email: [email protected] | https://medium.com/@davidrussel009/how-pharma-analytics-solutions-in-saudi-arabia-protect-your-hospital-insights-during-the-crisis-of-ce1eb85c0644 | ['Russel David'] | 2020-11-23 09:01:41.859000+00:00 | ['Pharmacy', 'Pharmacist', 'Pharma', 'Pharmaceuticals Industry', 'Pharmaceutical'] |
Adding Nuxt to an existing Express service | Well, usually you do completely the opposite. But maybe there is another developer that is looking for this tutorial, as I was.
Why?
Before moving further, I would like to explain why I needed it. If you already have your own reasons then just skip this part.
At my company we have a PaaS team that maintains a service for creating internal services (yeah tautology…). Why so? It reduces a significant amount of time when creating a new service. You get a fully configured Express template on GitHub with already enabled CI/CD and all the internal dependency packages within a few minutes. So it was more natural to add Nuxt to an already existing Express service, rather than using create-nuxt-app and configuring serverMiddleware from scratch.
How?
Let’s start by creating our app. Open terminal and choose a folder to work in.
mkdir nuxt-as-express-middleware; cd nuxt-as-express-middleware
Initializing the app.
npm init
Installing dependencies.
npm i express nuxt
Creating the heart of the app.
touch app.js
Open app.js in your favorite editor and copy-paste this code.
Well, that’s it. But if you’re interested in what is going on here let’s dig a bit deeper.
loadNuxt first searches for nuxt.config.js if it doesn’t exist Nuxt uses default configurations. After loading the configurations it creates and returns an instance of Nuxt.
nuxt.render is a classical middleware function which maps Express requests to Nuxt routes. Because this function will handle the rendering of your web application and won’t call next() you should call it at the end of your middlewares. | https://medium.com/@vkraykin/adding-nuxt-to-an-existing-express-service-e1be644f720f | ['Vladimir Kraykin'] | 2021-01-21 02:33:51.888000+00:00 | ['Nuxtjs', 'Expressjs', 'Server Side Rendering'] |
Laravel service providers explained in 2 mins | Start talking to a new Laravel developer about service providers and you may find a confused glaze spread slowly over their face. Chances are they’ve read about them briefly in the docs, but for many this is not an area they are fully comfortable with.
In part, a lot of this comes from how interlinked this feature is with the concept of dependency injection, something that can appear very daunting for new developers.
In actual fact — whilst service providers are commonly used to implement dependency injection — at their heart they are pretty straight forward.
Imagine building a brand-new app. Invariably every app needs a central place where a developer can do “stuff” that they know will affect their entire application.
Service providers are this place.
Contrast with a controller for example, which handles only individual specific requests. Or middleware, which transforms groups of requests before they hit the controller. Both these are great patterns to manage the flow of our incoming requests, but what if we want to run code before this happens — right at the start of the process when our app first boots up?
If you come from a Wordpress background you may be familiar with the functions.php file. This is effectively the same concept as a Laravel service provider — a place to run code that will affect your entire app before any of your other custom code.
There is one helpful difference though — Laravel allows us to have multiple service providers.
This enables us to separate our responsibilities and organise our code more elegantly then having a single file to dump code into. It also allows package developers to manage the needs of their package separately to the other needs of the app.
Each of your service providers is defined in your config/app.php file and are “fired-up” by Laravel when it first runs.
And it’s really as simple as that!
One last thing…you may be asking how then does this tie back with the aforementioned concept of dependency injection. Well…in a nutshell, developers need a central place when they can define the bindings for each of their dependencies before any of their other code runs— and Laravel service providers offer the perfect place to setup these bindings. | https://medium.com/@marvioso/laravel-service-providers-explained-in-2-mins-d8971cab7f75 | [] | 2020-12-23 15:35:29.427000+00:00 | ['PHP', 'Web Development', 'Dependency Injection', 'Laravel'] |
The 3 Tiers of Lying and How Well-Intentioned Lies Can Still Destroy Relationships | Our self-preservation instincts are strong. It’s how our ancestors survived lions and bears trying to eat them all the time. So when we’re afraid that telling the whole truth will HURT us, it’s not hard to resort to a lie that doesn’t feel ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’ in order to avoid experiencing that hurt, or feeling what would seem to be unnecessary discomfort.
I tell self-preservation lies sometimes. I do.
I don’t think I tell them in my close personal relationships in a way that I perceive to be a breach of trust, but I also know better than to trust my own judgment anymore.
Maybe I’m just embarrassed about something that someone else doesn’t really need to know, so I find some other way to say it that isn’t the most truth I could tell.
I don’t think it’s good.
I think it’s lying, and I think lying is almost universally frowned upon as a bad thing for good reason.
I understand why someone might make something sound cooler than it actually was to try to impress a date, or professional colleagues, or friends.
I understand why someone might omit a detail, or talk around some embarrassing thing when explaining a situation because they’re afraid of that person they’re crushing on, or their friend, or their co-worker thinking they’re a douchebag and not wanting to hang out with them anymore.
We are irrational creatures, us humans.
Tier 3 — Little White Lies
You already know about these. You probably tell one every day, and don’t think twice about the moral implications of doing so because they don’t FEEL wrong or bad. They just don’t.
If I think a meal tasted kind of shitty, and I say “Thank you so much for dinner. It was wonderful,” I’m not going to beat myself up about it.
I played along with stories about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy that today I actually have mixed emotions about, because I have legitimate concerns about the psychological effect it has on kids when they grow up and realize the ENTIRE WORLD, including the people they love the most had orchestrated a scheme to make them believe that something was real that actually wasn’t.
No one was trying to hurt anyone, and it’s all done in the spirit of childhood innocence and helping kids have a good time, so we all convince ourselves it’s fine. That it’s a good thing, even.
But the older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve begun to question how true that is.
If I don’t like someone’s shirt, or haircut, or new car, or whatever, and they ask me about it, I’m not going to tell them the whole truth if I believe doing so will offend them or hurt their feelings.
Maybe that makes me some kind of coward or weakling. I don’t know.
I just know I don’t like how it feels to say or do things that make people feel bad, and not ONCE in my life have I ever intentionally tried to do that.
So, sometimes, I won’t tell the whole truth because I perceive it to be the ‘right’ thing to do.
NOT hurting someone I care about > Being the most honest I can possibly be.
I think there’s a reasonable debate to be had about that little math equation, and I think how everyone feels about it will depend on a thousand unknown variables.
How Lies Destroy Marriages and Compromise Relationships
Here’s the part I didn’t get when I was married and was justifying the Little White Lies or Cover Your Ass lies I told.
Human beings have NEEDS. Not wants. Not nice-to-haves. NEEDS.
And the needs people have come with varying degrees of importance.
For example, we NEED a phone, right? And it’s a life emergency that yours just went over the side of the boat and sunk to the bottom of the lake or ocean.
But now, you get word that a tornado swept through your neighborhood, and your house is gone. You don’t have anywhere to live. How big of a deal is that lost phone feeling now?
You’re homeless, and you can’t even text your friends or put up a sad Instagram post about it. It feels like the sky’s falling at this point.
But suddenly, the sky IS falling. An asteroid falls down to Earth out of nowhere and it’s dark and scary, and it doesn’t take everyone long to figure out that the ash cloud from the asteroid impact is going to block out the sun for the next two years, and all plant and animal life on earth is going to die. How big of a deal is the tornado-hit home situation now?
It’s chaos. Scary. People are looting big-screen TVs they can’t watch because there’s no power or internet right now. Everything looks post-apocalyptic, like you’ve seen in the movies.
But suddenly you hear a gunshot, and the Jolly Rancher piece of candy in your mouth goes down the wrong pipe, and you can’t breathe. You’re choking. No matter what you do. Your body can’t get air. If you can’t unblock your air passage, you’re dead in 30 seconds…
How scary does that gunshot you heard feel now? | https://medium.com/hello-love/the-3-tiers-of-lying-and-how-well-intentioned-lies-can-still-destroy-relationships-cc281925d8b6 | ['The Good Men Project'] | 2020-12-10 11:47:58.606000+00:00 | ['Communication', 'Lies', 'Relationships', 'Love', 'Trust'] |
Eliminating Last-Minute Tax Season Stress | Eliminating Last-Minute Tax Season Stress
Tax season may be exhausting. Burnout rears its gloomy head year after year as tax professionals slog over tax return after tax return. You know when it’s going to occur, and the circumstances are always the same — clients wait until the last minute to turn in their documentation, there never seems to be enough staff, and it feels like you’re working around the clock.
Tax season has arrived, and you’ve got a lot on your plate. You’re probably already frazzled, and there is still a long way to go before April 15th. You’re probably stressed out and exhausted at this time of year. What can you do to avoid collapsing against a brick wall!?
Consider the following tips:
Avoid distractions: Work interruptions are never pleasant, but disruptions during tax season may be extremely aggravating and lead to exhaustion. Tax season is a great time to delegate activities that pull you from your primary work. Set aside a specific block of time each day to handle those distractions. Turn your phone off or especially disable notifications, don’t open emails, and put a “Do Not Disturb” sign on your door.
Hire offshore staff: You may not be able to find full-time support for tax season, but you can supplement your team working with an offshore staffing partner. Hiring either full- or part-time can help reduce the workload across your firm, lessening the burden on everyone. If you have identified your needs and have a solid hiring process in place, now is the time to get that extra assistance. Offshore staffing helps you build capacity so that your compliance and data entry or even review level work is being done by your offshore team. Then your onshore core team is responsible for investing time behind their clients and their business.
Reduce preparation delays: Many firms have unnecessary delays in sending and receiving signed documents. If you can organize requests, questionnaires, engagement letters and payments into one structured system, it can truly speed up your production. The more you can automate data collection and deliverable creation, the more quickly you can service clients.
Optimize new technology: For many, tax season appears to be the worst time to contemplate investing in a new software package, but having the greatest technology on your side will surely speed up your productivity. As demand for accounting software grows, there will be a new accounting technology to help with this need. To date, there are more than 50% of accounting practices using accounting software solutions.
Advances in technology have made it easier for firms to operate in a multi-office environment. Technology enables efficiency and with state-of-the-art business tools you can ‘wow’ your clients! Technology can potentially help you work faster with fewer mistakes, and thus decrease your stress. If you have outdated technology, this is likely a cause of stress for your employees, and an upgrade would be a long overdue relief.
Take Rest: Look for symptoms of burnout in yourself and your staff before it’s too late. Take a vacation break or entirely disengage if necessary. Taking a long vacation this time of year may seem out of the question, but surely will help you rejuvenate where you can make up for it in the days that follow. Overtime is bad for everyone, no matter what time of year it is or how vital the task is. Make sure you leave the office at a reasonable hour so that you may relax and get some rest before going to bed.
Prepare for critical problems: Identify clients who may have more difficult tax returns and ensure that you have someone on staff with the specialist expertise required for those tasks. Take use of the time you have available this year to handle any concerns that you believe will arise.
Positive work culture: Having an attitude of gratitude is a natural stress reliever. Tell your employees how thankful you are for their contributions. Words of appreciation and thankfulness can go a long way towards relieving tension. The smallest thing that you do or say to someone will be very impactful in more ways than you know!! In short, burnout is a problem, but at the same time, it’s a good problem to have.
Take this advice in guiding you to reduce stress, avoid burnout, and become more lucrative this tax season. Communicating, delegating, use of technologies with streamlined workflow processes may all help you triumph through this difficult period. Take care of yourself and your business and April 15 will be here before you know it! | https://medium.com/@entigrity/eliminating-last-minute-tax-season-stress-7b50c6ff4d2f | ['Entigrity Solutions Llc'] | 2021-12-24 05:05:36.673000+00:00 | ['Accounting', 'Tax Season', 'Cpa Firms In California', 'Accountant', 'Offshoring'] |
How to learn Machine Learning? | Some time ago I started a journey into one of the most exciting fields in Computer Science — Machine Learning. This is my subjective guide for anyone who would like to explore this topic, but don’t know how to start.
Before You Go
It’s time to pack our bag:
math is a must — it will be hard to start if you don’t know a glimpse of algebra and calculus. You don’t have to be an expert, but you must know what a minimum of a function is and understand that math can be done on symbols.
programming — some programming experience is necessary. Machine Learning is not a place to take baby steps in programming. If you cannot code, take one of many Programming 101 courses. Python is a good language of choice.
First Steps
Your first steps should lead to Stanford Machine Learning class at Coursera by Andrew Ng. This course is simply brilliant! Along a way, you will be given everything you need to know, including algebra review. You will not only get the overview of supervised and unsupervised techniques but you will gather hands on experience through coding assignments in Octave (or Matlab). Pull in your weight and you will gain a lot of self-confidence. You will probably reach peak in Dunning-Kruger Effect.
As pointed out by Piotr Migdal this is real Dunning-Krugger effect.
Try Yourself Out
Try yourself out in one of ML competitions on Kaggle. You probably will not win, but you will get an idea what you still need to learn.
Walking Shoes
It’s time to buy better shoes. There are plenty of options, but two stands out: Python and R.
This two have strong and opinionated believers. Among people I met, those with math background prefer R and those with roots in CS get along with Python. I would recommend to start with Python. It is beautiful language and you will get faster to exciting stuff. The most popular ML library for Python is scikit-learn. To make your work convenient try out interactive environments: ipython is better console for python and Jupyter is programming notebook which works also with R. Data processing can be done with PANDAS.
With R you get caret package, RStudio, knitr and Shiny as counter parts.
Deep Learning
Admit it. You still seek fame. You have heard about deep learning and you want jump on a bandwagon. You are lucky! Google prepared great course on Deep Learning on Udacity. You will learn everything you need to know about neural networks with hands on experience using TensorFlow library.
It Is All About Data
Is it is getting to you that whole Machine Learning fuss is all about data? It is time to learn R and become Data Scientist with John Hopkins specialization on Coursera. It is 9 classes that will teach you data scientist toolkit, data exploration and visualization, statistical inference and regression. Everything is wrapped up with the capstone project.
It Is Just Statistics
Practical Machine Learning from Data Science specialization probably opened your eyes that there is more into ML than Andrew Ng taught you. Get deep into the field of Statistical Learning with Stanford course by Rob Tibshirani and Trevor Hastie. These two and Jerome Friedman are the authors of ML Bible Elements of Statistical Learning which is available online for free.
Rob Tibshirani and Trevor Hastie. (Take a class, you will get it.)
You may feel that you need to supplement your knowledge of probability. There is a great class from MIT Introduction to Probability — The Science of Uncertainty on edX. I would also recommend a great book: Introduction to Probability by course instructor John N. Tsitsiklis.
Big Data
It was proved that more data beats better algorithm. How to handle huge datasets?
Graphic cards are able to do matrix calculations effectively and thats what we need in ML. To speed up calculations you can use libraries like OpenCL or Theano, but usually you can use frameworks like Keras that will do it for you.
You can also to make computations parallel using map reduce paradigm. You can use Hadoop for that, but nowadays it becomes overshadowed by Spark which comes with own ML library MLib. If you want to learn more, take two great classes at Berkley via edX: Introduction to Big Data with Apache Spark and Scalable Machine Learning.
Search Your Own Path
It’s time for you to search your own path. For fresh news in the field pay regular visits to ML Reddit, DataTau. It is also good idea to join Facebook groups like R-Cran Fan Club! Sign up to different MOOC platforms. Interesting courses keeps popping out.
Good luck with your journey! | https://medium.com/machine-intelligence-report/how-to-learn-machine-learning-6fa1c66bf039 | ['Roman Kierzkowski'] | 2016-03-23 03:07:32.952000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Machine Learning'] |
Four weeks off | I recently quit my job.
I had been there for almost two years, and it was my first job. I learned a lot, developed a lot of skills, and had some pretty incredible experiences very early in my legal career.
But I also burned out pretty badly. Part of that had to do with going to law school straight out of undergrad. Part of it had to do with the kind of person I have long been (Type A, anxious, people-pleasing, “insecure overachiever”), and have recently begun un-being. Part of it had to do with the nature of the “Big Law” industry. And part of it had to do with the way the COVID-19 pandemic forced one part of my apartment to become my office, my gym, and my living room — these parts of my life were crammed into one small space, leaving me no room and no option but to reassess what I was doing professionally and personally, and, more importantly, why.
One — perhaps the most — constant source of solace during the past few years has been food: creating it, consuming it, and sharing it with people I love. I have always loved food, not only for the sensation of eating something delicious but also, and more so, for the unique way in which it creates community. The way certain foods or meals or restaurants hold memories has always fascinated and moved me. Even years later, I can recall where or what I ate in connection with a particular occasion. And, more recently, I have grown to love making food, whether cooked or baked.
yes, yes I do lovingly gaze at most food this way, why do you ask?
I didn’t really begin cooking until the end of college, and I certainly would not have called myself a baker until early 2020. Right before the pandemic started, I began following along with Bon Appétit’s Basically Guide to Better Baking. The 10-week guide took me from occasionally baking challah — just about the only thing I could bake consistently well — to feeling confident making chocolate chip cookies (historically, mine had turned out more like bricks with chocolate chips in them), “restaurant quality” (as my friend kindly called them) fudge brownies, focaccia, biscuits, galettes, and more. I was hooked on baking, and particularly enthralled by the knowledge that I could create just about any baked good if I was patient and focused enough.
Baking is therapeutic, meditative, soothing, and (even for me, an uptight person with some deep-rooted fears of imperfection) truly fun. It is a hobby that delights me to no end, and one I can share with people I love. It’s how I sparked a friendship with new neighbors who moved in next door last winter, how I kept in touch with friends across the country who ordered sourdough loaves made by partner and me as we participated in #BakersAgainstRacism, how I bring a little something to the table when I visit my family or friends for dinner. (I love cooking, too, and enjoy it for many of the same reasons. But baking is really where I seem to shine when it comes to making food.)
The combination of being an attorney at a big firm, living through a pandemic and its accompanying stressors, observing a world literally and metaphorically on fire, and feeling incredibly burned out by all of these things left me with no energy — and worse, no desire — to bake or cook for much of this year. I started a baking-focused Instagram last winter to try to motivate myself to bake but ended up constantly feeling like I didn’t have the energy to keep it up. To feel as depleted as I did and not be able to access the one thing I knew could help felt pretty miserable. The few times I did feel up to baking something during the weekend or making dinner on a weeknight felt simultaneously wonderful (healing!) and maddening (the healing was fleeting!).
these spelt croissants (Claire Saffitz’s recipe from Dessert Person) are probably my greatest accomplishment
I have a job lined up, one I am earnestly very excited about. But before then, I am taking four weeks off, starting today. When people ask me how I want to spend these weeks, the first thing that comes to mind is: baking (and cooking) as much as I can. I want to make up for lost time. I want to thank my partner for all the days/weeks/months he spent making us dinner because I was still working or too wiped from the day I’d had. I want to learn how to create new dishes without the constraints of the work day or work week holding me back.
And I want to share it with you, if you feel inclined to follow along. My goal is two-fold. The first part is simple: to make (at least) one, home-cooked or -baked item a day. It can be a meal, a batch of cookies, or an ingredient (like a curd or croutons or pie dough) — whatever I feel like, no matter how big or small. Just as long as I’m spending some time in the kitchen each day, learning something new or perfecting an old technique or recipe. (I’ll be sure to link to the recipe(s) I’m using, or write them out when they’re my own!)
The second part is a little trickier: to get writing again. As you can imagine, being an attorney requires writing a lot. I basically spend my days writing — emails, drafts, memos, you name it. But that writing looks a lot different than the kind of writing I’m doing right now. It’s a kind of writing I haven’t done a lot of (and the last time I did was nearly six years ago). But it’s a kind of writing that I feel quite a bit of (albeit self-conscious) joy doing. (Also a lot of fear, but I’ll get over it.)
So there it is: what I want to do with my four weeks off is try to cook or bake and then write something about it every day. There will likely be a couple of days where that goal won’t be achieved, and that will be okay, because I’m just doing this for myself, for fun, with no purpose in mind but to use this time to indulge in two activities that bring me a lot of happiness. (Oh, and I’ll also try to throw in a couple of things, like an article I read that day that I recommend, or what I was listening to while in the kitchen.)
After years and years devoted to my professional growth, I’m really excited to take a breath and focus on different passions and interests of mine. I’m unaccustomed to the feeling of having this much free time. (And maybe this project is partly indulging a part of me that feels she always needs to be doing something productive.) Regardless, I’m genuinely looking forward to it, and if you’d like to follow along, then I’m happy to have you here.
I’ll see you tomorrow for the first installment.
my beloved kitchen, where I’ll be spending a lot of time this month
For simplicity and ease of access, here’s a rolling list of my daily posts:
On August 30, I started my new job. My final post, which you can find here, reflected on my four weeks off and all the wonderful time I spent in my kitchen. | https://medium.com/@lromm/four-weeks-off-e957258c93c4 | ['Leah Romm'] | 2021-08-31 04:47:50.785000+00:00 | ['Time Off', 'Baking', 'Work Life Balance', 'Food', 'Cooking'] |
Crush-ed | Photo by Alex Martinez on Unsplash
“Coffee?”
“Yeah. Black”
She prepared two cups and handed one of them to Andrea.
“What’s up? You look so down. Anything bothering you?”
“Stop reading me, will you?. It makes me so uncomfortable”
Sarah looked into Andrea's eyes and said “Nothing to be uncomfortable about this, love. We are all the same here”
Andrea took a deep breath and nodded.
Sarah gave a short, serious smile. “Okay, what’s bothering you?”
“You know, I haven't been into this teen been dating stuff. I thought they were just stupid kid kinda stuffs”
“Mhm mhm…”
“But, recently I've found someone so close to my heart. someone to talk to without being judged. someone so comfortable to hang out with. and we’ve become so close to each other. But…”
“But…?”
“I kinda have strong feelings and this could turn into a very serious relationship” She looks exhilarated.
“Wow! That… That is huge. I am happy for you”
“Yeah….” voice tones down.
“What is it?”
“I mean, I want to take this to the next level and officially start dating buuuuut…”
Sarah gave a questioning look.
“I dunno whether this will work out. I am scared that this might break our friendship. Then I’ll be the stupidest person on Earth, I guess”
Sarah chuckled.
“What? What is so funny here? I am literally bi-hearted”
“Andrea, you know there is always some madness in love, right?”
“Yeah, love could be the stupid thing anyone could go for. Plus cotton candy. Who would eat that sh*t? Why would they even make that? Why this world is so crazy?”
“I know, right?” Sarah continues. “But still, there are people falling for each other in either way. It could be a friendship or a relationship. The thing is to be with someone you love and loves you”
Andrea gave a deep stare at Sarah.
“What if things go wrong? What if I lose my best friend?”
“That is the risk you’ll have to face yourself. There are two possibilities. Either you get a long-lasting soul mate or you get the satisfaction of trying something and learning things to do better next time”
“But Mom, you never fell in love with anyone after dad left. Why?”
“I have you, Andrea. You are the most beautiful thing that happened in my life after your dad. We brought you to this world and it is unfortunate he left. But I found a new love, YOU”
This gets her attention. She looked up at Sarah.
“We can give different names. But the inner feeling and the warmth of the closeness with someone is all the same. I have you and you will have someone too. It is like a chain, it goes on”
“Thank you, mom” Andrea smiled at her confidently, holding Sarah’s hands. “You too are my best friend. And I am so happy I have you”
She stood up.
“And I am proud of you, Andrea. Anyone, you choosing will feel the same. I am pretty sure any boy will be lucky to have you”
“GIRL!” She paused. “ANY GIRL would be lucky to have me…!”
For a few seconds she Sarah said nothing and the intensity of the silence was very severe.
The next moment, Sarah pulled Andrea closer and hugged her so tight and said, “whatever happens I am always there for you”
Andrea felt solace in her warmth and said back to her “I know, mom”
“Now go get her. Tell her how much you feel. Open your heart deep from the roots. Go on”
Andrea smiled and took her phone and started texting. | https://medium.com/social-jogi/crush-ed-ab13081f24e4 | ['Blank Voice'] | 2021-02-04 16:05:25.297000+00:00 | ['Covid Diaries', 'Fiction', 'Short Story', 'Relationships', 'Love'] |
The problem with freelancers. | “Plato has a fine saying, that he who would discourse of man should survey, as from some high watchtower, the things of earth.”
- Marcus Aurelius
If you’re running, or you’re part of a growing digital business, there’s a pretty good chance that you’re working with freelancers.
With an increasing demand for digital skillsets twinned with a shortage of people, you’ll probably need to work with freelancers in one capacity or another for the life of your business.
This isn’t great for freelancers, and it’s terrible for the future of your business, here’s why.
There are two problems that freelancers are currently used to solve:
There is no in-house resource available for the skill required (this needs done now)
There is no permanent need for the skill required (this is not something we need to do every day)
These problems occur either when a company has committed their team to a roadmap aligned with their core services, and they no longer have any additional team members to deal with incidental and increased demands, OR when a project or channel requires specialist input.
If you’re the person responsible for solving either of these problems you’ll be tasked with finding additional resources to make sure you stay on track, and more often than not, the following process (or something resembling it) unfolds.
(Drawn on a Post-It)
We know that from internal research we’ve conducted that this process usually costs a company on average around £2,500 (extrapolate to whatever your native currency is) and 5 week’s worth of time.
Now, after a few weeks and after spending a couple of thousand pounds (euros/dollars etc), the freelancer you’ve hired can finally get started on the work required to keep the company on track…but not quite.
Here’s a list of some typical steps that now need to be completed before they start on the project:
On-boarding/learning about the company
Set-up with systems access rights
Meeting the team they’ll be working with
Understanding the project they’ll be working on
Getting to know their manager and how they’ll be measured
After all of the above has been completed (and often, more than the above), the freelancer can now begin work on the project, which by now is probably frighteningly behind.
So the total up the cost to the business to bring this freelancer onboard:
£2,500 recruiter fees/job post fees
A significant amount of resource drain
4/5 week’s recruitment time
3 days on-boarding time
This leaves the company an additional month behind on their project, and £2,500 poorer, before they start paying their newly hired freelancer.
Hopefully the freelancer that has been hired is unbelievably brilliant and is able to help the team get the project delivered on time.
After the piece of work is delivered, the freelancer can leave and go on to their next job.
It might also be worth adding here that there’s no guarantee that the freelancer will available again in the future when you need them, meaning all of the time (and money) spent will have to be spent again each time this need arises.
As your business grows, and your resource requirements fluctuate, this process, and the expenses that accompany it are likely to become commonplace, costs are going to grow and they’re going to become a serious revenue and resource drain for the company.
From a freelancer’s perspective, it’s not much better. Here’s what it looks like for them.
(Also drawn on a Post-It)
It’s a whole lot of administrative heavy lifting for the freelancer, and is a process that needs to be repeated multiple times a year, there are quite a few more time (and motivation) sapping expectations of freelancers too such as:
Lack of clear documentation/briefs
Multiple stakeholders to manage at each role
Invoicing (and chasing unpaid invoices)
Differing, ‘on-site/remote’, requirements for each role
Unrealistic delivery expectations/timeframes
Additional complimentary skills required to complete delivery
At the moment, businesses (and the freelancers they rely on) are getting by (barely), but the future we’re building needs this system (it’s not, ‘the gig economy’) to scale more effectively and has a bunch of problems that need to be solved:
Businesses don’t need permanent teams for everything they need to do
Businesses can’t afford permanent teams for everything they need to do
Businesses are not set up to use fractional team members effectively
Resource requirements are going to become more elastic
Specialist skill sets are going to be more in-demand
Freelancers need predictable work pipelines
Freelancers need to be on-boarded faster
Freelancers need to be managed better
Freelancers need to be briefed better
Freelancers need their skills and ability measured quickly and accurately
Freelancers need to be paid faster and more reliably
We’re well on our way to solving these problems for businesses and freelancers here at Distributed, but I’d like to see more companies working on improving the use of elastic teams that’s not a marketplace for talent or some sort of SaaS play.
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions please tweet me @callumadamson
#recommendedreading
Tribe of Mentors — by Tim Ferriss
Chances are that if you’re reading this you already know who Tim Ferriss is, whether you do or not this book is marvellous. It’s a series of short Q&A’s from some of the most influential people on the planet and gives the reader a great insight into what helps them be who they are, while also imparting tons of life lessons easy to apply to your own life.
Cal on LinkedIn
Cal on Twitter
distributed.cx
Callum Adamson
Distributed | https://medium.com/distributed/the-problem-with-freelancers-10c0f3ec50b2 | ['Callum Adamson'] | 2018-06-26 19:34:49.084000+00:00 | ['Freelancing', 'Remote Working', 'Growth', 'Business', 'Business Strategy'] |
Teaching Home Robots | Leveraging Stereo Vision to Transfer from Simulation to Reality
By: Kevin Stone and Mike Laskey
Our home robot in the kitchen. The robot is reasoning about where the wipeable surface is to clean (top right image) and how to grasp the objects given the 3D oriented bounding boxes. The perception for this task was trained with programmable data.
At TRI, our goal is to make breakthrough capabilities in Artificial Intelligence (AI). Projects range from self-driving cars to home robotics. Despite recent advancements in AI, the large amount of data collection needed to deploy systems in unstructured environments continues to be a burden.
Data collection in computer vision can be both quite costly and time-consuming, largely due to the process of annotating. Annotating data is typically done by a team of labelers, who are provided a long list of rules for how to handle different scenarios and what data to collect. For complex systems like a home robot or a self-driving car, these rules must be constantly refined, which creates an expensive feedback loop.
For example, our home robot, shown above, was tasked with identifying objects on a table. The initial data we trained on consisted solely of images of tables with clutter on top. At runtime, the robot had significant error when shown empty tables and required more data to be collected. If we relied on real-world data to fix our problem, an individual would have to go into homes, capture images of tables with various levels of clutter, and then annotate them, which could take days.
A promising alternative is the use of synthetic data, where a computer simulates a 3D world, similar to a video game, and then renders the image and desired labels from the scene. Since synthetic data can now be programmed, an engineer can address unforeseen and unrepresented environments — in our example, tables without clutter objects — by simply writing a patch to the code rather than using real-world data that is time-consuming to collect. The engineer now has far greater control over the data, which can enable rapid iteration on model errors and customizability.
While the promise of synthetic data is enticing, the difficulty is designing a simulator that is easily programmable and that can translate to reality. Current photo-realistic approaches to simulator design require laborious artist-curated mesh assets and scene placement to recreate the physical world. Inspired by techniques in domain randomization [1,9], where textures, lighting, and scene placement are algorithmically generated, we are exploring how to create a procedural simulator that can be easily adapted to new domains from dining room tables to self-driving cars.
Our main finding is that by forcing a deep network to explicitly reason about geometry from stereo images, we can dramatically reduce the complexity of simulation and still achieve robust transfer in very unstructured domains. The intuition for this is that we can learn to understand the world geometrically, like humans do, and remove the need for complex photo-realism. In this blog post, we show how using ideas from the learned stereo community, we can train a model on low-quality synthetic data and obtain results on par with real-world data. We then describe how the same simulator is used on our robotic fleet to enable a home robot to reason about unknown objects and wipe surfaces.
Transferring from Simulation with Stereo Cameras
To transfer from simulation to real, the network needs to be able to reason about the world in a way that is invariant between the two domains. One promising technique used to make transferrable data is to use geometric features, such as a depth image or a point cloud [3,10]. In this approach a network is trained on a synthetic geometric representation and then at run time a sensor is used to extract 3D geometry of the environment. The intuition is that geometry is consistent between the real world and simulation, so features learned in simulation should be invariant.
Currently, the common way to extract geometry from real-world environments is utilizing either LIDAR or structured light sensors. These are both active sensors, which project light to infer depth. While these sensors can produce great results, they have several significant limitations. LIDAR is typically a very expensive solution that makes it impractical for a lot of applications. While structure light sensors are lower in cost, they have trouble with objects that disrupt infrared light, such as black objects, glassware, stainless steel, and natural sunlight. In the home robotic setting, these situations are far too common for the sensor to be reliable.
An alternative to active sensors is to use a stereo pair of images to derive the geometry of a scene. Stereo images are created with a pair of two cameras that are positioned horizontally from each other by a fixed distance, or baseline. The most common stereo pair is human eyes. Stereo cameras infer the distance to a target point, by understanding the relative distance between where the point is projected on the two images. The relative distance is commonly referred to as disparity, which is proportional to the absolute distance from the camera.
Example images from our procedural simulator, which are used for training a 2D car detector. The data is abstract and low quality, which is consistent with training data used for learned stereo networks [9]. However, the scene layout places cars in natural-like configurations, which enables “high-level” vision tasks, like detection, to transfer.
While understanding where a point in one image is on the adjacent image seems easy, it can actually be quite challenging for a computer — especially when encountering large texture-less surfaces like white walls or stainless steel appliances. Classical techniques to solve this problem have suffered from not having the correct feature space to address these challenges. Thus, there has been a recent surge in research in leveraging deep networks to learn better features for stereo matching.
Recently, a surprising result [9] came out about the quality of data needed to train stereo networks. The authors showed that since stereo matching is a “low-level” vision task, the datasets can be completely divorced from reality and low-quality. The intuition for the result is that features for stereo matching can be trained in a generic way that doesn’t require understanding the semantics of the world. Given this new technique to extract dense geometric features, we wondered if it can replace the need for depth sensors for transferring “high-level” vision? To test this, we designed a simulator for car detection that used the procedural randomization methods from [9] but had a scene layout to coarsely mimic the real world.
While the simulator, shown above, might seem chaotic, the underlying algorithm is quite simple. First, cars are placed in natural-like positions on a flat plane. Then, random objects from the ShapeNet [6] are sampled in the free space and scaled to building size. The lighting, texture, and camera noise are implemented by the procedural algorithms listed in [9]. The simulator is implemented in python with OpenGL shaders. Leveraging $60 of cloud computing, we can generate a dataset of 50K examples in an hour.
A rough sketch of how stereo can be fed into a single-shot detector. Features are computed on the left and right images. The features are then matched in the cost volume and a disparity image is computed. The geometry is then fused with the left RGB image and fed into the backbone of the detection network.
To learn stereo matching, we train a network heavily inspired by DispNet-Corr [4] on the generated data. DispNet-Corr is a simple stereo algorithm that relies only on 2D convolutions, which makes it ideal for real-time applications. DispNet-Corr works by having a feature extractor with shared weights run on both the left and right image. Pixel-wise features are then computed for each image and a cost volume is calculated, which stores the correlation of each pixel to one another. This can actually be done efficiently since we only need to consider matches along the “scan-line” or horizontal row of the image. The features with the highest correlation are considered a match and that determines the pixel displacement or disparity.
Given the disparity map generated from the stereo network, we concatenate it with the left RGB image and feed it as input into the network. Empirically, we have found that adding the left image in an early fusion step with the disparity map improves performance. A similar result was seen in the case with structured light sensors [10]. We hypothesize this enables robustness to the errors from the learned stereo network and can also offer coarse texture information. A high-level architecture of this network can be seen above for the 2D car detection task. We have empirically found the network can be trained end-to-end or have frozen stereo weights with little performance difference.
To test if using stereo matching enables reliable transfer for high-level vision, we evaluate it on the KITTI benchmark [7] with the task of 2D car detection. For inference, we train a single shot detector that is inspired by CenterNet [2]. If we train the network on real KITTI data and test it, we can achieve 86 [email protected] on the aggregate Easy+Moderate class which is comparable to the published CenterNet numbers. If we train the same network while feeding in our stereo predictions with 50K examples from our simulated data it achieves 83 mAP, or a 4% difference. However, the network achieves only 68 mAP when trained on only monocular images from the simulator. These results are preliminary but suggest a simple stereo algorithm can enable robust transfer from the simulation. Below are qualitative results of both the predictions and the learned stereo that were trained solely on the rendered images from our simulator.
The detections on KITTI from the network trained in our simulator. In the top right, the stereo predictions are being visualized, despite being trained only on procedural data it can compute dense geometric features of the scene. Our detector uses these geometric features to predict 2D bounding boxes on cars in the real world.
Programmable Data Applied to Home Robotics
To better illustrate the capability of programmable data, we integrated it into our home robotic fleet [11]. One common task in the home is wiping surfaces clean. In order for a robot to perform this task, it needs to identify the surface that should be wiped and the size of all objects that should be moved. The robot can achieve this by segmenting out the wipeable surface and detecting 3D oriented bounding boxes of the objects on it. At the beginning of the blog post, we show our robot performing this task.
Manual annotation of pixel-level segmentation and 3D bounding boxes would be a challenging task for human annotators. Programmable data though offers a relatively straightforward solution to this problem. Using our procedural simulator, we created a scene layout with a table sampled in the middle of the room and random appliances placed around the object. We then sample objects on the table in random poses. Shown below are rendered images from different camera viewpoints.
Example renders of our simulator for wipeable surfaces with objects placed on them Like the in the car example, the simulator is low quality and procedural, which makes it trivial to program and reconfigure.
Given this data, we train a network to jointly learn the predictions of both, the oriented bounding boxes and segmentation of the wipeable surface. The architecture of this network is heavily inspired by Mobile-Pose [5], however, we added our stereo network discussed in the previous section. Additionally in MobilePose, the network predicts absolute object pose. Since we are interested in oriented bounding boxes, we instead regress the elements of the covariance matrix computed from mesh vertices. We train the network on 50k synthetic images, which can be generated in an hour from our simulator.
To test how robust the perception can be in unstructured environments, we curated an internal validation dataset of 30 reconstructed scenes with labeled 3D bounding boxes of each object on the table, using a similar annotation method in [5]. On this dataset we can achieve 89.1 [email protected] with a 3D IOU, using the stereo network. If we swap the network with an off-the-shelf structured light sensor. Then retrain the model with synthetic depth plus added noise. The performance drops to 67.2 mAP. Thus suggesting raw stereo images can provide more robust geometric features than structured light sensors. Shown below are three scenes from our validation data with the predictions being shown.
Images from our validation dataset with the predictions from the panoptic network overlaid. Top: Is 3D oriented bounding boxes for each object. Note: Oriented bounding boxes can rotate freely along axes with similar dimensions. Bottom: Wipeable surface segmentation where green is the surface and red is an object. Despite only being trained on low-quality synthetic data, we are able to achieve robust transfer in a variety of home scenes.
Current Limitations of Programmable Data
Programmable data seems like a very promising research direction but does have limitations. The technique presented in this blog post relies heavily on geometric features extracted from stereo matching. The ability to infer geometry decays at distance, which means far away objects are difficult to detect. A promising solution to this problem is to add more contextual information using advanced scene placement techniques, as in [8]. The other limitation to this approach is that we are currently restricted to perception tasks. Ideally for robotic systems, we would want to also learn control policies in simulation that transfer. However, that will potentially require significant advances in contact modeling, which is an active focus at TRI.
Broader Societal Impact
We are motivated to research programmable data because it can offer a solution to the issue of AI accessibility. Current solutions to high-performance perception require a large amount of resources to annotate the datasets, such as an internal team or a costly third party contract. The amount of capital needed creates a significant barrier for people to implement and deploy state of the art algorithms. Furthermore, relying on large noisy datasets can introduce unwanted bias into the model that is hard to control. Programmable data offers a new paradigm where data can become as accessible and interpretable as coding. In the future, we hope to release our simulator, Simnet, to further promote accessibility. We are currently conducting alpha testing within TRI.
Acknowledgments
We thank Jeremy Ma for his help with collecting validation data in homes. We additionally thank Mark Tjersland and Krishna Shankar for their insights into learned stereo and sharing code. We finally thank the ML and Manipulation teams at TRI for their insightful feedback along the way.
References | https://medium.com/toyotaresearch/teaching-home-robots-73f7d5e3601f | ['Michael Laskey'] | 2021-03-12 17:08:41.871000+00:00 | ['Pose Estimation', 'Robotics', 'Perception', 'Computer Vision', 'Synthetic Data'] |
CATALYST — Earth Data, Simplified. | New Licensing models
The underlying science accessible through traditional licensing terms was also in need of modernization to reflect the way in which today’s geospatial data and applications are made, and consumed. While the installation of thick client applications on desktop or server configurations is, and has been common in our industry, recent and rapid increases in the size of datasets demands new distributed computing solutions that also require new ways to license CATALYST technology.
CATALYST Products — New offerings now available through modern licensing models
CATALYST Professional
The professional edition, now available as a subscription with many flexible bundles, provides the ideal testing environment to develop workflows, perform validation and work towards automation of results. A Python API makes it easy and straightforward to call algorithms, while an interactive testing environment (with viewers and GUIs) allows testing and verification of algorithms and workflows.
CATALYST Enterprise
The enterprise edition, now available as a subscription, offers pre-made workflows to easily achieve automation. Per core processing licensing has been implemented, and when combined with subscription based licensing models, greatly increases the accessibility of this technology to organizations of all sizes.
CATALYST Services
The CATALYST Insights demonstration application was deployed leveraging the individual modules (roughly 15 algorithms in this case) needed to generate InSAR products. The required algorithms can thus be licensed and deployed accordingly. Rather than purchasing a complete license which would include hundreds of algorithms that are not needed, the main advantage is that consumers of CATALYST Services have the option to purchase and pay for licenses of the algorithms when they are needed.
CATALYST Insights
Subscription based access to information as a service is possible through CATALYST Insights. Land deformation monitoring services are available and can be deployed to end users via the easy to use web application (https://insights.catalyst.earth), or information can be provided through the CATALYST Insights API, allowing consumption of derived information layers into other popular GIS platforms such as Esri’s ArcGIS. The cost to use the application will vary based on the size of the area requested, the temporal frequency, and the type / resolution of imagery (commercial vs open data).
CATALYST OEM
Several use cases necessitate alternative means to license CATALYST capability where public cloud processing may not be possible. A good example of this is an embedded solution, deployed in the field (for example, drone data processing in remote locations). Other processing and operations may form the overall solution such as drone navigation, system calibration, camera operation, which could be offered by other OEM partners or built in-house. In this case, CATALYST OEM forms part of the overall solution, and is licensed based on the algorithms required to complete the work. Subscription based access to the required algorithms offers the benefit of limiting the licensing costs to the required algorithms that form the overall solution.
Engaging with our team
PCI Geomatics has been working to solve our customer’s challenges by developing technology for earth observation for many decades. Whether you are a current, past, or potential customer or partner, it would be our pleasure to engage with you to understand what problems you seek to solve, and how we can help. A team of experienced sales engineers can work with you to see how the new ways we are delivering our science can help to make simple access to earth data possible.
https://catalyst.earth/about/contact/
Kevin Jones
Vice President — Product and Marketing
M: +1 (613) 878–6295
[email protected]
www.CATALYST.Earth | https://medium.com/@catalyst-earth/catalyst-earth-data-simplified-4c1feeadea7e | ['Kevin R Jones'] | 2020-12-10 13:53:48.949000+00:00 | ['Geography', 'Satellite Technology', 'Earth Observation', 'Remote Sensing', 'Geospatial'] |
Focus on giving | In any relationship we have, it is all about giving what we have to offer to the other person. It is never about what we can get in return. Since relationships with people are not transactions, whenever we focus on what we can get of any relationship, it will cause us to suffer by creating expectations. But when we only focus on giving to the other person, we get more without asking anything in return.
Love doesn’t work like money. With money, if you give it to someone else, you loose it. But with love, the more you give, the more you get for yourself.
People can really feel when someone cares for them in a genuine way. They don’t necessarily need to be a close friend to you to feel it, it can come from a complete stranger. Giving an authentic smile and trying to know more about the other person will always make them feel like you care about them.
However, not every person is open to receive love. Some people feel like they don’t deserve to be loved. So when a stranger approaches them and shows sincere care for them, they subconsciously reject him because they feel uncomfortable. They start thinking “why is he so kind to me, it shouldn’t suppose to be this way”. Since most people grow up in an environment where they are being told they are not enough and they should give love to their parents, family members, teachers, god. Basically anyone that is not them is worthy of receiving love, but not yourself. You are allowed to love anyone but not yourself. Since nobody teaches kids to love themselves, they grow up feeling unworthy of receiving love.
And there is really not much you can do about it. If you find someone in your life that is not open to receive love, they will shut you down and stay away from you. And that’s OK, you just need to move on and continue to give your love to other people who are open to receive it.
People who are healthy, have a high self esteem and who appreciate themselves will resonate with you and start giving you more of their time. They will want to hang out with you more, express themselves in an authentic way and give you more enriching experiences.
So start giving more and don’t focus on what you can get out of any relationships. Relationships are about what you can give to others, not about what you can get. Love doesn’t depend on the subject, is something that you have within, it in your birth right.
When you start giving more, the quality of the people who you spend your time with will increase. Not only that but, by loving others more you will also feel loved. When we feel loved, we do better in live. We can start tackling harder challenges, demand more of yourselves and take more risks to go for your dreams because we know people who genuinely supports us and want us to succeed. When we start feeling that way, they we are truly living. | https://medium.com/@megamaomao/focus-on-giving-6929251d4ece | ['Mao Mao'] | 2020-12-11 04:27:48.395000+00:00 | ['Motivation', 'Productivity', 'Depression', 'Digital Art', 'Painting'] |
What are the Top 5 Cloud-Based Software Testing Tools? | Many companies have realized the gravity and competence of cloud based testing tools over the past few years. Cloud based testing is advantageous for teams to maintain pace with client demands that are related to test automation. The software testers can perform tests covering multiple versions, devices, and test case scenarios resulting in enhanced test efficiency towards the end.
The cloud testing market is projected to acquire USD 10.24 Billion by 2022; this growth is expected to occur at 13.01% CAGR. The role of cloud-based software testing tools is imperative when it comes to conducting cloud testing. At present, you have several cloud-based testing tools available in the market that are well-suited for both small and large businesses.
As per industry gurus, the value of cloud-based testing is likely to surge majorly in the near future. With remote working gaining prominence during this global pandemic, the dependency on cloud testing has increased to uplift the value of cloud-based testing tools directly. To understand the significance of cloud-based testing tools within the software testing arena, let us focus on its benefits and top tool choices preferred by companies.
Benefits of Cloud-Based Testing Tools
Cost-Effectiveness
The most interesting aspect related to cloud-based automation tools is the reduced ‘cost of ownership’ as compared to conventional test automation tools. With cloud-based tools, there are no licensing costs and the presence of hardware needs are also less. Furthermore, cloud-based tools deliver high reusability in terms of test components. They are ranked as highly scalable to prove useful for load & performance testing frameworks.
Comfort of Virtualization
The incorporation of cloud-based tools brings with it the advantages of virtualization. To be precise, companies are enabled to make use of their resources to achieve efficient testing optimally. The need for virtualization becomes highly imperative as applications turn more and more complex. Enterprises gain through the benefit of lesser capital costs and resource sharing.
Quick Testing
Having cloud-based automation tools in your software testing suite assures additional advantages related to quicker test arrangements and tool deployment. There is no role for a tiring setup or installation process as testing can immediately initiate from any place without any geographical restrictions. Moreover, cloud-based tools offer seamless software upgrades with reduced downtime. Quick testing directly lessens the time-to-market that is eagerly expected by companies to receive better market standing.
Topmost Cloud-Based Testing Tools
SOASTA CloudTest
SOASTA is the sole developer of CloudTest, which is a leading cloud-based software testing tool. The primary functionalities of CloudTest are associated with loading and performance testing focused at mobile & web applications. This cloud testing tool operates by hosting one or more servers or preferably the cloud.
Prime Features:
Presence of a customizable dashboard with real-time feedback
Availability of Visual Playback Editor and Visual Test Creation
Collaboration with cloud providers like Rackspace and AWS for executing application stress test
Nessus
The usefulness of this renowned cloud-based testing tool is evident via vulnerability scanner operations. It permits the detection of discrepancies linked to misconfigurations as well as missing patches across devices, virtualized systems, cloud infrastructure, firewalls, etc. Nessus assists in the detection of threats such as viruses, backdoors, malware, and a lot more. On the broader front, this cloud-based software testing tool provides visibility for AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure platforms.
Prime Features:
Automatic plugin updates in real-time
Provision for pre-built policies & templates
Conduct a vulnerability assessment to spot system issues and inconsistencies
Testsigma
The popularity of Testsigma as a useful cloud-based automation testing tool for mobile & web applications has supported numerous companies across different industry verticals. Being an AI-driven tool, Testsigma is ideal for continuous testing in both DevOps and Agile environments. The incorporation of this tool helps save time and overall cost by running tests in a parallel arrangement.
Prime Features:
Natural language processing that simplifies the writing of automated tests
Active suggestions associated with test execution whenever the code gets altered
Recognizing potential test failures for better implementation
LoadStorm
Being a primary load testing tool for both mobile and web applications, LoadStorm is not that complicated. You can consider it as a capable cloud-based testing tool for assessing performance under extreme traffic scenarios. The capability of this tool can be judged by its high scalability which permits it to simulate multiple virtual users to spot looming issues in your website or application. With the involvement of LoadStorm in your software testing plan, recording scripts become somewhat more manageable.
Prime Features:
Provision for cloud load testing to highlight the scalability of web and mobile applications
Advance reporting to deliver sophisticated overview related to application performance under load
Dev@Cloud
CloudBees introduced the Jenkins Dev@Cloud, which effectively facilitates development, integration and continuous deployment on the cloud. This cloud testing tool supports development in numerous languages merged with deployment in multiple services. The presence of trending mobile testing tools focused at development is one of the prominent advantages of Jenkins Dev@Cloud; it offers a secure connection via the cloud for the existing systems.
Prime Features:
Support from third-party systems such as Google App Engine, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, etc
Steady software delivery platform that protects cloud-native apps which are designed using Jenkins X
The presence of CloudBees Core works as a CI/CD automation engine which backs different software portfolios
Availability of CloudBees CodeShip to leverage features for shipping the apps.
Cloud-based testing tools need to be selected on the basis of application and company requirements. The benefits of various cloud testing tools are readily mentioned in the above section; however, you need to analyze how to can utilize them smartly for the benefit of your organization.
As a testing analyst, its not necessary to be limited to such popular testing tools like CloudTest, Testsigma, or LoadStorm. Exploring the market by consulting quality cloud testing service providers. These companies can serve as specialists in consulting and updating your business about the most trending cloud testing tools currently in trend. | https://medium.com/@impactqa/what-are-the-top-5-cloud-based-software-testing-tools-1a185311b83a | [] | 2020-12-23 12:57:21.889000+00:00 | ['Software Testing', 'Automation Testing Tool', 'Virtualization', 'Cloud Testing', 'Performance Testing'] |
This 50-inch 4K HDR TV is just $250 | In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity (Albert Einstein) | https://medium.com/@cody01734611/this-50-inch-4k-hdr-tv-is-just-250-9b5b2842015a | [] | 2020-12-23 06:48:13.371000+00:00 | ['Surveillance', 'Music', 'Chargers', 'Tvs'] |
A Serverless Data Lake : Part1 — Data From Streaming | We produce data with Lambda, and put records to Kinesis Firehose, that load to s3 in blocks periodically (from 60s to 900s).
That data is crawled and cataloged using crawlers and we transform this data to analytical ready data using Glue Job and write again to s3 in parquet, that can be discovered and explored using Athena and visualized with Quicksight.
Kinesis Firehose — Ingest Data
Create a firehose with S3 bucket as destiny, in the field “Prefix” add the following code:
raw/year=!{timestamp:YYYY}/month=!{timestamp:MM}/day=!{timestamp:dd}/hour=!{timestamp:HH}/
and on “S3 error prefix” this:
fherroroutputbase/!{firehose:random-string}/!{firehose:error-output-type}/!{timestamp:yyyy/MM/dd}/
with this code, we can easily identify partition our data by year, month, day and hour.
Set buffer size to 128Mb and buffer interval to 900s
The Lambda Code — Generate Sample Data
Here I’ve created a code that generate a random json with a few properties and put records to Firehose.
* In productive environment this will be replaced by real sensors and producers.
You can get my python code here, basically each execution create a 5k records of data
*Don’t forget:
to create a IAM Role that can access a Firehose and Cloudwatch.
to change “DeliveryStreamName” on pasted code
increase lambda`s timeout
To enable auto-create records and test throughput capacity of firehose, a cloudwatch trigger as bellow:
Cloudwatch event config
Once done this step , it’s possible view the raw data on bucket in a few minutes.
Glue Job & Crawler — Catalog and Transform
Now we will create a crawler to catalog our data.
On creating our crawler set the output bucket as the path to be cataloged. After run, we will see under database/tables menu the following data on created table:
vehicles_table from glue database/tables
As we can see, the vehicle_status and gps_info are struct, this happens because out json is nested, let’s relationalize transform our data to easily visualize struct and arrays members.
To this, we’ll create a Glue Job using PySpark to transform our raw data into a flatten , compacted(gzip) and read optimized data (parquet)
Create a job with this source code:
*Don’t forget:
Grantee that your role can read from and write to S3
chance output bucket to your real path
Tip: You can use Jupyter Notebook to test your code, I’ve created a jupyter file to help you here:
After runs this job, check your s3 bucket, and something like that will appear:
This happens because we repartition by vendor on pyspark code.
Add the new path (stage) to the crawler and run it again, a new table will be available on database “vehicles_stage”.
Note that you can create a schedule or workflow on glue to automate this process and let your data ready to be consumed.
Athena
Athena is a Presto based service to query S3 data.
The data is already cataloged by glue, then we can query easily as below. The tables will be displayed on right side:
database/tables/fields on Athena
Run the following query to test your data:
SELECT * FROM "vehicles"."vehicles_stage" limit 10;
The result will be similar to that:
query result
QuickSight
Now the last part of our story: visualize the data in dashboards. QuickSight has some visuals that can be explored. But first we need to create a datasource with the source from Athena, and this is easy as should be.
First, create your QuickSight account, go to “Manage Data” and “New data set” , select “Athena” and finally select the last created table.
Now we can play with some dashboards and visuals. As sample I’ve created a dashboard using latitude and longitude to point the vehicles on map as bellow, and the the distribution by vendor aside.
How much will it cost?
The cost starts by zero. Yes, as serverless you just what you use. The cost depends the service’s price on specific region.
The price to reproduce this demo was U$ 0.24, but depends how many data you input using the lambda “dummy generator”
I’ve created the resources in us-east-1, then I’ve created a summary with the cost that I checked today:
Kinesis Firehose: 0,029 USD /Gb
S3: 0.023 USD / GB
Glue Job: 0.44 USD / DPU-hour
Glue Crawler: 0.44 USD / DPU-hour
Athena: 5 USD / Tb scanned
QuickSight: Starts from 9 USD/month
Let’s assume that you produce 3Gb/day of raw data ~90Gb/month. You will pay:
Kinesis Firehose: 0,029 USD*3*30 = 2.31 USD
S3: 0.023 USD*3*30 = ~2.07 USD (cumulative)
Glue Job: 0.44 USD / DPU-hour * 10 DPU * 5 hours (10 minutes jobs) = 22 USD
Glue Crawler: 0.44 USD / DPU-hour * 1 DPU * 5 = 2.2 USD
Athena: 5 USD / Tb scanned = 5 USD (if you are a heavy user)
QuickSight: Starts from 9 USD/month
Total: 42.58 USD / month
If you just create a few Gb of data /day, your entire data workload will cost less then a m5.large instance per month. | https://medium.com/brlink/a-serverless-data-lake-part1-data-from-streaming-1e657596bf33 | ['Rafael Campana'] | 2020-03-25 16:45:11.433000+00:00 | ['Serverless', 'Spark', 'Big Data', 'AWS', 'Big Data Analytics'] |
Hell is Other People: How Wedding Guests are the True Zillas | In my fifteen+ years in the world of events, I have seen a lot of bad behaviour… but contrary to popular belief, it’s usually not from the people getting married! Honestly, I think the word bridezilla is just another patriarchal trope meant to make women complacent, and keep you worrying you’ll be considered difficult when you’re being decisive, or rude when you question why weddings cost so fucking much.
But there is an element of truth in the lore of awful behaviour at weddings. It’s a day charged with expectation and emotion, and the engaged couple and their parents aren’t the only ones who have invested in the day. The wedding guests also spend time anticipating, spend energy preparing and beautifying, and spend money on their outfits and the gift. Whenever we invest our resources into something, the payoff becomes very important to us.
For this reason, some level of “it’s all about me and my experience” is called for; guests are entitled (ooh, but I shudder to use that word so early on) to an experience, and we should make sure they aren’t left hungry, shivering in the rain, or bored during interminably long speeches. We’ve all been to a bad event.
But that sense of entitlement is, in my experience, grossly inflated. So, while we’re contemplating whether big weddings will ever be a thing again, and whether to elope, consider this list of absolutely true, ripped-from-the-archives behaviours when you’re hesitating over who gets a plus one.
1. They ignore the names on the invitation.
You would think it’s a truth universally understood that you do not call the couple getting married to make requests. The role of the invitation is so important: it sets the tone for the event, giving the guests a glimpse into what they can expect, from the timing (which they’ll ignore, see below), to the dress code (which they’ll ignore, again, see below), to whether they can expect a valet service. But the most important information they’ll receive is on the outside of the envelope: who is actually invited to the wedding.
Yet regardless of what you write, if you don’t include a plus one or their children, they will call you for “clarification.” Didn’t you mean to encourage them to bring someone they just met and could potentially hook up with at $200 a plate (your expense)? Did you really mean for them to have to find a sitter for their three rambunctious children? This early indication of guestzilla-ness will have you immediately regretting that you invited this person and wishing you could uninvite them and their plus one (or two, or three).
Actionable Advice: Repeat after me: “Only people who love us in the room.” Do not let yourself be guilted into stretching your budget to cover people that didn’t make the cut in the first place. Boundaries are important, and there’s no better time to set them than when you’re establishing a family unit.
2. They ignore the dress code
Once again, no matter what you write on the invitation, no matter how clear you attempt to be, someone might show up in jeans or yoga pants to your “cocktail attire” wedding. They may also show up in a ball gown with gloves up to their armpits to your “summer formal” affair. Trust me, they’ll be more uncomfortable than you are.
Actionable Advice: This is much more embarrassing for the guest than for you, so don’t get too upset about it. Yes, someone might wear white to your wedding. Try to have a sense of humour about it. Just like gossiping isn’t worth worrying about, this is something that makes the person who did it look much worse than the person they’re doing it too.
3. They interrupt the procession
You might think this is uncommon, and your planner can usually keep it from happening, but the possibility of this occurring is crazy high. Even though we, your event team, will do everything we can to mitigate this possibility — having the cocktail hour precede the ceremony, inviting guests to be seated a full 20 minutes before we intend to start, writing the time on the damn invitation — people will always be late. Most often, a late guest will have the humility to patiently wait for the procession to end before quietly finding a seat in the back row. But unfortunately, some people are blissfully unaware of how important this moment is to literally everyone else, and they only consider how important the moment is for them to witness. They’re sure they can somehow be discreet walking down the aisle as if: a. they are part of the wedding party or b. wearing a cloak of invisibility.
Or they’re drunk. Hey, having your cocktails first both solves and creates problems.
Actionable Advice: Definitely have a day-of coordinator at a minimum, and if the procession is super important to you, then hire security and make sure everyone on your team (suppliers, wedding party) knows that this is a top priority.
4. They take over for the photographer
I cannot tell you how many gorgeous shots are ruined by guests who photobomb with their iPhone. Wedding photographers rant about this constantly, but most guests don’t even consider what is going on around them. Everyone is so accustomed to being able to capture and immediately share every single moment of our life, and it feels natural — not rude — to reach for your phone.
Actionable Advice: Once your guests are seated for the ceremony, have your officiant announce that this is a phone-free ceremony, and ask everyone to turn off their sound and put their phones away. They can even let guests know that the couple requests they not take pictures with their phones. “The couple has asked…” is a magical phrase, and it works on all but the most belligerent of guests.
5. They stand by the kitchen trying to get first dibs on the hors d’oeuvres
Shrug emoji — this is not your problem. But as a former cater-waitress, I need to complain about this briefly. Look, a good caterer has an abundance of food and a strategy for getting that food to every corner of the room. But it’s super annoying to have people hovering at the high traffic path between the front and back-of-house, and it’s really uncomfortable when people you don’t know grab your arm or your waist. Just thinking about it now makes me shudder. I have to admit, I was a very vindictive waitress, and when someone crossed a line with me… I was Seinfeldian in my retribution. No more delicious lamb chops for you!
Actionable Advice: Never skimp on service — it’s worth it to hire the extra staff — and if you have a huge room with only one entrance, have stations around the room to make sure there is ample opportunity for everyone to access the appetizers. An increasingly popular option to supplement passed hors d’oeuvres (that works on any budget) is a massive grazing station full of cheeses, charcuteries, breads, veggies, and dips.
6. They harass the couple when they’re trying to take photos/eat
In the Jewish faith, there is an awesome tradition of whisking the couple away to enjoy a few minutes alone just after the ceremony. At this point, I always either stand sentry, or appoint someone tougher than me to do it, because it is inevitable that someone will try to get to them. Whether it’s the officiant who wants to say goodbye because they would really like to leave, or the bridesmaid who left her lipstick in the couple’s suite, or a waiter who was told to bring champagne, everyone thinks their own timeline is more important than the one agreed upon by the planner and the newlyweds.
And this is a theme that will continue throughout the event, as guests always want a memento in the form of a picture or a special moment with the couple. On your wedding day, you’re basically celebrities, so this is pretty understandable.
Actionable Advice: From the moment you arrive at the venue, don’t allow anyone in the couple’s suite except for the couple. There is no need for anyone to store their shit there or be in that space. It’s a place for just you to get ready, leave your change of shoes and clothes, and to stash gifts. Be precious about this space — you really won’t have anywhere else to get a quiet moment with your partner.
Bonus Tip: Don’t have a head table that includes your wedding party and families. There are myriad reasons for this, but the most important is this: you get precious little opportunities on your wedding day to actually look one another in the eye and make your own memories. Enjoy the meal together, just the two of you, and seat the wedding party and the families at adjacent tables.
7. Seating arrangements, schmeating schmarrangements
As a wedding coach, I work really closely with my clients to make sure they have as little stress as possible on the journey to their wedding day, but there are two things that are out of my control: their budget, which is what it is and doesn’t always line up with their vision… and making the fucking seating chart. You will go back and forth with your parents and in-laws trying to decide how not to offend the easily offended, trying to make sure everyone has a “good seat”, and doing your best to mediate family scandals. Regardless of your incredible efforts and sleepless nights, some guests will treat your carefully designed floorplan like Cher Horowitz does her report card — a jumping off point to start negotiations. If you’re lucky, they’ll follow the cardinal rule and not complain to the couple, and this will only drive your planner and the catering staff nuts as we attempt to negotiate with your know-it-all great aunt or squeeze an eleventh chair and table setting into a table meant for ten.
Actionable Advice: Elope? I’m half-kidding… If you’re having a small-ish wedding (under 150 guests), you could do a buffet and have free seating. But if you want a sit-down dinner, it’s pretty impossible to get away from the seating chart. Just let your team of professionals handle it, and don’t worry about shit you can’t control.
8. They treat the service staff like their personal staff
My favourite guests are the parents who didn’t plan for their hangry children, and now want me, the wedding planner, to go ask the kitchen to make their child some food. When I had the gall the explain to one mother that the kitchen was very busy getting the first course ready, and that there weren’t rolls on the table I could grab to compensate for her lack of preparation, her partner came over to me and said, “I know you just told my wife no, but I’m going to insist you get my child some food, right now.”
People like this will demand service, and always at the most inappropriate time:
They’ll insist the bar shake them up a martini during speeches
They’ll swipe treats off the sweet table when we’re mid-set up
And they’ll ask multiple staff (waiters, lighting techs, musicians…) for the same thing. WE GET IT. You want a diet coke. Trust that the first person you asked is bringing you one.
Guests who think suppliers take requests are the worst.
Now I’m speaking directly to that person, because you know who you are. And FYI, you’re not the client. So, no, you can’t demand the DJ give you the mic so you can make an impromptu speech or initiate karaoke; you cannot ask the waitstaff go hunt down your missing date; and the caterer is not going to pack up food for you.
You also don’t have the right, no matter how drunk you are, to raise your voice to someone who is at work. Let me be suuuuper clear: we don’t work for you. And I pity the person who does. Regardless, when you feel rage start to bubble up inside you when you’re a guest at someone’s event, it’s time to call an Uber.
Actionable Advice: It’s unlikely you’ll witness this at your event, you’ll just hear about it afterward. I recommend a good public shaming, but if you can mitigate the situation by not inviting problem people in the first place… do that!
9. They sneak drinks to underage kids
This is actually a really awful one, and something I’ve unfortunately witnessed many times, especially at parties where there are lots of young people.
Actionable Advice: Have your suppliers’ back. The venue could lose its liquor license, the bar staff becomes responsible, and the kids get sick. It’s not a good look. It is definitely on the hosts to be sure they don’t encourage this kind of behaviour.
10. They “forget” to bring a gift
Ooof, can you even?! Yup, some people straight up don’t bring a gift. Here’s what you’re not going to do — you’re not going to accuse any of the staff. In all my time in the events circuit, I have never once found an accusation of a staff stealing the weddings gifts to be true. Never.
Actionable Advice: Make sure there is somewhere secure to store gifts when you’re scouting venues, and have a limited number of people responsible for accepting those gifts. After the event, it’s up to you: it’s absolutely fine to call up your guests and tell them you didn’t receive a gift from them, and you’re wondering if it was an oversight — give them a chance to correct the mistake. It’s also okay to write them a thank you card that thanks them for their presence — tacitly acknowledging the lack of a gift. And finally, it’s okay to say nothing. You’re probably not all that surprised by who it was, anyway.
11. They take as many favours as they can carry
Favours are both unnecessary and yet really fun — they can be a great way to send off your guests, like a hot chocolate for the road in the winter, or a hangover kit for the morning after. Other times, they can allude to a cause you believe in, like this coffee that benefits rescue dogs, or a callback to the event theme.
You would think that at this point in the evening, your guests have had a blast, are feeling tipsy, and they’re not going to cause any more drama, right? Wrong. When the favours are in limited supply, and they’re really good (i.e. edible), I’ve seen people try to load up their purses or send their kids to swipe more, or pretend they aren’t in a couple. I once even had to stop drunk guests from destroying the favours. (Luckily, the drunker they are, the less polite I feel I need to be, since they likely won’t remember that I told them to knock it off.)
Actionable Advice: Plan to have a staff at the exit managing the favours. They will do their best to ensure that every guest gets the favour, and that if it’s one per couple, it’s one per couple. It’s also wise to a few extras just in case that poor staff gets caught up in negotiations with someone… special.
When you were adding your third cousin/obnoxious colleague/ex-boyfriend to your guest list, you knew they’d be a headache. I know you feel guilty, or required to invite them, or someone told you it’s “just good etiquette” (don’t even get me started, Emily Post!). But every invitation comes at a cost — and sometimes it’s more than just money. One of the first things I do with all my clients is figure out their values, and how those translate into boundaries and a plan for their wedding. I call it “coming up with your wedding mantra,” and here’s a freebie, straight from a past client: Who is this wedding even for? When you’re making your guest list, when you’re choosing your officiant, and when you’re deciding whether you can mix metals on your tabletops, remember: you’re the guests of honour. This is for you. And it’s only happening once. So be picky. | https://medium.com/@heycarrieannk/hell-is-other-people-how-wedding-guests-are-the-true-zillas-6d6e3bfa2473 | ['Carrie-Ann Kloda'] | 2021-01-21 21:13:07.822000+00:00 | ['Wedding Planning Advice', 'Weddings', 'Wedding Coordinator', 'Wedding Planning', 'Wedding Planner'] |
How Artificial Intelligence is changing the agricultural industry | Agriculture is one of the oldest and most crucial professions in the world, that is responsible for mankind’s sustainability. Humans have come a long way over the years with respect to how we farm and cultivate crops. Today, with the introduction of Artificial Intelligence technologies, the farming industry has turned itself over. As the population of the world continues to grow and cultivable land becomes scarcer, we need to get more creative and become more efficient in the way we farm, in using less labor to produce more crops, and in increasing the yield and productivity of our soil.
Globally speaking, the agriculture industry is worth $5 trillion. And today, the industry is approaching and applying AI technologies to help grow better crops, reduce the problem of weed and pests, monitor the quality of soil, and check climate and weather conditions.
AI is also being used to organize data for farmers, assist with the workload. And to increase the efficiency of a wide range of agriculture-related tasks in various other industries. Let us look at some ways in which AI is impacting agriculture.
Artificial Intelligence helps in analyzing farm data
Farms and agricultural companies generate millions of data points daily, be it the number of seeds sown, crops cultivated, count of manpower, etc. One of the advantages of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence is that farmers or managers can now analyze a variety of factors in real-time such as climate, weather conditions, amount of rainfall and temperature, water consumption, or the quality of soil collected from their farms to make informed and intelligent decisions. Technologies like AI aid farmers in optimizing planning to produce more profitable yields by helping them determine the ideal combination of crops to grow together, the best hybrid seed choices, and the utilization of resources.
AI for Precision Agriculture
AI technologies are being used to increase the quality and accuracy of harvest. This is now called precision agriculture. Precision agriculture is basically using AI technology to help in identifying defects in seeds and to recognize symptoms of diseases in plants. And pinpoint problems due to pests and weeds, and poor plant nutrition due to issues with soil in farms. Sensors that use AI technology can identify and target weeds and then make informed decisions.
About which herbicides to apply within the right areas in the farms so as to avoid harming healthy plants. This helps in avoiding over usage of herbicides and excessive chemicals that find their way to crops that ultimately become our food.
Artificial Intelligence for forecasting
Farmers are also using AI-based algorithms to develop seasonal predictive models to improve agricultural accuracy and increase yield and productivity. These models are able to forecast upcoming weather patterns based on historical data, months ahead to assist farmers in planning appropriate measures to prevent loss.
Seasonal forecasting is especially crucial for small farm businesses in developing countries as their past information and techniques can be limited. 70% of the world’s crops are produced by these small farms. And hence it is necessary that we equip them with these technologies to sustain our essential needs.
Use of AI for monitoring
Along with helping farmers on the ground, AI helps them to take their analysis to the sky so as to monitor their farms. The use of Computer vision and deep learning algorithms in processing data obtained from drones flying over the farms gives valuable information.
From these drones, cameras with AI technologies can capture pictures of the entire field. And analyze these images in almost real-time to recognize problem areas. With outside threats, and potential areas of improvement. Unmanned drones have the ability to cover far more land in significantly less time than humans on foot. This allows large farms to monitor more frequently and without human error or bias.
Use of AI in labor management
We all know that one of the many ways in which AI will change the face of the world is by solving labor problems. With fewer people entering the farming profession, most farm businesses are facing the problem of a workforce shortage. Previously farms needed many workers, mostly seasonal, to sow seeds, plow lands, remove weeds, harvest crops, and so on. However, humans have moved away from living in a traditional agrarian society with mostly everyone living on farms. With a large chunk of people living in cities, fewer people are able and willing to take care of the land. One strategy to help with this shortage of workers is the assistance of AI agriculture bots. These bots can partially replace the human labor workforce and used for various reasons. These AI bots can harvest crops at a higher volume, faster pace. And lesser errors than human laborers. They can accurately identify and eliminate weeds, thus reducing costs for farms by being a full-time workforce.
You can visit Artificial Intelligence (AI) Classes for Kids here. | https://medium.com/@edurific/how-artificial-intelligence-is-changing-the-agricultural-industry-82949fa42537 | [] | 2020-11-17 08:00:13.901000+00:00 | ['AI', 'Industry', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Agriculture', 'Education'] |
10 Deep Learning concepts one should know | 1. Activation Functions:
An activation function is a function added to a neural network to help the organization learn complex information examples.
For short, the linear activation function or ReLU is a piecewise linear function that will give the information straightforwardly with a little chance that it is positive.
Else, it will give zero.
The greatest advantage of ReLU is its dense gradient, which widely quickens the meeting of stochastic gradient descent, going against the sigmoid/tanh capacities.
Contrasting with tanh/sigmoid neurons that include costly tasks (exponentials, and so forth), the ReLU can be executed by basic thresholding a framework of initiations at zero.
2. Cost Function:
It is a function that indicates the presentation of an AI model for the given information. Cost Function evaluates the error between predicted values and expected values. Then, it presents it as a real number.
In AI, cost functions are utilized to evaluate how severely models are performing.
Set forth, a cost function is a proportion of how wrong the model is regarding its capacity to evaluate the relation between X and y.
This is normally communicated as a distance between the predicted value and the actual value.
3. Back Propagation:
Back-propagation is an important component by which neural networks learn.
Back-propagation is only a method of restoring the all-out mishap into the neural networks to know the amount of the issues each node is responsible for, and accordingly refreshing the loads, so that limits the problems.
It can be done by giving the nodes with higher error rates lower weights and the other way around.
Back-propagation is a short structure for “backward propagation of errors”. It is a standard plan for preparing fake neural networks. This strategy assists with computing the list of all difficulties regarding the loads in the networks.
4. Convolutional Neural Networks:
A Convolutional Neural Network is a Deep Learning calculation that can take in an info picture, lower significance to different viewpoints/objects in the picture, and have the option to separate one from the other.
CNN, or convolutional neural network, is a neural network utilizing a convolution layer and pooling layer.
CNN’s are fundamentally utilized for picture characterization and acknowledgment. The skill of CNN is its convolutional capacity.
The potential for additional employments of CNNs is boundless. It should be explored and pushed to additional limits to find everything that could be accomplished by this unpredictable hardware.
5. Recurrent Neural Networks:
Repetitive Neural Networks (RNN) are a class of Artificial Neural Networks that can cycle a series of contributions to deep learning and hold its state while preparing the following grouping of data sources.
A recurrent neural network (RNN) is a class of counterfeit neural networks where groups between nodes structure a coordinated diagram and a quick arrangement.
RNNs are widely used in the following applications; Prediction problems, Language Modelling and Generating Text, Machine Translation, Speech Recognition, Generating Image Descriptions, Video Tagging, Text Summarization, Call Center Analysis, Face detection, OCR Applications as Image Recognition, Other applications like Music composition.
6. Long Short-Term Memory Networks:
Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks are a repetitive neural network equipped for learning request dependence in arrangement forecast issues.
This conduct is needed in complex-issue areas like machine interpretation, discourse acknowledgment, and only the iceberg’s tip. LSTMs are a complex territory of deep learning.
Long short-term memory (LSTM) is a false and irregular neural network, engineering utilized in deep learning.
The LSTM successfully solves speech recognition problems, unconstrained handwritten recognition, machine translation, image captioning, parsing, and lately, predicting stock prices and time series prediction. (83)
7. Weight Initialization:
The point of weight initialization is to avoid layer activation yields from disappearing throughout a forward pass through a deep neural organization.
Ø If we initialize all the loads to be zero, at that point, all the neurons of the relative multitude of layers play out a similar figurine. It gives a similar yield and makes the entire deep net useless. If the loads are zero, the entire deep net’s unpredictability would be equivalent to that of a single neuron.
Ø The random initialization serves the cycle of symmetry-breaking and gives much better precision. In this strategy, the loads are introduced extremely near zero, however randomly. This aids in breaking balance, and each neuron are done playing out a similar calculation.
8. Batch vs. Stochastic gradient descent:
Batch gradient descent is a variety of the gradient descent system that computes every model’s mistake in the training dataset.
However, updates the model after all training models have been evaluated. One cycle through the whole training dataset is known as a training epoch.
In Stochastic Gradient Descent, we utilize just single training per epoch.
Mini-batch Gradient Descent lies in the middle of these two limits. We can utilize a smaller group of preparing information per epoch.
9. Hyper-parameters:
Hyper-parameters are the variables that regulate the network structure and the variables which govern how the network is trained.
Hyper-parameters are set before training. Some common hyper-parameters are:
Ø Model Architecture is a vast hyper-parameter consisting of numerous settings such as many layers, processing the data, and other components that command how the actual data analysis will be done.
Ø Regularization is a procedure to decrease overfitting. Percept lab now supports random dropout as a binary hyper-parameter in deep learning components, allowing or disabling this for the model.
Ø A Loss Function maps decisions related to costs and the Learning Rate defines how much to change the model based on the evaluated error when weights are reorganized.
10. Learning Rate:
The learning rate is a constructible hyper-parameter used in neural networks training with a small positive value, frequently in the range between 0.0 and 1.0.
The learning rate is a hyper-parameter that controls how much to transform the model in reply to the estimated error each time the model weights are updated.
The learning rate may be the most significant hyper-parameter when constructing your neural network.
Therefore, it is vital to know how to examine the effects of the learning rate on model performance and build a concept about the learning rate’s fineness on model behavior. | https://medium.com/@sanamalik2392/10-deep-learning-concepts-one-should-know-cb821cc993fe | ['Sana Malik'] | 2020-12-07 12:46:35.065000+00:00 | ['Information Technology', 'Computer Science', 'Machine Learning', 'Deep Learning'] |
The Tell-Tale Heart Transplant | The Tell-Tale Heart Transplant
A review of Chip Jones’ stunning new book, *The Organ Thieves: The Shocking Story of the First Heart Transplant in the Segregated South*
You get a phone call that your brother is in the hospital. You rush to go to him, get a couple more scrambled messages about how he had a head injury at work and is now in a recovery room. When you get the next update, he is dead. When you take his body to the funeral home, you get another batch of shocking news: his heart and kidneys are missing. What do you think? What do you do?
Now, to add on to all of that, you are a Black man in segregated Virginia in 1967. What do you think? What do you do?
“They took my brother’s heart!” the man on the other end of the line exclaimed in horror.
This is the engine behind Chip Jones’ The Organ Thieves: The Shocking Story of the First Heart Transplant in the Segregated South. The Black man is William Tucker. His brother, Bruce Tucker, went in to the Medical College of Virginia (MCV) with a head injury and his heart became the 15th heart transplant in world history. He was not a listed donor. His family did not give consent. The reader must wonder (I did) if his head injury was given adequate treatment, after seeing what happened next.
The Egyptian Building (left) and Dooley Hospital (right), where a lot of the events of *The Organ Thieves* took place
Jones’ tome is part a history of MCV, part history of transplantation, another part courtroom drama, and a little dash of archeological excavation. Its flexibility makes the story unique, and the depth of research is simply astounding. It’s been compared to The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, now a classic that I am embarassed to say I have not yet read. However, I am very familiar with it (Jones even references the book several times within his text) and to my knowledge Bruce Tucker’s importance to the ethics of heart transplantation and the concept of “brain death” seems just as important as Henrietta Lacks’ posthumous contribution to cancer research. The similarities in the two stories are striking, to say the least.
Jones is clear in his message about what put Bruce Tucker’s family in such a vulnerable situation:
Bruce’s race and socioeconomic circumstances made him vulnerable for organ removal, demonstrated by the simple fact that doctors declared him derelict without making much of an effort to find his family.
But the racial component, though crucially important, does not take up nearly all the oxygen in Jones’s figurative room. The science of heart transplants, of death, and where those connect forms the crux of the intellectual questioning in his account. Does “brain death” count as death, or does death depend on the cessation of breathing and heartbeat? If surgeons were to have followed the Virginia law at the time, they would have had to wait 24 hours after Bruce Tucker’s heart stopped beating to count him surely dead. That would have saved his brother William a lot of heartache, but it would make a heart transplant impossible. As Jones relays in the book, the authors of the 2015 text Transplantation Ethics wrote:
The public policy discussion of how to define death began in earnest in the late 1960s, not long before surgeons were confronted by Bruce Tucker’s case … Now, a half century later, we are still unclear about exactly what it means to be dead.
It’s the paradox of modern science: We can put a dead man’s heart into a living man’s body, but we don’t know exactly what it means to be dead.
If these questions interest you, I implore you to read The Organ Thieves and think deeply about the ethical conundrums presented. They are important to how we define life, who matters, and what is most important when it comes to saving lives with the help of modern science — science which cannot answer every important question.
I borrowed a copy of The Organ Thieves from my local library. Borrow it, request it, or consider donating to your library today. | https://medium.com/park-recommendations/the-tell-tale-heart-transplant-b6348e33d103 | ['Jason Park'] | 2020-09-16 13:31:05.071000+00:00 | ['History', 'Reading', 'Medicine', 'Racism', 'Books'] |
10 JavaScript Concepts That Every Developer Should Know. | JavaScript ES6
Hi! Programmers, Today I will explore 10 javaScript Concepts That Every Developer Should Know. So, let’s go….
1. Arrow Function
An arrow function expression is an alternative way to declare a traditional function expression. But it has some difference between arrow function and traditional function.
Traditional functions have ‘this’ keyword but arrow functions have no ‘this’ keyword. Traditional functions have ‘arguments’ keywords but arrow functions have no ‘arguments’ keywords. Traditional functions can use as ‘constructors’ but arrow functions can not use as ‘constructors’.
If we use an arrow function, we should remove the function keyword and set arrow => between the argument and opening body bracket. We can store the function in a variable. If an arrow function writes in one line then we can remove body brackets and the return keyword. If the arrow function has only one argument, then we can remove argument parentheses.
Code Examples:
const sum = (a, b)=> {
return a+b;
}
console.log(sum(5, 7)) // output, 12 const multiply = (a, b) => a*b
console.log(multiply(5, 7)) // output, 35 const double = a => a*2
console.log(double(5)) // output, 10
2. Default parameters
You can use default parameters in a function after es6. If never pass the parameter then you can set a default parameter. The default parameter will set if you pass undefined or you didn't pass the parameter otherwise, it is not set.
Code Examples:
function add(a, b=5){
return a+b;
}
console.log(add(7)) // output, 12 function add(a, b=5){
return a+b;
}
console.log(add(7, 4)) // output, 11
3. IIFE Function
IIFE full meaning — Immediately Invoked Function Expression
If we defined a function and we want the function will call Immediately, then we can use the IIFE function. IIFE function is an anonymous function and the function will call Immediately. We can’t call the IIFE function another time.
Code Examples:
(function (){
console.log(5+7);
})(); // output, 12
4. Spread operator
Spread operator(…) or three dots are the es6 Features. You can concat array, object, and string by using the spread operator. It is used for array expression or string to be expanded or an object expression to be expanded in places. You can copy all the elements of an array, all the properties of an object, and all iterable of the string.
Code Examples:
const numbers = [1, 8, 5, 15, 10];
console.log([...numbers]) // output, [1, 8, 5, 15, 10]
console.log([...numbers, 65]) // output, [1, 8, 5, 15, 10, 65] const user = {name: 'Shuvo'}
console.log({...user}) // output, {name: 'Shuvo'}
console.log({...user, id: '1'}) // output, {name: 'Shuvo', id: '1'}
5. isNaN() Method
isNaN() Method returns true if the argument is NaN, Otherwise it returns false.
Code Examples:
console.log(isNaN(12)); // output, false
console.log(isNaN("false")); // output, true
console.log(isNaN("12")); // output, false
console.log(isNaN("")); // output, false
console.log(isNaN("12as")); // output, true
JavaScript has two types of data types. Primitive and Reference or Objects and Functions.
6. Primitive Values
There are 7 Primitive data types. They are___
Number String Boolean Undefined Null Symbol BigInt
Code Examples:
console.log(typeof(5)) //output, "number"
console.log(typeof('Hello')) //output, "string"
console.log(typeof(true)) //output, "boolean"
console.log(typeof(undefined)) //output, "undefined"
console.log(typeof(null)) //output, "object" **In JavaScript, typeof null is "object". We can consider it a bug in JavaScript and we can think it should be "null".
7. Reference or Objects and Functions
Without primitive data types, javaScript’s other data types are reference data types. They are ____
Object Function
Arrays, regular expressions, and dates are the Object type.
Code Examples:
console.log(typeof({name: 'Faysal'})) //output, "object"
console.log(typeof([1, 2, 5])) //output, "object"
console.log(typeof(() => 4+4)) //output, "function"
console.log(typeof(/exp/)) //output, "object"
8. Double Equal(==) vs Triple Equal (===)
In javaScript two double equal compare the values. If the value is equal, return true. But triple equal compare the values and compare the data type. If the value is equal and the type is equal, then return true, otherwise, return false. We should use triple equal to compare and it is best practice.
Code Examples:
console.log(5=="5") // output, true
console.log(5==="5") // output, false
console.log(1==true) // output, true
console.log(1===true) // output, false
console.log(0==false) // output, true
console.log(0===false) // output, false
9. Ternary Operator
Ternary Operator, another way to conditional checking. This is the smallest way for condition. You can write one line condition by using the ternary operator. In ternary operator conditional checking using a question mark (?) and a colon (:).First of all, we write the condition, num>5 then we should use a question mark (?), then we wire the code if the condition is true, then we should use a colon (:), then we wire the code if the condition is false. We can use nested conditions in the ternary operator. The ternary operator should write code the condition is true and false.
Code Examples:
const number1 = 5;
const number2 = 8;
const largest = number1 > number2 ? number1: number2;
console.log(largest) // output, 8
10. Destructuring
There are two Destructuring, Array and Object.
Object Destructuring: We can destructure object properties in variable and the variable name and property name should be the same. We can destructure any properties in an object. In object Destructuring, we should not maintain any order which property was first or last or any position. In object destructuring, we should declare a variable with curly braces { } . In curly braces, we should write those properties that we want to destructure from an object. Then we should use the assignment operator = and on the right side, we use that object.
Array Destructuring: We can destructure array elements in variable and the variable name and the element don't need to be the same name. In array destructuring, we should maintain the order which element was first or last or any position. In array destructuring, we should declare a variable with an array symbol [] . In the array symbol, we should write elements by an order which element was first or last or any position. If we want the second element and don’t want the first element we can use only a comma. Then we should use the assignment operator = and on the right side, we use that array.
** In Array and object destructuring we can use a spread operator or three dots to destructuring another array of elements in an array variable and another object properties in an object variable.
Code Examples: | https://medium.com/geekculture/10-javascript-concepts-that-every-developer-should-know-702330e662e2 | ['Saiful Islam Sojib'] | 2021-07-05 18:27:00.491000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Web Development', 'Programming', 'ES6'] |
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https://popularmediacenter.blogspot.com/media60.php?asin=B08ZN5YBC9 | https://medium.com/@rihannabarker/download-read-pdf-free-gundam-forward-mobile-suit-gundam-iron-blooded-orphans-c204a0c4940e | ['Rihanna Barker'] | 2021-09-11 04:20:59.540000+00:00 | ['Amazon', 'Pdf', 'eBook', 'Free', 'Download'] |
10 Best Project-Based Tutorials To Learn Frontend Development | 10 Best Project-Based Tutorials To Learn Frontend Development
Let’s end 2020 with a BANG! with these Free Tutorials to take for your Web Development Journey
Photo by Anastasiia Kamil on Unsplash
“Shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” — Brian Littrell
Never be afraid to suck at something new, everyone needs to start somewhere.
Becoming a Frontend Developer in my personal opinion is the best path to start your developer journey.
It is easier, it is a good introductory topic before you decide to fully define what kind of developer you really want to become.
When I started I honestly thought of working as a Web Developer and nothing else, I don’t have any knowledge about Software Development, DevOps, Fullstack, Mobile Development, etc.
All I know is that I need to learn HTML, CSS, Javascript, MySQL, and PHP that’s all — and that was what I have been working on before I got my first developer job.
It was very fulfilling being able to build your own website from scratch, and seeing your friends using it, it was just so cool.
Almost 5 years fast forward — well, the journey was as hard as fvck but it was definitely worth it.
My plan to become a Web Developer has been one hell of a ride, a few months of working my first developer job I was re-assigned to the Mobile Developer Team, and now in my current job, I am working as a Software Developer.
One thing I’ve learned though is that learning these fundamentals had really helped me a lot, HTML, CSS, Javascript, and Database is still part of the stack that I am currently working on, and the crazy part is this project is so huge that it took more or less 100 developers.
So, don’t underestimate these fundamental technologies, they will serve you a lifetime. | https://medium.com/for-self-taught-developers/10-best-project-based-tutorials-to-learn-frontend-development-338b5a6f42b5 | ['Ann Adaya'] | 2020-12-26 11:46:06.494000+00:00 | ['Work', 'JavaScript', 'Software Development', 'Programming', 'Software Engineering'] |
How to get free traffic from 100 different sources instantly to your site. | How to get free traffic from 100 different sources instantly to your site. Bilken Jun 17·3 min read
Automated Store Builder
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Keep reading this Wave explained to get the full features and benefits of this software and how to put it into use.
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Wave — Introduction
Welcome to my Wave explained. As a result of the global pandemic, more people running into billions are staying more At Home, and many of these people are looking for opportunities to Make Money Online at home more than ever.
As at now online shopping has increased to over 800 billion dollars market. Wave App will give you an opportunity to tap into this market and earn commissions on autopilot from Clickbank, Amazon, Crypto, and other online shopping sites.
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So keep reading this Wave explained to get the full features and benefits of this software and how to put it into use.
Wave
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Wave allows you create brand new “profit sites” instantly while getting you buyer traffic & sales at the same time.
It automates all the manual work for you, gets Traffic from 100 Sources to your site and handles all the other tedious work you need to succeed.
Wave — About The Creator
Venkata Ramana, the creator of Wave App is a ‘7-Figure Marketer’ on WarriorPlus Marketplace. He is also a top affiliate and software developer.
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Click Here To Get Software | https://medium.com/@kenbilden/how-to-get-free-traffic-from-100-different-sources-instantly-to-your-site-18e7ff18887b | [] | 2021-06-17 01:11:56.599000+00:00 | ['Traffic', 'Digital', 'Opportunity', 'Application', 'Software'] |
How to Become Indispensable | Responsibility
“What remarkably stupid things are you doing on a regular basis to absolutely screw up your life?” - Jordan Peterson
Ask yourself this question and write down what comes to mind.
It’s easy to point our fingers to external factors as the culprit of our demise. The uncomfortable truth we must confront is this: When good things happen to those around you, it’s usually because they put themselves in a position to succeed.
At school, I barely paid attention in lectures and elected not to take notes. At practice, I gave myself a pass when I arrived 5–10 minutes late because “everyone else was doing it.” At work going through the motions was my default setting.
My life was on cruise control, and I had the results to prove it.
I nearly failed a class, was passed up for a better position at work and was overlooked as team captain for the season. What did I expect? If I wanted to change, I had to accept responsibility for everything in my life, failures, and all.
The next thing I did was I printed out a list of questions that I placed on my “Accountability Mirror.” (Special thanks to David Goggins) If his website intrigued you click below to get a sample of what Goggins is in a nutshell.
Below is my list of questions I’d ask myself daily. Ask yourself the following. Honesty is your best friend here.
Accountability Mirror Questions:
Are you showing up to work on time?
When you are working, are you measuring by the progress you made or time spent?
What level of effort are you putting in?
Are you actively trying to better yourself?
If someone is in a better position than you, what are they doing that you are not?
Are you putting yourself in a position to succeed? If not, what actions could you take today?
Self-Management
“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!” - Benjamin Franklin.
Merely hoping things get done is not a sufficient option. Often we overestimate our ability to maintain and keep track of all the tasks that need to be completed. Don’t rely on simple brainpower in the hustle and bustle of everyday life. It is easy to get swept up in multiple projects, emails, and events life throws at us. No plan to combat this constant bombardment of things to do will not only drain you but make you less effective.
The goal here is to make your life, well, bite-size. Segmenting your time throughout the day to enable a more specific focus will ensure you tend to what is essential. It might seem robotic, but it makes you the act of managing your day actually can become your most significant asset as typically; we do not realize that the action of bouncing from task to task is too time-consuming.
Planning was the crucial element to turning my luck around as a struggling student. I began by scheduling my week in advance Sunday at 5 pm. It would look a little something like this.
5 pm-6 pm: Plan week, ie. Scheduling class times, study sessions, practice, work, and meal plan.
6 pm-7:30 pm: Meal prep and in between cooking email tutors and schedule sessions.
7:30 pm-8:30 pm: Schedule assignments and align them by day. Also, contact professors and schedule office hours.
I set dates, deadlines and held myself accountable for what I wrote down Sunday. At the time, I used an old whiteboard and a piece of paper. Archaic, but this three and half hour time span of planning gave me the space to win the week. I saw it as being a general going into war. By getting a layout of the battlefield, I could best align my resources to win the battle that was my week.
If you want to change, plan accordingly. I’d suggest starting with some organizational software like Notion, Trello, Asana, etc. My personal favorite is a tool called Trello. Click here to see how I manage my tasks today!
Consistency
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” - Aristotle.
Consistency is the element that ties all three together. It makes no sense to be responsible half the time and even less to plan a partial schedule. Do exactly what you say you will do.
People progress in life because they show up and get the work done day in and out. It might not seem important, but the consistency of showing up on time and being a person of your word makes you indispensable.
If you are like me and have allowed yourself the excuse of being late 5–10 minutes, how quickly did that consistent act turn into 15 minutes or more? Now you’ve become the person known as the tardy guy/gal. Others now see you as unreliable and untrustworthy.
I learned this first hand. On top of being a student, I was also an athlete and the top-scorer on the team. I got comfortable in my role as the top player. I went from showing up 15 minutes early to 15 minutes late. Little did I know this lackluster attitude trickled down to our newly acquired teammates.
Half the team started showing up late. It affected our performance in practice, games, and an overall dedication to being the best team.
You may be saying, “I mean, but it’s only 5–10 minutes? What difference does it make?”
A big one.
If you are willing to shortchange your teammates, employers, and coworkers 5–10 minutes, is it wrong to believe you will cut other corners? Probably not. | https://medium.com/@nestorivas/how-to-become-indispensable-47463d91995e | ['Nesto Rivas'] | 2020-12-07 22:12:15.123000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Discipline', 'Leadership', 'Responsibility', 'Self Development'] |
How to use Zoom virtual background for Linux Ubuntu? | Zoom is a cloud meeting application which allow us to join or create virtual meeting, classes or interviews. So if you are a zoom user and want to know that how can we use virtual background in Zoom. Then I tell you you came here a right place.
First of all you are thinking about how to do these are stuff So, don’t worry about it we both will do experiments with this stuff. So in beginning, you need to install the Zoom app, or If you don’t have then Install Zoom in your Debian-based Linux operating system such as;- Ubuntu, Kali Linus elementary OS and etc.
Step1: Install Snap Store in your System
In this step, you need to install the zoom application from the Snap store and if you don’t have snap in your Linux OS then open your terminal or press ctrl+alt.
$ sudo rm /etc/apt/preferences.d/nosnap.pref
$ sudo apt update
these commands run on your terminal and then finally you need to install snap using this command-
$ sudo apt install snapd
Now, you have all set to installing the Zoom application in your Linux operating system. So open your terminal and type the given command in your terminal and firstly go on snap website and select your Ubuntu version and Zoom application version.
Just like this image-
Step2: Install Zoom Application in your System
Now, run this command in your terminal and wait a minute for installation zoom.
Originally published at https://www.codersgeek.in.
$ sudo snap install zoom-client
If you have finished the installation process then open your zoom application just like in this given image-
3. Create Zoom account using signup or register
Now, after opening the zoom application in your system you need to make your account using your mail or you can register as a new user.
Step 4: Click on Setting in the Zoom Application
After all login or signup steps, you need to click on the settings icon, right side corner. Then go in the virtual background option.
Step 5: Click on virtual background
Now you will get here virtual background images by default or also you can add your background image from your system by clicking the plus icon.
Congratulations!!! Now, You have installed the Zoom application and got the configuration of virtual background in your Ubuntu or Debian-based operating system.
Final Verdict
These stuffs are also applicable for all ubuntu versions(16.04 above). And I hope you have been got all points in this article So, if you have any query to related this article or any problem at the installation time then free feel to contact us in the comment box. Definitely, we will resolve this issue from our end. | https://medium.com/@codersgeek358/how-to-use-zoom-virtual-background-for-linux-ubuntu-969e44952bdf | ['Prasandeep Gautam'] | 2020-12-25 08:23:24.722000+00:00 | ['Zoom', 'Ubuntu', 'Linux', 'Virtual Reality'] |
Five of My Favorite Writing Exercises | Five of My Favorite Writing Exercises
Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash
I’m going to whisper two dirty words in your ear:
Writer’s block
We all face it. It hits beginning writers and successful novelists. It hits Stephen King (just consider his novel Misery). We sit down to a blank screen and wonder how we’re going to fill it. The following tips might result in complete stories, or they might serve as practice runs. How they work for you isn’t important, but I hope they jump-start your writing whenever you feel like you need that extra little push.
Writing is imagination. It’s experimentation. It’s conjuring something from nothing.
1. Practice your spy game
Listen to the woman in line behind you at the coffee shop, the kid bagging your groceries, a neighbor you don’t know very well, anyone. Look carefully at your friend’s jewelry, a stranger’s shoes, the art hanging on a wall in your dentist’s office. What might these words or objects reveal? What stories could they tell?
Remember, this is fiction, so you don’t want to reveal any personal information about the individuals who inspire your story. The idea is to create something new from a mere glimpse — to imagine how a turn of phrase is part of a broader context, to wonder about the sentimental value of an opal pendant. There’s no reason to ask for further information from your unwitting subject; let your mind do the work.
Example
Our good friends visited one evening for dinner, and I noticed the woman had on a silver toe ring. (Additional information: the couple was from New York, but were living in a southern town, so think pearls instead of toe rings!) From that single piece of jewelry, I imagined a story about not quite fitting in, wearing the wrong clothes and playing the wrong music, and ultimately upping sticks and returning home. “The New Yorkers of Tidewater” practically wrote itself.
2. Begin after the finish line
Flash fiction requires big ideas in small spaces. We don’t have time to recount all the events or backstory. My advice? Skip to finish line and forget the race itself. Talk about the aftermath, not what led to it (at least, not directly). Show us a character who is dealing with the consequences of an event without explicitly stating what happened.
Perhaps your main character is recently widowed. There’s no need to spell that out in words when you can describe the widow’s actions. What does she do with all those casseroles the mourners brought over? How does she go about sifting through her husband’s closet? Focus on the minute behaviors that tell the story in such detail your readers will fill in the white space. They’ll learn not only what happened, but about the character herself.
Other events (which you won’t speak of directly!) might be:
A dinner party that went badly
An argument between siblings
A disastrous accident
Example
One writing prompt from a workshop asked us to sketch a character who was in the process of putting things in order and making sense of chaos. We were directed to not explicitly discuss what happened before, only to show the character’s subsequent behavior. My story, which I eventually titled “Out, Spot,” described a woman in a cleaning frenzy. At first, it appeared she was merely scrubbing away at random objects, but as the 400-word story progresses, it becomes clear she’s struggling to forget a fatal car accident that she caused.
3. Grow a word garden
This is one of my favorite exercises from a workshop I took with Kathy Fish some years back. It works especially well for those of us who sometimes struggle with bringing our passive vocabulary (words we know, but seldom use) to the surface. But that’s not all — starting a story with a mess of unrelated words can take our writing in unexpected directions, forcing us out of comfortable shells.
Start with a story you wrote yourself or a story by someone else. Now skim over it and pull out five words that resonate with you. Try not to think about it too much; let your subconscious do the work. When you’ve got your five words, write them each on a separate sheet of paper.
Now for the fun part: for every word, come up with ten additional words and scribble them down like petals surrounding the starting point. They don’t need to be synonyms or even closely related. ‘Smoke,’ for instance, might lead you to think of ‘fire,’ but it could just as easily generate something like ‘obscure’ or ‘suffocation.’ When you’re finished, you’ll have five pages with ten fresh words on each.
Final step? Go through the pages one at a time, circling only one of the petals in every ‘word flower.’ Again, pick them without over-analyzing. Use these final five items (all five of them!) in a brand new story. Who knows where it will lead!
Example
I began with a piece of flash fiction I’d previously published, and ended up with this list of words:
foam, pop, engorge, liquify, spray
There were so many water images, I knew the story setting needed to be the ocean. I broke out of my comfort zone and wrote a fun piece about an old man getting back on his surfboard and called it “One Last Endless Summer.”
4. Stop and ask questions
Actually, you only need to ask one question: What if? While at the first Flash Fiction Festival in Bath, England a few years ago, I took a workshop with Pamela Painter. Her advice has stuck in my mind ever since. Whether you’re a plotter or a pantser, pausing to think about what might happen next opens up the imagination. Remember, just because you’ve plotted out your story doesn’t mean you’re beholden to the plan. And if you write by the seat of your pants (as I often do), you’ll spend plenty of time staring at the page wondering what happens next.
Try this: As soon as you’ve hit a key event in your story, stop writing. Take a few breaths, do some yoga, grab a snack. Then come back to the page and brainstorm five different ways to continue. The technique is similar to growing your word garden, but instead of lexical items we’re expanding the world of possible events.
Suppose your story involves a character who has recently purchased an antique desk. There’s a piece of paper stuck inside. Your writer’s mind has already decided it’s a love letter from fifty years ago, and that’s fine. But there’s no harm at in stopping to consider a few other options:
What if you show the letter to your spouse, but he or she only sees a blank piece of paper?
What if when you pry the paper out, it begins to disintegrate?
What if the paper is a scrap from a newspaper dated 100 years in the future?
What if on the paper are two words: “Help me”?
Example
I’ve now used this technique so often, I can’t even remember the specific stories or novels where I’ve played the What if? game. What I do know is I’ve sometimes stuck with my original plotline, other times changed it, and still other times have generated a brand new story idea.
5. Creating plots from events
Aristotle, in his Poetics, says, ”The plot is the essential element of a tragedy….The plot does not concern what has happened as an isolated incident.”
Consider a single event, say, a man jumping out of a window (Chinquee, 2009). At first, this might sound like your story’s plot, but it’s merely an event. To develop a plot, we need to ask questions.
Who is the man?
Where is the man?
Is he rich? Poor? Famous? Lonely? Sane?
Is he suicidal, or is he a stunt man?
Who else might be in the house? Wife? Child? Wheelchair-bound father?
In other words, we need to recognize how all the other things surrounding the event are the real deal. So try this: pick a mundane event like Woman goes dress shopping or Student cheats on an exam. Write five completely different paragraph-long stories centering on the event you chose. Notice how the event remains the same, but the plot doesn’t.
Example
A woman goes dress shopping, same as every Saturday. She tries on bold prints and strappy sundresses, things she’ll never wear because there’s no place to wear them. She goes home, dreaming of next Saturday when, for a few hours, she can pretend she’s someone else. Her husband is a cheat, and so she goes dress shopping. Her therapist says, “Lure him back.” She comes home with armfuls of frocks, stashes them in the closet, and smiles as she slides the stolen credit card back into her husband’s wallet.
Okay — I wrote these on the fly, but I think you see the point. In each, we have a woman going dress shopping. But how different the circumstances are!
The take-home message
Writing is imagination. It’s experimentation. It’s conjuring something from nothing. In short, writing is hard work. Whether you’re stuck on the initial idea or hit a roadblock halfway through your story, consider trying one of these exercises and seeing where it takes you. I have a feeling the final destination will be an interesting one.
References
Chinquee, K. 2009. The Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction. (Tara L. Masih, Ed.). Rose Metal Press. | https://writingcooperative.com/five-of-my-favorite-writing-exercises-abcb292fb279 | ['Christina Dalcher'] | 2020-09-06 13:01:02.160000+00:00 | ['Creativity', 'Writing Tips', 'Writing', 'Fiction', 'Writers Block'] |
The Theology of Cinema: Chosen | The archetype of the Chosen One is common to movies, echoing the Messiah figure in ancient religions.
Neo is an example of a Chosen figure in ‘The Matrix,’ his name an anagram for the word “One.”
As many of you may know, I have a background in the academic study of theology, a B.A. in religious studies from the University of Virginia and a Masters of Divinity degree from Yale. So it is only natural I bring that perspective to how I view and understand movies and screenwriting.
Let me be clear, when I say theological, I mean it — in this context — in a secular way. How does that make sense?
The word “theology” is a combination of two Greek words: “theos” which means God and “logos” which means word. So theology is words about God. What if for this series we think of God as a metaphor for an explanation for the big questions of life? Thus, theology as words about the meaning of life. Broadly speaking that is one dynamic movies hit on consistently, characters forced to confront their values, behaviors, and world views related to who they are and how they should act.
In this respect, movies and theology wade in very much the same thematic waters. As Andrew Stanton noted about Lawrence of Arabia in this TED Talk, how the central theme of that story is the question asked of the Protagonist “who are you,” that issue exists at the core of perhaps every movie, an existential exploration of a character or characters’ self-identity. So, too, with theology.
Also, movies tend to be about characters at critical junctures in their lives, facing a journey from the Old World into a New World where through a series of challenges and lessons they undergo a significant metamorphosis. Sounds an awful lot like a conversion experience to me.
Thus, it is only natural there will be a lot of crossover of theological themes in movies. But while a theological theme in a movie may have a religious or spiritual connotation, I am more interested in exploring such themes metaphorically to find the widest value possible for screenwriters at large.
By working with this non-religious take on the concept, we can avail ourselves of numerous powerful theological themes in screenwriting regardless of whether our stories are secular or non-secular.
Today: Chosen.
The theme of being chosen by God exists at the core of the Judeo-Christian tradition and in other major religions as well. For example, the very idea of the covenant relationship between Yahweh and the Children of Israel is based upon the premise that God chose them: “For you are a holy people to Yahweh your God, and God has chosen you to be his treasured people from all the nations that are on the face of the earth.” [Deuteronomy 14:2]
Likewise in the New Testament, when John the Baptist baptized Jesus in the Jordan River, it is written he said, “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. And I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ I have seen and I testify that this is God’s Chosen One.” [John 1:32–34]
We see this messianic theme of the Chosen One in dozens of movies ranging from Neo in The Matrix to Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings to Sarah Connor in The Terminator series to Harry Potter. This makes sense on many levels.
First, we like heroes and heroines, we want to believe there are individuals who are willing and capable of taking on seemingly insurmountable tasks. We find that to be a source of hope.
Moreover, we enjoy getting swept up in their escapades, often the underdog versus significant opposition and extremely long odds. We find that entertaining.
Also, whenever we follow the exploits of a Chosen One, we may indulge in a type of wish fulfillment, imagining that within our Self, we are unique, we are heroic, we are chosen. We find that to be empowering.
Obviously, there are exalted types of chosen figures. We need look no further than most any superhero movie playing at the local theater to find this dynamic at work. However, the idea of being chosen can work in any story, genre or scope of narrative.
It can be present in a small indie drama like Little Miss Sunshine where Olive being chosen to participate in the beauty pageant sets into motion the entire plot; a horror story like The Exorcist where Satan chooses to inhabit Regan’s body; or a mainstream comedy like The Santa Clause where Scott Calvin is chosen to take on the role of Santa Claus.
I was reminded of this theological theme when watching the 2006 movie Children of Men. The IMDB plot summary: “In 2027, in a chaotic world in which women have become somehow infertile, a former activist agrees to help transport a miraculously pregnant woman to a sanctuary at sea.”
Here we have the theme at work in the lives of two characters: Theo (Clive Owen), the former activist, and Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey), the young pregnant woman.
Kee is chosen in the sense she is the only pregnant woman in an infertile world. Indeed there is a comparison to be made to Mary, the mother of Jesus. For example, Kee, like Mary, is a young mother. When we first meet Kee, she is in a barn, reminiscent of the stable in which Mary is said to have given birth to Jesus. Kee has to travel many miles before giving birth, much like Mary. Most notably, the pregnancy itself is perceived to something akin to sacred.
Likewise, Theo is chosen by his former wife Julian (Julianne Moore) to transport Kee to the Human Project. Later, when events become chaotic, Kee chooses to go with Theo rather than stay with the people who have been supporting her all along.
Once Kee gives birth, there are a host of incredible scenes evoking theological symbolism, perhaps most powerfully this one:
Theo guarding Kee and the baby through rebel fighters and government troops, briefly stopping their battle to gaze in awe at the miracle of the newborn child.
The fates of Theo and Kee bring them together, both chosen for this journey, their relationship functioning symbolically the emergence of a New Creation — Theo as Adam to Kee’s Eve.
Then again Theo, which as noted above, is Greek for “god,” takes on the role of savior in the end, the ultimate act of a hero — giving up his life on behalf of a cause bigger than himself.
Broadly speaking, it is almost inevitable any of the Protagonists we write are in some sense chosen within the context of their story universe. Whether by an external force plucking them out of obscurity or the Protagonist responding to his/her own inner need to become who they are, or as in most cases a combination of both, their journey is an expression of them being chosen for that particular adventure.
It is the very essence of the Call to Adventure: The Protagonist chosen by Fate to go on a life-changing journey.
Comment Archive | https://gointothestory.blcklst.com/the-theology-of-cinema-chosen-2e762f999791 | ['Scott Myers'] | 2020-12-13 13:03:34.584000+00:00 | ['Creative Writing', 'Writing', 'Fiction', 'Storytelling', 'Screenwriting'] |
The umpteenth piece on self-promotion | The umpteenth piece on self-promotion
Why your content matters way more than anything else.
Photo by 苏寒 赵 on Unsplash
Let me tell you two very different stories about networking. At my first writers’ conference, a friend of mine tried to pitch her novel to an agent at the opening reception. We were both nobodies, and the agent was a superstar. He kindly said, “Not right now.”
My friend spent a fair deal of time cajoling me, when she wasn’t schmoozing. Act more assertive, she said. Otherwise I’d never get a book deal.
So I tried, and failed. Meanwhile, my friend did actually make some sweet connections with editors at big publishing houses. Three months later, they all rejected her book proposal.
After a while, I let go of everything popular culture had taught me about networking and just started expressing my chiller, easygoing self. Traveled some — stateside — and read my ass off.
And I wrote a lot.
And made some poor life decisions — like every writer should.
Now here’s my second networking story. Years later, I managed to publish in some decent venues. At another writers’ conference, I browsed and chatted with editors at press booths for half an hour. My point wasn’t to sell myself, just to kill some time between panels. When I’d run out of social juice, I grabbed some coffee and wandered.
Right before I left the room, an editor walked up and practically grabbed me. “Hey, I just read one of your stories online. Send me something!”
So I did. And it got rejected.
Content matters the most
Those two experiences taught me something crucial about networking. But also about marketing, branding, and any other type of promotion.
You don’t sell your content. Your content does.
Every single time.
Content is everything. No matter what you’re pushing — art, music, or banana slicers. Your best chances rest on the strength of your ideas.
Sure, people have won by cheating. A clever marketing scheme or drip campaign might spark interest in an otherwise worthless product like pet rocks. But do you want to be that person?
Do you really want to be the guy or gal that dreams up social media campaigns for stuff like Goop?
Because I just went to their website, and it looks a lot like shopping items from Kroger — photographed from clever angles. Don’t get me wrong, I love Gwyneth Paltrow in the Avengers movies. But even Pepper Potts can’t make me pay that much for what I can find at a grocery store.
Free Trait Theory
Your ability to network and promote yourself depends very little on your actual personality type. Like we’ve seen time and again since Susan Cain’s book Quiet, introverts can socialize and engage just as much as extroverts — or even better. But why?
The real crux of Cain’s book lies in free trait theory, developed by Gordon Allport. The key idea is that people can act counter to their personalities for different reasons. We all have “cardinal” traits that govern something like an essential self — if that really exists. But we can learn other behaviors and emulate other personality types, if we want.
An introvert like me can throw a party if she really wanted to. As long as she identified an incentive, found motivation, and learned how to do it well. You know, without creeping everyone out.
How do you think Hannibal Lecter got so good at convincing people he wasn’t a cannibal? He watched and learned human behavior, then created a disarming persona.
Acting like someone else might sound dishonest, but we all do it. Some of us just do it better than others, and we do it for a range of reasons — not necessarily to take advantage of people, but to survive happy hour with our coworkers. A noble cause.
It takes a lot of practice to exude a different version of yourself. You’re taking a lot of risk. But you can do it. So it doesn’t really matter if you’re an introvert, extrovert, or total sociopath. As long as you don’t eat your potential investors. That’s bad for business.
Epic networking fails
It’s easy to forget how networking and promotion actually work. We see it done poorly so often. Plus, magazines and infomercials lie to us all the time. They want us to believe in the power of pep, just as much as self-made billionaires with reality TV shows.
The culture of personality is reinforced from all sides these days. So when you’re tempted to give into the hype, try this:
Remember the worst networking fail you’ve ever seen. How bad was it? What made it so bad?
I’ll tell you mine, at least from recent memory. About a year ago, I was wandering around publishing booths at another conference. A nonfiction writer was handing out promotion baggies.
When I tried to slide past anonymously, he stepped in front of me and struck up a conversation. “Tell me all about yourself,” he began.
“Well, I’m a teacher.” The word MISTAKE flashed before my eyes. Was there still time to escape?
Too late.
The guy began explaining his book and why it would be perfect for a course adoption. Or maybe I could even help put him in touch with our freshmen read coordinator. Ugh.
You want to know what his book was about? Sigh. It was a writer’s guide. Not a great one. The research was a mess. He kept insisting that his was the “ultimate” writer’s companion. Except ten minutes of conversation revealed he hadn’t read any other guides.
Still, I listened and waited for an emergency exit to open in the conversation. This is what happens when introverts get trapped by extroverts. At least the baggie had a cool pen, and a pack of post-it notes.
The elephant factory
There’s a powerful machine at work these days. It wants you to sign up for charisma coaches and hire publicists. It wants you to try and sell something, even if you have nothing.
In my nook of the world, we call these elephant factories.
They make nothing but elephants, and those elephants go on and make even more elephants. That’s a colorful way of saying that a personality coach or marketing expert can’t do much except turn you into a weirder version of themselves.
Or if you already have a solid product, they can shine it up a little. They’ll take way more credit than they might deserve.
In Quiet, Susan Cain describes her attendance at a day-long workshop led by the famous motivation guru, Tony Robbins. This guy charges people thousands of dollars for enthusiastic pep talks. His website lists Bill Clinton as a client. But the truth is kind of hard to ferret out. All I’ve managed to find is an interview with Robbins, where he talks about how Clinton called him for advice back in the 90s, during the impeachment.
So, let’s cut the shit. A personality coach didn’t make Bill Clinton president. Didn’t even help him win reelection. Clinton’s impeachment began in 1998, two whole years into his second term.
It also sounds to me like Bill Clinton didn’t pay thousands of dollars for the advice he got over the phone.
If Bill Clinton had called me the night before his impeachment, here’s what I would’ve said:
Look, Slick. Just ride this out. You have no idea how bad shit’s going to get after you leave. You’re the Ronald Reagan of the Democratic Party. Just don’t fuck any more interns, and you should come out of this okay.
A hundred experts and influencers will take your money in order to shine up what you’ve got. They’ll promise to fix your life. Double your web traffic. Triple your sales. They’ll show you how to use LinkedIn.
Not that there’s anything wrong with LinkedIn. It’s just that…LinkedIn already shows you how to use LinkedIn. Besides, learning how to use LinkedIn won’t make the difference between one sale and a million.
Focus on the center, not the fluff
We all get distracted by the ephemera. Stats. Followers. Traffic. Viral tweets. We almost want there to be a secret to all this. There’s not. Just failing, learning, and trying again.
Consider the squatty potty. Memorable name. Funny commercial. Altogether brilliant marketing. But at the core, squatty potty is just a simple, strong idea. It’s a stool that makes shitting easier. And it actually works.
The marketing potential is baked in. Think about how many people expel their bodily waste by sitting on a toilet. Not quite everyone, but pretty close.
And we don’t do it just one or twice a year. We do it every day. And shitting can be uncomfortable. So a device that makes it easier has instant, nearly universal appeal. From its inception.
Squatty Potty was already doing pretty well before they released their famous unicorn commercial. They didn’t hire a bunch of marketing experts or social media influencers. The CEO wrote and created the skit in-house, against the advice of other supposed gurus — including a Shark Tank panel.
Squatty Potty became a huge success because the idea was good. The marketing helped. Like it should.
The commercial’s job was easy — be funny and quirky enough for people to remember the premise. Yep, you’ve been shitting wrong your whole life. You need a stool.
Without an actual product, the commercial would’ve been worthless.
We forget this basic lesson all the time.
Everyone wants to make a cool commercial these days. We forget that you actually need something worth advertising.
So let’s revisit the dude trying to market a writer’s guide. I’m not sure he thought much about his content. Instead, he started ass backwards, with his promotion angle.
He thought it would be easy to crap out a bunch of cliches about creativity, then use the power of his personality to push that glossy stack of nothing into unsuspecting hands.
The next time you see someone like this, take a pass. Put your attention on the harder stuff:
What are you selling? Yourself? A lifestyle? Okay, I guess. You’ll be competing with Dr. Oz. Good luck with that. But if you want a sure bet, stop thinking so much about the marketing, the stats, the traffic. Think about what value your content or product adds. Content first, always. | https://jessicalexicus.medium.com/the-upteenth-piece-on-self-promotion-dddfb6c95f7c | ['Jessica Wildfire'] | 2018-08-13 07:37:29.342000+00:00 | ['Introvert', 'Creativity', 'Communication', 'Marketing', 'Entrepreneurship'] |
Top 5 Books for 2021 | (and two I wouldn’t recommend touching with a 39-and-a-half-foot pole)
2021 is right around the corner, meaning it’s time to set those New Year’s goals in stone. No matter what you’re into there’s something here for you. Dive back into reading with one of these five books from five different genres.
1) Beach Read by Emily Henry — Contemporary Romance (2020)
This was by far my favorite book that came out in 2020. It’s got feuding beach-front neighbors (January and Gus), salacious romance, and a relatable main character who only eats pizza and somehow still manages to have a bangin’ bod. But seriously, if you’re into romance and looking for a book to help you get back into reading, Beach Read is it.
BONUS: Author Emily Henry is coming out with another highly anticipated book in the new year titled People We Meet On Vacation. It’s sure to be the highlight of my year.
2) The Knockout Queen by Rufi Thorpe — Contemporary Fiction (2020)
A unique friendship between two unlikely teens blossoms into something…interesting. Quick witted dark humor flows from protagonist Michael, who lives next door to Bunny, a super-tall volleyball player who could have been the Queen B of their school if her violent tendencies didn’t bubble up. The Knockout Queen was thought provoking because it tackled a lot of hard-hitting subjects, from ethics and abuse to classism and addiction. It was easily the best written book I read this year.
3) The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett — Historical Fiction (2020)
I may be a little biased because I’ve been craving a book with biracial main characters exploring the struggles that come with hiding half your identity. The Vanishing Half follows the half-black-half-white Vignes twins who grew up in a strange southern town. The two eventually part ways and live polar opposite lives, one as a black woman and the other as white. I myself am biracial and have had to weave in and out of a world that wasn’t built for me so I highly recommend this book if you’re looking to get into the minds of people who are unlike yourself.
4) Jar of Hearts by Jennifer Hillier — Psychological Thriller (2018)
This book was WAY out of my comfort zone; I’m not a fan of books with murder, rape, or abusive relationships. Lucky for me this book has all three! However, despite my dislike of certain events, the character development and overall storyline was enthralling. Three high school best friends: One ends up in jail, another dead, and the last as a cop investigating that murder. Cue the court appearances, longing stares, and Orange is the New Black jail scenes.
5) Untamed by Glennon Doyle — Autobiography (2020)
The last autobiography I read before this was Down the Rabbit Hole by Holly Madison in 2015 so I had no idea what I was getting myself into. The advice in this book can be seen as a little cheesy at times but overall, it was an inspiring memoir with the mantra “We can do hard things”. It was a nice juxtaposition to the dumpster fire that was 2020; instilling hope in some of the darkest times.
BONUS BOOKS I DID NOT LIKE
Normal People by Sally Rooney — Literary Fiction (2018)
Hear me out, maybe I just didn’t get it. Two high school peers, Connell and Marianne, go from acquaintances to lovers to strangers to friends to lovers and back again. To me, there’s no character development between the two of them. They just continually hurt each other for 273 pages, learning absolutely nothing. Marianne jumps from emotionally abusive relationship to emotionally abusive relationship and never stops to think WHY she accepts this type of love. Connell has a “woe is me” attitude and becomes codependent on Marianne. Not my cup of tea.
Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins — Young Adult (2020)
I was so excited. Operative word: Was. While it was interesting to see how President Snow became the horrendous person he is today, I felt the book was bloated and overdrawn. It could have been split into two books OR half could have been cut out — take your pick. I wish Collins would have spent more time in the arena and following Lucy Gray’s life. Glad I read so I know the full story, mad I read because it took a week out of my summer. | https://medium.com/@najaharvey/top-5-books-for-2021-5b6aa8e080d0 | ['Naja Harvey'] | 2020-12-22 04:45:53.789000+00:00 | ['Reading', 'New Year Resolution', '2020', 'Books', 'Book Club'] |
The Cycle | One day at a time you fight
You step in and out of the light
Breathe in and hold it tight
What’s wrong can feel so right
When the day turns into night
When the frog becomes a knight
His kiss makes your heart take flight
Then he’s gone and out of sight
The fight is gone and replaced with numbness
The light disappears and fades into darkness
Release your breath into nothingness
What was right is now just emptiness
The night swallows you into its vastness
The knight vanishes into the wilderness
His kiss is gone, leaving you breathless
You’re alone again and filled with sadness
One day at a time, you’re stronger
The darkness starts to fade, the sky becomes lighter
Your breath once more light as a feather
Wrong and right are entangled together
Day and night spin around and under
The knight, you were, always the fighter
From the past, now asunder
Never alone, happiness now and forever | https://medium.com/romance-monsters/the-cycle-4627f6d7de47 | ['Edie Tuck'] | 2020-01-02 03:24:51.447000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Lov', 'Self-awareness', 'Broken', 'Self Love'] |
Spring Data Lovelace & Neo4j-OGM 3.1.3 went GA | It has been nearly a year since our last post about the things happening with Neo4j in the “Spring World”. Time did not stand still and the Spring Data Neo4j / Neo4j-OGM Team has been working on improvements and building new features based on the foundations laid out with SDN 5.0 and Neo4j-OGM 3.0 last year.
My name is Michael Simons, I am a Java Champion and the author of the German book about Spring Boot 2 and Spring 5. I joined the Spring Data Neo4j team in July 2018. Together with Gerrit Meier I have been working on the latest release of Neo4j-OGM which is 3.1.3. Neo4j-OGM is the underlying Object Graph Mapper technology used by Spring Data Neo4j.
While Neo4j-OGM 3.1.3 has been released on September 19th prior to our own GraphConnect in New York, Spring Data Neo4j 5.1 has been released some days later as part of Spring Data’s Lovelace release train just in time for the Spring One Platform (S1P) conference.
Time to have a look what’s new in the most recent versions.
What’s new in Neo4j-OGM 3.1.3
What are the new features and improvements in the object graph mapper itself? Neo4j-OGM can be used by itself, for example with Micronaut, a framework especially dedicated to the creation of microservices. It also works well when Spring Data’s features like repository abstraction or the eventing system are not needed or wanted. This could be the case in applications dealing with a large number of different nodes, that are not clearly part of aggregate roots. Spring Data has never be designed to be used in such a way that one needs to declare a repository per entity type.
Improved @PostLoad mechanism
Each @NodeEntity can have one method annotated with @PostLoad . Neo4j-OGM will call this method once the entity is loaded from the database. This is useful for composed information or other initialization methods that should only be called after the object has been fully populated.
Listing 1. SomeEntity.java
@NodeEntity
public class SomeEntity { private transient String computedInformation; @PostLoad
void computeTransientInformation() {
this.computedInformation = "Whatever";
}
}
With Neo4j-OGM 3.1.3 @PostLoad requirements are the same as JSR 250 @PostConstruct has, especially:
The method on which @PostConstruct is applied may be public, protected, package private or private
is applied may be public, protected, package private or private In general, the method must not be final. However, other specifications are permitted to relax this requirement on a per-component basis
This change allows a better encapsulation of business logic in your aggregate roots. In the previous versions, @PostLoad methods needed to be public and could not be final. This lead to situations where those methods could be called from the outside or overwritten in ways that contradict your domain.
There is one situations where you might be able to actually want to overwrite @PostLoad methods: Class hierarchies.
Improved handling of class hierarchies
Many people like the approach of introducing some abstract base classes for their entities. We have seen this approach with JPA and also a lot with Neo4j-OGM. Common arguments for doing this are keeping common attributes like the id -Attribute or auditing information in a shared base class as shown in Listing 2.
Listing 2. AbstractAuditableBaseEntity.java
public abstract class AbstractAuditableBaseEntity {
@Id
@GeneratedValue
private Long id; @CreatedDate
private LocalDate createdAt; @LastModifiedDate
private LocalDate updatedAt; public LocalDate getCreatedAt() {
return createdAt;
} public LocalDate getUpdatedAt() {
return updatedAt;
}
}
This AbstractBaseEntity provides all boilerplate needed: A generated id and some auditing. In previous versions of Neo4j-OGM you had to use @NodeEntity on this class as well to make our auto index manager work.
This introduced meaningless labels (either the name of the class or some other artificial label made up by you). Now the logic works as stated in the documentation: Abstract classes in the hierarchy of an entity don’t contribute a label to nodes. The auto index manager creates indexes in such a way that they ensure uniqueness across subclasses, if there are intermediate classes (abstract or not) with labels in the hierarchy.
@CreatedDate and @LastModifiedDate are annotations from Spring Data Neo4j, more about them later.
Improvements on Neo4j-OGM Filters
Neo4j-OGM Filters can now traverse relationships of entities to query their attributes. We call this nested property filter support. The equal filter can now do a case-insensitive equals comparison without resorting to regular expressions.
Miscellaneous
No software is without bugs. We fixed issues around array conversions, prevent possible accidental deletion of all nodes when a query doesn’t contain any label and more. Also, we started polishing code and deprecating unused things. In short: We are trying to create a clean state to be prepared for new features.
Ada Lovelace portrayed by Margaret Sarah Carpenter
All these things are used in the latest and greatest installment of Spring Data Neo4j, called Lovelace after famous Ada Lovelace. Ada Lovelace was the first to recognize the potential of a general computing machine by publishing algorithms for a
-back then- only proposed mechanical computer, the Analytical engine.
What’s new in Spring Data Neo4j 5.1 Lovelace
As you might know, Spring Data itself is heavily inspired by Eric Evans’ famous book “Domain Driven Design”. The ideas of repository and aggregate roots are just some of the ideas of this book. Spring Data is much more than just helpful derived finder methods. There is support for an eventing system, auditing and more.
Modeling better domain models is part of SDN 5.1, together with all the things described in “Improved @PostLoad mechanism”.
Persistence constructors
Extending AbstractAuditableBaseEntity from Listing 2 to model a musical artist as in Listing 3, you’ll notice the missing public default constructor:
Listing 3. ArtistEntity.java
@NodeEntity("Artist")
public class ArtistEntity extends AbstractAuditableBaseEntity { @Index(unique = true)
private String name; public ArtistEntity(String name) {
this.name = name;
} public String getName() {
return name;
}
}
Using Spring Data’s common infrastructure, you no longer need to provide useless default constructors in your domain. If there are several meaningful constructors from the business side of things, you have to annotate one of them with @PersistenceConstructor as shown in Listing 4. That way, you make clear which constructor is to be used when retrieving nodes from the database.
Listing 4. BandEntity.java
@NodeEntity("Band")
public class BandEntity extends ArtistEntity { @Relationship("FOUNDED_IN")
private CountryEntity foundedIn; @Relationship("HAS")
private List<MemberEntity> member = new ArrayList<>(); public BandEntity(String name) {
this(name, null);
} @PersistenceConstructor
public BandEntity(String name, CountryEntity foundedIn) {
super(name);
this.foundedIn = foundedIn;
}
}
Auditing support
As mentioned in Listing 2, the example uses Spring Data Neo4j features. org.springframework.data.annotation.CreatedDate and org.springframework.data.annotation.LastModifiedDate are Spring Data annotations to mark attributes as targets for audit-informations. Those are enabled by providing a Spring @Configuration class like in Listing 5.
Listing 5. Neo4jConfiguration.java
@Configuration
@EnableNeo4jAuditing // Turn on auditing
public class Neo4jConfiguration {
}
Now those fields are automatically populated on creation and updates of the node in question. There are many more features like this that make a compelling reason to use Spring Data Neo4j for accessing Neo4j in your Spring projects.
Miscellaneous
SDN 5.1 directly uses Neo4j-OGM’s new features, like case-insensitive queries by supporting IgnoreCase in derived finder methods and traversing nested properties. For example, you can use a derived method as shown in Listing 6 to retrieve all Bands from Germany with a call like bandRepository.findAllByFoundedInCodeIgnoreCase("de")
.forEach(System.out::println) .
Listing 6. BandRepository.java
public interface BandRepository extends
Neo4jRepository<BandEntity, Long> { List<BandEntity> findAllByFoundedInCodeIgnoreCase(
String countryCode);
}
The newly developed support for Springs Expression language in annotated @Query methods in SDN repositories has the same goal: Improving your repository design. Listing 7 may seem a bit constructed, but here SpEL is used to pass parameters to a query that are currently not directly supported.
Listing 7. YearRepository.java
public interface YearRepository extends
Neo4jRepository<YearEntity, Long> { @Query("MATCH (y:Year {value: #{#year.value}}) RETURN y")
Optional<YearEntity> findOneByValue(Year year);
}
Enterprise customers can now use the @UseBookmark annotation in composed annotations. Composed annotations are meta annotations that can be used to express things in a language that’s better suited for a specific application than a generic @UseBookmark or similar.
Spring Boot
Today one can claim that new Spring projects should be started with Spring Boot. The easiest way to do this is going to start.spring.io, select all the dependencies you need, especially Neo4j. The result is a project skeleton defined to best practices from more than two years. As said before: Spring Boot is not only about microservices, but about all developments with Spring.
From Spring Boot 2.0.6 the reference documentation has been updated and refined to great extends regarding Neo4j. Read it here: Spring Boot and Neo4j (Note: This is a link to the Snapshot documentation until the final release of 2.1).
Also, starting with Boot 2.0.6, one can omit the Neo4j-OGM version on the embedded driver, in case it should be included. It will be enough to declare org.neo4j:neo4j-ogm-embedded-driver as dependency.
With Spring Boot 2.1, our enterprise customers don’t need to declare their own BookmarkManager themselves anymore if Caffeine cache is on the class path. Our starter will take care of this as well.
Outlook
The Spring Data Neo4j team has started to use performance optimizations that are now possible in Spring Data in regard of non-eager initialization of beans and will continue to invest this. Recent updates to the class path scanner that is used to determine classes to be recognized by Neo4j-OGM are also investigated. We are also working on an improved support of Neo4j’s newer datatypes, especially the date time and spatial types that have been introduced together with the spatial features of 3.4.
The Spring Data Neo4j / Neo4j-OGM Team is ready to incorporate all future developments regarding reactive Java drivers for Neo4j that are planed to be available in future releases. The common groundwork in Spring Data has been around for some time now and is ready to be used in SDN.
The examples in this article are from my project “bootiful-music” which you can find at GitHub, look especially at the knowledge module. The whole project will serve as an example for upcoming Spring Data Neo4j related talks.
Happy Coding! | https://medium.com/neo4j/spring-data-lovelace-neo4j-ogm-3-1-3-went-ga-36614b60c889 | ['Michael Simons'] | 2018-09-27 15:37:09.590000+00:00 | ['Neo4j', 'Java', 'Spring', 'Neo4j Ogm', 'Spring Data'] |
On Premise VS Cloud: Time for you to make the transition with these simple tips | It may have taken some by surprise when Atlassian announced that it would be sunsetting its on-premise version of its JIRA Software by ceasing server product sales in February of 2021 and ending server support in February of 2024.
But those with an eye towards innovation saw a movement towards the cloud coming for quite some time now, and Atlassian is prepared to shed those who aren’t prepared to follow.
Before we jump into the benefits of moving your project management to the cloud, let’s first understand why you’re likely currently hosting your tool locally.
On Premise Incentives
There are up to three key reasons your company likely operates with an on premise solution:
Security
Ownership and Control
Infrastructure
Security
Generally the chief concern with cloud hosting, on premise solutions keep security squarely in your control as there’s no third party intermediary between your employees and the software.
Ownership and Control
A one-time purchase of software licenses allows your organization to maximize the value of the purchase by supporting the software on your own arrangement. Additionally, the configuration, data, and system updates are entirely in your control.
Infrastructure
That you’re hosting your own project management software on premise means you organization has already engaged in the up front capital expenditure as well as the necessary hires to implement and maintain the system. To be frank, it’s quite possible that this capital commitment came before the widespread availability (and trust in) the cloud.
Transition Trepidation
Moving to the cloud means your organization will need to loosen its own grasp of the Security, Ownership, and Infrastructure that currently keeps your project management (and likely other company-wide softwares) afloat. Such a transition can be costly and may call the necessity of certain positions of your organization into question once the transition has concluded.
So then the big question persists: Why make the leap to the cloud from your on premise solution? Truth is, many of the reasons that your organization cited as reasons to be on premise are addressed with grace through a cloud solution.
The Benefits of the Cloud
Adopting the Cloud and the providers who utilize it is admittedly an extension of trust in other organizations, but this trust is often warranted. A third party’s ability to optimize their service for a segment of your business generally improves the quality and lowers the cost of that service.
Security
Cloud Security is increasingly becoming safer than on premise security as cloud providers routinely invest heavily in the latest security measures to ward off a wide range of threats. It’s unlikely that the average organization will have the bandwidth to invest in on premise hardware for security measures at the rate of, say, AWS, so trusting cloud providers with modernized security is becoming less of a leap of faith and more of a reasonable expectation. This is just one of many instances where you can limit expenditure and strain on internal IT positions and infrastructures.
Ownership and Control
Cloud-based softwares are far more accessible than ones deployed on premise. Additionally, the burden to maintain, update, and optimize performance for scalability is also shifted to the software provider, allowing you to engage with an ideal experience of the program without needing to lean on your IT infrastructure to perfect the solution internally.
Infrastructure
There’s no dodging the fact that your organization has made a considerable investment in its on premise hosting solution, but a sunk cost is a dangerous fallacy when trying to estimate innovation for the future. Cloud-based softwares come with predictable costs in the form of an operational expenditure. The responsibilities of uptime, energy costs, disaster recovery are mantled by the provider as part of the arrangement as well. In this way, you’re safe to assume that cloud-hosted solutions shake out to being less expensive over time as essentially everything required to rollout, maintain, and update the solution is no longer your burden to shoulder.
An Opportunity for Innovation
If your organization is looking to move its project management solution from on premise to the cloud, it’s also likely a good time to assess and reconsider the management tool your company is employing to spearhead planning and execution efforts. Let’s identify three core ways to evaluate a software the same way we did to evaluate the benefits of the cloud:
Ease of use
Flexibility
Scalability
Ease of Use
Organizational buy-in on a tool is tremendously important, as it ultimately determines if your company is maximizing the value of the solution they’ve selected. An easy to use solution helps bridge the gap between your employees using a tool as part of an organizational mandate and using a tool because it actually facilitates reaching objectives by making daily workflows easier. Modern PM solutions incentivize usage by weaving more instances of collaboration into them so that they become live working environments instead of “update hubs” that simply track what’s already been done.
Flexibility
The more organizational workflows that a solution can gracefully solve, the better, as it comes with a bevy of benefits. First, this will require your team to juggle fewer subscription engagements across fewer vendors. Secondly, cross-departmental workflows are facilitated as they do not require integrations between tools, or even worse, moving data outside of these tools altogether. The drawback to consider with all-in-one flexible workspaces is that drawing meaningful insights across the platform can be a challenge, which lends to our third point.
Scalability
It’s imperative that the selected solution fits your organization both today and tomorrow, meaning it must have the flexibility to cater to many workflows while still scaling in an such a way that does not result in an organizational nightmare. Striking a balance between flexibility and scalability is arguably the key challenge that separates the top-tier workflow solutions from ones that thrive in the hands of a certain department. Consider how your management may glean meaningful insights across two or more departments with entirely different workflows to determine a solution’s cross-departmental scalability.
Final Thoughts
Moving your organization to the cloud is no small feat, but it’s a vital transformation that is beginning to look like a “when, not if” transition. What feels like a leap of faith is coming more of an acknowledgement of the ability for cloud vendors to optimize their service more effectively than your organization can internally.
The same can be said about workflow solutions. What feels like a stretch in unifying more of your organization around fewer solutions will eventually be seen as an undeniable leap towards scalable productivity instead of forcing too many square pegs into round holes. That said, selecting the best solution as part of your digital transformation is a major crux in the success in the future of an organization’s workflows. | https://blog.niftypm.com/its-time-to-bring-your-project-management-from-on-premise-to-the-cloud-c1388f660161 | [] | 2020-12-20 02:33:12.208000+00:00 | ['Enterprise Technology', 'On Premise', 'Project Management', 'Enterprise', 'Enterprise Software'] |
The Best Front-End Hacking Cheatsheets — All in One Place | GraphQL
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Thanks for reading, stay awesome! ❤ | https://medium.com/better-programming/modern-frontend-hacking-cheatsheets-df9c2566c72a | ['Indrek Lasn'] | 2020-11-30 00:07:46.513000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'JavaScript', 'Software Development', 'Web Development', 'Tech'] |
Glad Tuesday | Glad Tuesday
What stage of acceptance are you at for anything, everything, today, tomorrow, the future. I keep pondering the question that has no answers and no ending. The Queen of overthinking reporting for duty once again. The things that should make Owen sleepy generally have the opposite effect on him. I gave him a lavender bath. Before the bath, he was yawning and could hardly keep his eyes open but he always has to take a bath. We must do the routine. I very rarely use lavender because he likes to drink the bath water and I have to watch him like a hawk when he has soap in the tub. He got out of the tub like he was ready to take a five-mile run and two hours later he’s finally asleep. He would almost be asleep and then pop up, get not even an inch from my nose, and scream. I have to remind myself of the victories. The dude is growing. He climbed in my lap today and I thought he is solid as a rock, all muscle, and must have gained ten pounds. For early breakfast, he ate cereal and two waffles. We got up at five so there was a lot of time for second breakfast that consisted of eggs. I asked if he wanted some and he said no but he ate at least one before I asked if he wanted more. He said, “one more time”. So I gave him a little more. And then he ate mine off my plate when I got up to get more coffee. The bottomless pit continued. Not an hour later he asked for veggie straws and he said, “you want a donut”. Unfortunately, we had no donuts and he really doesn’t like sweets anyways. He has become a typing machine. He wanted to find animal sounds on YouTube. He had it pulled up on the tv. He started typing in “a n i m” saying the letters as he typed and when animal sounds came up in the list he selected and said, “hello zebra”. I am trying to teach him how to find things. He has no concept of where things are located. Like tonight I asked him to take the water jug from the front door to the kitchen. I broke it down in steps for him but he has a hard time working through each step and stopping for further instructions. Plus, he doesn’t understand when I say a location like floor or ceiling. I finally got close to him and walked him through each step. When he carried the jug to the kitchen I asked him multiple times to sit it down but that process was hard he brought it back in the living room until I made him take it back in the kitchen. I am celebrating that he got it to the kitchen. One step at a time we grow and together we walk forward. Find your happiness, share your joy, and let the world see your smile. Smiles to all and donut daze! | https://medium.com/@lynnbrowder/glad-tuesday-d8d52f1be332 | ['Lynn Browder'] | 2020-12-16 04:12:47.023000+00:00 | ['Life', 'Parenting', 'Autism', 'Life Lessons', 'Inspiration'] |
Life as an online student | By now we all know what is going on in the world and if not, you probably life under a rock in the middle of nowhere.
However we don’t know how different people in different countries with different jobs and so on deal with this situation and how it effects their daily life.I will tell you how the pandemic effects the life of a normal university student in Cologne, Germany.
Before we get started I’m studying Banking & Finance in my third semester.
At the beginning, about March or April, I really enjoyed having online classes. I mean, who doesn’t like having more time in the morning before you attend classes and don’t being worried about how you look like, because no one is going to see you. Furthermore I didn’t had to take a full bus to university and I could spent more time with my family. When I think back about this time I could consider myself really lucky and thankful that the start of the first lockdown in Germany didn’t affect my life that much due to the fact that I lived and still do now live at my parents house and they completely financially support me.
Like this, enjoying and relaxing, the start and first month of this semester I attended my classes regularly and I also really liked the subjects I had. However I about half way through this semester I noticed something. I felt alone. Not in my everyday life, because I still had my family and friends from school which luckily also study in Cologne just in different universitys. With them I played online games on this app called Houseparty or after the first lockdown we often hung out in parks or went out to eat. No, I felt alone in my uni life. I had no one to talk to because after my first semester my two friends, really lovely girls, decided to change university and study something different. Before it was announced that the universitys will close I thought: “Okay, I know some people briefly it won’t be that hard to make new friends.”But I was wrong. Due to the fact that everything was now online it was almost impossible to get to know new people. It hit me when a girl in my internal accounting class said: “ I and some other people tried to do this task…”and I thought to myself WOW, there are people talking to each other over tasks and I felt so alone, because I had no one to talk about my studies or someone to ask when I have questions.
Soon the semester came to an end and so the exams came. In my university you write your exams directly the week after classes had ended, so there is not much time to study and you have to start while having classes. During my first semester (which was before the pandemic started) I couldn't study that well because I had classes and than had a way from about 30–40 mins. to go home and I think we can all agree, that after coming home you are just exhausted and don’t really want to do anything. The exams turned out to be okay for a first semester but not much more. However being at home anyways (during my second semester) I had more time to study and I had more energy to study. Since we had to write our exams from home, the university allowed us to use our notes from class, because they couldn’t control if we cheat or not. Through this my exams turned out really well, for which I am really greatful. However I heard from some of my friends that they didn’t do that well in online exams.
Looking forward to my third semester (eventhough I don’t have friends in university) I started it in early November. Quickly I noticed that this time online classes are not as enjoyable as they were the previous semester and that I get really annoyed and exhausted sitting in my room for such a long time and looking at my laptop at someone reading from a presentation. I think the reason for this are the winter months. Sitting in a dark room and freezing eventhough the heaters are on is not something nice.
I am looking forward to my exams, starting at the end of January and if I am still annoyed of having online classes next semester.
Thank you for reading my first artical on Medium :) Follow for more. | https://medium.com/@eva-laarmann/life-as-an-online-student-77dbe9270236 | ['Eva Laarmann'] | 2020-12-27 16:46:05+00:00 | ['Study', 'Students', 'Online', 'Life', 'Student Life'] |
Navigating The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA): What You Need To Know About Compliance For Enterprise | By Calvin Bushor, Vice President of Data Services, Quicken Loans
In January 2020, the state of data for companies and consumers in the U.S. changed forever.
The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) went into effect, giving people more power and control over their data than ever before. With this change, there’s a lot of new information that both companies and consumers need to know about how to responsibly handle data.
For the first time ever, consumers and clients of a company’s goods and services can demand to know and control how their data can be used and stored. That means companies need to have programs designed to track, protect — and yes eliminate — all the data they have around those consumers and clients. That’s not something they’ve ever had to think about before, and while it’s a necessary shift for consumers, it’s a huge change for data caretakers.
For a company, understanding and navigating this changing data landscape can be difficult, and you may be struggling to figure out the right thing to do for both your business and your clients.
At Quicken Loans, we experienced this tug of war, but our company culture and client obsession helped us navigate the fog and develop a privacy philosophy.
What Is The CCPA?
The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is a law from California state legislature defining how businesses can deal with personal information of it’s residents. This law gives consumers in California three data privacy rights.
However, these concepts are important for all consumers — including those outside of California — to understand:
People Have The Right To Know
This means a person can contact a company and find out what types of data they collect. The answer to this question will go something like this: “We collect contact information, such as name, email, phone number and address. We collect financial information, such as, income, assets and credit information.”
People Have The Right To Access
This means a person can request to obtain a copy of the data you collect on them. It’s their data, after all. It’s up to companies to navigate how to field these requests, but if a request is made, companies are required to provide an answer within 45 days and must provide records covering the year preceding the date of the request.
People Have The Right To Delete
This means a person can request you delete all the data you have on them. Often, the first question I’m asked about this is, “Is it a hard delete, or is it a soft delete? Can we just flag the data?” Delete means delete. We must purge the data should we need to fulfill a “right to delete” request.
Which Companies Does The CCPA Affect?
The CCPA applies primarily to businesses that operate as for-profit companies, collect personal information of California consumers, conduct business in the state of California and meet at least one of the following requirements:
You earn at least $25 million in gross revenues. You buy, sell, share and/or receive personal information of a minimum 50,000 Californians’ households or devices each year. You derive at least 50% of your annual revenue from selling personal information of California consumers.
Most companies don’t want to introduce the complexity of state-by-state data standards, which means California is essentially setting the standard for the country.
What Do I Need To Do As An Affected Company?
To abide by the CCPA, a company will need to create new business processes and software features to manage these requests. Deleting data is relatively simple. Just perform a “DROP TABLE customers,” and you’re all set. Doing so, however, would mean an inability to conduct business, so the trick here is figuring out what data the company needs to operate and what data can be deleted after use.
A company can apply their retention rights to these requests. For example, at Rocket Mortgage, if a client requests their data be deleted but we’re in the middle of transacting with them by originating their mortgage so they can buy a new home, we’re not obligated to delete their data because we still need their data for processing their loan. Your industry standards may be different, which is why it’s crucial to be familiar with this law and how it impacts your business.
You may also need to keep a client’s data for compliance reasons. The mortgage industry is heavily regulated, and we’re required to retain certain data for these use cases. For example, after we originate a loan, we’ll often continue to service that loan. For regulatory reasons, for any loan we service, we need to retain the majority of the data we collect about that loan and client for the life of the loan.
We’ve been managing complex regulatory rules around client and mortgage data for eons, so understanding and managing these situations is familiar territory. But for any company, having and understanding your data retention rules is essential for developing a data privacy strategy.
What if you don’t know the person implementing their rights? As a business, you won’t blindly execute on these requests. You’ll need to create some sort of client verification process. This process should help identify who this person really is with fraud detection built in. Once you identify the person for who they really are, and your retention rules allow for their request to process, and you can find their data, then you fulfill their request.
What If My Company Isn’t Compliant With The CCPA?
This is a difficult question to answer because precedent hasn’t been set and we do not have a lot of examples of companies being sued or going through the financial accountability that CCPA declares. Each company is left to interpret the law as it stands, knowing that if you fail to implement a data privacy solution for fulfilling these new client data rights, your company could be financially liable. The maximum fine for an unintentional breach of CPPA is $2,500. If a company is found to be intentionally violating the law, fines can be as high as $7,500 per violation. For example, if a client requests to have their data deleted, and the company later mistakenly sends the client a text message, email or calls them to try and sell them something, the company can be held liable for not deleting this data.
What If There’s A Data Breach?
When a company has a massive data breach, if they want to comply with CCPA, they must disclose the event happened and details about the event. They’re also held financially accountable to any financial damage to their clients. When an individual’s data is breached, they are able to collect $100 to $750 under CCPA.
This accountability is a huge game-changer believed to help influence companies to revisit their data security strategies. Before, companies could cover up such breaches and continue to operate as they previously were with very little oversight or impact to their business.
CCPA Compliance, Brand Trust And Culture
Should a business fail to follow these new privacy laws or have a critical data breach, the biggest impact may not be financial. It could be the loss of trust to your brand.
At Rocket Mortgage, we live by our culture, the foundation which is our ISMs, 19 philosophies that guide how we act. So, naturally, when we set out on this journey to rethink our data privacy approach, we started with our culture. Two of our ISMs provided guidance that served us particularly well in this process:
Every Client. Every Time. No Exceptions. No Excuses.
This philosophy means that everything starts and ends with the client, and it’s up to every person in this organization to do everything in their power to help our clients have the best experience possible.
Our strategy starts with a focus and true commitment to creating the best data privacy experience possible. If you really care about your clients, focus on creating a simple process and client-centric experience for someone to manage their data privacy preferences.
Do The Right Thing.
Straight to the point, this philosophy is about looking at all the variables and potential outcomes and coming up with the right thing to do. Looking at these data rights, our first decision was to identify what the ‘right thing’ was to do. Examining the spirit of the CCPA and the forces driving it, we agree with what the law was seeking to establish: It’s the client’s data, not ours. Therefore, we needed to figure out a way to not just obey the letter of the law, but its spirit and intent.
We believe the right thing to do is to empower our clients, and we believe that trust is earned. This is the cultural framework we’re using to help us design the right data privacy experience for our clients. To achieve this, we’re giving our clients the highest level of transparency and control possible over their data while also ensuring it’s protected at the highest level.
The future is one where the consumer wants are driving this policy and pushing companies in this direction. Consumers are becoming more empowered than ever to take control of their data, with more access to information and tools than they’ve ever have. Is your company ready to take on this challenge?
Companies that focus on giving me more control, with more transparency, more choice, more flexibility and more trust, will be the brands I gravitate toward and will want to do business with in the future. | https://medium.com/rocket-mortgage-technology-blog/navigating-the-california-consumer-privacy-act-ccpa-what-you-need-to-know-about-compliance-for-5b572fa8b50 | ['Rocket Mortgage Technology'] | 2020-05-29 19:47:48.301000+00:00 | ['Fintech', 'Ccpa Compliance', 'Data Privacy', 'Ccpa', 'Data'] |
The Various Advantages of Service Level Agreement for Businesses with Maps | The Various Advantages of Service Level Agreement for Businesses with Maps
To ensure smooth service delivery of managed services, one should look to service level agreements that promise successful partnership between business and msp. Braden Martin Oct 22, 2020·3 min read
In a competitive IT service environment, businesses can choose from hundreds of local managed IT service providers in Phoenix. If you want to stand out, you need to have a service level agreement (SLA) that documents the rules, regulations, project details, and policies clearly and in a crisp manner for successful service implementation towards both parties.
Advantages of SLA between businesses and MSP
1. Attainable goals
SLAs are a great way to demonstrate your business’s value, but you never want to portray a wrong image of the nature of your products and services. With a legal document by your side, you mention clearly the things you’d do for your customers and what not!
In this way, you leave very little scope for misinterpretation. You set attainable goals and objectives including resolution time, troubleshooting practices, tech support duration, and so on.
In this way, you don’t end up doing more or less than required. Fair play is ensured on both sides and smooth business functioning is promised.
2. Customer perception
If you can’t prove your value to your customers, there’s no use of running a business. It’s all about forming a relationship between you and your customer businesses. When both parties trust each other, that’s how they grow together.
If a managed IT service in Phoenix AZ fails to document legal practices properly and fails at formalities, it can be said that they’ll equally fail to support you in the long run.
When you set up a SLA, you stand apart as you take your values and obligations seriously towards your clients and customers.
3. Professionalism
Professionalism is a generic term that is used in every other business organization, but hardly followed diligently. This word roots out from basic traits such as trust, values, worthiness, timely service, and so on.
SLA helps you show professional care towards your customers. It also puts you a step ahead of your competitors.
Your SLA isn’t a one-off document. It’s a process. With every meeting that takes place, you should regularly review and update the agreement.
4. Transparency
Be aware that a SLA is not a marketing or human resource or sales document. Don’t take it as a rule book or use casual language. Be extremely precise in your duties and assets.
Don’t put anything that you might not be able to fulfill later. One might try to say stuff that adds prosperity to his/her business but if you fail to stand on your promises shows disagreement.
Take all the guesswork out of your business relationship and prepare a SLA that is true to your service and value proposition. No grey area, just black or white. If you give it to a teenager, the person should be able to understand it crystal clear!
5. Save Time
People and businesses have unrealistic expectations. This is true everywhere, you can’t deny that. Dealing with unfair demands from time to time can lower your productivity and increase stress on your team exponentially.
Your SLA marks clearly the days and hours you are going to invest for the respective project. This way, your team can think clearly and perform at their best with regular breaks.
6. Protection
At some time, if you find yourself in a conflict or dispute, your best friend during such times is your SLA. It gives you protection and ultimate peace of mind.
For example, if your business client has failed to pay you because he thinks you didn’t add the necessary features in the project, you can refer to the obligations mentioned in the SLA to clear the doubts. | https://medium.com/@bradenmartin/the-various-advantages-of-service-level-agreement-for-businesses-with-maps-90c6966af01a | ['Braden Martin'] | 2020-10-22 05:25:52.159000+00:00 | ['Maps', 'Business Strategy', 'Managed It Services', 'Service Level Agreement'] |
Statistical Learning Theory Part 1 | Statistical Learning Theory Part 1
Introduction to Statistical Learning Theory
Introduction
In the 1920s, Fisher described different problems of estimating functions from given data as the problems of parameter estimation of specific models and suggested the Maximum Likelihood method for estiamting the unknown parameters in all these models.
Glivenko and Cantelli proved that the empirical distribution function converges to the actual distribution function and Kolmogorov found the asymptotically exact rate of this convergence to be exponentially fast and independent of the unknown distribution function.
These two events gave birth to two main approaches to statistical inference, Parametric and Non-parametric inference. Parametric inference aims to create simple statistical methods of inference that can be usedfor solving real-life problems. Non-parametric inference on the other hand, aims to find one inductive method for any problem of statistical inference.
Parametric inference is based on the assumption that the processes generating the stochastic properties of the data and the function whose finite parameters needs to be estimated are known to the person handling the data and for this one adops the maximum Likelihood method.
Non-parametric inference on the other hand, assumes that one does not have a priori information about the process or the function to be approximated, and thus finding a method for approximating the function from the data is necessary.
The three beliefs that forms the basis of classical parametric paradigm are:
To find a functional dependency from the data, it is possible to find a set of functions, linear in their parameters, that contains a good approaximation to the desireed function, and the number of free parameters describing this set is small. The statistical law underlying the stochastic component of most real-life problems involving large number of random components is described by the normal law. The Maximum Likelihood method is a good tool for estimating parameters.
However, the parametric inference paradigm has its own shortcomings.
Curse of Dimensionality : Increasing the number of dimensions increases the required amount of computational resources exponentially. Statistical components of Real-life problems distributions are described by only classical statistical distribution functions. Maximum Likelihood method does not perform best for some simple problems of density estimation.
In 1958, after F. Rosenblatt suggested the Perceptron for solving the simple learning problems, several different learning machines were suggested. The genral induction principle that these machines implemented was the so-called Empirical Risk Minimization (ERM) principle. The ERM principle suggests a decision rule (an indicator function) that minimizes the number of training errors.
However, the issues which drove the developement of the ERM theory, that is, to describe the necessary and sufficient conditions for which the ERM method defines functions that converges to the best possible solution with an increasing number of observations and to estimate both the probability of error for the function that minimizes the empirical risk on the given set of training examples and how close this probability (of error) is to the smallest possible for the given set of functions. The resulting theorems described the Qualitative model and the Generalization ability of the ERM principle respectively.
To construct the general theory of ERM method for pattern recognition, a generalization of the Glivenko-Cantelli-Kolmogorov theory was made:
For any given set of events, to determine whether the uniform law of large numbers holds. If uniform convergence holds, to find the bounds for the nonasymptotic rate of uniform convergence.
These bounds are generalizations of Kolmogorov’s bound in two respects :
They must be valid for a finite number of observations. They must be valid for any set of events.
This theory gave rise to the concept of capacity for a set of events (a set of indicator functions). Out of these, the concept of VC dimension is of particular importance. VC dimension of a set of events characterizes the variability of the set of events. Both the necessary and sufficient conditions of consistency and the rate of convergence of the ERM principle depend on the capacity of the set of events implemented by the learning machine.
For any level of confidence, an equivalent form of the bounds for the rate of uniform convergence define bounds on the probability of the test error simultaneously for all functions of the learning machine as a function of the number of training errors, of the VC Dimension of the set of functions implemented by the learning machine and of the number of observations. Achieving this form of bounds has two requirements — to minimize the number of training error and to use a set of functions with a small VC dimension. The above two requirements are contradictory. That is, to minimize the number of tranining errors, one needs to choose from a wide set of functions, rather than a narrow set with small VC dimension. Hence, finding the best guaranteed solution requires making a compromise between the accuracy of approximation of the training data and the capacity (VC dimension) of the set of functions, that is used to minimize the number of errors. This idea of minimizing the test error by making a trade-off between these two factors was formalized by introducing a new induction principle, known as the Structured Risk Minimzation principle.
Two important points in connection with the capacity concept :
Capacity determines both the necessary and sufficient conditions for consistency of learning processes and the rate of convergence of learning processes nad thus reflects intrinsic properties of inductive inference. Naive notions of complexity does not reflect capacity properly.
In many real-life problems, the goal is to find the values of an unknown function only at points of interest (test set). To do this, first we find an estimation of the function from a given set of functions using inductive inference, and then we use that function to evaluate the values of the unknown function at the points of interest. Thus, we solve a problem which is more general in nature than we need to solve. But in cases where we have limited amount of data, we cannot estimate the values of the function at all points of its domain but can estimate the values of the unknown function reasonably well at given points of interest. This type of inference is called transductive inference. | https://medium.com/the-owl/statistical-learning-theory-part-1-aa00d522557e | ['Siladittya Manna'] | 2020-07-21 10:54:31.585000+00:00 | ['Mathematics', 'Machine Learning', 'Statistics'] |
Top 5 Challenges to Developing Application with Mean Stack? | The Web application has become a business requirement for the hour. With the growing active involvement of people on the internet, things take a turn in which people expect things online. All are supposed to be available with a finger, be it shopping, ordering food, or booking a taxi.
This has led to companies taking the form of web applications to develop their online presence. Web applications, therefore, have a major effect on organizations and are considered critical. Since the customers directly participate and decide the revenue factor afterward, it is important to ensure that web applications are developed as efficiently as possible.
You now need to concentrate on the technologies you use to build your Web app to ensure that it is stable and impacts customers effectively. Stacks are one of the most commonly spoken factors in web application growth. The choice of the right technology stack for your web application is the first step to creating your business’s successful web applications.
MEAN Stack could be a good option to create your web app. In this post, we will address the 5 main reasons why MEAN Stack will make your Web application a suitable option.
5 reasons why you should choose a MEAN Stack for the development of web applications
Here are the reasons why the MEAN Stack is a good choice for the construction of your web application:
Low cost of development
MEAN Stack offers you a rich ecosystem for the development of your web application, which also for free. As it is an open-source of nature, you can save a lot of money that will buy licenses. It would be the development significantly.
As it is very scalable and offers full code sharing and the ability to reuse it in the battery, you can also save a lot of time and resources that build the code from scratch each time. And in business, time means money, as you would finish delivering faster.
As you can start your product faster, you get the advantage of time on your side, so you can invest more time and money in the marketing of your product.
MVP Faster Development and High Scalability
When the MEAN stack offers a lot of additional frames, libraries, and reusable code modules in the battery, you can easily build a minimum viable product (MVP) in a short period. This helps you start as soon as possible, where you can get feedback and a ladder due to the customer’s responsibility.
MEAN STACK is very scalable, which is suitable for the requirement of a modern business that develops on the idea of accelerated growth.
More flexibility
MEAN Stack offers a lot of flexibility towards the developer, where you can quickly develop applications to a single page that can double as complimentary commercial applications. For such products, the resource condition remains low, which is profitable for companies.
High performance
Web applications developed using MEAN Stack offer high performance, which outperforms the applications developed using other technologies.
Easy availability of resources
Hire dedicated MEAN Stack developers in India is not very difficult and is available on the market. We can find a good and certified developer qualified in a MEAN stack compared to other stacks of development.
The next step
Although MEAN Stack has a lot to offer as a web application development stack, you must use them for the right use cases for the best results. Some of the most appropriate use cases include web applications that have high scalability requirements, one-page web applications, business applications, complementary business applications, applications that use large data, Real-time applications such as social media platforms, and much more.
But with the appropriate use case, it is also very crucial that you choose the right business to develop your web application using Mean Stack. If you still have trouble finding the hire MEAN Stack programmers in India for your web business web application, your search ends here.
DxMinds Innovation Labs is one of the main companies offering MEAN Stack development services and has provided highly functional applications for its customers.
DxMinds is a cutting edge offshore development company in India that creates top-notch software applications that are suitable for the customer’s business requirements. We are fully adapted to provide services to increase IT, staff, in a wide range of areas, including e-commerce, health, and Edu-tech.
We provide full-time, part-time, and hourly placement services for your specific needs in the MEAN Stack Development with direct access to the MEAN stack resource, the minimum number of hours of man guaranteed, hours of Flexible work to your business. Periodic needs and reports to keeping things clear.
Contact us to know how you can hire MEAN stack developers in India for your start-up here. | https://medium.com/@davidhook333666/top-5-challenges-to-developing-application-with-mean-stack-90ac767e398 | [] | 2020-12-21 13:45:29.893000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Meanstack Developer', 'Web App Development', 'Business', 'App Development'] |
Subscription Conniption | Subscription Conniption
Podcasters should banish the verb “subscribe” from our free service MegaphonePods Follow Apr 12, 2019 · 4 min read
By Andy Bowers
Do you know why podcast hosts ask their listeners to “subscribe to this show in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, etc…”? Do the hosts even know why? Was there some meeting of the medium’s founders in which they carefully weighed competing verbs and decided, “Yes! Subscribe is just the word we need to make podcasting easy and intuitive”?
There wasn’t any such meeting. In fact, “subscribe” in this context predates podcasting, and it’s only because those of us who worked in the medium in those early days didn’t fight hard enough to change it that you, the podcasters of 2019, are saddled with this terrible word today. We failed you, and I for one am sorry.
“Subscribe” in this context is a vestige of a technology that pre-dated podcasting. It’s a word that, to any normal person, suggests a paid service, yet it has become the preeminent verb in our free, ad-supported ecosystem. How did we let that happen?!
The “subscribe” we know and hate today comes from RSS, a kind of web feed still used to distribute podcasts to your listening app. RSS is basically just a list of periodic content that the publisher can update at any time. For a while, you could get free print articles from various newspapers, magazines and blog posts via RSS, and it was great in a pre-smartphone world. You “subscribed” to the feed — by pasting the URL into a special RSS reader or, later, a browser plug-in — and voila! Whenever a new story was posted it appeared automatically in your queue. RSS was around for years before it was modified to include MP3 files, which suddenly made podcasting possible.
RSS for text never went mainstream, so the ill-chosen word “subscribe” didn’t really matter. But when podcasting adopted the RSS standard it also inherited that verb.
In 2005, Apple launched its podcast service in iTunes. It was a landmark and overwhelmingly positive moment for the medium, but Apple’s decision to label its action button “Subscribe” enshrined the word in our minds and our metadata. It meant that people who had been shopping for paid music downloads in one part of iTunes could wander over to the new podcast section, see the word “subscribe,” and quite reasonably conclude these too were downloads that required you to fork over some hard-earned cash. Sure, some people began to figure out that it was a free subscription, but those people were already interested enough to look past the word’s obvious first connotation.
For years, as the head of Slate’s podcast arm, I tried to fight this misunderstanding by asking our hosts to say “Subscribe for free in iTunes…”, but I think it had almost no impact. After all, most of the people who heard that were already regular podcast listeners. They already knew how much it cost.
We will never know how many potential listeners have arrived at a podcasting app, seen the word “subscribe,” and departed again, uninterested in adding yet another monthly charge to their credit cards. I’ve long thought this was a non-trivial issue for a medium whose consumer usage has only been growing by only a few percentage points a year until very recently. But now we have real evidence of the problem, thanks to the Podcast Consumer 2019 survey by Edison Research.
Edison asked non-podcast listeners why they haven’t gotten on the bandwagon. 38%, more than a third, answered that it was because “You have to pay to subscribe to podcasts.” The word is right there in the question itself! Why wouldn’t you assume that? | https://medium.com/megaphonepods/subscription-conniption-255dd4519591 | [] | 2019-04-13 00:15:04.771000+00:00 | ['Podcasting', 'Podcast', 'Slate’s podcast arm', 'Food For Thought'] |
Where does the impetus for change come from? | Then along came Netflix.
Excerpt from presentations I’ve given over the last couple of years about how some companies evolve, and others die.
Netflix had a very different delivery model. They started with an online service where you chose DVDs (not VHS) and had them shipped to your house. You watched the video when you wanted, and dropped them back in the mail when you were done, at which time, the next videos in your queue would get shipped. There was no late fee. The smaller, flat DVDs were easily mailed and Netflix likely saved money on real estate — they didn’t have retail locations. When I first tried Netflix, the asynchronous nature of the service was sort of weird. You would set up a queue which you had to manage but often you’d get a movie you had chosen some days after you wanted to view it. Blockbuster provided immediate satisfaction. You popped over to a store, found a movie you wanted to watch, maybe grabbed some food to cook or take-out and that was your evening.
There is a robust podcast on the topic of Blockbuster vs Netflix here. The podcast delves deep into the internal strife that Blockbuster was experiencing, starting with the antagonism between, Carl Icahn, a board member, and John Antioco, the CEO. In 2007, it actually looked like Blockbuster was doing well. Netflix had offered to buy Blockbusters subscribers and subscriptions were going up. They were short of the number they needed to break even though so money was being spent marketing to gain subscribers and a huge sum had been spent to gain parity with Netflix and support their digital presence.
Playing catch-up can be exhausting.
Two years earlier, in 2005, while I was at frog, Blockbuster came to us and wanted to enhance their online presence and the race to parity was their priority.
We pointed out numerous visual issues with their site including:
Page from a frog presentation on the Blockbuster vision we presented.
The Blockbuster ticket logo was set against a blue background which obscured the visual of the logo. It gets lost in that circle graphic.
The dimensional graphics (back then, designers weren’t calling it skeuomorphic) were slower to load, took up a huge amount of screen real estate, and were challenging to render consistently across browsers.
The placement of navigational elements like Movies and Games tabs and the less noticeable ‘sign-in’ link to the right get a little lost in the header of the screen. Sign-in is an important call to action as the sites functionality hinged on subscriptions.
Also, their product was movies, yet look at how small the movie thumbnails appear, in contrast to the rest of the page? There were numerous other issues.
Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works. — Jobs
Importantly, we were more concerned with how the site and service worked, rather than the poorly presented visuals. In a document we shared a number of ideas Blockbuster could implement to surpass Netflix and other competitors.
We specifically told them that streaming was the future and strongly suggested that they should consider this but they flat out refused to see that this was a viable business. And to be fair, we likely didn’t present a cogent business argument or show them a prepared roadmap to make it successful. We told them to “build a destination and community” at a time that was ripe for online social interactions including a “Blockbuster block party” where a group could share a movie and chat about it the next day. We suggested a much deeper categorization of movies in order to encourage more rentals. Movies organized around viewers mood, current events, or collated around actors or directors. These are all standard features today. We suggested multiple users for a single account to delineate content that was inappropriate for certain users which has become a standard feature on all the streaming services today. The key suggestion we recommended was to “leverage Blockbusters physical stores to enhance the movie rental experience.”
This last one would have been difficult to pull off given the trouble they had convincing the franchise owners to participate, but it’s perhaps the most compelling. Blockbuster had a physical presence and Netflix did not. This was very much a service design strategy, but Blockbuster wasn’t prepared to implement this deep a revision. Blockbuster was asking franchise store owners to accept mailed DVDs back into the stores for returns. Not only were the staff not trained for this, the store owners knew that the online service was taking away business. Because the stores weren’t owned by Blockbuster, the store owners resented this.
Back to 2007 and Icahn succeeded in ousting Antioco. His successor discontinued efforts in the online business, instead focusing on the stores. They lasted a couple more years and declared bankruptcy in 2011. Ironically, you can view a documentary called The Last Blockbuster on Netflix. | https://uxdesign.cc/where-does-the-impetus-for-change-come-from-7bbd3f088870 | ['Dave Hoffer'] | 2021-09-11 14:04:21.761000+00:00 | ['Business', 'UX', 'Design', 'Innovation', 'Startup'] |
Employees Love the Story, Too — Shep Hyken | Reviews are where they start. High ratings can turn into high interest. Customer commentary in the review-as in how much they are enjoying the product and how they are using the product-can push a potential customer to make the purchase.
There is a similar benefit to employees reading reviews. While they may not be buying the product, the reviews help them buy into the company they work for. It provides validation, credibility and even a sense of pride.
One of our clients asked whether they should share survey results with their team. His question was, “Should they go to everyone in the company or just leadership?
On a regular basis, share your positive reviews with everyone. This could be at a weekly team meeting or even a quarterly event. Some of my clients have reviews and surveys returned daily and choose to share them every day in their morning huddles. While that frequency may be a bit much for many, the idea is that there is a steady flow of sharing, whether it’s daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly.
The good stories are great to share, but what about the bad ones? What about the occasional-at least I hope it’s just occasional-complaint from an unhappy customer? Do you share those? The short answer is, “Absolutely!”
You don’t need to share all negative reviews and complaints, just the ones everyone can learn from. There will be some complaints that are directed to an individual because of a poor attitude. That is not the type of negative review you share with the team. Addressing the individual responsible for the complaint is a teaching and coaching opportunity for that specific employee. The type of reviews and complaints you want to share with the team have to do with customers experiencing a flaw in your process. The lesson on how these are handled is definitely worth sharing.
The accolades are stories you want to share with everyone. After all, everyone loves a good story. The negative comments and complaints along with how they were handled also make for a good story. It’s that second part-how they are handled well-that turns the negative into a positive. That’s the important part-the opportunity for learning-that you want your team to know about.
Everyone loves the story-both your customers and your employees!
Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling business author. For information, contact 314–692–2200 or www.hyken.com. For information on The Customer Focus™ customer service training programs, go to www.thecustomerfocus.com. Follow on Twitter: @Hyken
(Copyright © MMXX, Shep Hyken) | https://medium.com/@hyken/employees-love-the-story-too-shep-hyken-ce9b293b4868 | ['Shep Hyken'] | 2020-12-30 18:44:12.441000+00:00 | ['Empowerment', 'Customer Service', 'Employee Experience', 'Customer Reviews', 'Business Strategy'] |
Natural forms | A procedural landscape rendered in Terragen.
While programs like Rhino, AutoCAD, Solidworks, and Maya (among others) deal with content that we think of as 3D, every representation of and interaction with this content happens on a 2D screen. The software programs mentioned above differ in the way they allow users to convert 2D actions into 3D actions. Users of Solidworks are accustomed to extrude and cut operations, wherein a 3D form is created by sweeping a planar sketch along a path normal to the sketch plane. The most complicated operation I’ve used in Solidworks is the loft feature, which, while sweeping a sketch, varies its cross section. The resulting form is somewhat more complex than an extruded box, but it still contains a cross section parameterized by distance along the sweep path. In other words, it would be very difficult to create a fluffy pillow using Solidworks. Luckily for Dassault Systems, the makers of Solidworks, users of their programs are typically engineers, not animators or sculptors, and thus are happy to work with only fundamental forms.
For those who desire a less dimensionally-constrained workflow, there are programs like Rhino. As part of the customer research process, one question I like to ask is “how would you make a pillow in [insert their CAD program of choice]?” From what I’ve gathered, pillow-making in Rhino is done using lines swept into surfaces. While Solidworks deals primarily with volumes, Rhino works with surfaces. Instead of the planar sketch forming the basis of 3D form-creation, users of Rhino make 3D spline curves and then loft those curves along some other path through 3-space (pardon the jargon, my background is in physics). Mathematically, this works out to defining a parametric surface { x(t, s), y(t, s), z(t, s) } where t parameterizes a spline path at a given point along the loft path s.
Theoretically, this process of defining a surface allows users to create any 3D form their mind can imagine. In this case, however, the tractability of the desired form replaces the limitations of the interface as the bottleneck in the modeling process. Modeling something like a lumpy sphere is fairly straightforward: first, draw a circular arc from one pole of the sphere to the other; use control points to add a few bumps to the arc; define the loft path s to be a circle centered at the midpoint of the line between the two poles, normal to that line, parameterized by angle p; finally, have the amplitude of the bumps be some smooth function of p, with appropriate boundary conditions such that spline(p = 0) = spline (p = 2 pi). Boom, you have a lumpy ball — making a comparable shape with a Solidworks-type interface would be a nightmare.
However, say you dream a little bigger. Say you want to model a dusty old book, with the pages bent and wrinkled, half falling out. Now suppose that book had been resting on a small stone for a long time, so that gravity had induced some overall curvature in the shape of the book. Your mind can probably picture the form I’m describing, but could you model it in Rhino? Maybe, but it would be difficult. Decomposing such a form into curves that can be lofted requires a very experienced mind. For this reason, 3D modelers (myself included) tend to fall into the habit of reproducing the same forms over and over again. Why? Because these are the forms that 1) they know how to make, and 2) their software of choice allows them to make. These are what I refer to as natural forms, as they are a natural function of a given medium.
For example, the forms natural to Solidworks are perpendicular and rectilinear. In Rhino, we see hyperboloid surfaces over and over again, because they are easy to make. Natural forms exist not only in the digital world, but in the physical one as well. Forms that are created in marble differ from those created in papier-mache, simply as an artifact of the different way gravity affects these two materials. To artists who desire complete freedom, the existence of natural forms is a constant nuisance. A sculptor to whom I spoke expressed displeasure over the clumsiness of “clay modes” in current 3D modeling programs, on the basis that they made it difficult to create forms which would be simple to make with real clay. The problem, he thought, lay not with the representation of 3D data, but rather with the interface through which he communicated his artistic intentions to the software.
There exists a normalizing factor when things move to certain softwares. Forms become normalized, curves and surfaces become normalized. A canon of shapes emerges. This is a serious problem for artists who care about discovery and expression through form—for those who believe that everyone has a particular way of drawing or making, and that their personal style of engaging with material is irreplicable. When the medium of creation filters out idiosyncratic tendencies, an artist’s meaning and intention can be lost.
To others, however, the phenomena of natural forms is not inherently problematic. Something I’ve heard from several architects is that Rhino is good for architecture because it’s rational in the way that building materials are rational. What they mean by this sentiment is that the constraints imposed upon them by Rhino aren’t an issue because those are the same constraints imposed upon buildings by the laws of physics. The software forces them to think in a way appropriate for the discipline of architecture, and this results in buildings that can be physically constructed without falling over.
One architect I talked to described her encounter with the natural forms of Grasshopper, a mathematics-based extension to Rhino. Initially, she said, the architecture community was very excited about the program because it allowed them to create “really cool cell-like patterns that had a mathematical basis.” Such forms were previously constructible, but were most likely too difficult to model for anyone to seriously pursue them. Over time, however, these cell-like designs started to pop up everywhere. Architects could tell that a structure had been designed in Grasshopper simply by observing its form. At this point, she noted, some architects started to feel as if they had lost control of the tool, and that their artistic intent was being steamrolled by the natural forms of Grasshopper. Of course, Grasshopper is widely used today, so clearly this erosion of personal style was not a dealbreaker for the architecture community as a whole.
Looking to the future, I anticipate that a whole new class of 3D modelers will emerge. Up until now, 3D modeling has primarily been used as a step in creating physical objects. Architects and engineers have been able to save time and money by modeling forms on the computer before sending them to fabrication. With the rise of virtual reality, however, there is a growing demand for stand-alone 3D models—models that exist purely in the digital world. We’ve already seen a preview of these types of models from the video game and animation industries.
The key difference between what’s coming and what has been is scale. Video game artists and animators have been able to devote their time to crafting characters in meticulous detail because the worlds in which they work are limited in size. They haven’t had to create millions of characters, only hundreds. The environments they create haven’t been galaxies, only worlds. As the improvement in virtual reality technology increases our expectations of virtual landscapes, exponentially more 3D models will be required to keep up with demand. Right now, 3D artists can afford to spend a week on a single character. In the future, they’re going to have to churn out a character an hour.
You might be asking, isn’t this where automation comes in? Yes, to some extent. We’ve already seen procedural generation used to create armies of soldiers in the Lord of the Rings movies, and the landscapes in The Mandalorian. However, automated tools still require human direction. 3D artists of the future will still have to communicate their intentions to computers. No matter the software they use, natural forms will emerge. The question is, what do we want these natural forms to look like? And, more importantly, how does the answer to that question influence our design of 3D modeling software today? | https://medium.com/@telex-robotics/natural-forms-efeb0824539d | ['Tim Foldy-Porto'] | 2020-12-16 20:24:18.774000+00:00 | ['3d Modeling', 'VR', 'AR', 'Extended Reality', 'Haptics'] |
Choosing the Best Small Area Rugs Carpets. | The development of carpets and rugs occurred thousands of years ago. Prehistoric humans made simple clothing from animal skin, wool, and fur to soften rough terrain. Were slaughtered for this cause, and that covering your cave with their pelts might have given you strength and fame. Although many of these early textiles are still in existence, pinpointing their specific origins is difficult. Carpet weavings were able to migrate far from their roots since they became such a profitable commercial product.
The earliest known carpet was uncovered. Before sheep’s wool was brought in the 16th century, cotton was the most common material for flat-weave floor rugs created by Native Americans.
Area Rugs Sizes.
One of the most typical design blunders is buying a rug that is too tiny for the space. Between the margins of the rug and the room’s walls, there should be about 10 to 20 inches of the bare floor in most average-sized rooms. You can go as low as eight inches and as high as 24 inches, depending on the size of the room. In any case, ensure that the rug is centered in the room and that the distance between the rug and the wall on all four sides is the same.
Small Area Rugs can also be used to designate areas. The rules can be a little different if you have an open-concept area or want to layer rugs. Consider the area you want to emphasize and select a size accordingly, but keep in mind that going too big is preferable to going too little. | https://medium.com/@ooptech123/choosing-the-best-small-area-rugs-carpets-65bf103b7fc | [] | 2021-12-16 18:34:53.363000+00:00 | ['Furniture', 'Rugs', 'Lighting'] |
Billion-Dollar Startup Story: Ragy Thomas of Sprinklr | Sprinklr is the embodiment of a tech unicorn. Solution-focused, data-driven, and generating buzz consistently, Sprinklr boasts a valuation far north of $1.8 billion (at the time of this piece). We spoke with the charismatic founder and CEO, Ragy Thomas, about his company’s startup journey and why NYC was the right place to launch.
Founder and CEO Ragy Thomas
Tell us about your company’s beginnings. What did you see (or not see) in the market that led you to launch?
In 2008, I was President of Epsilon Interactive Services Group, a division of Alliance Data Systems that provided email marketing technology and interactive agency services. During this time, I saw that email was changing the way that businesses communicated with customers and realized that the same thing would happen with social media. It was clear that social would create new opportunities and new challenges for how brands communicate with customers.
In 2009, I launched Sprinklr to solve the biggest problem facing every modern enterprise in today’s social world — managing experiences across every single customer touchpoint. Today, Sprinklr provides the most complete social media and customer experience management platform for the enterprise. We help more than 1,200 of the world’s largest brands do marketing, advertising, research, care, and commerce on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and 22 other social channels globally — all on one integrated platform.
What were some of the biggest challenges that your team faced at zero stage?
In the early days of Sprinklr, we were often ridiculed for our strategy. We pursued a platform strategy as opposed to a point solutions strategy, and we were ridiculed for this. If you go back six years, the startup world was going through the notion that you must be really specialized and simple and we just didn’t believe in that. We believed that big businesses needed a comprehensive, unified platform to interact with their customers in a human, intuitive way.
We learned not to get distracted by little things, and focus on the big picture. No matter what’s going on in the market, the philosophy I’ve used to build my business has always been the same: a relentless focus on fundamentals. We’ve focused on revenue growth and creating tangible value for customers with a credible solution to an incredibly pervasive problem. Those are the things that matter, and the things that will always win in the end.
Let’s look at the science behind your product. What makes it different from other offerings in this space?
Sprinklr is the only unified customer experience management platform purpose-built for today’s social world. From the beginning, we set out to build a powerful social media management platform that integrates with an organization’s existing infrastructure and allows employees across every customer-facing department to collaborate with unified data. We provide an external API available to build applications on Sprinklr and have over 100 total connections, including CRM, marketing automation, asset management, profile and message enrichment, and analytics systems.
We pride ourselves in the ability to drive real business results for brands. In fact, the average Sprinklr customer sees a 172% return on their investment in the first year of their contract and 236% in their second year.
Another key differentiator for Sprinklr is our vast relationships with channel partners. Unlike competitors, Sprinklr has a direct relationship and access to more than 21 channel partners, including Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and more. This, along with content for over 120 countries in over 110 languages, paired with the breadth of enterprise platform applications (i.e. Salesforce, SAP, Marketo, Adobe and more) allow brands to achieve a true 360-degree view of the customer by having a presence at every user touchpoint.
Lastly, Sprinklr’s platform is proudly secure for our customers. Leading financial services companies like JPMorgan Chase, Citi, and Wells Fargo depend on Sprinklr because of our governance, compliance and security capabilities. Sprinklr has top-tier security and compliance certifications, such as SOC 1 and 2 certifications, FFIEC, and more.
How do you translate your brand’s message in a way that gets you heard above the noise?
We only have one “true north” at Sprinklr: creating value for our customers. We obsess over it. Sprinklr creates value by helping companies solve their problems, and the Fortune 500 brands we work with have a very big one on their hands: figuring how to engage with each of their customers in a meaningful way, at scale, across every social channel. We provide a unique solution to an obvious problem, and that leads to immense value for our customers.
There is a lot of noise around digital transformation and social media crises, but we don’t feed into the noise. We provide the solution to the noise. And that’s how we get heard.
Let’s talk about brand values. What means the most to your company besides industry success?
Sprinklr is unique in that its core values come directly up from the company’s employees, not down from the boardroom. Our core values are: It’s ok; Sprinkle, don’t shout; Fix it don’t complain; Never ever give up; and Passionately and genuinely care.
These are the personality traits and core values that our company runs on. They’re written on our walls, woven into emails, mentioned in board meetings. They keep us unified.
Success to me is about the people. I want my team to feel empowered, inspired and equipped to tackle any challenge. As we continue to grow and scale as a business, maintaining strong values and a positive culture is critical.
There’s always been this rivalry between Silicon Valley and NYC in tech. What are some tangible benefits to being based in NYC?
New York was an easy choice for me to build our headquarters. My life is here and it’s truly a one-of-a-kind city. The business landscape in New York is incredibly challenging, without a doubt, but it’s the right kind of challenges you need as a startup. If you can do it in New York, you can do it anywhere.
For Sprinklr, we also had a big advantage by being physically close to our prospects. We knew we wanted to target the enterprise and Fortune 500 landscape. Being one of the biggest business meccas in the world, and having a big focus on the advertising and marketing space, it was a perfect fit.
Name one place in your company’s NYC neighborhood (restaurant, cafe, etc) that you and your team just can’t live without.
Many employees in our NYC office occasionally moonlight as karaoke superstars and head to Koreatown for all the karaoke spots. Our office is also close to Bryant Park, which is our year-round destination for grabbing a breath of fresh air and our go-to outdoor spot to hang out and relax. | https://medium.com/the-year-in-media/billion-dollar-startup-story-ragy-thomas-of-sprinklr-4463db94519b | ['Carla Rover'] | 2017-08-19 17:47:12.805000+00:00 | ['Marketing', 'Carla Rover', 'Digital Marketing', 'Sprinklr', 'The Year In Media'] |
System Design — How to query status of 10,000 machines | The general answer is to 1) maintain a queue of 10,000 jobs, each one is to query a machine’s status 2) have a bunch of worker machines run in parallel, retrieving and executing one status querying job at a time.
Following are the steps of getting deeper in this question and ultimately reach a satisfying state.
Step 1 — Naive Approach
A pitfall when the interviewer presents this question is that, he won’t tell you how many machines you can use to do such an operation. Thus, the first impression an inteviewee got is it can be a dead simple a loop.
List<Status> getStatus(List<Host> hosts) {
List<Status> status = Lists.newArrayList();
hosts.forEach(h -> {
status.add(h.getStatus());
})
return status;
}
Step 2 — this is not an algorithm question, THIS IS A SYSTEM DESIGN QUESTION!
The inteviewer will attack you by asking the complexity of the above solution — it’s O(N) . You’ll doubt if there’s any better way. It seems not, because you have to visit each machine and O(N) is the best one you can think of. Can it be O(logN) ??!!
But wait, the only feasible answer is that… this is not an algorithm question, THIS IS A SYSTEM DESIGN QUESTION!
Then it makes sense, since you can make it faster by enabling Parallel Computing !
The naive parallel solution that comes right to your mind is, having multiple worker machines, say 100, each one querying 100 host machines (100 * 100 = 10,000) and forward the query results to UI.
Step 3 — Naive Parallelization
But what if there are huge delays when querying a single machine? It’s not uncommon due to:
huge network latency
request timeout
several host machines are actually dead!
One of the worst case is that, 9000 host machines are healthy and the other 100 are dead, and it happens to be that one of the workers is responsible for querying the 1000 dead machines. Your UI would take forever to show the results!
Step 4 — Determine a timeout
We should have a timeout for each status query!
Him: Well, how long is the timeout?
You: If we have a collected history of how long each request takes, we can make the timeout such that, we can not only ensure most healthy calls are not missed, but also fail on dead machines fast enough
Him: How can you do that? Let’s say we have a distribution graph for you, can you elaborate more?
Step 5 — Cold Start and Load Balancing? -Worker and Task Queue Paramdigm
There are two main problems with this above solution:
1) what about cold start ? What if there’s no historical data? When you are building this from scratch, not optimizing it, then no data is ready for you to reference.
? What if there’s no historical data? When you are building this from scratch, not optimizing it, then no data is ready for you to reference. 2) what about load balancing ? What if some workers finished all their jobs very fast, and don’t have things to do, but some workers still have a ton of work remaining? This can happen easily when a worker gets assigned 100 healthy host machines, and another worker happens to get assigned 100 dead machines
The only feasible way to go further now seems require changing the naive parallel computing paradigm.
And the promising one is the Worker and Task Queue Paradigm , looks like this:
Each worker pulls an uncompleted task from the task queue, and execute it. When finishing it, the worker pulls a new one.
This parallel paradigm greatly reduces the chance of a worker got assigned all dead machines, and therefore greatly reduces the overall expected time for the whole job to finish.
Let’s compare this with the former approach in Step 3 in the case of consecutive dead machines. We are counting how much time it cost to finish the whole job in both ways, based on the following assumption:
Say the first 100 machines are dead, and the other 9900 are good.
The time to process a health machine (time to send requests + double way network communication time + time to process response) is 1s, and that for a dead machine is 5s (because of the standard timeout).
Ignore the time to actually retrieve a task from task queue
In first approach, the worst scenario is that one worker gets all the 100 dead machines. That worker will take 100 * 5 sec to finish, and all the other 99 workers will take 100 * 1 to finish. So the total time to finish the job is max(100 * 5, 100 * 1) = 500 sec.
In the second approach: all 100 workers will pulls each of query job for a dead machine (100 in total), so it takes 5 sec to finish all the dead machine querying jobs in parallel. Then it takes 9900 / 100 = 99 sec to finish all the remaing jobs for healthy machines. The overall time is 5 + 99 = 104 sec, which is far less than 500 sec.
Step 6 — Priority Queue
This is a kind of bonus answer to this specific problem, but is quite common and important to a general task queue. The incentive is about having tasks of different priorities.
You can set the priority by considering weight of different elements.
Summary
Finally, we came up with a quite sound solution for this question.
Have a worker and task queue paradigm
Maintain the queue as a priority queue
Remember this paradigm in the future when you run into similar problems!
References: https://bowenli86.github.io/2016/06/17/system%20design/task%20queue/System-Design-How-to-query-status-of-10-000-machines/ | https://medium.com/system-design/system-design-how-to-query-status-of-10-000-machines-cbbdec008f50 | ['Omar Faroque'] | 2020-09-28 04:20:03.184000+00:00 | ['1m Machine Health Status', 'Million Query Job Status', 'System Design'] |
Why I Found Working With Abandoned Dogs In Spain SO Amazing | Over the 10 months, I spent in Menorca, I wanted to make the most of my experience. I mean, it is a long time to be anywhere, especially when you don’t have any friends and the culture is all new to you. Homesickness is something that lots of people struggle with when they are travelling for extended periods of time, and a remedy that I have found nearly always works is keeping yourself as busy as possible.
The purpose of my stay in Menorca was actually for my degree, I had to take a year out of study and immerse myself in the culture and language of the country I am living in. As well as this you are given the opportunity to experience the working world. Pretty sweet deal if you ask me. I was working in a primary school as a language assistant (the ‘fun teacher’) in the mornings Monday to Thursday. So, I had a lot of free time. I soon discovered that spending ALL my free time drinking beer might be bad for me in the long run, so I decided to do something different.
Also Read: A Quick Guide To Menorca’s Famous Horse Trail
What am I passionate about? Animals. If I hadn’t been so shockingly terrible in the chemistry classroom, I would have become a vet, and spent my life with my arm up a cow’s hoo-ha. Ah, dreams. So, after a swift Google search, I was in contact with the volunteer organiser at the local dog shelter, and she wanted to meet me for a morning beer. Classic Spaniards.
Before I go on about my work as a volunteer, I’ll educate you on the topic of animal welfare in Spain, just so you can get a feel for what we were dealing with.
Furry Friends In Spain
A stereotypical view of Spain would perhaps involve gory bullfighting and an annual party where everyone thinks it’s a good idea to run away from some very dangerous cows in a crowded street (natural selection if you ask me). However, the tradition for bullfighting is on the decline; I have spent many months of my life in Spain and never once have I met someone who has ever a bullfight. It is regarded by many as barbaric, which is a fair opinion to have. Although this is arguably a great step in the right direction, the animals which seem to be suffering more each year are our beloved household pets.
According to , and this can include anything from horses to guinea pigs, dogs to parrots. There are of course many reasons why someone would choose to abandon an animal. It may be that people simply do not have a choice at all. It could be due to a relationship breakdown, or they have to move out and their new landlord doesn’t allow pets. Sometimes people can get very unlucky financially, and with the average dog a study by Royal Canin, 375 pets are abandoned each day in Spain costing 800 euros a year in upkeep , it is not a surprise that people make that hard decision to give their pet to someone else. This is not a problem that is exclusive to Spain either, almost every country in Europe has similar statistics.
But why do they do this?
However, a study by Affinity Fundacion in 2018 researched many facts and figures about the reasons why people are abandoning or giving up their furry friends. According to this study, people abandoning their pets because they lose interest in the animal is up by 10% . That is staggering. They dump them because they are bored. This happens a lot after Christmas time, when people have bought their kids a puppy all cute with a bow on its head, and then January comes — the reality sinks in that you have another life that depends on you, and pees everywhere. This is the reason that Dogs Trust in the UK adopted the slogan ‘a dog is for life, not just for Christmas’. Essentially, think before you buy.
Another interesting development from Affinity Fundacion’s study is that for every dog that was found on the streets or left in a shelter in 2017, . A microchip is inserted under the skin and is connected to an online database that stores the owner’s information. They are becoming more popular these days as tags can easily be lost or removed, and it is a sure way of reuniting a lost dog with its owner. In fact, in the UK, dog owners are required by law to ensure any dog over the age of 8 weeks old wears a microchip, or you could face only 25% were wearing a microchip a hefty fine of up to £500 .
On microchips and their importance
Why is it so important that dogs wear a microchip? I’ll tell ya why! In Spain, there is not a state law which decides what happens to dogs that end up in shelters, it depends on the local councils. In certain areas there is a time limit for the dogs to be claimed before they are put to sleep, sometimes this time limit is only a matter of days, and if your dog is not wearing a microchip you are less likely to get to them in time . Pretty dark stuff, but sadly it does happen.
Is there a solution? Yes! In fact, there is a country which has already achieved this. Holland is the first country to have absolutely 0 abandoned dogs or animals living on the streets, due to extremely tight regulations, which they claim improve the health and wellbeing of people and animals. These regulations include hefty fines for anyone caught abandoning an animal (up to 16k Euros). In addition, taxes on buying specially bred dogs and pure breeds have encouraged people to adopt mixed breeds from the shelters. Neutering your dog became compulsory unless you have a breeding license (which is extremely difficult and expensive to get). The government have also spent a lot of money on campaigns which have helped to educate young people about animal welfare .
Animal Protection in Menorca
Animal Protection in Mahon (Menorca’s capital city) has been running since 2010. They educate people through social media and workshops in primary and secondary schools. They raise funds in order to help get the animals out of the shelter and into foster care or adoptive homes. In 2017 there were 143 dogs and 101 cats in their care . Menorca’s shelter is one of two, the other being in Ciutadella at the other end of the island. Therefore, these statistics barely cover half of the entire island’s abandoned animals.
The Animal Protection in Mahon is separate from the shelter. The shelter is essentially the dog pound which is funded by the local council. The Animal Protection is the charity which helps get the dogs and cats out of the shelter, through adoption or foster homes. There is one based in Mahon and one based in Ciutadella, and the two work very hard in keeping all of the island’s resident pets well-cared for and eventually in loving homes. It’s not just pets though, all kinds of furry and non-furry creatures pass through their care every year. This can even include tortoises!
The furry and non-furry creatures of Menorca
My friends, I have a soft spot for these not-so-soft, shell-carrying reptiles. Tortoises are the cutest non-fluffy things that walk this earth, in my humble opinion. Menorca is lucky enough to have wild tortoises roaming about the place; which is awesome, until a car comes along. Let me tell you, the stereotype of tortoises being slow and steady — wrong. I was leisurely driving along a country road one pleasant afternoon when all of a sudden this shelled creature darted in front of my tyres! Luckily, I managed to miss the crazy thing, but some are not so lucky- that’s where the animal protection comes in. From goats stuck in fences, to stolen cows, to illegal cat poisonings (that really happens), they are always there to help any animal in need.
Social media can save the world (if we try hard enough)
What makes the network of volunteers so effective is their WhatsApp group. It doesn’t sound like much, but every time there was an animal noticed by someone to need special care or even rescuing, a volunteer closest to the area would be notified. It happened in my area once, when a member of the public called in to report a rabbit that seemed injured. We managed to capture the little thing and take it to the vet to be fixed up. Another example of this, is that after I noticed a pregnant looking stray cat on one of the beaches, a volunteer in that village kept an eye out, and ended up hand-rearing some of the kittens, which were eventually rehomed! Countless other animal lives were saved thanks to the volunteers and the handy group chat!
As well as WhatsApp, social media plays a huge part in the Animal Protection’s campaign. They have active accounts on both Facebook and Instagram, which they use as platforms to promote animal care and adoption. It is an important asset to the charity as it keeps people in the know! When I was living there, they had a very important campaign about cleaning up doggy doo-doo, and the problems it can cause to humans, especially young kiddies. This was shared hundreds of times by residents and got a pretty decent response. The charity also posts cute pics of the dogs that are up for adoption, as well as their fundraising events and other important pieces of information that they like to share with the general public.
Canicross
One of the most popular events that they organise to raise money is ‘Canicross’. It is a sponsored run that you can take part in with your four-legged friends! They organise a few of these throughout the year, and plenty of people get involved, including kids. They take place all over the island and you can choose the distance, so it doesn’t have to be anything strenuous if you don’t want it to be! It’s all for charity, after all. I have to say, it is a funny sight, seeing people try and run, as well as control their excitable kids and even excitable dogs.
It takes a lot of people to organise these sorts of events. When I was a volunteer in Menorca, the team was made up of around 120 people, and that was only in Mahon. In Ciutadella they have even more, as there is a higher population density there. As well as the Canicross, there are other fundraising events such as the Christmas markets, where they sell calendars, cards, dog treats etc. and all of the proceeds go towards the Animal Protection.
Gardens and adoption fairs
One of my favourite events we did was the adoption fair. It took place at the local garden centre on a Sunday — so to get the attention of members of the public going about their garden shopping. It worked! We always had people wondering over who didn’t know it was going on until they saw it all happening. It must have looked a bit weird, people having their faces painted, people dressed up in tutus and all manners of strange fancy dress, and amongst all of this — dogs. Dogs everywhere. It was sooooo cute! The dogs from the shelter got to experience freedom for one day, as they were the special guests at the event. It was a chance for people to meet the dogs in person, cuddle them and ask the volunteers questions about their character etc.
One of the best moments I remember from the first adoption fair I participated in, was seeing a dog who was normally very shy fall in love with an eight-year-old boy. She was hiding behind the volunteer she was with and this little boy went up to her, and she just lay on her back and let him cuddle her. I died. The funniest thing was seeing his parents, who gave each other this look, ‘well I guess we have to take this dog home’. Mwahaha. Emotional blackmail is a truly effective tactic.
The Story Of Pelusa (Fluff)
I am now going to tell you a very sweet story about a little dog named Fluff, who was saved by my overwhelming love for her. She stayed with me for 2 months while I lived in Menorca, and she became my best bud; I even got close to adopting her and bringing her home to the UK!
Pelusa was ended up in the dog shelter in Mahon after being tied up outside (I know!). The worst part is that she was left outside during the night and so wasn’t found until the next morning, freezing and completely soaked (Menorca is very wet in winter). She is a Catalan sheepdog — which kind of looks like an insanely hairy collie — black and white, and covered in tumours. As well as tumours she had mastitis and was severely underweight. The poor dog was having an absolute nightmare of a time.
Finding Pelusa
When she was discovered by the dog warden, they took her to the vet to get her fixed up. As her teeth were in such bad condition they really couldn’t say how old she was; they guessed anywhere between 7 and 12…which is like saying a human is between 49 and 84! The only thing they could tell us for sure is that she was used for breeding, and was probably dumped because she stopped having puppies.
Having had some TLC, she was popped back in the shelter, in the hope that she would be able to find a new loving family. I met her during my volunteering hours when I went to walk and socialise the residents of the shelter, and thought she was beautiful. However, behind the cute fluffy face, was a very sad dog. She wouldn’t make eye contact with any of the volunteers and rarely ate treats given to her. We had gotten to a point where we were able to have a group of dogs playing out safely together, and although Pelusa tolerated other dogs, she would never play with them or even wag her tail.
Becoming Friends
We hoped that a new family would mend her broken heart, so we put out appeals for adoption or foster home. Unfortunately, her bad luck didn’t end there. Further vet checks after a deterioration of her health told us that she had many tumours and was unlikely to live the next month, and as she was too weak it would be risky to operate. This took everyone back and it was decided that there was a need to find a hospice for her to live in a comfy home so she could go in peace. My housemates and I took on this challenge and figured that we would be doing something good.
When she arrived at our apartment, she was very weak and clearly stressed, going around and around the kitchen in circles that made us all dizzy. This went on for a few days, and we could see signs that she was deteriorating. That was, until one day, I opened a packet of smoked salmon, her ears shot up and she was at my side, wagging her scraggly tail. I’m not an advocate for feeding dogs from the table, but she just looked so cute and happy and wiggly waggly. I gave her that salmon, and our friendship bloomed.
Pelusa On The Rise
She was wagging her tail more and more each day, devouring her food, and started trotting around the park. We could take her on longer walks down to our favourite restaurant and she began to make a reputation for herself as the fluffiest, happiest dog around. People couldn’t believe that she was so unwell: “What? She smiles so much!”, “She’s so lovely!”. One of my favourite days out with her was when we had decided to take her to the beach, and she went nuts, running around all over the place — a few weeks before this she couldn’t even make it up a few steps!
This apparent miracle and sudden change in character and health were so incredible for all of us. Having taken her back to the vet, it was decided that she was in fact going to live a lot longer than expected, but, as I was to leave the island soon to work in Canada, we needed to find a permanent home for her.
A proud foster mummy
Pelusa had become Menorca-internet-famous in the time that we had her, due to all the photos and videos we had been posting on Facebook, therefore finding people who were interested in rehoming her was very easy. As Pelusa and I had become VERY attached, the charity said to me that my opinion mattered hugely in the rehoming process, which was a great honour for me. It was very hard to let her go, as it’s not what I had been preparing for, but I was so happy that we had been able to bring her from the brink of what was essentially doggy depression.
We were at an adoption fair when the head of volunteers approached Pelusa and I, with a man who was very interested in adopting Pelusa. The next week we met him and his dog, Stitch, in the park, and they all really hit it off. It was an easy decision to make! It has now been 8 months since she moved in with her new family, and she became well enough that they could operate and remove her tumours! She is thriving in her new home with her boyfriend Stitch, and I am a very proud foster mummy.
HOY ES UN GRAN DÍA PARA TODOS LOS QUE CONOCEN A PELUSA, UNA PERRA ENCANTADORA Y QUE LLEGÓ ESTE INVIERNO A LA PERRERA… Protectora d’Animals Maó
How can you help?
This story luckily had a happy ending and would not have been possible without the work of volunteers and the money raised by the general public (and my strong love of dogs). Attitudes towards animals are gradually changing, thanks to the campaigns in schools and awareness spread on social media. As well as this, we are hoping that in years to come laws will be changed and enforcement will be able to tighten around those who mistreat animals. Perhaps one day everyone in Europe can follow the example of Holland!
One day when I am rich and famous I will go back to Menorca and adopt all of the dogs — if you want to support me in this, get in touch! | https://medium.com/@Travel.Earth/why-i-found-working-with-abandoned-dogs-in-spain-so-amazing-d382b6268809 | [] | 2020-02-27 06:27:06.468000+00:00 | ['Travel Writing', 'Travel', 'Dogs', 'Spain', 'Animal Welfare'] |
A tale in the life of a UXer — 2. Working with a new entrepreneur | Working with a new entrepreneur
This was my second project in the Small Business Digitisation program. It was a slightly complicated one and my colleague and I had four weeks to work on it.
Business Demands:
The owner had started a consulting business and wanted us to modify the existing business website that she had built sometime ago. Besides, she had recently created a personal website and wanted the business site to appear as a dropdown on her personal site.😲🤔. Both the websites were on WordPress and had different themes.
It seemed a little complicated. An initial brainstorming with the entire group led us to arrive at the decision that brand integrity was the need of the hour. This was charted to be done through design elements such as color, typography and other visual elements. The final outcome was to have the business site connected to her personal site and to have both the sites look visually similar.
My Role: Since WordPress is not a collaborative platform, only one person could work on it at a time through screen sharing while the other stayed online. We would take turns to get the work done.
Key Lessons Learned:
Problem 1: New entrepreneurs are far more impatient to view results. Rather than keeping to the initial list of demands, she would randomly throw suggestions off the top of her head during our weekly meetings. As inexperienced newbies, we took it seriously. But, as we moved forward, we were confused as to what she wanted and what we had to prioritise. Moreover, keeping the site modifications as drafts rather than publishing them without prior approval made it difficult to preview the exact changes. By the end of Week 2, all of this had snowballed into a lack of trust because her overall expectations did not seem to have been met.
Solution: Despite keeping notes for every meeting at our end, we requested her to send a bulleted weekly to-do list in the order of priority after the meetings. As for entrepreneurs, stopping the flow of ideas is not the solution. It lies in being more organised and phased out.
Communication is a key factor that determines success in any project. However minor a meeting, sharing meeting notes among all the attendees after every meeting serves as a great resource at any time during the project.
Problem 2: Each of the two sites had a different theme. To make one look like the other actually meant recoding one theme to reflect the other.😲😳. Yes! Complicated stuff but that’s just what we did. As inexperienced newbies, she had asked us to make a decision on whether we could do this or if we wanted her to purchase the theme. Firstly, we did not sign up to make major investment decisions for her business. Secondly, we found it foolish to make one theme like another when the other is already available. Last but not the least, we wanted to try our best to save her money. We would often brief her about the problems we faced and communicated to her that it was in our best interest to keep it economical for her. This went on for a whole 3 weeks at the end of which the heat was high at both ends and a decision was finally made to purchase a new theme.
Solution: We should have documented our thoughts in the form of alternatives and presented it to her to make the final decision. The three alternatives should have been:
A calculation of the estimated website maintenance expenses the she would incur annually on both the sites. To have just one site where she can have a page exclusively about herself. To have the sites exclusive of each other.
I use the word should because we spent the last week working on fulfilling the initial basic demands and could not deliver more. The project seemed a failure but this solution handling will stay with us forever throughout our professional career. I thank the administrators for helping us see through the problem. And a final takeaway —
Reach out to the project admins when stuck.
In hindsight, I thought this was the minimum basic we could have done to have avoided a major project management roadblock. For shorter timelines, sooner, the better!
As for entrepreneurs, 100% outsourcing may not assure 100% results.
Thank you🙂 | https://medium.com/my-brain-globe/a-tale-in-the-life-of-a-uxer-2-696d45e1f69b | ['Gaayathri Sankar'] | 2020-12-20 22:49:08.344000+00:00 | ['UX', 'Volunteering', 'Project Management', 'Problem Solving', 'Students'] |
NewsOrb360 News And Films Production Private Limited | NewsOrb360 News And Films Production Private Limited
CLOSEST DWARF PLANET TO EARTH FOUND TO BE GEOLOGICALLY ACTIVE
Source: NewsOrb360.Com
Named after the Roman Goddess of the harvest, the icy dwarf planet Ceres has been found to be geologically active after close examination of NASA’s Dawn spacecraft’s final findings before its death. Ceres, despite being less than 1/3 of the size of our Moon, apparently has ice volcanoes and remnants of an ancient ocean, potentially even harbouring liquid water.
The craft’s findings suggest that Ceres has salty liquid water seeping out on its surface, as well as a diverse landscape of hills and mounds that formed when the ice melted as a result of an asteroid impact 20 million years ago, and subsequently refroze to form the landscape, while also leaving a 91 km-wide crater known as Occator on the surface. These findings also support the existence of something known as ‘cryovolcanoes’ on the dwarf-planet, erupting with ice-cold salty mud or slush instead of the molten lava we are used to on Earth. Dawn even spotted hints of an eruption of brine within the past few decades.
“We’ve provided strong evidence that Ceres is geologically active in the present, [or] at least in the very recent past,” said Dawn’s principal investigator Carol Raymond, the manager of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Small Bodies Program in Pasadena, California. “And there’s some tantalizing evidence that it could be ongoing.” This also means that the dwarf planet has, at some point, had all the building blocks for organic life at some point: liquid water, energy and carbon-based organic molecules, theoretically making the planet inhabitable for at least some time after the asteroid collision.
The presence of brine pockets (as detected by Dawn) also seemingly point to the past existence of a planet-spanning ocean. This is possible despite the frigid temperatures, as dissolved salt can keep water in a liquid state even at sub-zero temperatures. Fortunately, Ceres is located relatively close to Earth, orbiting the Sun as part of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, making it an ideal target for future research. | https://medium.com/@newsorb360/newsorb360-news-and-films-production-private-limited-dd4d8bec2ae9 | [] | 2020-08-20 06:47:35.496000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Technology News', 'Planets', 'Geopolitics', 'News'] |
Getting Started With Spring Boot … Part 1 | Spring is an application framework that provides complete infrastructure for the development of Java applications. It’s packed with nice features such as Spring MVC, Spring JDBC, Spring Security, Spring ORM etc.
These modules reduce significant time in the development of applications. For example, In early days of Java web development, We need to write a lot of boiler plate code to insert data into database. But with Spring JDBC it is reduced to very few lines in terms of configurations.
The most important feature of Spring is Dependency Injection. At the core of all Spring modules is Dependency Injection or Inversion of Control(IOC). With DI and IOC we can develop loosely coupled applications. And the loosely coupled applications can be easily unit tested.
One significant overhead with spring is that the amount of configuration that has to be done while developing applications
Spring Boot solves this problem with the combination of Auto Configuration and Starter Projects.
Spring Boot:
Spring boot is an open-source Java Framework used to build production grade Spring Applications. By definition, it is an application framework and inversion of control container for Java Platform. We’ll discuss about inversion of control in our upcoming posts.
Essentially Spring Boot is a project built on top of Spring framework i.e an extension of Spring framework which eliminated the configurations required to setup an Spring application.
source : javatpoint
Enough with the introductions and definitions, Let’s kick start the development of Spring Boot application with a sample app
We can easily create and run a spring boot app in 15 minutes. All we have to do is visit Spring Initializr and create a spring boot project with the dependencies of our choice.
source : https://spring.io
We will use two dependencies, Spring Web and Spring dev tools ( tools highly useful for spring development)
Click Generate, download the zip and unpack it into a folder in your computer.
We can run the spring boot app directly without any IDE by navigating to the folder and using the command
./mvnw spring-boot:run
in Mac or
mvnw spring-boot:run
in windows.
In this post, we will see importing your project into eclipse and running the spring boot app via eclipse
Open Eclipse App and go to Help → MarketPlace Search for Spring Tools . Install the Spring tools plugin and restart the eclipse.
Now go to File → Import → Maven ( Existing Maven Projects) → Browse the folder location → finish
Now you can see the folders & files present in the project in Project Explorer
we can see two classes generated automatically SpringGettingStartedApplicaiton.java & SpringGettingStartedApplicationTests.java — Spring boot by default generates test folder and encourage us to write unit test for our code.
Now click on the SpringGettingStartedApplication.java file we can see a main function. We are going to write a sample get API and run it as an spring boot app via eclipse
Initial Code auto generated in spring app
Detour @SpringBootApplication annotation:
SpringBootApplication — its an annotation unique and newly created in spring boot that comprises of three annotation provided in spring @EnableAutoConfiguration, @ComponentScan, and @Configuration.
Enable Auto Configuration annotation specifies the spring boot to look through the dependencies and configuring them automatically reducing lot of work for developers ( for example configuring data source if hibernate jar is present). It is implemented in spring-boot-autoconfigure.jar ( ref : https://www.springboottutorial.com/spring-boot-auto-configuration )
Component Scan annotation specifies the application where to look for beans(components) i.e Once you define a Component Scan for a package, Spring would search the package and all its sub packages for components/beans.
(note : If all the packages you develop in your application is sub packages of the main package @SpringBootApplication is enough. Or else you have to explicitly mention component scan annotation)
Configuration annotation on top of any class to declare that this class provides one or more @Bean methods and may be processed by the Spring container to generate bean definitions and service requests for those beans at runtime. | https://medium.com/@writethatcode/getting-started-with-spring-boot-part-1-38cd17d03484 | ['Lakshmanan Subbiah'] | 2020-06-07 06:34:02.883000+00:00 | ['Eclipse', 'Spring', 'Getting Started', 'Spring Boot', 'Web App Development'] |
Delivering Great Customer Service | Delivering Great Customer Service
The Importance of Paying Attention To Your Clients
Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash
It was Sunday, my day off. One of only 2 days to decompress and get all of my personal things done. The phone rang. It was an attorney from my firm calling because she couldn’t log on to our network from her home. I couldn’t see her screen to see what she was doing, so I tried the usual troubleshooting techniques to solve the problem, but they didn’t work. I couldn’t be sure if it was what she was doing or a true technical problem.
I knew her well enough to know that she wasn’t a whiz with computers. Finally, she told me that when her husband got home she’d have him call me since he was more familiar with computers.
A minute after we hung up, my phone rang again. It was her again. She started telling me how frustrated she was because I didn’t know what I was doing. I was so stunned I didn’t say anything. I realized that she didn’t know she was talking to ME. She thought she had called another attorney to complain. Finally, I asked her if she knew who she was talking to. She paused, realizing what she’d done. Then she started apologizing.
After we hung up the second time, I thought about how to act at work the next day. Her office was right across from mine, so I couldn’t avoid her. It upset me that someone who I thought liked me both professionally and personally would talk about me like that.
I decided that all I could do was accept her apology, tell her that I realized that she was frustrated, and that I knew these things happened. I made a mental note not to tell her anything too personal in the future. Then I let it go.
I did this for several reasons. First, what else could I really do? Make a big deal of it and be uncomfortable at work every day?
Second, since part of my job was technical support for our office, it was my job to help everyone with any technical problems. Therefore my coworkers were also my clients.
No matter what kind of business you’re in, there is always a client/customer. Whatever you call them, making sure they’re satisfied should be one of your top priorities. This may seem obvious, but I’ve been surprised by the managers I’ve had who didn’t place a priority on this. Ego gets in the way of good customer service. “They don’t know what they’re talking about”, “he’s a jerk”, “they just need to do what we tell them”.
The statements above may all be true, but if you want to keep your clients satisfied, they don’t matter. We all know that the customer isn’t always right, but if you do customer service well, they’ll feel that their problems matter, and that makes most people happy.
I’ve had a variety of jobs and I’ve managed to get most clients to like me, or at least to think that I did a good job. Here are a few things I’ve picked up over the years.
Listen To People
Don’t be that person who just waits for a break in the conversation so they can talk. Don’t ignore what clients are telling you because you think you already know what they need.
I assume that you can’t read minds, so this is your best way to find out what you need to know to make your clients and yourself happy.
One of the most important skills to have is reading people.
Is the person someone who likes to chat, or are they transactional? If they’re friendly and like small talk, showing an interest in them and their life goes a long way toward getting them to like you. If they’re transactional, they may find that annoying. They want their problem solved and that’s all. Very often what kind of person they are will change depending on how much pressure they’re under.
When I worked at law firms people were more often transactional. Lawyers are often trying to meet a quota for billable hours, they have to get documents in by a court deadline, or they have to respond to opposing counsel. In a service setting like when I waited tables, people can be either, but many are more social. My regular customers liked to tell me a little about themselves, the movie they just saw, where they worked, and so on.
What Is Most Important To Them?
A lot of companies lump all their customers together, assuming that they all have the same priorities because they want the same product. It’s okay to have a general sense of what your group of customers wants or needs, but if you can get to know them as individuals you can meet individual needs.
Some of my clients had no patience for “lengthy” troubleshooting. If you couldn’t fix a problem in 2–3 minutes, they would get irritated (or worse).
If they were trying to meet a deadline, I did whatever I could to fix their problem fast, even if it wasn’t perfect. Sometimes that meant I’d print their document or make formatting changes so they could get it out the door. I’d explain that I needed to do a few more things to fix their computer and that I’d be glad to do it when they were at lunch or had left for the day.
This allowed me to do my job without someone pressuring me, and they got their problem fixed without spending precious non-billable time waiting for me. Some tech people would think editing a document was “below” them. I think that attitude is a mistake. If it only takes a minute of your time, why not do it to make your client happy?
Figure Out If They Have Pet Peeves Or Quirks
This was one of the best things I’ve ever learned to do. Every workplace has employees that are “difficult”. No one likes dealing with them. Since I’m a perfectionist and a people pleaser, this type of person used to scare the crap out of me. I couldn’t avoid them forever, though, so I tried to figure out why they were difficult.
One partner would send us long emails telling us what his problem was in detail. He knew more about technology than the average attorney, so you couldn’t bullshit him. He told us how much he charged per hour, and that he shouldn’t be wasting his valuable time troubleshooting software. This type of behavior normally gets eye rolls in IT departments. Since we develop, install, and support software, we can get defensive when people criticize it. But that mentality didn’t help me or him.
I changed my approach to him by addressing each thing he told us, because these things were obviously important to him. I told him that I knew he was busy, so I’d make it quick. I knew that he resented the firm telling him that he had to have a standard software setup on his personal laptop, so I didn’t change things on his laptop any more than I had to.
Also, when the firm was voting on which office suite to buy, he wanted Word Perfect. The committee went with Microsoft Office. He didn’t like it, so he pointed out every problem he had with Microsoft products.
So when we talked I’d tell him that yes, he had indeed found yet another problem with Word. I’d insinuate that it frustrated me, too. I never, ever tried to fool him by lying about the cause of his problem or anything. I knew that he knew bullshit when he heard it. After a while, he started sending his emails directly to me. Years later when I put in my two week’s notice, he called me to ask why I was leaving, and if I’d reconsider.
Flatter People
There are very few people who don’t like flattery. Listen to your clients & figure out what they take pride in. Find that thing and find a way to mention it. For the “technical gurus” who told me they knew a lot about computers, I would acknowledge their knowledge. I’d say something along the lines of “I know that you’re better with Windows than most, this is a bug that we just found out about and we need to get it fixed. Do you want me to give you instructions or just fix it for you?”
This acknowledged that they knew their stuff, it gave them “inside” information, and it gave them a choice of how to resolve their problem.
Think Of How You Would Feel If You Were In Their Position
We’ve all had times when something went wrong & we’ve had to ask for help. We’ve also all probably dealt with rude or apathetic customer service people. How did you feel? How would you feel if you were in your customer’s place, having the knowledge that they have?
Being empathic goes a long way toward having a good relationship with a client. I’ve had bosses who couldn’t remember what it was like when they didn’t know a lot about a product. They gave instructions to people with the assumption that those people were on the same knowledge level as them.
Whenever possible, imagine being in your client’s place. They have to deal with you. Make that as seamless and pleasant as possible.
Some clients would tell me “I’m not a computer person”. I could tell most felt slightly embarrassed or frustrated that they couldn’t fix their problem themselves. My reply was “that’s not your job, it’s mine. You’ve got more important things to do”.
Pick Your Battles
When I taught software classes, some people didn’t want to be there. Their company wanted them to learn more about a software package, so they paid for training and required all employees to go. I could usually tell who these students were because they didn’t look at me. They were busy playing games on their computer.
In this case, THEY were my customer. They were the ones who filled out my evaluation at the end of class. I decided that if they wanted to play games, that was their choice. As long as they didn’t disrupt my class by asking questions because they hadn’t been paying attention, I left them alone. If I had continually stopped teaching to comment on their lack of attention, it would distract the rest of the class.
Stand Up For Yourself When You Have To
Some people are simply rude, stupid, careless, or irritating. None of us should have to deal with abuse by customers or co-workers. The important thing is knowing what crosses the line from annoying to abusive. Some things are obvious (sexual harrassment, physical abuse, personal insults). For others it’s a matter of personality and perspective. Cover your ass if you can. Before you say something that will result in a client problem, talk to your boss or Human Resources.
At one of my jobs there was a paralegal who just didn’t like me. I tried everything I could think of, but none of it made her like me.
One night she got angry and told me that I didn’t know how to do my job (after four years). She went on and on with insults. It was after-hours and my boss had left for the day. I told her that I realized that she didn’t like me, and I was sorry that we were having a problem. I admitted my part in the problem and offered to do what I could to help. That was it. Someone else was in her office so I had a witness.
The next day I went to my boss and told her what happened. I told her what I said. She told me that she knew this person could be difficult, and she had no problem with what I said. By being direct with my boss I’d avoided a day of worry about what might be said about me.
We all get angry, hurt, and frustrated. We might be tired or having a bad day. It would be nice if all of our clients thought of these things, but they don’t.
If we put the effort in to meet their needs, we’ve done our part. Hopefully your boss will hear what a great experience the clients had with you, or your clients will tell other potential clients. If nothing else, you’ll know that when it comes to this part of your job, you’ve done your best. Your pride in a job well done should be worth the effort. | https://medium.com/swlh/delivering-great-customer-service-a53d39f738fc | ['Donna Cosky'] | 2019-07-26 07:55:26.477000+00:00 | ['Work', 'Customer Service', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Business', 'Client Relationship'] |
Who is Andrew Cuomo? | Who is Andrew Cuomo?
This appeared in The Millennial Source
Democrat Andrew Cuomo has been the governor of New York, one of the most populous states in the United States, since 2011. The recent outbreak of COVID-19, which has hit New York especially hard, has thrust Cuomo into the national spotlight like no other time in his career.
Cuomo, who comes from a family steeped in politics, has had a long political career and at times has earned unfavorable press. But now, his handling of the current pandemic is earning him positive comparisons to President Donald Trump’s own handling of the situation.
It has even sparked rumors of a presidential run, despite the primary season having started months ago.
The early career of Andrew Cuomo
When the Queens-born Cuomo assumed the office of Governor of New York on January 1, 2011, he was already a highly visible public figure with a famous family, at least across New York.
His father, Mario Cuomo, served three terms as New York’s Governor from 1983 to 1994. Like his son, Mario Cuomo was a Democrat, known particularly for being a liberal reformer.
Andrew Cuomo studied at Fordham University before completing a law degree at Albany Law School in 1982. He then served as an advisor for his father when the elder Cuomo was governor.
In 1986, after practicing law with a private firm, Cuomo founded the “Housing Enterprise for the Less Privileged” ( HELP). He was 28. The foundation was set up to tackle the problem of homelessness in New York City.
His work combating homelessness led to Cuomo being appointed the US Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in President Bill Clinton’s administration. In his time in that role, from 1997 to 2000, Andrew Cuomo focused on increasing home ownership in the country.
Following an unsuccessful bid for New York Governor in 2002, Cuomo ran a successful campaign in 2006 to become New York’s Attorney General, beating out Republican candidate Jeanine Pirro (who currently works as a Fox News host). He served as attorney general until the end of 2010, then transitioned to the governorship.
Cuomo was married to human rights activist Kerry Kennedy for 13 years. The couple have three daughters.
Most recently, Cuomo was in a 14-year relationship with well-known television chef Sandra Lee, though that relationship is said to have ended in 2019.
Cuomo’s brother is CNN anchor Chris Cuomo. The two made headlines recently for their brotherly ribbing of each other on air.
Andrew Cuomo’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis
As New York has become the state with the most coronavirus cases in the country — approximately 6% of the total number of cases worldwide — Cuomo’s role as governor has thrust him into the national spotlight.
Cuomo gives regular press conferences that air nationally in which he updates the state and the country on the rapidly evolving situation in New York. This has turned him into one of the most visible figures of the crisis.
According to at least one poll, Cuomo has also become one of the most-trusted leaders in America, alongside Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Observers have made pointed contrasts between Cuomo and President Trump, who also holds regular coronavirus press conferences to address the nation.
Cuomo’s matter-of-fact speaking style and willingness to contradict Trump has gained him fans, especially among liberals who say that Trump has misled or lied about the federal government’s response to the pandemic.
Cuomo’s star has risen so quickly, there has even been speculation that he could be an outside spoiler for the Democratic nomination for president.
On betting sites, former Vice President Joe Biden remains the favorite to win the nomination, but Cuomo is given greater odds of winning than even Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, the only other candidate officially in the race besides Biden.
Cuomo’s controversies
While Secretary of HUD, Cuomo’s push to get more US citizens in homes involved the government investing in the mortgages of low and middle-income homeowners. This was done through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government-created, publicly-traded companies that facilitated financing for housing.
Those two companies were at the center of the 2008 housing crisis, also known as the “subprime mortgage crisis,” because they purchased risky (“subprime”) mortgages. Though Cuomo’s actions were deemed well-intentioned, critics feel that they were at least partly responsible for the crisis.
Though Cuomo has recently been praised for the way he speaks in his press conferences, his words have gotten him into trouble in the past.
During the 2008 Democratic primary for president, then-Attorney General Cuomo disparaged Barack Obama’s campaigning, saying, “You can’t shuck and jive at a press conference.” This statement was roundly criticized as racist as “shucking and jiving” is a historically offensive way to suggest black people are dishonest.
In 2018, after signing a bill related to penalties for sex trafficking, the governor was quoted in a news conference as saying, “We’re not going to make America great again — it was never that great. We have not reached greatness. We will reach greatness when every American is fully engaged.”
The comment was meant to contrast with Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.” However, Trump and Republicans from New York singled in on the assertion that America “was never that great” to attack Cuomo. The governor ended up backtracking on his comments, saying his phrasing was “inartful.” | https://themillennialsource.medium.com/who-is-andrew-cuomo-8698a6b360af | ['The Millennial Source'] | 2020-03-27 06:20:15.642000+00:00 | ['America', 'News', 'Trump', 'Government', 'World'] |
Portfolio Rebalancing Algorithms In Crypto (Part I) | This article will detail some of the complexities involved with portfolio rebalancing for cryptocurrencies. Theoretically, rebalancing should be simple, but there are complications that arise based on restrictions that are imposed by exchanges. One of these restrictions is that limit orders commonly have minimum trade requirements. These minimums vary between exchanges, but each result in situations where target allocations cannot be reached. This occurs when the trade necessary to reach a target allocation is less than the minimum trade requirement.
The act of buying more of an asset which needs funds to reach its target allocation is called “debt resolution”. The process of selling an asset which performed well over a period and has a larger allocation than the target allocation is considered “taxation”. Taxing the assets which performed well so they match their target allocations is generally easy, paying the debt out to the remaining assets is more complicated. There are cases where debt cannot be paid. Whether this is a result of a taxed asset not meeting the minimum requirements to make a trade or exchange errors, it doesn’t matter. The result is a situation where more debt is owed than what is available to pay.
Unless otherwise specified, each algorithm will assume trades happen through BTC. This means there will be two discrete steps. First, all assets which have a larger percent allocation than their target allocations will be taxed. This taxation happens by selling the asset for BTC. Second, debt will be paid to each asset which has a smaller percent allocation than their target allocation. Payment will be made from the pool of BTC that was collected during the taxation step.
Constructing algorithms to address this issue should meet the 4 following requirements:
Fairness: The fairest instance is not picking between two assets. This means if there are only enough funds to make one trade, the fairest option is to pick neither. (however, this may not be desired from the user standpoint)
Deterministic: The algorithm should be consistent. It should work every single time. Every reachable state should be predictable.
Usability: An algorithm can be fair and deterministic, but not usable. The algorithm needs to be usable and desirable. It should produce results that the user wants to see.
Economical: Any method used shouldn’t require excessive trades to fit one of the previous requirements. The algorithm should optimize for the smallest amount of fees possible.
Share based debt resolution
Share based debt resolution is an algorithm that attempts fairness in results. The way this solution works is by divvying up the shares by calculating the percent debt held by each asset. For example, let’s say the total debt is 100 BTC, however only 90 BTC is available for payment. This means 90 BTC needs to be divided among 100 BTC of debt. The fairest way to do this is to pay out 90% of the debt that is owed to each individual asset. Instead of satisfying 100% of any assets debt, they will only get 90% of their debt paid.
This is the fairest and most deterministic algorithm. No decisions are made that prioritize a single asset or trade. The issues come from usability and economical decisions.
One issue with this solution is that it is rare to be able to pay out 100% of the debt that is owed. Since this is a rare occurrence, it will be rare to have every asset reach its target allocations. As a result, this algorithm may be less desirable for some users who wish to have as many assets reach their target allocations as possible. In the other sense, this algorithm may be more desirable for some users since this technique is completely unbiased. It does not attempt to anticipate which asset the user would prefer to buy.
Largest debt first resolution
The largest debt first resolution algorithm focuses on paying off the largest debt first. The reasoning behind this algorithm is that the assets which have the largest debt are the furthest from their target allocations. In this sense, it makes sense that the algorithm should satisfy the assets which are furthest from the users desired allocations first.
Let’s examine the same situation that was examined above. Imagine you only have 90 BTC but have 100 BTC of debt to pay. With this algorithm, you will pay the assets which are furthest from their target allocation first. This may result in a single asset getting 90 BTC if they are far enough away. Then, there is 0 BTC left to pay the remaining assets.
While this strategy will likely make sense to some users, it is assuming that the user would want the asset with the largest debt to be paid first. This may not be the case. Since it is an unfair algorithm, this results in assumptions that may not be desirable from the user’s prospective.
Path of Least Resistance Debt Resolution
The path of least resistance debt resolution is slightly different than the previous algorithms. This technique is only available for a subset of asset pairs and bypasses the BTC pool that is collected for debt pay out by other assets. The path of least resistance refers to trading pairs that connect assets directly together, so they don’t need to be traded through BTC during a rebalance. An example of one of these pairs is XRP/ETH on Binance. If a portfolio contains both XRP and ETH, it has an opportunity to trade directly between these two assets without first trading to BTC.
The path of least resistance is always considered the path which results in the largest amount of the resulting asset. So, this considers fees, spread, and slippage to maximize the final asset amount. Given the scenario which two assets are present in the portfolio which are also a pair, they can be evaluated and paid off first given they are the path of least resistance.
The path of least resistance debt resolution can further be generalized to include all trades that result in the smallest spread, slippage, and fees. This results in maximizing purchase power of the portfolio for those assets which are considered cheap to acquire.
The resistance can then be calculated for each asset based on the following criteria:
# of trades, where higher increases resistance
% spread, where higher increases resistance
% slippage, where higher increases resistance
% fees, where higher increases resistance
Putting it all together
Once these strategies are understood, it’s possible to put them all together to create a rebalancing algorithm which is fair, deterministic, usable, and economical. This is done by performing each of these strategies at different stages.
First, the economical strategy of fulfilling the path of least resistance will be completed. This should be done before any assets have sold to BTC.
Second, the fairest strategy should be used to distribute the BTC that was collected for debt distribution. This allows the spread of debt across all assets which require payment. However, during this process, there may be trades which are smaller than the minimum trade limit if the deviation for some assets are small.
Third, the usable strategy of largest debt first should be used to distribute the BTC which was left over from the previous step. This allows each asset to get as close as possible to the target allocation.
This staged strategy is deterministic which provides a comfort in predictability for how the algorithm will behave during rebalances.
Rebalancing is Complex
On the surface, rebalancing is a simple strategy: realign the current allocations with the target allocations. However, digging into the details surfaces complexities that complicate the way rebalances are performed. This whitepaper attempts to illuminate these complexities and provide a foundation for future research.
Although Shrimpy has a great foundation, we are constantly improve the rebalancing algorithm. We will be integrating the most advanced rebalancing features in the market to ensure our users are constantly at the front of the curve. While the algorithms detailed above are a starting point for your adventures into rebalancing, there are far more complex strategies we will be discussing in future articles.
Additional Reading | https://medium.com/hackernoon/portfolio-rebalancing-algorithms-in-crypto-a7c91c15b1a7 | [] | 2018-08-07 03:31:37.914000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Rebalancing Algorithms', 'Portfolio Rebalancing', 'Bitcoin', 'Algorithms'] |
Designing for the user’s emotional journey | Designing for the user’s emotional journey
A valuable tool to help guide design decisions while building thoughtful products.
An emotional journey is the visualization of a user’s emotional experience when interacting with a product or service.
People go through a range of conscious and subconscious emotional reactions when interacting with products. An experience becomes truly valuable to us when it hits the right notes at the right time. That is when an experience truly feels human. In other words, our reaction to things is heavily dependent on how we feel at that particular moment. Products and services that consider this are able to truly create an enriching, connected experience. Therefore, in the design process, it is important not only to consider the ‘what’, but also the ‘when’, in order to create a powerful experience. The key to this is figuring out the ‘design timing’. Let’s take a look at a few examples that illustrate this concept.
Lyft bikes and scooters
A good example of design timing done right. Traditionally we see flows beginning with onboarding screens. In this case, the onboarding flow is triggered as the scooter is unlocking after being scanned. This does two very important things.
By providing contextual information right before the action, the app feels more intuitive and helpful. The well-timed onboarding flow during the unlocking stage makes an otherwise dull moment refreshing and enjoyable.
Robinhood
Let’s take a look at the cryptocurrency buying experience in Robinhood. For the first time buyer, this process could be very exciting yet intimidating. The app uses a progressive flow that does a great job of informing and engaging the user. Here’s how it really taps into the emotional experience to build a really successful solution. | https://uxdesign.cc/designing-for-the-users-emotional-journey-b4aa98422842 | ['Aahel Iyer'] | 2019-06-09 20:59:16.945000+00:00 | ['Design Thinking', 'Customer Experience', 'Design Process', 'UX', 'Product Design'] |
BABY BOOMERS GUIDE to Google’s Six Month High Tech Job Certification Grants — KACHING, KACHING! | BABY BOOMERS GUIDE to Google’s Six Month High Tech Job Certification Grants — KACHING, KACHING! Dana Greene Jan 21·2 min read
As we get older, we often wonder what am I going to do now? Well…what do you want to do? PLEASE SHARE THIS WITH ALL YOUR BABY BOOMER friends.
Our former President of the United States was 74 years old, and our NEW President is 78 years old. Need I say more? This gives me some hope as I am younger then both of them.
What your ‘bucket list’ Baby Boomer, since it seems that if you keep healthy and keep happy, there is no telling what you cannot do ( a 78 year old President of the United States ?).
How about a college degree that you have always wanted, It only takes a couple of years now if they include your life experience as credit towards your degree.
Are you retired and on Social Security? Get out of that rocking chair and go back to work? How about a NEW career start in your 60’s (or 70's). Joe Biden started a NEW career yesterday at 78. You can do it too! Here is a little help.
Google Six Month High Tech Job Certification Grants
Become job-ready for in-demand, high-paying roles:
Qualify for jobs across fields with median average annual salaries of over $55,000.
Career Example — UX Designer This certificate teaches learners the introductory level foundations of UX design and research, building low-fidelity designs and wire frames, creating high-fidelity prototypes, and testing.
The median annual wage for UX designers is $84,000
Grants and scholarships will be available
About six months to complete ( You can do this ! )
No previous experience require
Check Out the NEW Google Program
The BABY BOOMERS GUIDE newsletter is researched compiled and published weekly… To subscribe to our weekly blog and newsletter go to :MEDIUM BLOG PAGE
https://medium.com/ | https://medium.com/@dharoldgreene203/baby-boomers-guide-to-googles-six-month-high-tech-job-certification-grants-kaching-kaching-4747dc8599be | ['Dana Greene'] | 2021-01-21 14:26:14.034000+00:00 | ['Career Advice', 'Career Change', 'Careers', 'Millennials', 'Baby Boomers'] |
How to Build a Community Lending Library | Photo by Daniel Funes Fuentes on Unsplash
Lending libraries are for more than just books…
You may have seen a lending library in your own neighborhood. You know, those cute little boxes stuffed full of books, free for the taking. Some communities are taking the idea a few steps further by pooling together by creating lending libraries for other items. Ever borrow a cup of sugar from a neighbor? Imagine that on a much larger scale.
Best Items to Use for Community Lending Libraries
The only limit to building a community lending library is your own imagination. The best items to lend are those that consume a lot of resources to own individually. A lot of resources are consumed when we take a quick trip to the store for a simple item. Some of these may include:
Gardening Equipment — Shears, Lawnmowers, Leaf-Blowers, Gloves. Why have 15 lawnmowers in the neighborhood?
Kitchen Equipment — Bread Machines, Blenders, Extra Dishes & Cutlery for Events. These items often sit in cupboards for long periods of time.
Car Maintenance Equipment — Ice Scrapers, Car Washing Tools, Vacuums. Why drive across town to the automated car wash?
Home Repair Equipment — Screwdrivers, Drills, Spackle, Glue. Sometimes, you need these tools for a few minutes to make minor repairs.
First-Aid & Medical Equipment — Wheelchairs, Crutches, First-Aid. This is especially helpful for senior living.
Non-Perishable Food — Canned & Dry Items. Save your neighbors a trip to the store for some simple items.
Forming a Community Lending Library Committee
There will need to be structure when forming a lending library of this magnitude. Think of it as a neighborhood watch for sustainability. Depending on the cost of the equipment and the group’s size, you may opt to have members sign agreements outlining circumstances where a damaged item will need to be replaced by the person who borrowed it.
You will also need to decide whether people will pay a small per-use fee or all-inclusive dues. Funds should be set aside to pay for the replacement, maintenance/repairs, or equipment upgrading. To maximize your community lending library’s success, funds should be deposited into a trust and interest-bearing savings account. In time, this will help ensure your library will stay well-maintained and even grow! | https://medium.com/new-world-optimist/how-to-build-a-community-lending-library-4d1bb20c1f25 | ['Kimberly Forsythe'] | 2020-10-28 21:31:45.478000+00:00 | ['Lending Libraries', 'Green Living', 'Sustainability', 'Green Living Tips', 'Community'] |
The superior man is catholic and not partisan. The mean man is partisan and not catholic. | The superior man is catholic and not partisan. The mean man is partisan and not catholic.
Daily three quotes from China classics
The Master said, “The superior man is catholic and not partisan. The mean man is partisan and not catholic.”
— The Analects, Confucius
Taking No Action
If any one should wish to get the kingdom for himself, and to effect this by what he does, I see that he will not succeed. The kingdom is a spirit-like thing, and cannot be got by active doing. He who would so win it destroys it; he who would hold it in his grasp loses it. The course and nature of things is such that
What was in front is now behind;
What warmed anon we freezing find.
Strength is of weakness oft the spoil;
The store in ruins mocks our toil. Hence the sage puts away excessive effort, extravagance, and easy indulgence.
— Tao Te Ching, Lao Zi
With Cankī
Thus have I heard. On one occasion the Blessed One was wandering in the Kosalan country with a large Sangha of bhikkhus, and eventually he arrived at a Kosalan brahmin village named Opasāda. There the Blessed One stayed in the Gods’ Grove, the Sāla-tree Grove to the north of Opasāda.
Now on that occasion the brahmin Cankī was ruling over Opasāda, a crown property abounding in living beings, rich in grasslands, woodlands, waterways, and grain, a royal endowment, a sacred grant given to him by King Pasenadi of Kosala.
The brahmin householders of Opasāda heard: “The recluse Gotama…as Sutta 91, §3…Now it is good see such arahants.”
Then the brahmin householders of Opasāda set forth from Opasāda in groups and bands and headed northwards to the Gods’ Grove, the Sāla-tree Grove.
Now on that occasion the brahmin Cankī had retired to the upper storey of his palace for his midday rest. Then he saw the brahmin householders of Opasāda setting forth from Opasāda in groups and bands and heading northwards to the Gods’ Grove, the Sāla-tree Grove. When he saw them, he asked his minister: “Good minister, why are the brahmin householders of Opasāda setting forth from Opasāda in groups and bands and heading northwards to the Gods’ Grove, the Sāla-tree Grove?”
“Sir, there is the recluse Gotama, the son of the Sakyans who went forth from a Sakyan clan, who has been wandering in the Kosalan country…as Sutta 91, §3…They are going to see that Master Gotama.”
“Then, good minister, go to the brahmin householders of Opasāda and tell them: ‘Sirs, the brahmin Cankī says this: “Please wait, sirs. The brahmin Cankī will also go to see the recluse Gotama.”’”
“Yes, sir,” the minister replied, and he went to the brahmin householders of Opasāda and gave them the message.
Now on that occasion five hundred brahmins from various states were staying at Opasāda for some business or other. They heard: “The brahmin Cankī, it is said, is going to see the recluse Gotama.” Then they went to the brahmin Cankī and asked him: “Sir, is it true that you are going to see the recluse Gotama?”
“So it is, sirs. I am going to see the recluse Gotama.”
“Sir, do not go to see the recluse Gotama. It is not proper, Master Cankī, for you to go to see the recluse Gotama; rather, it is proper for the recluse Gotama to come to see you. For you, sir, are well born on both sides, of pure maternal and paternal descent seven generations back, unassailable and impeccable in respect of birth. Since that is so, Master Cankī, it is not proper for you to go to see the recluse Gotama; rather, it is proper for the recluse Gotama to come to see you. You, sir, are rich, with great wealth and great possessions. You, sir, are a master of the Three Vedas with their vocabularies, liturgy, phonology, and etymology, and the histories as a fifth; skilled in philology and grammar, you are fully versed in natural philosophy and in the marks of a Great Man. You, sir, are handsome, comely, and graceful, possessing supreme beauty of complexion, with sublime beauty and sublime presence, remarkable to behold. You, sir, are virtuous, mature in virtue, possessing mature virtue. You, sir, are a good speaker with a good delivery; you speak words that are courteous, distinct, flawless, and communicate the meaning. You, sir, teach the teachers of many, and you teach the recitation of the hymns to three hundred brahmin students. You, sir, are honoured, respected, revered, venerated, and esteemed by King Pasenadi of Kosala. You, sir, are honoured, respected, revered, venerated, and esteemed by the brahmin Pokkharasāti. You, sir, rule over Opasāda, a crown property abounding in living beings…a sacred grant given to you by King Pasenadi of Kosala. Since this is so, Master Cankī, it is not proper for you to go to see the recluse Gotama; rather, it is proper for the recluse Gotama to come to see you.”
When this was said, the brahmin Cankī told those brahmins: “Now, sirs, hear from me why it is proper for me to go to see Master Gotama, and why it is not proper for Master Gotama to come to see me. Sirs, the recluse Gotama is well born on both sides, of pure maternal and paternal descent seven generations back, unassailable and impeccable in respect of birth. Since this is so, sirs, it is not proper for Master Gotama to come to see me; rather, it is proper for me to go to see Master Gotama. Sirs, the recluse Gotama went forth abandoning much gold and bullion stored away in vaults and in lofts. Sirs, the recluse Gotama went forth from the home life into homelessness while still young, a black-haired young man endowed with the blessing of youth, in the prime of life. Sirs, the recluse Gotama shaved off his hair and beard, put on the yellow robe, and went forth from the home life into homelessness though his mother and father wished otherwise and wept with tearful faces. Sirs, the recluse Gotama is handsome, comely, and graceful, possessing supreme beauty of complexion, with sublime beauty and sublime presence, remarkable to behold. Sirs, the recluse Gotama is virtuous, with noble virtue, with wholesome virtue, possessing wholesome virtue. Sirs, the recluse Gotama is a good speaker with a good delivery; he speaks words that are courteous, distinct, flawless, and communicate the meaning. Sirs, the recluse Gotama is a teacher of the teachers of many. Sirs, the recluse Gotama is free from sensual lust and without personal vanity. Sirs, the recluse Gotama holds the doctrine of the moral efficacy of action, the doctrine of the moral efficacy of deeds; he does not seek any harm for the line of brahmins. Sirs, the recluse Gotama went forth from an aristocratic family, from one of the original noble families. Sirs, the recluse Gotama went forth from a rich family, from a family of great wealth and great possessions. Sirs, people come from remote kingdoms and remote districts to question the recluse Gotama. Sirs, many thousands of deities have gone for refuge for life to the recluse Gotama. Sirs, a good report of the recluse Gotama has been spread to this effect: ‘That Blessed One is accomplished, fully enlightened, perfect in true knowledge and conduct, sublime, knower of worlds, incomparable leader of persons to be tamed, teacher of gods and humans, enlightened, blessed.’ Sirs, the recluse Gotama possesses the thirty-two marks of a Great Man. Sirs, King Seniya Bimbisāra of Magadha and his wife and children have gone for refuge for life to the recluse Gotama. Sirs, King Pasenadi of Kosala and his wife and children have gone for refuge for life to the recluse Gotama. Sirs, the brahmin Pokkharasāti and his wife and children have gone for refuge for life to the recluse Gotama. Sirs, the recluse Gotama has arrived at Opasāda and is living at Opasāda in the Gods’ Grove, the Sāla-tree Grove to the north of Opasāda. Now any recluses or brahmins that come to our town are our guests, and guests should be honoured, respected, revered, and venerated by us. Since the recluse Gotama has arrived at Opasāda, he is our guest, and as our guest should be honoured, respected, revered, and venerated by us. Since this is so, sirs, it is not proper for Master Gotama to come to see me; rather, it is proper for me to go to see Master Gotama.
“Sirs, this much is the praise of Master Gotama that I have learned, but the praise of Master Gotama is not limited to that, for the praise of Master Gotama is immeasurable. Since Master Gotama possesses each one of these factors, it is not proper for him to come to see me; rather, it is proper for me to go to see Master Gotama. Therefore, sirs, let all of us go to see the recluse Gotama.”
Then the brahmin Cankī, together with a large company of brahmins, went to the Blessed One and exchanged greetings with him. When this courteous and amiable talk was finished, he sat down at one side.
Now on that occasion the Blessed One was seated finishing some amiable talk with some very senior brahmins. At the time, sitting in the assembly, was a brahmin student named Kāpaṭhika. Young, shaven-headed, sixteen years old, he was a master of the Three Vedas with their vocabularies, liturgy, phonology, and etymology, and the histories as a fifth; skilled in philology and grammar, he was fully versed in natural philosophy and in the marks of a Great Man. While the very senior brahmins were conversing with the Blessed One, he repeatedly broke in and interrupted their talk. Then the Blessed One rebuked the brahmin student Kāpaṭhika thus: “Let not the venerable Bhāradvāja break in and interrupt the talk of the very senior brahmins while they are conversing. Let the venerable Bhāradvāja wait until the talk is finished.”
When this was said, the brahmin Cankī said to the Blessed One: “Let not Master Gotama rebuke the brahmin student Kāpaṭhika. The brahmin student Kāpaṭhika is a clansman, he is very learned, he has a good delivery, he is wise; he is capable of taking part in this discussion with Master Gotama.”
Then the Blessed One thought: “Surely, since the brahmins honour him thus, the brahmin student Kāpaṭhika must be accomplished in the scriptures of the Three Vedas.”
Then the brahmin student Kāpaṭhika thought: “When the recluse Gotama catches my eye, I shall ask him a question.”
Then, knowing with his own mind the thought in the brahmin student Kāpaṭhika’s mind, the Blessed One turned his eye towards him. Then the brahmin student Kāpaṭhika thought: “The recluse Gotama has turned towards me. Suppose I ask him a question.” Then he said to the Blessed One: “Master Gotama, in regard to the ancient brahmanic hymns that have come down through oral transmission, preserved in the collections, the brahmins come to the definite conclusion: ‘Only this is true, anything else is wrong.’ What does Master Gotama say about this?”
“How then, Bhāradvāja, among the brahmins is there even a single brahmin who says thus: ‘I know this, I see this: only this is true, anything else is wrong’?” — “No, Master Gotama.”
“How then, Bhāradvāja, among the brahmins is there even a single teacher or a single teacher’s teacher back to the seventh generation of teachers who says thus: ‘I know this, I see this: only this is true, anything else is wrong’?” — “No, Master Gotama.”
“How then, Bhāradvāja, the ancient brahmin seers, the creators of the hymns, the composers of the hymns, whose ancient hymns that were formerly chanted, uttered, and compiled, the brahmins nowadays still chant and repeat, repeating what was spoken and reciting what was recited — that is, Aṭṭhaka, Vāmaka, Vāmadeva, Vessāmitta, Yamataggi, Angirasa, Bhāradvāja, Vāseṭṭha, Kassapa, and Bhagu — did even these ancient brahmin seers say thus: ‘We know this, we see this: only this is true, anything else is wrong’?” — “No, Master Gotama.”
“So, Bhāradvāja, it seems that among the brahmins there is not even a single brahmin who says thus: ‘I know this, I see this: only this is true, anything else is wrong.’ And among the brahmins there is not even a single teacher or a single teacher’s teacher back to the seventh generation of teachers, who says thus: ‘I know this, I see this: only this is true, anything else is wrong.’ And the ancient brahmin seers, the creators of the hymns, the composers of the hymns…even these ancient brahmin seers did not say thus: ‘We know this, we see this: only this is true, anything else is wrong.’ Suppose there were a file of blind men each in touch with the next: the first one does not see, the middle one does not see, and the last one does not see. So too, Bhāradvāja, in regard to their statement the brahmins seem to be like a file of blind men: the first one does not see, the middle one does not see, and the last one does not see. What do you think, Bhāradvāja, that being so, does not the faith of the brahmins turn out to be groundless?”
“The brahmins honour this not only out of faith, Master Gotama. They also honour it as oral tradition.”
“Bhāradvāja, first you took your stand on faith, now you speak of oral tradition. There are five things, Bhāradvāja, that may turn out in two different ways here and now. What five? Faith, approval, oral tradition, reasoned cogitation, and reflective acceptance of a view. These five things may turn out in two different ways here and now. Now something may be fully accepted out of faith, yet it may be empty, hollow, and false; but something else may not be fully accepted out of faith, yet it may be factual, true, and unmistaken. Again, something may be fully approved of…well transmitted…well cogitated…well reflected upon, yet it may be empty, hollow, and false; but something else may not be well reflected upon, yet it may be factual, true, and unmistaken. Under these conditions it is not proper for a wise man who preserves truth to come to the definite conclusion: ‘Only this is true, anything else is wrong.’”
“But, Master Gotama, in what way is there the preservation of truth? How does one preserve truth? We ask Master Gotama about the preservation of truth.”
“If a person has faith, Bhāradvāja, he preserves truth when he says: ‘My faith is thus’; but he does not yet come to the definite conclusion: ‘Only this is true, anything else is wrong.’ In this way, Bhāradvāja, there is the preservation of truth; in this way he preserves truth; in this way we describe the preservation of truth. But as yet there is no discovery of truth.
“If a person approves of something…if he receives an oral tradition…if he reaches a conclusion based on reasoned cogitation…if he gains a reflective acceptance of a view, he preserves truth when he says: ‘My reflective acceptance of a view is thus’; but he does not yet come to the definite conclusion: ‘Only this is true, anything else is wrong.’ In this way too, Bhāradvāja, there is the preservation of truth; in this way he preserves truth; in this way we describe the preservation of truth. But as yet there is no discovery of truth.”
“In that way, Master Gotama, there is the preservation of truth; in that way one preserves truth; in that way we recognise the preservation of truth. But in what way, Master Gotama, is there the discovery of truth? In what way does one discover truth? We ask Master Gotama about the discovery of truth.”
“Here, Bhāradvāja, a bhikkhu may be living in dependence on some village or town. Then a householder or a householder’s son goes to him and investigates him in regard to three kinds of states: in regard to states based on greed, in regard to states based on hate, and in regard to states based on delusion: ‘Are there in this venerable one any states based on greed such that, with his mind obsessed by those states, while not knowing he might say, “I know,” or while not seeing he might say, “I see,” or he might urge others to act in a way that would lead to their harm and suffering for a long time?’ As he investigates him he comes to know: ‘There are no such states based on greed in this venerable one. The bodily behaviour and the verbal behaviour of this venerable one are not those of one affected by greed. And the Dhamma that this venerable one teaches is profound, hard to see and hard to understand, peaceful and sublime, unattainable by mere reasoning, subtle, to be experienced by the wise. This Dhamma cannot easily be taught by one affected by greed.’
“When he has investigated him and has seen that he is purified from states based on greed, he next investigates him in regard to states based on hate: ‘Are there in this venerable one any states based on hate such that, with his mind obsessed by those states…he might urge others to act in a way that would lead to their harm and suffering for a long time?’ As he investigates him, he comes to know: ‘There are no such states based on hate in this venerable one. The bodily behaviour and the verbal behaviour of this venerable one are not those of one affected by hate. And the Dhamma that this venerable one teaches is profound…to be experienced by the wise. This Dhamma cannot easily be taught by one affected by hate.’
“When he has investigated him and has seen that he is purified from states based on hate, he next investigates him in regard to states based on delusion: ‘Are there in this venerable one any states based on delusion such that, with his mind obsessed by those states…he might urge others to act in a way that would lead to their harm and suffering for a long time?’ As he investigates him, he comes to know: ‘There are no such states based on delusion in this venerable one. The bodily behaviour and the verbal behaviour of this venerable one are not those of one affected by delusion. And the Dhamma that this venerable one teaches is profound…to be experienced by the wise. This Dhamma cannot easily be taught by one affected by delusion.’
“When he has investigated him and has seen that he is purified from states based on delusion, then he places faith in him; filled with faith he visits him and pays respect to him; having paid respect to him, he gives ear; when he gives ear, he hears the Dhamma; having heard the Dhamma, he memorises it and examines the meaning of the teachings he has memorised; when he examines their meaning, he gains a reflective acceptance of those teachings; when he has gained a reflective acceptance of those teachings, zeal springs up; when zeal has sprung up, he applies his will; having applied his will, he scrutinises; having scrutinised, he strives; resolutely striving, he realises with the body the supreme truth and sees it by penetrating it with wisdom. In this way, Bhāradvāja, there is the discovery of truth; in this way one discovers truth; in this way we describe the discovery of truth. But as yet there is no final arrival at truth.”
“In that way, Master Gotama, there is the discovery of truth; in that way one discovers truth; in that way we recognise the discovery of truth. But in what way, Master Gotama, is there the final arrival at truth? In what way does one finally arrive at truth? We ask Master Gotama about the final arrival at truth.” “The final arrival at truth, Bhāradvāja, lies in the repetition, development, and cultivation of those same things. In this way, Bhāradvāja, there is the final arrival at truth; in this way one finally arrives at truth; in this way we describe the final arrival at truth.”
“In that way, Master Gotama, there is the final arrival at truth; in that way one finally arrives at truth; in that way we recognise the final arrival at truth. But what, Master Gotama, is most helpful for the final arrival at truth? We ask Master Gotama about the thing most helpful for the final arrival at truth.” “Striving is most helpful for the final arrival at truth, Bhāradvāja. If one does not strive, one will not finally arrive at truth; but because one strives, one does finally arrive at truth. That is why striving is most helpful for the final arrival at truth.”
“But what, Master Gotama, is most helpful for striving? We ask Master Gotama about the thing most helpful for striving.”
“Scrutiny is most helpful for striving, Bhāradvāja. If one does not scrutinise, one will not strive; but because one scrutinises, one strives. That is why scrutiny is most helpful for striving.”
“But what, Master Gotama, is most helpful for scrutiny? We ask Master Gotama about the thing most helpful for scrutiny.”
“Application of the will is most helpful for scrutiny, Bhāradvāja. If one does not apply one’s will, one will not scrutinise; but because one applies one’s will, one scrutinises. That is why application of the will is most helpful for scrutiny.”
“But what, Master Gotama, is most helpful for application of the will? We ask Master Gotama about the thing most helpful for application of the will.”
“Zeal is most helpful for application of the will, Bhāradvāja. If one does not arouse zeal, one will not apply one’s will; but because one arouses zeal, one applies one’s will. That is why zeal is most helpful for application of the will.”
“But what, Master Gotama, is most helpful for zeal? We ask Master Gotama about the thing most helpful for zeal.”
“A reflective acceptance of the teachings is most helpful for zeal, Bhāradvāja. If one does not gain a reflective acceptance of the teachings, zeal will not spring up; but because one gains a reflective acceptance of the teachings, zeal springs up. That is why a reflective acceptance of the teachings is most helpful for zeal.”
“But what, Master Gotama, is most helpful for a reflective acceptance of the teachings? We ask Master Gotama about the thing most helpful for a reflective acceptance of the teachings.”
“Examination of the meaning is most helpful for a reflective acceptance of the teachings, Bhāradvāja. If one does not examine their meaning, one will not gain a reflective acceptance of the teachings; but because one examines their meaning, one gains a reflective acceptance of the teachings. That is why examination of the meaning is most helpful for a reflective acceptance of the teachings.”
“But what, Master Gotama, is most helpful for examination of the meaning? We ask Master Gotama about the thing most helpful for examination of meaning.”
“Memorising the teachings is most helpful for examining the meaning, Bhāradvāja. If one does not memorise a teaching, one will not examine its meaning; but because one memorises a teaching, one examines its meaning.”
“But what, Master Gotama, is most helpful for memorising the teachings? We ask Master Gotama about the thing most helpful for memorising the teachings.”
“Hearing the Dhamma is most helpful for memorising the teachings, Bhāradvāja. If one does not hear the Dhamma, one will not memorise the teachings; but because one hears the Dhamma, one memorises the teachings. That is why hearing the Dhamma is most helpful for memorising the teachings.”
“But what, Master Gotama, is most helpful for hearing the Dhamma? We ask Master Gotama about the thing most helpful for hearing the Dhamma.”
“Giving ear is most helpful for hearing the Dhamma, Bhāradvāja. If one does not give ear, one will not hear the Dhamma; but because one gives ear, one hears the Dhamma. That is why giving ear is most helpful for hearing the Dhamma.”
“But what, Master Gotama, is most helpful for giving ear? We ask Master Gotama about the thing most helpful for giving ear.”
“Paying respect is most helpful for giving ear, Bhāradvāja. If one does not pay respect, one will not give ear; but because one pays respect, one gives ear. That is why paying respect is most helpful for giving ear.”
“But what, Master Gotama, is most helpful for paying respect? We ask Master Gotama about the thing most helpful for paying respect.”
“Visiting is most helpful for paying respect, Bhāradvāja. If one does not visit a teacher, one will not pay respect to him; but because one visits a teacher, one pays respect to him. That is why visiting is most helpful for paying respect.”
“But what, Master Gotama, is most helpful for visiting? We ask Master Gotama about the thing most helpful for visiting.”
“Faith is most helpful for visiting, Bhāradvāja. If faith in a teacher does not arise, one will not visit him; but because faith in a teacher arises, one visits him. That is why faith is most helpful for visiting.”
“We asked Master Gotama about the preservation of truth, and Master Gotama answered about the preservation of truth; we approve of and accept that answer, and so we are satisfied. We asked Master Gotama about the discovery of truth, and Master Gotama answered about the discovery of truth; we approve of and accept that answer, and so we are satisfied. We asked Master Gotama about the final arrival at truth, and Master Gotama answered about the final arrival at truth; we approve of and accept that answer, and so we are satisfied. We asked Master Gotama about the thing most helpful for the final arrival at truth, and Master Gotama answered about the thing most helpful for the final arrival at truth; we approve of and accept that answer, and so we are satisfied. Whatever we asked Master Gotama about, that he has answered us; we approve of and accept that answer, and so we are satisfied. Formerly, Master Gotama, we used to think: ‘Who are these bald-pated recluses, these swarthy menial offspring of the Kinsman’s feet, that they would understand the Dhamma?’ But Master Gotama has indeed inspired in me love for recluses, confidence in recluses, reverence for recluses.
“Magnificent, Master Gotama! Magnificent, Master Gotama!…as Sutta 91, §37…From today let Master Gotama remember me as a lay follower who has gone to him for refuge for life.”
— Majjhima Nikāya 95, Buddha | https://medium.com/china-three/the-superior-man-is-catholic-and-not-partisan-the-mean-man-is-partisan-and-not-catholic-11749e26c412 | ['Jian Xu'] | 2020-08-11 11:01:01.520000+00:00 | ['Quotes', 'Religion', 'China', 'Philosophy', 'Culture'] |
Проблемы и вызовы удалённой работы для руководителя | 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/dataduck/%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B1%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BC%D1%8B-%D0%B8-%D0%B2%D1%8B%D0%B7%D0%BE%D0%B2%D1%8B-%D1%83%D0%B4%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%91%D0%BD%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B9-%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B1%D0%BE%D1%82%D1%8B-%D0%B4%D0%BB%D1%8F-%D1%80%D1%83%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B8%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%8F-11fa2e0e7b1 | [] | 2020-12-08 12:09:36.514000+00:00 | ['Leadership', 'Remote Working', 'Management', 'Teamwork', 'Remote Work'] |
Give Your Home A Finishing Touch With Sofa Upholstery | If you are searching for sofa upholstery, you ought to lean toward Furnishing Dubai for your purpose. Quality upholstery in Dubai makes each home significantly more welcoming and agreeable. Without utilitarian furniture at home, an inn or even an office, it will look dull, dead, and only a room of void space.With our substantial scope of textures, you will effectively discover one that flawlessly accommodates your taste.The sofa upholstery items which are accessible in this company will upgrade the solace and in addition the look of the sofa along these lines the people won’t get frustrated for picking this company.
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Phone: +971 55 8043423 or +971 4 3972532 | https://medium.com/@furnishingindubai/give-your-home-a-finishing-touch-with-sofa-upholstery-d727a41afc47 | ['Furnishing Dubai'] | 2018-10-12 05:36:04.394000+00:00 | ['Furniture', 'Furniture Online', 'Dubai'] |
Wonderful Men in my Life Timeline | 3 inspiring and motivating men in my life are:
Gowrisankar — Dad:
1. Have never been behind me for my studies from childhood like my mom.
2. Though coming from a very conservative family, he has always given me equal rights as given to my brother.
3. Always said “I can only show you water and I cant swim :) “
4. I was brought up bold and my opinions were always heard.
5. Even now whenever i need him, he is there to help me and my kids !!
Palanivenkatesan — Husband:
Jay Parikh — X Manager:
When I had a 3.5 year old daughter and was in India, I got an opportunity to come to US. But unfortunately my husband didn’t get a visa at that time. I was planning to leave my kid in India and come alone first. But as I was getting closer to my travel, I started feeling guilty. So just 2 weeks before my travel, I called my manager in US and asked if I can bring my daughter and if he can help me with initial settling.
Jay Parikh was very supportive and connected me to people out here. So, I could bring my daughter too as well. It was a struggle for all three of us, me, husband and my daughter as we were apart for almost 1.5 years.
But now we are all together and I have a new addition to my family, my son !! | https://medium.com/@monisha-ceg/wonderful-men-in-my-life-timeline-8428c76b7fab | ['Monisha Kannamangalam Gowrisankar'] | 2020-12-24 17:06:46.839000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Motivation', 'Men', 'Careers', 'Women In Tech'] |
Dining for a cause | Dining for a cause
Volunteer Center of South Jersey sets a date for annual Taste of the Community event.
By ANTHONY J. MAZZIOTTI III, The Sun
The Volunteer Center of South Jersey is a unique organization because it supports many causes. Where one nonprofit might go toward fighting cancer, and another is geared toward feeding the less fortunate, the Volunteer Center of South Jersey tries to match volunteers with the cause that best suits their needs. With that, it is only fitting the jack-of-all-trades organization would have a food sampling event as a fundraiser.
The Volunteer Center of South Jersey’s “Taste of the Community” is in its 21st year and is thriving. Executive director Michele Epifani said between 350 and 400 people are in attendance each year. This year, the event is scheduled for Monday, April 8, from 6 to 8:30 p.m. at Auletto Caterers in Deptford. There is a VIP reception from 5 to 6 p.m. as well. The event will feature 20 eateries from South Jersey, wine tastings and a cash bar. Tickets are available online at https://taste2019.eventbrite.com and are $75 apiece for the VIP package and $55 each for the regular event.
“It’s a fun event,” Epifani said. “It’s not like a sit-down dinner with a lot of speeches. It’s more of a fun, relaxing atmosphere.”
She added there will be vegan options this year as well.
The proceeds for the tasting go back into the volunteer center. Epifani said their goal is to raise $40,000 this year.
“It helps to operate the volunteer center all year long,” she said of the fundraiser. “It funds day-to-day operations as well as programs we do like the Martin Luther King Day of service, the family day of service and crocheting for a cause.”
Epifani added the volunteer center is aiming to provide more resources into education and helping its nonprofit partners with training.
In addition to the food and drinks, there will be a Chinese auction, 50–50 raffle and a jazz band playing. Attendees will be able to vote for their favorite food, and the winner will receive the prestigious “Tasters Choice” award.
Volunteer opportunities are available for those who are looking to lend a helping hand. Epifani said volunteers could help at registration, serve wine, assist in selling basket auction tickets or help clean up/pack up at the end of the night. Volunteers are given a shift, they will not be asked to work the whole event.
The volunteer center services Burlington, Camden, Gloucester, Salem, Atlantic, Cumberland and Cape May counties. According to Epifani, there are more than 3,500 volunteers in a database, and the volunteer center assists them in connecting with nonprofits that are registered with them.
“We make a lot of connections throughout the year and connect people with volunteer opportunities,” she said. “We’re supporting the nonprofit community by helping them find good volunteers and helping them with their volunteer management services.”
For more information, email Epifani at [email protected]. | https://medium.com/the-moorestown-sun/dining-for-a-cause-e55e50bac8ec | ['Kelly Flynn'] | 2019-03-28 12:01:03.842000+00:00 | ['Volunteering', 'Charity', 'Giving', 'Dinner', 'Food'] |
A juypter notebook extension for graphical publication figure layout | Communication is key to science and in many fields, communication means presenting data in a visual format. In some fields, such as neuroscience, it’s not uncommon to spend years editing the figures to go into a paper. This is in part due to the complexity of the data, but also in part due to the difficulty of quickly making plots to the standard of publication in the field using tools such as matplotlib. Subplots of different sizes, intricate inset plots and complex color schemes often drive scientists toward using graphical-based tools such as photoshop or inkscape.
This post describes the development of a pair of tools which may extend the figure complexity easily achievable with python and matplotlib. The main idea is to graphically define subplots within a figure. This is done leveraging the fact that jupyter notebooks run in a browser, and an extension to the notebook can inject HTML/javascript drawing widgets into the notebook. This lets the user define the subplot layout using a mouse rather than the more cumbersome matplotlib numerical way of defining axes. Then, once the rough plot is done, various components can be resized algorithmically to fit within the allotted canvas space.
Part 1: the drawing widget
Setting up the extension skeleton
As mentioned, the widget is built on top of the jupyter-contrib-nbextensions package, which provides a nice infrastructure for creating compartmentalized extensions which can independently be enabled/disabled. Making your own extension is a bit of cobbling together functions from existing extensions. This link is a good starting point.
The nbextensions package keeps each extension in its own folder in a known directory. Once you have installed the nbextensions package, this code snippet will help you find the directory
from jupyter_core.paths import jupyter_data_dir
import os
nbext_path = os.path.join(jupyter_data_dir(), 'nbextensions')
nbext_path is where the code for your extension should ultimately end up. However, this location is not the most convenient location to develop the code, and more importantly, we’ll need some way of “installing” code here automatically anyway if we want to distribute our extension to others without having to have it included in the main nbextensions repository. (There are all sorts of reasons to do this, including “beta testing” new extensions and that as of this writing the last commit to the `master` branch of the nbextensions repository was nearly 1 year ago).
A better approach than developing directly in nbext_path is to make a symbolic link to a more accessible coding location. Including this python script in your code directory will serve as an install script. Executing python install.py will make an appropriately named symlink from the current directory to nbext_path .
Now distribute away your extensions!
Creating the extension
User flow
Let’s briefly discuss the user flow of the extension before getting into implementation
Begin with an empty notebook cell and press the icon on the far right which looks like two desktop windows.
You can use your mouse to create an initial subplot:
When you’re satisfied with your layout, press the “Generate python cell” button to create a cell with equivalent python/matplotlib code.
The main challenges are injecting the HTML canvas when the toolbar button is pressed, and then automatically creating the python cell when the layout is ready. Once those are done, the rest of the implementation is just like every other javascript project.
Implementation
The main.js file is where most of the coding will happen. Below is the outline of the empty extension
define([
'base/js/namespace',
'base/js/events'
], function(Jupyter, events) { // add a button to the main toolbar
var addButton = function() {
Jupyter.toolbar.add_buttons_group([
Jupyter.keyboard_manager.actions.register({
'help': 'Add figure layout generator',
'icon': 'fa-window-restore',
'handler': inject_figure_widget
}, 'add-default-cell', 'Default cell')
])
} // This function is run when the notebook is first loaded
function load_ipython_extension() {
addButton();
}
return {
load_ipython_extension: load_ipython_extension
};
});
This skeleton code runs a ‘startup’ function when the notebook is loaded. That ‘startup’ function creates the toolbar button and also registers a callback to the toolbar putton press. That callback, inject_figure_widget , is the ‘main’ function of the extension which will inject the HTML canvas into the notebook. To make main.js self-contained, you can define helper functions inside of the main function(Jupter, events) .
Figuring out the JS/HTML to inject a canvas into the output field is a bit of trial and error using the console and the element inspector. The rough outline is:
// execute the current cell to generate the output field; otherwise it won't be created
Jupyter.notebook.select();
Jupyter.notebook.execute_cell(); // get reference to the output area of the cell
var output_subarea = $("#notebook-container")
.children('.selected')
.children('.output_wrapper')
.children('.output'); // add to DOM
let div = document.createElement("div");
output_subarea[0].appendChild(div);
Now the HTML elements of the widget can be added to div just like in any javascript-powered web page. Some special handling is needed for keyboard input elements, however. You’ll find if you try to type numbers into input fields that it converts your cell to markdown and eliminates the output field. This is because of Jupyter notebook’s default keybindings. The fix is to disable Jupyter’s keyboard manager when one of your text fields becomes in focus, and re-enable when it exits focus:
function input_field_focus() {
Jupyter.keyboard_manager.disable();
} function input_field_blur() {
Jupyter.keyboard_manager.enable();
}
$("#subplot_letter_input").focus(input_field_focus).blur(input_field_blur);
Other functionality
The implemented widget has a number of other functions for which I won’t describe the implementation as it is all fairly standard javascript:
Splitting plots into gridded subplots
Resizing subplots with the mouse
Aligning horizontal/vertical edges of selected plot to other plots
Moving subplots by mouse
Moving subplots by keyboard arrows
Copy/paste, undo, delete
Creating labels
Code generation
Saving and reloading from within the notebook
See the README of the widget for illustration of functionality.
Part 2: programmatic resizing
The mouse-based layout tool is (hopefully) an easier way to define a complicated subplot layout. One difficulty in laying out a figure with multiple subplots in matplotlib is that sometimes text can overlap between subplots. Matplotlib is beginning to handle this issue with the tight layout feature, but that feature does not appear to be compatible with the generic way of defining subplot locations used here; it is meant to be used with the grid-based subplot layout definitions.
What we’d like as a user is to
Create a rough layout graphically Fill in all the data and the labels Call a routine to automatically make everything “fit” in the available space.
Step 2 must happen before everything can be “made to fit”. This is because it’s hard to account for the size of text-base elements beforehand. You might add or omit text labels, which occupies or frees space. Depending on your data range, the tick labels might a different number of characters occupying different amounts of canvas area.
A very simple algorithm to make all the plot elements fit on the canvas is
Calculate a bounding box around all subplot elements. For each pair of plots, determine if the plots overlap based on the bounding boxes. If there’s overlap, calculate a scale factor to reduce the width and height of the leftmost/topmost plot. Assume that the top left corner of each subplot is anchored. When this scale factor is applied, there should be no overlap for this pair of plots. (Sidenote: if two plots are overlapping assuming zero area allocated for text, they will not be resized; the assumption then is that the overlap is intentional such as for inset plots). Apply the smallest pairwise scale factor globally.
This is by no means the best data visualization algorithm, but it should always produce an overlap-free plot. This algorithm is implemented in this simple python module]
Axis bounding box
Finding the bounding box of various elements in maplotlib takes some trial-and-error. The data structures representing plot elements are quite flexible which can make it hard to figure out how to get the size of elements on the canvas if you’re not familiar with the API (I am firmly in the “not familiar” camp). Below is a simple search which iterates through all the children of an axis and tries to get the size of different recognized elements. I could not figure out a more uniform approach than the one below.
def get_axis_bounds(fig, ax, scaled=False):
children = ax.get_children() # initial est based on ax itself
p0, p1 = ax.bbox.get_points()
xmax, ymax = p1
xmin, ymin = p0 for child in children:
if isinstance(child, matplotlib.axis.XAxis):
text_obj = filter(lambda x: isinstance(x, matplotlib.text.Text), child.get_children())
text_obj_y = [x.get_window_extent(renderer=fig.canvas.renderer).p0[1] for x in text_obj]
ymin_label = np.min(text_obj_y)
if ymin_label < ymin:
ymin = ymin_label
elif isinstance(child, matplotlib.axis.YAxis):
text_obj = filter(lambda x: isinstance(x, matplotlib.text.Text), child.get_children())
text_obj_x = [x.get_window_extent(renderer=fig.canvas.renderer).p0[0] for x in text_obj]
xmin_label = np.min(text_obj_x)
if xmin_label < xmin:
xmin = xmin_label
elif hasattr(child, 'get_window_extent'):
bb = child.get_window_extent(renderer=fig.canvas.renderer)
if xmax < bb.p1[0]:
xmax = bb.p1[0]
if xmin > bb.p0[0]:
xmin = bb.p0[0]
if ymin > bb.p0[1]:
ymin = bb.p0[1]
if ymax < bb.p1[1]:
ymax = bb.p1[1] if scaled:
rect_bounds = np.array([xmin, ymin, xmax, ymax])
fig_size_x, fig_size_y = fig.get_size_inches() * fig.dpi
rect_bounds /= np.array([fig_size_x, fig_size_y, fig_size_x, fig_size_y])
return rect_bounds
else:
return np.array([xmin, ymin, xmax, ymax])
There’s a small catch: this method requires matplotlib to first render the figure canvas. Before this rendering, matplotlib may not properly inform you how much space an element will take up. So you’ll have to use matplotlib in interactive mode. Presumably you’re in a jupyter environment if you’re using the widget from part 1. If you use the %matplotlib notebook style of figure generation which is interactive, this issue shouldn’t be a problem.
Getting the boundaries of the plot area is quite a bit simpler because that’s how you specify where to draw the axes. The information is stored on the bbox attribute of the axis.
fig_size_x, fig_size_y = fig.get_size_inches() * fig.dpi
plot_bounds = ax.bbox.get_points() / np.array([fig_size_x, fig_size_y])
Once the axis boundary and the plot boundary is known, the size of the border containing the text elements can be calculated on each side. The size of the border is fixed (unless the text changes), so the algorithm to calculate the rescaling factor on the plot is simply to scale it down by the fraction occupied by the border text
Resizing examples
Below are a few examples of auto-scaling plots to accomodate errant space occupied by text.
Axis extending too far horizontally
Before:
After:
Axis extending too far vertically
Before:
After:
Axes overlapping horizontally
Before:
After:
Axes overlapping vertically
Before:
After:
Conclusion
Altogether, this approach may automate some of the more tedious data visualization tasks researchers may face when publishing. Dealing with the layout issues algorithmically may lend itself to developing more sophisticated algorithms for laying out figures to be more naturally readable. | https://towardsdatascience.com/a-juypter-notebook-extension-for-graphical-publication-figure-layout-d2f207d7e63f | ['Suraj Gowda'] | 2020-09-15 18:18:43.123000+00:00 | ['Jupyter Notebook', 'Data Science', 'Matplotlib', 'Data Visualization'] |
Scarred Heart | If you purge your soul onto paper and are doing it for the love of writing. Then this publication is for you. We love gritty, raw, emotional, thought-provoking, rebellious, sexual, spiritual, nature-related writings and comic strips.
Follow | https://medium.com/the-rebel-poets-society/scarred-heart-1d7d5060135a | ['Ann Marie Steele'] | 2020-09-06 22:39:04.892000+00:00 | ['Confusion', 'Love', 'Poetry', 'Self-awareness', 'Poem'] |
Viewpoints Podcast #4–Towards an Open Metaverse | Viewpoints Podcast #4–Towards an Open Metaverse
Viewpoints Podcast #4–Towards an Open Metaverse w/ Ryan Gill (Crucible) and Jamie Burke (Outlier Ventures)
Welcome to the fourth episode of Viewpoints, the virtual podcast where we talk to the founders, entrepreneurs and investors who are building the category defining companies in the Metaverse and Spatial Computing. Your Viewpoint hosts are Dave Haynes and Petri Rajahalme. And in Episode #4 we talk with our guests Ryan Gill, the CEO of Crucible and Jamie Burke, founder of Outlier Ventures.
Crucible is a startup whose mission is to lay down the ‘Blueprints for the Open Metaverse’: a set of tools for builders, developers and creators to give their players a portable, digital identity. They’ve started doing this through their Emergence SDK which is currently in alpha. Ryan is one of the best people I know at translating lofty concepts such as ‘Metaverse’, ‘Web 3.0’ and ‘NFT’s to non-technical creators and business leaders. You can read more about Crucible’s vision here.
Outlier Ventures is an accelerator and early-stage investor that has been investing in web 3.0, crypto and blockchain since 2013, seeing many cycles in that space, and with a portfolio of over 70 startups now. You can read their vision for the open Metaverse here. And if you’re a founder working on related topics then you can find out more information about their Basecamp accelerator here.
Our general discussion revolves around how Ryan and Jamie both view the oncoming Metaverse. What is it? Why they both believe it should be both open and decentralized? And how this fits in with Web 3.0 and the work Outlier does in blockchain, crypto and de-fi. We also touch upon everything from NFT’s, ‘Direct To Avatar’ and Metaverse first brands. It’s quite a dense episode and we could have spent at least another hour unpacking many of the concepts and viewpoints discussed. I can sense a part 2 coming at some point in the future!
For this episode we recorded inside the Engage platform. We’re still perfecting how to best capture the best possible quality and Ryan suffered a few technical hitches that resulted in him disappearing for a few minutes. But it’s still a great episode, so please enjoy! Below are the show notes if you want to dive in at certain parts of the conversation.
Show Notes
0:20 — Welcome to Viewpoints and intros from Dave and Petri.
1:38 — Jamie tells us how he defines the Open Metaverse and why blockchain and de-fi are important to its development
5:43 — Ryan tells us more about Crucible and its role in building out an open metaverse and bridging the worlds of crypto and gaming.
8:07 — Jamie goes on to define Web 3.0 and how it contrasts to Web 2.0
10:02 — We go back to discuss the various different definitions that people have placed on the word ‘Metaverse’. And the fact that it has not yet been defined yet.
14:48 — Ryan talks about decentralised identity, why it matters and how that differs to the current state of identity in the gaming industry.
18:20 — Ryan highlights some of the early partnerships that Crucible have with companies such as Ubisoft
19:42 — We ask Jamie to tell us more about how Outlier started, how they differ to other investors and accelerators and what attracted Outlier to become an early backer in Crucible
25:26 — Jamie talks about some of the different funding routes open to startups working in the Web 3.0 space
30:24 — Is the hype around Metaverse and NFTs a help or a hindrance to startups in this space?
34:43 — Ryan re-enters the episode!
34:55 — Ryan talks about what he means by ‘Direct To Avatar’ and why he started using that term
39:15 — We discuss whether we will see the rise of ‘Metaverse-first’ brands and how they might leverage NFTs?
44:32 — What is the role of AR/VR in the Metaverse?
47:30 — Jamie argues that Web 3.0, greater interoperability and more open systems will lead to an accelerated pace of innovation in this space
51:10 — Dave brings together some of the key themes from this episode’s conversation
52:05 — Ryan gives his final thought on the importance of developing the language around Metaverse and Web 3.0 to translate these concepts for the business and investor community.
56:20 — Jamie gives us more info on how to find Outlier Ventures and what opportunities are currently open through their Basecamp and Ascent programs.
58:30 — Ryan gives us more info on where to find Crucible on the web and on Telegram.
Stay tuned for more episodes of Viewpoints. Subscribe to this Medium publication or our YouTube page for news and updates. | https://medium.com/viewpoints-podcast/viewpoints-podcast-4-towards-an-open-metaverse-afcdda1a712e | ['Dave Haynes'] | 2021-08-05 16:49:56.770000+00:00 | ['Podcast', 'Metaverse', 'Startup', 'Spatial Computing'] |
Right Model for the Job | Right Model for the Job
Choosing the right machine learning model for a business use case can be tricky. With so many models easily accessible as part of freely available libraries and more being added every day, it’s very important to spend some thought on which subset of models to focus your effort on. Many factors dictate this choice such as the problem statement at hand, the amount of data available, productionization constraints.
While deciding on the right model, the most basic question to consider would be the nature of the problem, whether it is a classification or regression task. This should be clear from the problem statement.
Let us say, we are working on a regression problem. The amount of data available for training would be another important consideration for choosing the model. However, a finer point to consider would be the purpose of the model, that is, whether the model is for prediction or drawing inference.
Prediction
A model needed to predict the output will have to prioritize accuracy over other considerations. Accuracy in this context, of course, means prediction accuracy on unseen data (“test error”) and not on the data model has been trained on (“train error”).
For example, we would want to focus on prediction accuracy if we are predicting stock prices.
In this scenario, the best model would be the one with the best prediction error. Generally, such a model would be more complex and non-linear to capture the variations in the target variable. However, as the model complexity increases, it becomes progressively difficult to interpret all the variations and how each factor affects the output and to what extent.
For example, it is quite easy to visualize data points in a 2-d space whereas it becomes progressively difficult to visualize the points in n-dimensional space as the number of dimensions increase.
Inference
Other than prediction, the model could be useful to approximate the relationship between the target variable and a set of features. For example, it could be useful to understand what factors affect life expectancy such as education, the standard of living. It would be important for policymakers to understand how much would 2 additional years of education improve life expectancy.
When inference is the primary aim of the analysis, it would be preferable to have a more interpretable model over more complex models with better prediction accuracy. For these scenarios, it would be more important to understand the interplay between the factors and how much weight each factor has in the final value for the target variable. Simple, easily explainable models such as linear regression would preferable as a direct look at the coefficients of the linear regression model gives us an idea of the importance of features and the change in the prediction with the change in the value of features.
Have Your Cake and Eat it Too
There could be scenarios where both prediction and inference matter. For example, a model to predict housing prices can not only provide an estimate of the value of the property but also provide an idea of the factors that affect the price of the property and to what extent.
Often in business, a complex model with the best prediction accuracy would need to be paired with some interpretability framework to ease business adoption.
Depending on the problem, if we have an interpretable model with good prediction accuracy, then we can use the model straight away. Otherwise, there are model interpretability techniques such as LIME and SHAP, which could enhance the interpretability of the model.
Issues with Complexity
The model architecture choice depends not only on the use-case but also on others factors such as the amount of data available. A more complex model would need a larger amount of data to provide similar prediction accuracy.
There is a trade-off between model accuracy and model interpretability. As the model becomes more complex, it can better follow the patterns in the data but it also becomes less interpretable. However, if a complex model is trained on limited data, the model can overfit. It would be more “flexible” ie it would fit the variations in the target feature too closely but it is also incorporating noise in the pattern.
Common Machine Learning Models — Interpretability-Accuracy Spectrum (Photo from this paper)
Conclusion
Choosing the right machine learning model depends not only on the business use-case but also on the amount of data available. There might be an over-reliance on prediction accuracy in the industry these days but both prediction and inference offer value in analytics workflows. Both offer different perspectives on understanding the data better and are complementary approaches.
In the future, when starting a new analysis and deciding on model architecture, the end use-case and amount of data available are important factors.
Related Reads | https://towardsdatascience.com/right-model-for-the-job-243b0009d84e | ['Sakchhi Srivastava'] | 2021-05-04 19:09:37.979000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Predictive Analytics', 'Model Selection', 'Data Science'] |
elegant bachelor | elegant bachelor
I begin fingering the ashtray.
One of those nights.
I shake the dust free and pluck out some roaches.
Laid out on a supermarket circular-
5 golden brown beauties
not dead, resting their eyes.
I pinch a couple down the middle and crack
them open between my thumb and knuckle.
The rest require surgery with little scissors
and the knife from my desk drawer,
I make precision cuts to honor the donors
and make use of their guts.
Pork chops are on sale, ham hocks are half-off.
Clumps of brown and green, crumbles of black matter
rolled in a paper with a pinch of tobacco for filler.
Ashen complexion. Acrid confection. User discretion.
I smoke it and ignore the life I’ve chosen. | https://medium.com/literally-literary/elegant-bachelor-40e1bff79661 | ['Matt Vercillo'] | 2018-01-26 13:52:05.164000+00:00 | ['Cannabis', 'Literally Literary', 'Writing', 'Poetry', 'Recycling'] |
Movies, murals & marine life: 32 things to do to on the Peninsula for Memorial Day Weekend | Take a hike
It’s a great year to find some open space for Memorial Day, and the Peninsula certainly has a lot to offer. High on our list these days is the Russian Ridge Preserve up on Skyline. Meadows full of wildflowers, stunning vistas and winding trails are all quickly accessible from the main parking lot (which is located near the Page Mill /Alpine Road intersection). You can hike far or just take a simple loop; plus, the area is full of raptors, lizards and other critters for the kids to scout.
We’re also inclined to point you towards some other great hike potential in the region, such as the Monte Bello Open Space Preserve and Montara Mountain (which is challenging in spots, but the coastal views are worth it). Also, consider the Sweeney Ridge Trail, which is located just off of 280 in San Bruno and leads to the Bay Area Discovery Site, where Spain’s Captain Juan Gaspar de Portola and his crew — accompanied by members of the local Aramai tribe — first “discovered” the San Francisco Bay in 1769, according to the National Park Service.
Visitors view the inhabitants of tide pool this past spring at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve. (Photo by Adam Pardee)
Finally, it wouldn’t be a list of 650 things to do without mentioning one of our perennial faves—Fitzgerald Marine Reserve. Yes, the tide pool wonderland is open again and there are some great negative low tides (read as: peak tide pooling conditions) in the a.m. hours throughout the weekend. And, as we always suggest, don’t forget to hike the bluffs overlooking the beach…which are simply stunning. | https://thesixfifty.com/movies-murals-marine-life-27-things-to-do-to-on-the-peninsula-for-memorial-day-weekend-61b1fa34bf65 | ['The Six Fifty Staff'] | 2021-05-27 22:00:42.720000+00:00 | ['Bay Area', 'San Francisco', 'California', 'Silicon Valley', 'Memorial Day'] |
Simple Ways to Make Fitness Fun | I love running, but it’s rare that I’ll suggest it to someone. In reality, most people just don’t enjoy it, and that’s fine. Problems arise when people try to stick to a training plan that they just don’t find fun. No matter if it’s optimal or not, the best training plan for you is one you enjoy. That way, it’s sustainable, and you’ll truly get the benefits of years of consistent training.
Make Fitness Fun Again
Returning to Sports
A lot of us will have performed some form of sports as kids. However, as we grow older, our priorities change. With our dreams of turning pro fading away, we unfortunately just don’t take the time in our schedule to play a sport for fun.
If you’re struggling to stick to your training, maybe you need to return to that sport you once loved so much. I’m sure there are some house leagues in your area you could join. If not, call some old friends and play some pick-up. Everybody loves a bit of fun and the benefits that come with it.
If you’ve never played sports before, it could be time to try. The teamwork, skills to improve on and socializing aspects of sports are usually enjoyed by all newcomers.
Family Activity
Another way to make your training fun is to do it with your family, your significant other, or even your friends. It could be a walk, sports, or any activity you all enjoy. Doing it together will add a social component to your training, which is fun and has benefits for your mental health.
Furthermore, everybody in the group will benefit from the added activity. You’ll usually perform better too, since you have someone to push you through it. So, bring your family to the park, the trails or the courts and have some fun together.
Through the Day
Activity can also be built in to your day. From your work desk to a trip to the grocery store, there are easy ways you can add more movement to regular activities. We have a whole blog post on this subject, which you’ll find below.
Easy Ways to Add Movement to Your Day
Necessities
While most of your training can be fun, there are still some things you should do, whether you like it or not. The most important of these is resistance training. In fact, the Canadian society of exercise physiology (CSEP) suggests that you do muscle-strengthening activities at least twice a week. This will reduce the risk of injuries, and lead to better bone health, physical function, and quality of life.
Resistance training is part of a well-balanced, and mostly fun, training plan. In truth, hitting a new PR is also pretty enjoyable. | https://medium.com/@theaveragerunnerblog/simple-ways-to-make-fitness-fu-eea9354406e6 | [] | 2021-04-25 15:02:55.297000+00:00 | ['Sports', 'Family', 'Fitness', 'Fun', 'Walking'] |
The Perfect Summer Makeup Routine for Oily Skin | Whoever said, “women don’t sweat, they glisten,” has obviously never had to put on a full face of permanent makeup in Portland in the sweltering heat of the summer months. Despite the fact that we all enjoy the summer, we don’t enjoy it when our makeup melts. Not only do you don’t want to waste your time putting on your makeup, but you also don’t want to get confused between a dewy look and the look that says “I just finished at the gym.”
Given my oily skin, my summer makeup routine for oily skin consists of oil-free and mattifying products to prevent the appearance of excessive shine on the skin. Here are six of my favourite ways to keep my makeup looking fresh throughout the summer.
Ailis Beauty
1. Don’t forget to prime your engine.
The use of a primer is essential for long-lasting makeup. Using a pea-sized amount of primer, apply it to moisturised skin before applying your foundation and concealer. I use Smashbox Photo Finish Pore Minimizing Primer ($39) to minimise the appearance of my large pores and to control the amount of shine in my T-zone.
2. Get rid of your full-coverage foundation.
When the weather is hot and humid, the last thing you want to do is bury your skin beneath a layer of foundation on your face. After all, you wouldn’t want to be wearing a heavy sweater in the middle of summer, would you?
Make room for your skin’s natural ability to breathe by using lightweight BB creams, CC creams, or tinted moisturisers (with plenty of SPF for sun protection). The Laura Mercier Tinted Moisturizer Broad Spectrum SPF 20 — Oil Free ($45) and the It Cosmetics CC+ Cream with SPF 50+ ($38) are the two products I like to alternate between. If you put on as little as possible, the less there will be to slide off in the heat. Using a dampened beauty sponge, apply your base for a light and sheer layer of protection.
Less coverage means more transparency, which can be a problem if you have problem areas such as redness, acne, or dark spots on your face or body. To hide imperfections when I’m having a bad skin day, I use concealer wherever it’s needed — my favourite concealer is NARS Radiant Creamy Concealer ($30).
3. Opt for cream rather than powder.
Powder and sweat are not a good combination. Wherever possible, opt for cream formulations (blushes, shadows, and highlighters). Their glistening effect is always welcome, and they tend to cake less than other products. In the shade, Glossier Cloud Paint ($18) is used. Dusk is my go-to for a natural summer blush that isn’t too heavy. It is sheer, but it is also buildable, making it simple to use. Make a quick swipe across your eyelids with Glossier Lidstar ($18) for a subtle sheen and a wash of colour, and you’re ready for the day.
If you’d like more information on any of the Glossier makeup products, check out our comprehensive review of the entire line.
4. Apply your makeup in a way that prevents shine.
A dewy finish is perfect for summer, but you don’t want to look like you’ve been working out. Use a loose translucent powder to set your makeup and keep your T-zone from becoming shiny. Laura Mercier’s Translucent Loose Setting Powder ($38) is colourless, which means it will be less likely to slide off your face in the heat. Use Clean & Clear Oil Absorbing Sheets ($5) to quickly absorb excess grease when you need a quick fix.
5. Make sure your makeup is sweat-proof.
We’re busy ladies who rely on our makeup to last throughout the day, whether it’s at the office, the gym, the pool, or brunch plans. Setting spray works in the same way that hairspray does for your hair; it keeps all of your makeup in place. The setting sprays from Urban Decay will keep your makeup from smudging, creasing, or fading in the heat. There are several different types to choose from. The Urban Decay De-Slick Oil-Control Makeup Setting Spray ($15) is my personal favourite.
When it comes to summer heat, waterproof mascara is a no-brainer. It’s also possible to ditch your kohl eyeliner pencil in favour of a waterproof liquid formal that will not smudge.
6. Make use of lip tints only.
While wearing lipstick in the heat, be aware that it may smudge and melt, and that lipgloss may become runny and sticky. Lip tints are my best friend when it comes to the summer months. With a hint of lip colour, you can maintain a natural and effortless appearance no matter what type of lip product you use. Glossier Generation G sheer matte lipsticks ($18) are something I always have in my purse. | https://medium.com/@ailisbeauty6/the-perfect-summer-makeup-routine-for-oily-skin-6abeb0aa29e7 | ['Ailis Beauty'] | 2021-11-25 10:14:56.368000+00:00 | ['Makeup Tips', 'Makeup Products', 'Makeup'] |
Sanity Testing an OpenShift Cluster | Sanity Testing an OpenShift Cluster
Over the past few months I have had a few scenarios where customers with 3.11 Openshift clusters were looking for a way to run automated functionality and sanity tests to insure cluster health and functionality on top of the available Grafana/Prometheus monitoring. Now that I have delivered it I thought that it would be useful for others trying to tackle the same issues. Below are two particular scenarios:
Sanity Testing the Cluster for Basic Deployment Health and Functionality
Periodic Test for Insuring Access to External Resources and Deployment Functionality
OpenShift Cluster Sanity Tests
Initially designed to be run once a cluster is deployed using an Ansible Tower workflow, the below project is useful not only when deploying a new cluster but also when looking to run periodic sanity tests on the cluster. The procedure has 3 major stages: project creation, infrastructure tests and cluster reboot.
It covers the following scenarios:
Check project creation and pod deployment
Verify persistent storage is available
Router Connectivity
All Pods are running in the main OCP projects
Checks for failed pods in all projects in the cluster
Verify nodes are ready
Etcd health
Console health
Checks selinux policy is correct
Check nodes survive reboot
The project utilizes an nginx image and Ansible and can be found on github:
OpenShift Periodic Functionality Sanity Tests
I got another request regarding testing connectivity to external services from within the pod network as well as insuring that at any given time a new project could be created and a pod brought up on any compute node. The aim being to periodically check for any unexpected network connectivity issues and internal OCP resource issues. For this I put together the following project:
Based on Ansible and a custom container containing the s3cmd and psql CLIs as well as httpd, the project performs the following:
Creates a project
Creates a Route, Service, PVC and deployment config for the container
Runs through all the compute nodes 1 by 1, labeling and scaling up/down the deployment config so that the pod runs on each node
When the pod is up, it runs an internal script that connects to both S3 and Postgresql endpoint and writes the response to /var/www/html/results.html
Before moving the Pod to the next node, Ansible queries the file via the router and checks for errors in the results.html file
The final architecture for implementing the solution is utilizing Ansible Tower Job Template Scheduling and SPLUNK logging aggregator as follows: | https://medium.com/@grakover/sanity-testing-an-openshift-cluster-43e2473c884e | ['Guy Rakover'] | 2019-11-11 03:47:50.740000+00:00 | ['Openshift', 'Sanity Testing', 'Docker', 'Monitoring', 'Ansible Tower'] |
Cooperative Human | Cooperative Human
Cooperation — where individuals work together to create a benefit for an entire group — seems at odds with what many people assume are the elemental evolution forces. After all, it’s a jungle out there; only the strongest survive, humans, are selfish, etc. Cooperation lies at the heart of human lives and society — from day-to-day interactions to some of our most significant endeavors. Understanding Cooperation — what motivates it, how it develops, how it happens, and when it fails to happen — is, therefore, an essential part of understanding all kinds of human behavior. Human beings are a social species that relies on Cooperation to survive and thrive. Understanding how and why Cooperation succeeds or fails is integral to solving the many global challenges we face.
But most scientists don’t share that view of evolution. “The role of unbridled violence in evolution is greatly overestimated,” says Danny Grunbaum, an oceanographer at the University of Washington and a pioneer in revealing the ways that ocean life cooperates to survive. “When we see animals like elephant seals fighting with each other — as we do in lots of nature documentaries — we see only a tiny sliver of time. Much more of the time, they’re accommodating each other and respecting where the boundaries are — and that’s Cooperation. There is a tremendous amount of Cooperation in nature.”
The science of Cooperation reveals that Cooperation is not unique to humans. It’s not even unique to animals. Cooperation is part of nature, down to the cellular level. The reason why is simple, according to evolutionary biologists: Cooperation is one of the most essential and beneficial behaviors on Earth. We literally would not be here without it.
Humans, plants, and animals are made up of cells that learned to cooperate long ago. Together they formed multicellular organisms, increasing each cell’s chances of replication and survival in the process. From these biological blocks, Cooperation prevails at every level of the animal kingdom. Ants that march to the same drummer move faster. Fish rid other fish of harmful bacteria for a free meal. Small birds protect each other from predators. Bats that share food survive.
Ants: If you’re looking for it, you will never see an ant stuck in traffic. Ants have evolved a three-lane, two-way traffic system: As many as 200,000 ants a day pour out of their nest in search of food, splitting into two groups to form two outgoing lanes; they return in a single canter lane, sometimes carrying more than 30,000 edible grasshoppers or other insects. This ultra-cooperative ability of these simplistic organisms arises from living in large groups for millions of years.
Fish: Among fish, Cooperation is motivated by a simple trade-off: food for cleanliness. “Cleaner” fish swim into the mouths of the bigger fish — called “clients” — to eat parasites and harmful bacteria. The cleaners get a meal, and the clients get a healthier mouth. Cleaners are small, hardly a satisfying meal, and a good, trustworthy cleaner takes work to find.
Birds: When a predator enters the area of a sparrow-like bird called the pied flycatcher, the flycatcher will alert others by screeching loudly. It’s a risky and costly move — screeching draws the predator’s attention. The more birds that join the mob, the more likely the predator will flee, and the quicker the flycatchers can return to their business.
Bats: Have a system of food sharing that helps ensure their survival as a species. Bats die if they go two nights without a meal, and hunting for blood — their only source of food — is a risky business. Adult bats fail to find blood eight percent of the time. Younger bats forget one night out of every three. But hunger is rare because bats that find blood share it with bats that don’t. But they do this only as long as the favor is someday returned. If a colony didn’t share food, four out of every five bats would die each year. But by cooperating, the death rate is slashed to one in four.
Humans: Our species, Homo sapiens¸, first appeared about 200,000 years ago in Africa and rapidly spread and diversified across the globe — a success that has, in part, been attributed to our capacity for Cooperation. Until the advent of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, all humans lived by hunting game and gathering wild plant foods. Today, there is a rich array of human populations with diverse subsistence modes, languages, religions, and forms of Cooperation. Because much of this diversity originated very recently in evolutionary terms, the puzzle of human Cooperation is best understood within the context of hunter-gatherers’ lifestyle (also referred to as ‘foragers’) and the adaptive problems solves. Unique aspects of the human diet, life-history, and reproduction made Cooperation a necessary human life element.
Researchers have concluded that our brain is wired for Cooperation. One of the Cooperation’s benefits is that people can pool their skills and creativity towards a common aim. Because of this, they have a higher chance of being more successful. Now, let’s put together the five benefits we can gain out of teamwork and collaboration:
It fosters peer learning and self-improvement.
Working within a team helps us create an environment that inspires collective knowledge, resources, and skills. Consequently, this allows us to pick some ideas and to reflect on our way of thinking. Teamwork also encourages self-improvement — an essential skill to acquire regardless of our role within an organization. It helps us expand our horizons and make better use of our intrinsic capabilities. And since self-improvement helps us seek better ways to perform our role within a team, it improves both the group’s efficiency and productivity. Teamwork promotes diversity
The very nature of teamwork requires a group of people from varying backgrounds to come together and share their experiences. As a result, this kind of environment nurtures diverse opinions, approaches, and problem-solving techniques.
Delegation of tasks becomes easy.
If you’re a team leader, one apparent reason to favor teamwork is that it allows you to convene a team of individuals who each have unique skills to help you with the project. A task can be delegated based on a person’s skills and expertise. For example, you may assign one person to do research, another to take charge of social media marketing, and another to look after the presentation. Teamwork allows you to get the most of each person’s attributes. Collaboration encourages healthy competition.
When you assemble a group of goal-oriented people, they somehow see each other as a rival. A healthy balance of friendly rivalry within the team won’t do much harm and could even benefit the organization itself and even the team members.
It increases creativity and innovation.
The seeds of creativity and innovation spring from the exchange of ideas from people of different backgrounds. For instance, researchers who come from other disciplines could tackle climate change could potentially lead to ground-breaking research. In the academic world, researchers have essentially migrated from the era of ‘traditional’ research in which one researcher pursued a theme over several decades. Instead, academia is fostering a new research culture, whereby academic works advance through the creation of interdisciplinary research.
Takeaway
With the benefits that an organization could gain from teamwork, they also come with potential problems. For one, you should not expect a multidisciplinary team to gel straight away, and if you are the team leader, you have to consider whether to reward (or punish) individuals or the entire group. But, arguably, the benefits of teamwork and collaboration could easily outweigh those drawbacks. And of course, in considering the benefits, an excellent place to start is with the end in mind: how will it help your organization position itself for growth.
The key to our happiness is Cooperation, not competition. | https://medium.com/@capt-vinod/cooperative-human-56735f91c795 | ['Vinod Bhardwaj'] | 2020-12-26 14:13:46.774000+00:00 | ['Teamwork', 'Cooperation', 'Competition', 'Science Of Consciousness', 'Happiness In Life'] |
Driving Mitsubishi outlander phev | … lessons from a 1K trip around the Northern reach of NZ South Island
Filled in petrol to tank up once, so about 80 liters of petrol, and drove about 1600 kilometres, averaging 20 kilometres to a litre, or roughly 5 litres per 100 kilometres. The terrain was up and down, hilly and flat, some gravel roads. The landscape was varying, some city driving, mostly highway miles at 90 km/hr (the speed limit here is 100 km/hr, some stretches 90 km/hr, and some stretches 60 km/hr).
Here are the bullet pointers for future and lessons learned: | https://medium.com/@arinbasu/driving-mitsubishi-outlander-phev-f1d8cbefdd4e | ['Arindam Basu'] | 2020-12-25 04:43:40.112000+00:00 | ['Phev', 'Outlander', 'Cars', 'Electric Vehicles', 'Mitsubishi'] |
New Years Bubbles | Drinking: Elouan Rosé of Pinot Noir with leftover Hawaiian pizza. An easy drinking rosé that can be picked up at Binny’s or wherever. Strawberry and raspberry notes, bright acidity, some mineral/stone notes. Truly delicious and a regular in my wine fridge.
Solo trip to Europe, fully jet lagged. Cava in an elevator, Barcelona, Spain, July 2019
2021, gone in a flash. The shortest and longest year ever, surely for everyone. I can’t decide if I’m happy to see it go or sad or just numb. But to be fair, I hate New Years. Always have. I’m not sure what it is — maybe the expectation of something better, something different, something more, that always gets to me.
Last night I watched “Don’t Look Up” on Netflix. I won’t spoil it, but when shit is hitting the fan, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character looks at his family and says, “We really did have everything, didn’t we?” It made me instantly cry, and I am not a cry-during-a-movie person. But that line will live with me. Because in this time of loss and grief and illness, in this time of quarantine and anxiety, of expensive home repairs, of chronic health stuff, of job stress, of heartbreaks, of tough moments with friends and family, of working overtime, it still feels like I have it all. And I don’t sit in that enough. New Years is about new and more and better, and really, I don’t want new, and more, and better. Because when I really look at it all, I really do have everything. And I want to spend more time celebrating that than the turn of a calendar.
But I’ll take almost any chance I can get to have a glass or two of bubbles, no matter what or who is being celebrated.
Here’s a quick list of fantastic bubbles you can find at any large wine store.
Celebrate with these sparklers:
Iron Horse, Sonoma, CA: Any of the cuvees are fantastic if you are partial to dry bubbly.
Schramsberg Blanc de Noirs, Napa, CA (blahnk — der — new — are): A bit more body and fruit than the lighter, dryer Blanc de Blanc.
Bollinger Special Cuvee, Champagne, FR: The bubbles my family and I popped after Biden won. Highly recommend.
Louis Bouillot Cremant de Bourgogne Brut, Burgundy, FR: Yeast, citrus, peaches, melon, almonds. Delish.
Mawby, Traverse City, MI: Grab anything from here, but their most popular is “Sex.” A bit too sweet for me, but a crowd pleaser for most. This bubble house is incredible, and the wine will surprise you.
And if I have taught you anything, just ask the employees there what they suggest. Tell them what you like first!
A celebration of having it all:
Gloria Ferrer, Sonoma CA, Aug 2017
The estate I lived on in Bordeaux. Chateau Feely, Saussignac, FR. Tasting the memories here, Oct, 2019
MFA graduation wine. Graduated in my parents’ living room. June, 2020
My wine partner in crime, Kaitlin. Oct, 2020
Take me out to dinner, Joe Byron. Nov, 2020
Friends at a favorite winery of ours. Oct, 2019
Steph and me after a bit too much wine, it seems. Apr, 2019
Let me in, Mawby. It’s been a hell of a (2) year(s). Mar, 2021
Sending you love and bubbles in the New Year. | https://medium.com/@wine-not/new-years-bubbles-320b87b00b53 | ['Wine Not'] | 2021-12-30 18:02:38.282000+00:00 | ['Wine Tasting', 'Wineries', 'Wine Industry', 'Wine'] |
Even as a white person, I am familiar with the problems of “traveling while black”! | Even as a white person, I am familiar with the problems of “traveling while black”!
I come from a multiracial family (white, Asian, Latino, African-American) and have a biracial white/African-American niece. I heard from her mom the HORRIBLE racist ways she was treated as she grew up in the US. Then when my niece was 15 the whole family moved to Bangkok. Of course, the constant staring by the Thai (and people wanting to touch her skin or hair!) totally freaked her out, so she came back to the US for college and a job. But her racist boss made her life so hellish she was diagnosed with PTSD and went back to Thailand to recuperate at her parents’ house. She concluded that she much preferred Thailand because even though she draws unwanted attention everywhere she goes, no Thai person has ever been mean to her, refused her service, or acted in any way like the white Americans who have mistreated her since infancy.
She’s doing fine now, as long as she stays away from racist whites…
I wish to high heaven there were a place where she and anyone of African descent could be safe from abuse and never thought to be anything other than an ordinary person, treated with the same respect and dignity as anyone else! The fact that such a place apparently does not exist is an utter travesty. | https://medium.com/@larsonstoll/even-as-a-white-person-i-am-familiar-with-the-problems-of-traveling-while-black-39d7b8c24cd5 | ['Jane Stoll'] | 2020-11-06 02:59:20.604000+00:00 | ['Travel', 'African American', 'Racism', 'America', 'Thailand'] |
Cryptocurrency basics — 3 key characteristics and why they matter | In order to believe in the crypto revolution, it’s important to understand the fundamental aspects of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology that make it so revolutionary.
The 3 key characteristics of cryptocurrencies are that they are trustless, immutable, and decentralized.
Bitcoin: our first and most prominent example
Bitcoin is a cryptographically secure currency that was created to be used universally for payments, similar to cash. It was also created with the vision of Bitcoin replacing of all forms of fiat currency in mind.
As Bitcoin is the first cryptocurrency ever created, it is the first to exhibit the 3 key characteristics we will cover later on.
Because the Bitcoin code is open source, people have been creating their own versions of Bitcoin, a.k.a. “Alt-coins” for the past few years.
The vision of Bitcoin replacing all fiat currency is becoming less realistic with bitcoin’s current dominance at 45% (less than half) of the total cryptocurrency market.
As you can see from the trend, there have been some tremendous altcoin rallies that have chopped Bitcoin’s dominance down over time, bringing in a number of other strong projects to the market.
However, bitcoin and altcoins share very similar blockchain technology and the 3 key characteristics also apply across the board (in most cases).
These 3 characteristics we will discuss are the answers to the questions you might often hear from skeptics such as: “what makes cryptocurrencies so special?” and “How are cryptocurrencies any different than fiat currencies?”
1) Trustless
Bitcoin is trustless because it was designed in a way that nobody has to trust anybody else in order for the network to function.
Every form of currency before bitcoin required a central authority that you had to trust in order to use it. In all cases, that central authority becomes the central weakness that leads to the demise of the currency.
With bitcoin, each part of the ecosystem validates what the other parts are telling it without needing to trust anybody. If you broadcast a bitcoin transaction, all nodes receive it and verify that the signatures are valid. If the signatures are not valid, they discard the transaction.
Everyone on the network has a copy of the ledger so we no longer need to trust a single entity/organization/third-party because there is no need to trust when you can just verify against this ledger because you have a copy of it. The decentralized ledger is known as the blockchain.
The incentivization of individual network actors though the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithm is one of the most groundbreaking ideas in modern economics.
The incentive may help encourage nodes to stay honest. If a greedy attacker is able to assemble more CPU proof-of-worker than all the honest nodes, he would have to choose between using it to defraud people by stealing back his payments, or using it to generate new coins. He ought to find it more profitable to play by the rules, such rules that favor him with more new coins than everyone else combined, than to undermine the system and the validity of his own wealth. — Satoshi Nakamoto
Although we are still figuring out exactly how we use cryptocurrencies and and what for, they are here to stay. Aside from the other major benefits of cryptocurrencies and blockchain tech, solving the centralized trust issue alone is a big enough innovation to give crypto staying power.
2) Immutable
“Immutable”, in its simplest sense, means “cannot be undone.”
Immutability in regards to blockchain and cryptocurrency should follow 3 principles:
It should be highly improbable or difficult to rewrite history.
It should be impossible for anyone but the owner of a private key to move funds.
All transactions are recorded on the blockchain. (to guarantee the above 2 principles)
When we want to check how money has been spent from our bank accounts, we check our transaction history with the bank. We trust our banks not to fabricate transactions or manipulate our money as we trust them to deliver our transactions to recipients. If there are fraudulent transactions, the bank also needs to be trusted to change them and fix the situation.
As we have already seen that the elements of centralization and trust are removed from cryptocurrency, there is no longer a third party for us to trust to do these things. Therefore, transaction records are made public and unchangeable (immutable).
Although it isn’t impossible to change the transaction ledger, cryptographic security makes it extremely difficult. It require you to compromise the entire network of cryptocurrency users.
3) Decentralized
Since “decentralization” is such a relevant buzzword in the crypto community, it’s important to define it well. It can take on different meanings.
“Blockchains are politically decentralized (no one controls them) and architecturally decentralized (no infrastructural central point of failure) but they are logically centralized (there is one commonly agreed state and the system behaves like a single computer).” — Vitalik Buterin
Fault tolerance: decentralized systems are less likely to fail accidentally because they rely on networks of separate components.
decentralized systems are less likely to fail accidentally because they rely on networks of separate components. Attack resistance: decentralized systems are more expensive to attack and destroy or manipulate because they don’t have vulnerable central points that can be attacked at much lower cost than the surrounding system.
decentralized systems are more expensive to attack and destroy or manipulate because they don’t have vulnerable central points that can be attacked at much lower cost than the surrounding system. Collusion resistance : it‘s harder for members of decentralized systems to act in ways that benefit them at the expense of others. On the other hand, corporations and governments collude in ways that benefit themselves but hurt others all the time.
With central banks and governments, the supply and creation of money through mints and interest rates are controlled only by the banks. Users of fiat currencies are at the mercy of the central banks’ money-printing whims.
The problem in this world is to avoid concentration of power — we must have a dispersion of power . — Milton Friedman
If you are not yet outraged by the central banking money-printing scam, it is helpful to think of it as a hidden tax when they print and destroy the wealth you have stored in those fiat currencies.
With cryptocurrency however, no individual or consortium is able to affect the supply of currency or exert significant influence over it without the approval of the majority.
Bonus Characteristic — Deflationary
Leading cryptocurrencies feature maximum token supply caps or infinite supply with pre-defined production parameters.
Many top cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Dash have a maximum supply, making them deflationary by nature. Any increase in the demand or adoption of the cryptocurrency will cause a corresponding increase in the price.
Most of the other major cryptocurrencies such as ethereum, monero etc., that have infinite supply have pre-defined rules for how many coins will be produced each year. Therefore they are predictable in nature. If these currencies are successful in the long-term, it’s highly unlikely that the rate of production of more currency will result in any sort of inflation.
The increasing demand, adoption, and destruction of coins in the form of lost private keys will likely offset any moderate increase in supply due to PoW/PoS mining rewards.
Conclusion
So there you have it, the 3 key characteristics that make cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology so revolutionary. Plus the bonus economic characteristic of being deflationary through limited supply.
Next time anyone asks you those pesky questions like “what’s so special about crypto?” or “what makes them any different”, you can take them to school on the 3 key characteristics: trustlessness, immutability, and decentralization.
Hold On for Dear Life | https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/cryptocurrency-basics-3-key-characteristics-and-why-they-matter-7348242abe18 | ['Lucho Poletti'] | 2018-04-10 21:34:38.920000+00:00 | ['Central Banking', 'Currency', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin', 'Decentralization'] |
SAPLING #74 — Where there’s smoke | Vermin has to be smoked out, with harsh means if necessary.
You smile at the raven’s rashness, its cool calculation to spread its wings above the fumes of furnaces, the smouldering stumps of cigarettes. A smoky ally comes in handy, you tell me, to free yourself of wriggling pests between your feathers, venomous visitors that bite and sting, parasites that take up way more room than they should. Ravens are clever. They use the resources available to them. And we have provided them with plenty.
Is there something watching from afar, smiling at that elegant blue orb in the vastness of the heavens? Is there something that can appreciate the planet’s cool calculation as she spreads her wings above smouldering soil, hot winds, parched earth? One spark is all that’s needed.
Surely, a smoky ally comes in handy to free herself of wriggling pests crawling on her skin, venomous visitors that hack and dig, parasites that destroy way more than they should.
The planet is clever. She uses the resources available. And we have provided her with plenty.
Vermin has to be smoked out, with harsh means if necessary. | https://medium.com/the-story-hall/sapling-74-where-theres-smoke-84ad64438259 | ['Kirstin Vanlierde'] | 2020-01-13 11:41:45.270000+00:00 | ['Sapling', 'Australia', 'Climate Change', 'Art', 'Birds'] |
7 Lessons I Learned From Not Owning a Car | 7 Lessons I Learned From Not Owning a Car
When I was a teenager, I was excited to get my licence. I had an incredibly busy schedule as I was involved with several music groups at my school and in the community. Naturally, I wanted to be independent and drive myself everywhere instead of relying on my parents for rides.
I grew up in the Canadian prairies where driving is a huge part of the culture. Public transit is available in urban areas but has a bad reputation of only being used by underprivileged people. It’s uncommon to choose to take the bus to save money or reduce environmental impact. Once you get your licence, you are never to be seen on public transit ever again.
My parents had opted not to buy a car for me. Therefore even once I had my licence, I was often unable to drive myself to school or my music commitments anyway.
Dealing with judgemental peers in high school was a huge source of stress in my teenage years. Not only was I the weird music kid, but I was also the loser who didn’t have a car. I wanted to be like the other kids and drive myself everywhere, but instead, I had to write a 10-page essay to my parents about why I wanted to borrow their car. Even then, they would often insist on driving me.
As a 26-year-old today, I still do not own a car. I learned a lot of important lessons over the years that I probably wouldn’t have thought of if I had been spoiled with a car as a teenager.
1. Driving is a privilege
A lot of the kids I went to high school with came from privileged families, including myself. My parents not buying a car for me was not a matter of them being unable to afford it, it was their own choice.
When I went away to university, I met many people who were like me. I also met several people who were older than me and did not even have a driver’s licence.
It was reassuring to see that not owning a car and taking public transit was socially acceptable. In fact, university students often receive a bus pass for unlimited transit rides during the academic year to discourage driving to school.
Even the simple act of learning how to drive is a privilege in itself, regardless of whether you own a car or not. Driver’s education courses and in-car lessons can be costly. The instructors rely on the fact that your parents will allow you to practice with their car outside of lesson times. Not everyone has access to a practice vehicle or parents who will be patient enough to help them learn to drive.
Additionally, some people are unable to drive through no financial fault of their own. Certain medical conditions, such as epilepsy, may prohibit an individual from operating a vehicle safely.
2. Owning a car is a huge responsibility
Taking your car in for its routine maintenance sessions is time-consuming and expensive. As a student, time is valuable. Anything you can do to maximize your study time is crucial to living a balanced life.
Both of my parents have countless anecdotes from their student years about times when attending to their car troubles prevented them from focusing on their studies. My mom almost missed an exam because her car wouldn’t start, as an example.
As a student, I moved to different cities to pursue my undergraduate and master’s degrees. Canadian cities are very spread out and driving from one major city to the next can take several days.
For instance, I moved from the prairies to Southern Ontario for my master’s degree. One might argue it’s worth it to do the long drive so you have your car there, but I personally didn’t want to drag a car halfway across the country. I would have opted to fly home for the holidays anyway so that would mean leaving a car parked somewhere for weeks or months at a time.
Owning a car as a full-time university student is a huge liability, in my opinion. All the time and money you put into maintaining a car should instead be put into your education.
3. Driving is stressful and anxiety-inducing
We take the ability to drive for granted and forget that it is a skill that needs to be learned and practiced. This is why you must take driving lessons and tests to obtain a licence.
I’ve gone up to a year without driving and getting behind the wheel after that amount of time is bizarre. I fear left turns and will take incredibly convoluted routes to avoid them. I also don’t like fighting to get the parking space right in front of the store and prefer parking farther away from the store where I feel more comfortable.
During the pandemic, however, I have been renting cars frequently to avoid potential Covid exposures on public transit. This has helped me improve my driving skills and confidence behind the wheel that deteriorated during my non-driving years.
The first time I rented a car, I was terrified to make a left turn out of the rental lot. I turned right and got lost in the side streets trying to get to a traffic light where I could turn left with an arrow. Now, I navigate the streets with confidence and make all kinds of left turns like there’s no tomorrow.
All this to say, if you are scared or anxious behind the wheel, it’s completely normal. Don’t let people tell you that you are childish or immature for not having a licence or not wanting to drive. Just because driving is effortless for many people does not mean everyone feels that way. For me, my driving fears were alleviated by getting more experience through driving rental cars, but for someone else, it may not be that simple.
4. Not owning a car is one of the best ways to save money
Currently, I am working as a professional musician. Music is an incredibly competitive field to get a job and even when you do find one, the pay is not great. I was one of the fortunate ones to get a symphony position at a young age, but even then, I rely on multiple income streams to make a sustainable living.
I was ignorant about the true cost of a car until I got to university. Buying a yearly parking pass from the school costs a ridiculous amount of money and doesn’t even guarantee you a parking space if your assigned lot has filled up. The biggest financial stress for my classmates with cars was dealing with these ridiculous parking fees, never mind all the other typical car expenses.
Not having to worry about paying for a car in the past decade has been a lifesaver in these times of financial uncertainty, especially with Covid. During the lockdown, I’m thankful that I didn’t have to pay the insurance and licensing fees for a car that would be sitting in a parking lot 95% of the time.
I don’t plan to continue my car-less lifestyle forever and want to own a car one day; at which point I will be in much better financial shape to deal with the associated costs. I don’t even want to think about how much money I could have spent on car expenses in the past ten years.
5. Learning how to navigate cities without a car is a valuable skill
My first year of undergrad was the first time in my life where I really started using public transit. I had moved to a different city and no longer had access to my parents’ vehicle and chauffeur services.
Smartphones existed back then, but many people still had flip phones. I had an iPhone but it didn’t have a data plan. When I needed to go on an adventure off-campus, I would go on the transit website and print out maps of where I needed to wait for the bus and what direction to walk to my destination. I also printed out the bus schedule for all the buses I took frequently.
This diligence paid off when I started travelling by myself to larger cities such as Toronto or Montreal. I was already used to navigating public transit in smaller cities, so taking the subway in Toronto wasn’t a big deal to me.
Renting a car is always an option when you travel. However, driving in an unfamiliar city or foreign country can be stressful. Not to mention, you will save money by opting out of a rental car.
Learning how to use public transit is a skill I probably wouldn’t have cultivated if I had been driving everywhere. If you’ve never had to find a way of getting somewhere without your car, you may not think to take the bus or call a taxi when your car won’t start on frigid winter mornings.
6. Active commuting is awesome
When I was doing my master’s degree, taking public transit daily was starting to take a toll on my mental health. The bus often arrived late and was very crowded at peak times. I had no plans of buying a car as driving to school would have been even worse, but I also wanted to find a way I could take the bus less frequently.
I purchased a used bicycle to experiment with active commuting and immediately fell in love. It combined the best of both worlds — independence and saving money. Other benefits included weight loss, extra cardio exercise, and overall better mental health.
Cycling was faster than driving or taking the bus as I could avoid traffic on the bicycle paths. I could also park my bicycle right in front of the building where I had class; good luck doing that with a car.
My bicycle was a life-saver during this pandemic. I didn’t want to buy a car that would sit in a parking lot but I also didn’t want to take the bus if I could avoid it. Having an excuse to get outside and exercise was also beneficial to my mental and physical health during the lockdown.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I wouldn’t have thought of cycling everywhere if I had a car.
7. You are just paying for convenience
When you think about the 24 hours in a day, how many of those hours are you actually driving your car? The answer will depend on where you work and how often you go out to do errands, but I guarantee your car is parked more than it is being driven.
When I was a student, it was easy to hop on a bus or ride my bicycle to school. It wasn’t as nice as driving may have been, but the same goal of going from point A to point B was achieved.
My apartment was just under a kilometre away from a grocery store. I walked there and back with my week’s groceries. I couldn’t justify owning a car to drive 800 metres to a grocery store once a week.
Even now as a young professional, I have found ways to get to work and do all my errands without my own vehicle. However, I now live in a smaller city that is less accessible by transit and cycling so I have relied more on rental cars, taxis, and rides from friends than I have in the past.
My point is that your car simply exists for convenience. You are basically paying thousands of dollars for an on-call transportation device that sits in your driveway for most of its life. | https://medium.com/@violaaltiste/7-lessons-i-learned-from-not-owning-a-car-77568ab74245 | ['Viola Altiste'] | 2020-12-16 16:03:02.880000+00:00 | ['Driving', 'Life Lessons', 'Cars', 'Advice and Opinion', 'Transportation'] |
How to Actually Make Sex Toys a Part of Your Sex Life | This comic is not about how to tell your partner you’d like to use toys with them. This comic is not about the practicalities of using toys with your partner either. It’s also not about the joys of using sex toys alone, or anything about how to pick out toys. Though, to be clear, those are all worthwhile topics.
This comic is about how to make sex toys a more regular part of your sex life with a partner. This is about when you and your partner both like sex toys, and you want to use toys together, and maybe you’ve even used toys together before, but for some reason it’s just not as often as you’d like.
Maybe you just have trouble remembering they’re there. Or maybe it’s hard to find the motivation to get them out. One way or another, it can be a challenge to use them as often as you’d enjoy it. Here’s a few tips and ideas that might help. | https://medium.com/sexedplus/how-to-actually-make-sex-toys-a-part-of-your-sex-life-db346ada44e0 | ['Sexedplus Dan'] | 2018-10-26 16:36:35.247000+00:00 | ['Communication', 'Relationships', 'Comics', 'Sex Toys', 'Sexuality'] |
How I’m healing from Sexual Trauma thru Psychadelic Assisted Psychotherapy | The last year has been trying, to put it generously. My soul went searching, but wasn’t necessarily prepared for its findings — Or was I? Looking back, I’ve spent my whole life preparing for the truths I buried deep in my subconscious. Our brains can’t hold what we can’t handle. This was too much for me. Until last September when I shared this post, without further explanation. Over the past year, I’ve dug deep into my psyche to remember and integrate my findings. I’m finally ready to tell my story: not as a victim, but as a survivor. The wounds heal but the scars never disappear and I refuse to enable this cycle of shame by staying silent. Please note the words below may be triggering. Proceed as you are ready. And if you too are suffering, know that I am with you, entirely. And I am empowered Finally to help eliminate this cycling. This is where my story begins.
Last Summer I was dating a man who asked me, after the first time we connected intimately, “Did something happen to you?” I vehemently denied it. But he piqued my curiosity. He grew up in a wartime country, and was working through his own PTSD with MDMA assisted psychotherapy. I’ve never been a recreational drug user, besides alcohol — sparingly. Hell, I don’t even drink regular coffee. But they say the medicine calls you when you’re ready. It wasn’t long after that I dove head first into my journey with 5MEO-DMT.
Friends well versed in the medicine world thought I was wild to jump in so deep, but I’ve always done my own thing. I showed up, with the intention to open my heart and reconnect to my body. We said a prayer, I smoked the toad medicine, passed out and woke up. But the 20-minute psychoactive experience wasn’t clear to me. The drug is meant to break down your ego, clear your chakras, and release fear. During the experience, I saw potent imagery of faces and places I’d blocked from memory, but with no explanation. It was beautiful and emotional, but the faces concerned me. I left wondering, did something happen to me?
I’ve often had recurring dreams: waking up in a shower naked; stuck in a dark room, crying; a hand signaling to be quiet; staring out a circular window, wishing I could fly. But most of my upbringing is void of memory. And as I grew up, I got good at suffering, being resilient, moving like a machine. I could handle anything. But I’ve always had the memories buried inside me. Now that I remember, I have more self- compassion and understanding as to why I’ve been running most of my life to both lose me and find me. Along the way, self-love became both my mission and journey. We teach what we need to learn personally. The nightmares weren’t random, but I wasn’t ready to understand them until September 12, 2020, the day I began my internal journey.
Five days after 5MEO-DMT, I was privy to another opportunity to join a medicine journey with MDMA and Psilocybin assisted group therapy. To clarify, a short summary of the current medical studies: MDMA is being used in clinical trials in tandem with assisted psychotherapy to treat PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. While memories of the experience may fade, PTSD debilitates, compromising physical, mental, emotional wellbeing, and sufferers continue to live in a “fight or flight,” highly anxious, post traumatic state. MDMA boosts serotonin, allowing sufferers to revisit painful suppressed memories with a sense of ease. When paired with psilocybin, the two substances work together to open the subconscious while maintaining a sense of well-being. At first I declined. I was scared. But that fear was what I needed to lean up against to get here. I arrived, shy, but ready to face whatever was inside. Little did I know it would change my life. But really my life was changed years prior.
Session One
The medicine fed me exactly what I needed, clarity of what happened when I was 17.
“_______ raped you.”
My friends’ father raped me during a high school party at their house. My friend was gay, but not openly. I was his beard. But his father was always inappropriate with me. The party was out by the pool, but his dad made it clear that no one was allowed inside the house except my friend and me. I popped inside to grab Kit Kat bites, while my classmates drank vodka red bull solo cups outside. The father was in the kitchen. I put my cup down and turned around and something was dropped in it. We chatted before I blacked out. He raped me and dragged me into the guest bathroom shower, unresponsive. He thought I was dead and left me there, water beating down on my lifeless body. I died inside that night. His son found me, pants-less and put me to bed. I woke up by sunrise and walked out, never to return to that house again. I forgot what happened but my body always remembered. After the memory, the MDMA also explained, “That’s why you dated ______ years later.” That’s the extra wounding, the repeating of patterns, trauma bonds, that attract us to doppelgängers of perpetrators from our past. Ever heard of an abused woman leaving her abuser only to go back to another abuser? It’s what she’s used to. Horrifying. But the memories were just beginning. That one was closest to the surface.
Imagine waking up at 34 and realizing your whole life has been a lie. That you’ve been unable to curate relationships, trust anyone, because someone trusted took your pride. So what did I do? I cried. I cried for myself and for all those suffering from the same shame and pain. I cried for my body and how long I’ve disassociated and I cried for my family. But I knew there was more suffering. The medicine only reveals what you’re ready to see. Medicine work is less drug and more integration. If you don’t “do the work” following the sessions, the medicine is less effective. MDMA Assisted Psychotherapy protocol involves ongoing talk therapy and it isn’t recommended that you revisit the medicine for at least a month following your last session.
And then I dug deeper. This time one:one with two therapists. And again the medicine read me a rap sheet. The deeper I went, the more I discovered, and for the months in between sessions I tried to make sense of all that I’d seen, unseen, and now remembered. Imagine watching a horror film of your worst nightmares only to realize you star in every scene?
The Sessions Continue
I learned how to fly when I was age five — dissociating out of my body and into my mind, where I was safer. That was the first time unwelcome hands touched me: a music teacher, preschool.
Age 21, my neighbor took me on a motorcycle ride. I didn’t realize he was coked out of his mind or that he had plans for an abandoned parking lot nearby where he assaulted and choked me. Explaining why I’ve always been sensitive to anything close to my neck.
At age six, my innocence was taken from me. Explaining why I’ve long been haunted by the memory of waking up at a sleepover party, crying hysterically. A vivid image of a pillow over my head, silencing me, leaving my body to interpret sex to be playing dead so I could leave. I didn’t have the language to describe what happened, too young and shy to say anything. But my body remembered it perfectly, so much so that my boyfriend years later shared the same name and birthday as the perpetrator. I went back to the crime scene, emotionally. My body craved familiarity. Trauma does that to you, conscious or unconsciously.
Age twelve, in an educational setting, he didn’t touch me. But told me how special I was repeatedly, as he touched himself under his desk visibly. I was frozen, too afraid to leave.
Each therapy revealed more detail to me as to why I chose relationships that didn’t feel right. I continued to go back to a man who resembled someone who had raped me becauseI was subconsciously repeating my own history. Furthermore — perpetrators smell the vulnerability of sexual assault survivors. Because my experiences started young, subsequent men could smell it on me. I had less boundaries because when you are violated, boundaries become void in everything.
IT CONTINUES
With the few previous therapies, I wasn’t yet ready to see what was lurking just before I turned 14; the event that made me angry, body-shaming, hating everything. It happened just after a family tragedy. I was extra vulnerable and quite naive. I started hanging out with the new girl who lived by me, unable to see the depth of wounding disguised by her family’s glitzy activities, and pageantry. Abuse and alcoholism hid behind walls of their perfectionism and I was roped in, dare I say her parents were grooming me. I was afraid of her stepdad but without reason, until the night he played footsie with me under the table. Later he raped me. But first he defamed me. I had my period. “Dirty Jew” is what he named me. He threatened to kill me if I told anybody. I waited for my mom to pick me up, and didn’t say anything. From that moment, I turned my anger inward, to my body, and to my family.
My parents did everything to protect me, but they couldn’t, so I blamed them relentlessly. And my body? It was no longer a part of me. My period hasn’t been regular since that evening. When I got home, I threw up everything — suffered from anorexia + bulimia for years, anything to rid me of the shame I was carrying. Textbook PTSD, always on the defense, I started seeking outside to distract me (thru exercise, relationships, food), anything to fill my empty. And sweating, habitually. Staring in a mirror at Bikram yoga daily in 110 degrees, wearing long sleeves, to cover the disgust of the body that carried and now defined me. I haven’t slept much my whole life. I’m almost 35. But after remembering, I no longer wonder why I hardened.
Nothing can hurt you if you can’t feel anything.
And yet the hardest thing I’ve done to date, is fly home last week to tell my parents everything: To tell them they aren’t to blame, they did everything to protect me, but life had other plans for me, that time after time, men who they knew and trusted, violated me, that my innocence was stolen from me, before I even knew the word’s meaning. They received my truth wholeheartedly, with deep sadness but now more understanding as to why most of my life I’ve been disconnected and angry, hating my body, stuck in my ego, trying to prove that I was worthy. When I was 14, my mom took me to every specialist to determine what was wrong with me. I stayed silent. A better question would have been “what happened to me?” Imagine telling your parents who worried constantly that you were violated by men they knew, who ARE fathers. And sadly, my story is not unique. And these are just pieces of the entirety of memories.
So what do you do when you wake up just shy of 35 and realize that the majority of your life you’ve felt dead inside? You grieve. I’ve been grieving the lost time, the inability to harvest healthy relationships because I didn’t trust anyone including myself. I grieved the self-blame, and blaming of my family, my mom specifically, for not being able to protect me. And grieve shaming my mind and body, operating on autopilot, at low points, borderline suicidal. Existing, not living, yet still able to “thrive” as far as society defines. I costumed my internal hell well, disguising and distracting by “doing,” overcompensating with grit, to prove I was worthy, after being made to feel unworthy repeatedly. My pain radiated so deep, but as time passed, I forgot the memories. A shell of myself, I compromised my physical health, dissociated.
And after the grief, you begin to heal, you grow and the silver lining eventually appears: the grace and gratitude for being alive, for surviving and finally understanding why I was so hard on me. I became both my Pain and my Power. I even had enough clarity to create my own medicine: boxing and yoga to move and breathe the trauma out of me, my self prescribed remedy, practicing resilience daily, as early as age 15. This modality became box + flow, a business to share my method and mentality, before even remembering my story.
Grief becomes growth. You integrate. And eventually forgive. Myself first. That took time.
AM I OK?
A loaded question. Grief, and fear never die entirely. But YES. I finally feel free from the shame thrust upon me. I can’t change the past but now live presently. It’s a journey but I’m finally able to share with clarity, void of fear of how my words are received. It’s just Truth with a capital T. Over the past year, I’ve asked myself repeatedly, Who Am I without all this wounding? Now realizing this is my opportunity to experience life with clear eyes, to create and co-create the love and life of my dreams, that the suffering starts and ends with me. That’s what I’ve been working on, love: of myself, my family, more understanding.
Therapy helps. I’ve found healers to help regulate every part of me. My body has suffered severely from PTSD: GI + digestive issues, hypothyroidism, hormonal deficiencies, PCOS and adrenal fatigue. So I’m picking up the pieces of a life shattered too early, determined to turn a mess into a mosaic. “The more you have been hurt, the more you have to move through.” Clearly flow thru the fight is my mantra for good reason. I’ve been training my whole life and I’ve spent three decades of detachment and finally know why. This is my opportunity to thrive — I’m excited.
WHY NOW?
Because its time to further open a dialogue that has long suffered from silencing. Because my big brother just had his first child and friends have children that are close to the age when I was first violated. Every child I see reminds me of Young Olivia. They deserve safety. Because I am just one of hundreds of millions in pain, long silenced in this fucked up game of hurt people hurting people. And because I have no shame. Maybe by sharing, others will feel safe. I’m tired of fighting, I want my life to flow, and now that I know, I’m coming back home To reclaim all of me. Everything I needed was always inside. I know my truth and hope to help others face their own.
“What I learned for sure was that holding the shame was the greatest burden of all. When you have nothing to be ashamed of, when you know who you are and what you stand for, you stand in wisdom.” -Oprah
This is my beginning, not my ending and will be the first of many shares from me. If you feel so inclined, please SHARE my story. The more we talk openly, the less opportunity for suffering. You are not alone. Let me be proof that you can get through anything. Some sources and resources that have helped me, below.
Love always, Olivia
Your Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk
How To Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan
Waking the Tiger by Dr. Peter Levine
How to do the Work Dr. Nicole LaPera
A Radical Awakening by Dr. Shefali
5MEO-DMT
MAPS : MDMA Assisted Psychotherapy Resources
PTSD
Dissociation
Holotropic Breathwork
Bodywork / Energy Work | https://medium.com/@oliviayoung_44277/how-im-healing-from-sexual-trauma-thru-psychadelic-assisted-psychotherapy-b514b8dd3c44 | ['Olivia Young'] | 2021-07-22 19:18:29.753000+00:00 | ['Psychology', 'Psychedelics', 'Trauma Recovery', 'Psychadelic', 'Trauma'] |
I ditched Apple and Android for the PWAs | I ditched Apple and Android for the PWAs
I’ve been building apps for almost 7 years — I have decided to move on.
My job requires me to ship apps for my clients. I’ve built a robust framework over the last 4 months, have paying customers and many willing to do so — yet I feel native apps is a thing of the past. My startup needs to be ready for the future.
Why did I choose to build native apps in the first place?
They give a native experience
They’re smooth and work just fine. Great performance.
Discovery through app stores
You can install it from the app stores and trust that you won’t be scammed
Have home screen presence
You install an app and it shows up just along side Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Your phone screen is precious real estate.
Novelty of apps
A lot of our clients have never considered the possibility of having their own apps. Selling apps was easy.
What sucked about native apps?
Install through the app stores only
You need to install an app. You install an app only if you intend to use it regularly. Very few people install an app to just check it out.
App reviews
Android and Apple have their walled garden to protect. The app reviews helps keep people safe from scams. The cost of compliance was huge. Our business demands us to ship new apps regularly — for different clients. Going through the review process was a huge cost of compliance.
Payments (!)
Many of our clients sell digital content. Apple takes a 30% cut, Google 20%. That’s huge. That’s so huge it makes business infeasible for smaller creators. Most of our clients are small creators.
Also, payments can be made only with the inbuilt payment mechanism. Users cannot pay using Wallets they use in their daily life. This is especially a concern in India where people use PayTM, BHIM and the like a lot.
I’m now rebuilding my framework on PWAs
Progressive web apps is still an emerging technology and a lot of standardization and features still need to catch up. Especially on iOS. That’s been the primary reason to not have picked PWAs 4 months back.
Nothing dramatic has happened in the last 4 months in terms of PWA progress. But I’ve had my hands burnt.
I don’t want to sit through compliance tests of an Apple or Android. I’m responsible for not shipping crap. I’ll slowly build the credibility.
I don’t want to pay a 30% transaction fees! Netflix and Spotify famously encourage users to make the payment on their website rather than on the app.
I want people to be able to just check out my clients’ apps. They may choose to install it though.
With PWAs, my clients can go from idea to launched in less than 5 minutes.
I think this is the future — permissionless software distribution.
This is like starting a new job. I’m making my bets today. I’ll keep you updated about how it turned out.
Do you think PWAs will be the future?
Let me know in comments, would love to hear what you think! | https://medium.com/madhavanmalolan/i-ditched-apple-and-android-for-the-pwas-caecf688936c | ['Madhavan Malolan'] | 2019-05-10 06:21:05.752000+00:00 | ['Android App Development', 'Web Development', 'Apple', 'Software Development', 'iOS App Development'] |
All-Terrain Vehicles Market Study Offering Insights on Latest Advancements, Trends & Analysis from 2022 to 2027 | Dec 21, 2021/IndustryNewsGlobal/ The unexpected shifts in the global markets because of the sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 virus have brought many major and minor tremors to industries of all sizes including the All-Terrain Vehicles Market.
It was estimated prior to this unanticipated outbreak that the All-Terrain Vehicles Market likely to grow at a healthy CAGR of 4.8% over the next five years to reach a value of US$ 6.0 billion in 2027. ATVs were introduced to the North American market in 1971 by Honda Motors. Other Japanese major motorcycle manufacturers (Yamaha, Kawasaki, and Suzuki) entered the North American ATV market in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The growth in the ATV market attracted North American companies like Polaris Industries, Arctic Cat, and BRP Inc., which entered the ATV market in 1985, 1995, and 1998 respectively. In addition to major global players, there are a number of other Chinese and Taiwanese manufacturers who produce low combustion chamber engine-based ATVs for the local market. ATVs are well-known for their mobility and off-road capabilities. They’re used in several applications such as agriculture, surveying and patrolling, law enforcement, sports, forestry, among others. These vehicles are typically used off-road; however, a few regions allow them to be driven on public routes.
Side by Side is another off-road vehicle type and offers many advantages over ATVs, such as a better riding experience, rollover protection bars, and ease of mobility. Over the last ten years, the Off-road industry has noticed a continuous shift from ATVs to Side-by-Side vehicles.
Unlike other vehicles, such as cars and commercial vehicles that recorded a tremendous decline amid the pandemic, ATVs emerged as a rising star and recorded magnetic growth amid the pandemic, mainly driven by an extraordinary boost in the North American market. Overall, the ATV market registered over 20% growth in the year 2020 in terms of the number of vehicles sold.
Based on the vehicle type, the market is classified as utility, recreational, sports, and youth. Utility is estimated to remain the most preferred vehicle type in the market over the next five years. All of the major players have a large product offering targeting the utility segment. The sports vehicle type is expected to witness the highest growth throughout the forecast period. This is majorly due to the increased applications of ATVs in sports and recreational activities.
Based on the application type, the market is segmented as sports, entertainment, agriculture, military, hunting, and others. More than 50% of the ATV sales come from sports and entertainment applications. These applications are expected to remain the largest types in the next five years as well, owing to an increase in the demand for ATVs for sports applications such as racing in hilly, desert, and ice regions. In addition, the increasing number of adventure enthusiasts around the world also influences the growth of this segment.
In terms of regions, North America is expected to remain the largest market for all-terrain vehicles during the forecast period, owing to the high demand for powersport vehicles including ATVs in the military, agricultural, sports, entertainment, hunting, forestry, mining, and construction activities. The Year 2020 proved to be invigorating for the ATV manufacturers, particularly for North America. The demand for ATVs soared extremely high, reaching new heights. Asia-Pacific is a relatively small market but is likely to exhibit excellent growth opportunities in the years to come. Markets, such as Australia, China, and India, generate a sizeable demand for ATVs as well as other powersport vehicles.
Key Players:
Key players operating in the global All-Terrain Vehicles market are-
Arctic Cat Inc.
BRP Inc.
Polaris Inc.
Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd.
Honda Motor Co., Ltd.
Kawasaki Motors Co., Ltd.
Suzuki Motor Corporation
Features of the Report
This report offers high-quality insights and is the outcome of detailed research methodology comprising extensive secondary research, rigorous primary interviews with industry stakeholders and validation and triangulation with Stratview Research’s internal database and statistical tools.
The All-Terrain Vehicles analysis report discusses the following heads in great detail:
Market structure: Overview, industry life cycle analysis, supply chain analysis
COVID-19 Impact Assessment
Market environment analysis: Growth drivers and constraints, Porter’s five forces analysis, SWOT analysis
Market trend and forecast analysis
Market segment trend and forecast
Competitive landscape and dynamics: Market share, product portfolio, product launches, etc.
Attractive market segments and associated growth opportunities
Emerging trends
Strategic growth opportunities for the existing and new players
Key success factors
Know more about Stratview Research:
Stratview Research is a global market research company and is known to offer custom research reports in varied fields such as aerospace & Defense, Advanced Materials, Aerospace & Defense, Automotive & Mass Transportation, Consumer Goods, Construction & Equipment, Electronics and Semiconductors, Energy & Utility, Healthcare & Life Sciences, and Oil & Gas. Our team makes sure to have deep research about the topics so that the most useful insights can be delivered to the professionals.
Need a detailed report? Get in touch with us:
Stratview Research
E-mail: [email protected]
Direct: +1–313–307–4176 | https://medium.com/@stratviewresearch/all-terrain-vehicles-market-study-offering-insights-on-latest-advancements-trends-analysis-from-672fe82cae3a | ['Stratview Research'] | 2021-12-21 10:19:18.489000+00:00 | ['All Terrain Vehicles', 'Market Research Reports', 'Market Research'] |
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