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Homeless Teen Sex Work: A Story
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If you really wanna hear my story, Bobby, it all started that Sunday Pastor Tim jerked open the door to the basement men’s room and caught me and Brad.
“I knew it, Luke Thomas!” he spits at me as he hauls me up off my knees by the hair. I can feel a couple clumps pull right outta my scalp.
I guess getting caught giving a blow job in the church bathroom where people usually change clothes to get baptized is about as big a trouble as anyone could expect.
It’s not like I’m some sex maniac, I swear. It just happened like that.
Brad, the guy I was blowing? He ain’t even gay, or at least he says he’s not. You could fool me sometimes. Like the times he kissed me, even using his tongue. Or the times he held onto me really tight before we started doing stuff, or how he like nuzzled his nose up in my neck.
Kinda hard to believe he’s straight after all that.
I guess Brad’s why I’m here, though. Why I’m in New York and not back at Butler Community College in Council Grove.
Hey Bobby, you see that guy over by the bar? In the dark blue suit? Is he cruising you or me? I can’t tell..
So, anyway, in high school Brad and me went to this ACE school, like this private Baptist school our church ran. Most of the church kids went and some other kids too, but it was real small.
Read the rest on Prism & Pen
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https://medium.com/james-finn/homeless-teen-sex-work-a-story-52b05401864e
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['James Finn']
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2020-11-12 20:07:56.002000+00:00
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['Gay', 'LGBTQ', 'Homeless', 'Mental Health', 'Youth']
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The Comparative Market Analysis (CMA)- What Is A Home Worth
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A home seller’s first thought when it comes time to sell is what is my home worth? But no only does a seller want to know what their home is worth but more importantly, how much will they net from the sale of my home.
This is when a homeowner turns towards a REALTOR or a Real Estate Agent to prepare a Comparative Market Analysis or CMA to determine the fair market value of a home.
The single most important thing you need to do when selling a home is to price your home correctly.
Your CMA report will use historical sold data to help you determine your home’s correct asking price or list price to get it sold.
What Is A CMA in Real Estate?
A Comparative Market Analysis or CMA is a report that uses current and recent historical data to identify similar homes that have sold in a neighborhood to determine the most likely selling price or the fair market value of a home.
The keyword here is data!
A number is not pulled out of the air, it isn’t based on a gut feeling, what your neighbor says it is worth or even what the Zillow Zestimate says your house is worth….
It is based on data.
What Is Included In A CMA Report?
Your Comparative Market Analysis should include the following:
Market Overview- Knowing where the current real estate market is and where it is headed will help you price your home accordingly. A failing market points to the fact you should be pricing your home slightly below market to compensate for decreasing home values. Where an appreciating market may indicate you can price a little more aggressively.
Comparable Homes That Have Sold- Your home will be compared to 3 or more similar sold properties to help give you a range of the pricing of what similar homes have sold for in your market.
Note that a seller can ask any price they want for a home but it is the sold price that indicates what the market is willing to pay.
Adjustments- In an ideal world, we could find 3 homes that are identical to yours that have sold. But in reality, every home is unique. Pricing adjustment will be made to adjust for amenities, appeal and location to either raise or lower the sale price of a comparable home.
Comparable Homes That Are On The Market Or Under Agreemen t- Homes similar to your home that are currently for sale give you an idea of what your competition will be when you list your home.
Under agreement homes help identify where the market is headed by seeing how quickly homes are having offers accepted on them or days on market. Shorter days on market indicate the market is appreciating, longer days on market could indicate homes are depreciating.
Pricing Recommendations- Finally your CMA will indicate a most likely range your home will sell for based on the sold comparable properties and where the market seems to be heading.
Overpricing your home is one of the biggest mistakes a seller can make. Work closely with your agent to fully understand the Market Analysis for your home.
What Makes A Comparable Home In A Comparative Market Analysis?
A comparable home or “comp” as agents like to say are homes that are identified to be similar to the subject property.
Comparable properties are at the center of a CMA.
While there can be many factors that go into selecting comparable properties. Let’s take a look at some of the more important points of what makes a comparable home in a Comparative Market Analysis.
Timing
First and foremost all the comparable homes need to be currently on the market or under agreement. Sold properties used as comparable homes in your comparative market analysis need to have been sold in the past 3–6 months.
Markets change what a home sold for 6 years ago or even only a year ago has no bearing on what a home is worth today.
The recency of a comparable home is important to keep the comps in a similar market.
Location
Comparable homes should be in the same neighborhood or under one mile from the subject property. Of course, this may not always be possible so then you may have to look for homes in a similar location within the same town.
For example, a home in a neighborhood setting on a cul-de-sac will have more value than a similar home on a busy route.
Size
The comps selected for your CMA report should be within 20% +/- of your home’s size or square footage. It is almost impossible to compare a 3000 square foot home to a 1600 square foot home.
A home that is 1600 square feet will function very differently than a 3000 square foot home.
Room Counts
Room counts should be similar as well as bath and bedroom count for your comparable homes. It is impossible to compare a 5 bedroom 4 bath home to a 3 bedroom 1.5 bath home.
Style and Age
Cape Cod-style homes should be compared to other cape homes and colonial homes should be compared to other colonial homes whenever possible
Compared homes should also be of a similar age. A 1950s colonial will function very differently than a 2015 colonial.
Condition
There would be a large value gap between a 1950’s home that was in original condition vs one that was fully renovated.
It is important your comparable homes are in a similar condition to the home you are selling.
Features and Amenities
Garages, sheds, finished basements, central air, etc… may all add value to a home. Comparable homes should have similar features and amenities to yours.
Function
A lot of what goes into selecting comps is function. Do similar homes function the same way. For example, a 3 bedroom home with 1 bath will function very differently than a 4 bedroom home with 2 baths.
Adjustments On Comparable Homes In A CMA
The similarity of home is crucial in selecting comparable homes for a CMA report. But as I pointed out no two homes are alike, especially in New England.
Adjustments are a vital part of a CMA because of this.
A superior comparable home will have subtractions made to the sale price and an inferior home will have additions. This brings the adjusted sale price more in line with the subject home.
For example, take a subject property compared to the property below. + Adjustments are made to superior features in the subject property. — Adjustments are made where the subject property is inferior to the comparable home.
This gives the comp an adjusted sale price of $479,500 which is used as the comp price for this home.
Below is a summary of all the comps used and the adjustments made on another property. The adjusted comps are than all averaged out to give a most likely selling price.
Your Responsibility As A Seller
Don’t blindly accept a price given to you by an agent. And, don’t assume you know what your house is worth without having the data.
It is ultimately your responsibility to choose your list price for your home. It is important to understand the data behind the CMA report.
As a seller, a Comparative Market Analysis is an invaluable tool.
Not only does it assist in getting the proper price for your home it is an key tool to negotiate offers with confidence. You know when you are getting offered a fair price for your home and you can always use the comps as a negotiating tool.
The Difference Between An Appraisal And A CMA
A Comparative Market Analysis is performed by a real estate broker to help determine market value for a home seller to market their home.
An appraisal is a report by a state-licensed appraiser. While an appraisal on a home can be done for lots of reasons it is primarily used for a lender to verify the home is worth what a buyer is paying for it.
While both an appraiser and a real estate use similar techniques and data from the multiple listing service, an appraiser has strict guidelines to follow. This allows for some uniformity for the banks.
A real estate agent or Realtor often mirrors what an appraiser will do when they create an appraisal. can use more subjectivity in the process. One large difference is an agent has no defining guidelines in creating a CMA. More subjectivity can be used by an agent.
Ultimately, when an appraiser inspects a home the process is more data-driven than a real estate agent’s process in creating a comparative market analysis.
Ultimately, whether you get a CMA or an appraisal done on your home you will get similar values.
A Comparative Market Analysis Is Not Just For Sellers
As a homebuyer, you are concerned about paying a fair price for a house and not overpaying.
When you work with a buyer’s agent, often they will suggest preparing a CMA for you. A CMA will give you an understanding of what similar houses are selling for and what the home you are interested in is worth.
The CMA will aide in putting together a negotiating strategy and allow you to negotiate from a position of strength.
A Market Analysis can be useful both to homebuyers and sellers to determine the market value of a home.
Ways Not To Value A Home
When it comes to pricing your home a CMA is the way to go…. or an appraisal. But many sellers turn to other resources that may not be so helpful in pricing a home.
Tax Assessment- The tax assessment is a valuation of your home. But it has a different purpose. It is not to determine fair market value.
Tax assessments are used to fulfill a town’s budget based on the value of your property. While often it can mirror the fair market value of your home it is not a reliable way to determine value.
Zillow or Other Automated Values- The Zillow Zestimate is an automated value model that returns a value for your home.
Unfortunately, it can be quite inaccurate. It does not make determinations on things like location or condition which can influence a home’s value.
What Others Have To Say- It seems like everyone has an opinion on real estate and what a house is worth. But would you go to court without a lawyer?
Hire a trusted professional that is in the business on a daily basis.
Summary
A Comparative Market Analysis is a staple in the real estate industry for agents to guide sellers in choosing a list price for their home.
There is a rhyme and reason on how to determine a price for your home. And that is by comparing recently sold data of comparable homes.
Get a CMA report from several different agents to compare the data. Hopefully, all the CMA’s will be within a few percentage points of each other. If there is a big swing be prepared to ask questions and why.
Two final thoughts.
First, a home’s value is a range and not just one number. Often a seller fixates on one number and can miss a good opportunity to sell their home over a few thousand dollars.
And, a home value from a Comparative Market Analysis is good for that window of time only.
If you list your home 6 months after reviewing a CMA, get a new one. Real estate markets can change on a dime and a value from six months ago can be different from the one today.
Other Resources:
The Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) was written by Kevin Vitali of EXIT Realty. If you are thinking of buying or selling a home call Kev in at 978–360–0422
|
https://medium.com/@kevinvitali/the-comparative-market-analysis-cma-what-is-a-home-worth-7476e43f8e5f
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['Kevin Vitali']
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2020-12-21 11:50:01.832000+00:00
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['Real Estate', 'Cma', 'House Valuation']
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A Simple Analysis of UX & UI of Google Search: “We are the Best”
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Here is how I imagined the meeting of Google Search’s UI and UX team goes.
…..
Boss: We need to tell people that we are the best search engine on the internet. How do we convince people that we are the best?
Then the team start brainstorming ideas and came up with few solutions.
Boss: We also need to make people want to come back to use Google Search. So that our partners are convinced to keep funding us and our traffic is always high to have enough data for a better search engine.
Then the team has to come up with solutions while obeying the psychological principles like the Von Restorff effect, the cognitive load effect, the Hick’s Law, and the Law of Proximity.
…..
First, they identify what they want from Google Search.
Persuade users — they are the best search engine. Keep users coming back to use Google Search. Provide proper space for ads for their partners.
Then only after that, they can start working on the best ways to impress their users and make their users feel at ease and comfortable using the search engine.
The Art of Persuasion — Convincing The Users
There is no benefit of having the best technologies but no one is using them properly and understand how big their technologies are.
Google might be the best search engine out there, or they might not be one. Nevertheless, they are known to internet users as the best search engine. This means that they have succeeded in convincing people that they are the best.
Let's have a look at their page and what they did right.
The search result for “How to kill a dragon”
a) “Look at Our Capabilities”
Display of quantity of search result and how long did it take them.
Google tells users that they can retrieve a certain amount of data in a certain amount of time. A piece of information that is not required and will not help in providing a better result to the user’s searches.
However, for users with a slow internet connection, they will come to the knowledge that the slow page loading has nothing to do with Google’s ability to retrieve the results, but it has something to do with their internet connection.
Let's see how other search engines display their results.
Microsoft Bing Search
Yahoo! Search
Ecosia.org Search
Other search engines tell their users the number of results that they manage to find but not how much time it took them. Again, it is not a required piece of information, but Google did it and others are not doing it.
b) “This Is Why We Show You These Results”
They not only show you the results, but they also show you why they show you those results. They do this by bolding the keywords you typed in your search.
Google Search results
Bing search results
Yahoo! search results
Ecosia search results
It seems like 3 out of the 4 main search engines are using this technique. Highlighting the input words of users’ searches allows users to better use the site’s search engine’s algorithm. It can also provide users with the knowledge of how do they reach the answers for their searches.
Ease Users’ Mind & Easy on the Eyes
Google Search is very good at making sure that users are comfortable and relaxed while using it. They are also good at making users feel smart while using their service. These are some of the ways they manage their results to provide a better user experience.
a) “Classify Your Result”
I am not an expert on search algorithms and search engine optimization.
After search results are retrieved, it is the job of the frontend developer to show the results in a manner that is easy on the eyes of users. How do we do that?
A full page of Google Search result
Google Search classify the results to understand the thought of its users. Google is sort of talking to us like this (using the figure above as a reference):
“I know you are looking for “How to kill a dragon”, but I will tell you that some people are looking for these questions in section A, almost the same as your question. Just in case, you need it.”
“If you are looking for the book titled “How to Kill a Dragon”, this section B is for you. Maybe what you meant was this book.”
“If you are looking for a video on “How to kill a dragon” these videos in Section C might interest you. Maybe you are looking for videos of your search.”
“Now that you have come to the end of page 1, if you still cannot find the result you are looking for, maybe you would like to check the related results. Maybe you typed it wrong or something.”
Google Search is not trying to keep you on Google Search for a long time, unlike social media websites. They are not trying to make you addicted to Google Search.
They are trying to make you convinced that you have found the correct results based on your searches. That they can translate the questions on your mind and provide you with the best journey to the answers.
What about the other search engines? Are they also using this technique?
Microsoft Bing search result’s page
Yahoo! search result’s page
Ecosia search result’s page
Almost every other search engine does not only show textual search results. Ecosia is only showing videos and related searches. Yahoo! is showing videos, books, and a filter to further details you. However, in my opinion, Bing is doing better than Google search in showing users what they might need. Bing shows:-
Questions related to your search.
Books in your search’s words.
Videos related to your search.
Related searches
Preview of a Wikipedia entry on your search.
Top responses on Reddit based on your search.
A preview of WikiHow's answer.
For websites that have a numbered list of steps for an answer, Bing provides a preview of that list.
This organization and classification of answers will lay out specified paths for users to their destination, thus, providing a better user experience on that website.
b) Shorten Your Paths to the Answers
There are a lot of google searches that users made that they can get the answer after opening one or two websites on the first page.
But Google cut it shorter by showing users the answers that were provided by Google or existing websites.
Google Search result for a song’s lyrics. The lyrics is provided by Musixmatch in which you can find the lyrics by going to the website that might be available if u scroll a bit further down.
Google Search result for a movie title. Google shows the rating of the movie based on the results on those sites (i.e. IMDb, Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes). Google also shows where you can watch the movie. Understanding the reasons why users searched for it.
Google Search results for Muslims prayer time. Muslims pray at a specific time of the day, five times a day. Google knows this and they provide users with a better user experience by providing them the answers straight away.
Google Search results for when you search for a company. It provides short information about the company, its online presence, and the stock price.
Google Search Result for ‘calculator’. Understanding the reasons behind why users search for ‘calculator’ online.
Google Search result for ‘protein in the chicken breast’.
The list goes on and on, making the high functionality of Google Search appeal to users as they do not have to ‘travel’ deeper than one click to find the answer.
c) They Make It Personal — Join the Exclusive Club
Some people might be overwhelmed by the high number of results from different sources and different categories. Here is how Google Search make it more user friendly.
JOB SEARCH
This is what they show you if you search for a job in a certain area.
First, they show you a glimpse of a job search portal by Google (in the red box). If you click on the header (in the blue box), it brings you to the web portal.
This portal makes your searches highly customizable and also eliminates other unrelated results such as articles on “how to get engineering jobs in Kuala Lumpur” or websites that teach you how to write a resume. It brings you to an ‘exclusive’ club that excludes other results that do not show job opportunities.
SCIENTIFIC ARTICLES
This is what they show you when you search for a highly specific topic.
Google Search results for “gallium nitride led quantum efficiency
Google will show you suggestions of scholarly articles for your result. Scholarly means involving or relating to serious academic study. Google shows you this to invite you to Google Scholar in which they exclusively show scholarly articles related to your search.
Google has a finance portal, a flight schedule scanner, and a shopping portal. I am sure in the future Google will have a nearby competitions search portal, seminars, workshops, and lectures search portal, and maybe itinerary planner portals based on Google Maps and other Google features.
Key Aspects in User Experience
After reading about all the principles and theories on design thinking, usability, and user psychology, the most important thing to remember is to have empathy.
Put yourself in the shoes of all your millions of users. Try to understand how they would feel while using your website.
A friend of mine gave me advice, “A good UI and UX designer has to have the right amount of empathy and selfishness. You want to make users comfortable and happy, but you also want things to go your way and your way only.”
|
https://uxplanet.org/a-simple-analysis-of-ux-ui-of-google-search-we-are-the-best-776c6372c909
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['Adam Shaari']
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2020-12-24 07:35:55.456000+00:00
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['UX Research', 'UX Design', 'User Experience', 'UX', 'Google']
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The Ultimate Trade-Off: Data Privacy Protection and Black Rights
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According to a CDC study collected by NPR’s Stephanie Adeline, one in three people hospitalized for COVID-19 are Black. Already especially vulnerable to the deadly virus, the Black community is now tasked with another challenge as strategies for combating Covid19 with the use of technology via contact tracing ensue: protecting their right to digital privacy and freedom.
Companies are racing to lend their services to the essential policies being put forth to end the virus’ threat; however, they are doing so without regard for long-term racial and constitutional implications. The uneven messaging Biden’s campaign plans for strengthening criminal justice (more lax) and combating Covid19 (more strict) does not help matters. It only reinforces the precedence that tackling the virus has over protecting civilians’ rights — especially those of the Black community given their position as the perpetually-targeted victims of the American criminal justice system.
American legislation protecting civilian privacy is new. New York Times journalist, Natasha Singer, shares that “[T]he United States is virtually the only developed nation without a comprehensive consumer data protection law and an independent agency to enforce it.” With weak cybersecurity for civilians at the nation’s foundation, it is almost certain that the anticipated racial consequences of policies adopted to combat Covid19 will be dire if not promptly and proactively properly mitigated.
It is probable that “The Biden Plan for Strengthening America’s Commitment to Justice”, used in conjunction with his plan for combating the COVID-19 pandemic as a moral rationale, will be used as veil to usher in advanced governmental opportunities for digital privacy obstruction that targets vulnerable communities, especially those of the Black minority. The plan for criminal justice includes the creation of “a new $20 billion competitive grant program to spur states to shift from incarceration to prevention…[They] will receive funding to invest in efforts proven to reduce crime and incarceration….” The wording for this plan is passive. It does not properly align with the important subject matter. Thus, it paves the way for loose legal scapegoats to be nationally ratified… potentially upending civil rights.
The Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy writes that “CCTV is intended to deter crime by increasing the risk of detection for criminal behavior. [It] can also be used to identify suspects in offenses that are committed within view of the camera.” What, then, of the case for states to employ the use of surveillance mediums as a form of “invest[ment] in efforts proven to reduce crime and incarceration”?
A similar case can be made for facial recognition software. In January of this year, Robert Williams, a Black man and father of two young children, was arrested in front of his family on suspicion of having stolen $4,000 worth of watches from a retail store. Matched to the crime by his driver’s license photo ID and surveillance cameras from the store, the Detroit Police Department had “enough” evidence to arrest this man and keep him in custody for 30 hours before finally dropping the charges. Facial recognition technology is known for being less accurate on darker skin tones.
If not the use of CCTV cameras and facial recognition tech, then what is to stop state leaders from investing in digital tracking systems via the use of data collection from apps? It isn’t far off.
Every country that is home to a minority population that must constantly assert its rightful citizenship is ripe for consideration as a new surveillance state. They have a stronger motive for adopting strategies, policies, and systems that will lead to social control against these minorities. This is especially so when these countries are faced with a threat as large as a pandemic. It becomes easier to hide true motivations for passing legislation that, on the surface, will indiscriminately fight the public health threat but will also advance insidious discriminatory agendas. The use of surveillance spurred by the motivation for social control is an existential threat against every minority community and political dissident.
China’s abuse of surveillance systems, to stand guard over its citizens is well-documented. The authoritarian state’s smackdown against Uyghurs, a Muslim minority, is a human rights violation that continues to intensify as the country relies more and more on its high-tech, all-reaching surveillance systems which, in some cases, are provided by private companies.
For a political policy to be viable in the long-term and of benefit to the constituents it stands to affect, it must be considerate of how policies set to be jointly implemented and/or are already in existence will either support or hinder its own impact. It must also scrutinize the potential that seemingly non-relevant factors may have to derail its initiatives. Biden’s campaign plans for combating Covid19 and strengthening America’s commitment to justice does not do this. The plan for the former leaves too much up for interpretation — dangerously so. It is a political risk in the making if his cabinet does not address it immediately.
To deter this enormous political risk from occurring, the Biden campaign must, within its first 100 days, announce their plans for the creation of an independent agency to enforce consumer data protection. The Federal Trade Commission, as overwhelmed as it is, should not be the agency charged with this enormous task.
Data protection failures at giants like Google, Facebook and with services like virtual assistants, including: Siri and Alexa, act as a foreshadowing for what is to come if the American government does not pay heed to the digital security breaches that have happened, are happening, and will only continue to happen.
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https://medium.com/@abrooksmajor/the-ultimate-trade-off-data-privacy-protection-and-black-rights-5f7afe271f0f
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['Alexa Brooks Major']
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2020-11-30 05:23:43.233000+00:00
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['BlackLivesMatter', 'Government', 'Cybersecurity', 'Criminal Justice', 'Data Privacy']
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LEAN UX
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It is a methodology for changing user behavior and influencing business outcomes. One of the thing about lean UX is it makes to think you about outcomes. An outcome for your business might be to increase revenue, it might be to increase the number of subscribers, it might be to increase the number of paid users and so on on your product. How you get that is an unknown. What lean UX is about ?? It’s about filling in that gap of how you get them. You don’t start up thinking about solutions, you don’t start of thinking about features. What you do is you start up thinking about outcome you want to influence.
Let’s take a example. One outcome you might want to influence for your business would be increasing the number of subscribers. What you do is you then say ok and go with increasing the number of subscribers, the outcome we want to create is increasing the number of subscribers. How do we get them ? May be that’s more flexible pricing plans, may be it’s one month’s free trial, may be it’s making the product easy to use and so on so that more people will continue to use your product and they recommend that to their friends and may be because they recommend to their friends more people will come and use it. There is always different way you can address the problems, there is always different ways you can think about the problems. But the core thing about Lean UX is what is does is it’s gets you to think about the problem, it gets you to think about a outcome you want to achieve.
How the Lean UX process works
Before you get started with Lean UX, keep in mind what Gothelf says: Lean UX is a mentality.
A mindset must be accepted by everyone in your organization in order for it to be effective.
“This reframe necessitates an attitude of humility throughout the business. It necessitates that teams and managers apply their knowledge, talents, and creativity in the same way that scientists do: they suggest their best answer and then test to see whether they’re correct.”
For Lean UX to be effective, all members of your organization must be on board and understand it.
The system can be broken down into four processes:
Outcomes, assumptions, hypotheses Design Creating the MVP Research and Learning
Outcomes, assumptions, and hypotheses
Whereas typical software development approaches concentrate on features and deliverables, Lean UX emphasizes the product’s outcomes and how they help (or do not benefit) the user.
To achieve positive results, Lean UX turns the focus away from what designers believe is necessary of a product and onto their assumptions.
Assumptions are just your beliefs or expectations about your users based on what you know.
Business outcomes. This is what it looks like when it’s all said and done. What evidence do you have that your product was a success?
Users. The people for whom you’re designing a product. What are their names? What does their persona entail?
User outcomes. This is what your customers are looking for in a product like yours. What are their aches and pains?
Features. How will you improve your product in the future to ensure that your users get the results they want?
Design
This is the point at which you start designing your product. This could also be the moment to put your hypotheses to the test.
Adapted from Lean UX:
“For instance, if you’re working on a new project, you could evaluate demand by developing a landing page that counts how many people sign up for your service.”
It’s also not enough to lock your designers in a room progressively filling with water and force them to build a product before drowning (too specific?). Always keep in mind that you must collaborate when designing.
For example, cross-departmental teams must collaborate to draw and construct wireframes, and everyone must feel comfortable providing input on everything. Designers should think of themselves as meeting and conversation facilitators.
As your designs advance, you can format your meetings and talks in a variety of ways. Check out chapter four of Lean UX for additional information.
This effort is incorporated into the minimal viable product.
MVP (Minimum viable product)
What is the simplest way for us to learn more about our hypothesis? That is the question that your minimum viable product seeks to answer (MVP).
An MVP is the most basic expression of your product, as we’ve already discussed. The goal is to get a basic product out there and test how your target market reacts to it.
MVP is defined as “a version of a new product that allows a team to acquire the largest amount of validated learnings about customers with the least amount of effort” in Eric Riess’ book The Lean Startup.
Research and learning
Validation is the focus of this stage of the process.
Are you heading in the right direction? Is your product meeting the needs of your customers? What should be changed?
Research and learning requires two things to be effective in Lean UX:
Continuous. Every sprint should include “small, informal, qualitative research” methodologies (from Lean UX).
Collaborative. To “build shared understanding,” teams must operate cross-functionally rather than in silos (from Lean UX).
The idea is for your company to obtain information quickly but thoroughly. This is only possible if you conduct frequent and collaborative research.
|
https://medium.com/@sandeshrijal00/lean-ux-3efb1863bf9e
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['Sandesh Rijal']
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2021-06-17 06:45:08.013000+00:00
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['Ux Writing', 'Ux Strategy', 'UX', 'UX Design', 'UX Research']
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Product Manager Ekagar Gupta narrates the product team’s & Meesho’s impressive journey from X to 50X, thanks to hard work, & prioritising Speed Over Perfection
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Product Manager Ekagar Gupta narrates the product team’s & Meesho’s impressive journey from X to 50X, thanks to hard work, & prioritising Speed Over Perfection Mangala Dilip Follow Oct 9, 2020 · 6 min read
This week, we bring you the story of a bright Meeshoite who is committed to the cause of Meesho — enabling [anyone] to start a business, without an investment. Ekagar Gupta, Product Manager, who knew that his ideal career would involve problem solving and user understanding, had taken his time to understand where his talents would have the most impact before landing into product management.
And so, in May 2018, he joined Meesho having decided that he wanted to be an integral part of the product team of a growth-stage startup, which was sure to have incomparable growth in the years to come.
Ekagar has seen the company scale from x to 50x (if not more) in the two and a half years of his time so far at Meesho, and he has been instrumental in the projects that made this scaling possible.
Hear all about Ekagar’s story here:
I was raised by an engineer father and a chemistry professor mother, both of whom prioritised academics above most other things in life, so I did not even have a choice of not doing the same. Growing up in Punjab’s Patiala district, I saw how my father worked hard day and night solving engineering problems and I knew that this is what I wanted out of my career as well. So, early on, engineering was a non-negotiable part of the future I envisioned for myself.
And so, I found my way to IIT Delhi after schooling and pursued a degree in Textile Technology. When I graduated, I wanted to really explore all my options and see where I would be able to dedicate my 100 per cent to, rather than making any decisions before gaining practical understanding. So, I joined Flipkart as a Business Analyst through campus recruitment and learnt all that I could about the different teams in a company and its functions.
In search of a challenging and dynamic workplace
After three years of working at Flipkart, I knew without a doubt that product is where I needed to be. I also wanted to be in a work atmosphere that was more challenging and dynamic. When I heard about Meesho and its work, I did not hesitate to reach out to Vidit Aatrey (CEO and Co-Founder, Meesho) who also happens to be an alum of my alma mater, and have a conversation with him about what I could bring to the table.
Everyone who worked at Meesho had brilliant profiles, I knew that Vidit and Sanjeev [Barnwal, CTO and Co-Founder] had a groundbreaking concept on their hands. I saw the commitment with which Meeshoites worked towards their goals, and even the overall growth of the company at that point — even though the scale of the company was still very small — excited me. I realised that this was the perfect culture for me to thrive in and so joining Meesho as an Associate Product Manager was an easy decision to make.
Back then, the product team was made up of only two-three people and the responsibilities were shared by all of us as tasks poured in based on priority. From Day 0 at Meesho, I was able to hit the ground running. I was interacting with our users and our suppliers to understand their problems and figuring out how to solve it for them. Within the first couple of days, I was handling projects.
Speed Over Perfection. Always
As one of the earliest members of the Product team, the core value that I associate with the most is Speed Over Perfection. Starting from Day 0, we have learnt to give priority to execute projects quickly so that we can see the impact of the projects more quickly and implement it to the benefit of the entrepreneurs immediately. Now Speed Over Perfection is really ingrained in me. This core value has a huge impact on my work, no matter what project I am working on.
I remember for some of the projects we took on back then, we conceptualised the whole thing in the morning, worked on the numbers by the end of the day and in the next couple of days, we would make it live. Cross-team collaboration has always been a key function at Meesho. During that period I remember how the tech team would help product with the conceptualisation, and getting the numbers before they started developing the feature. And in turn, the product team would help tech with the testing of the feature to help them make it live faster.
Over time, obviously, this has changed, and both product and tech are now much bigger teams and Meesho itself has gone from X to 50X. We spend weeks conceptualising with Kirti [Varun, Sr. VP — Product] and getting the correct numbers, speaking to users to figure out what issues they are facing exactly, and more. Then, we spend a few days discussing those findings with the tech team and come up with the best solutions. Tech team members then take their time to build those things, after which the QA team tests those features vigorously over a week or a couple of weeks before we launch. So, all of these processes have evolved a lot.
When my work makes Meesho function better
My role has obviously evolved a lot too over time. Once the tasks of each product team member started getting defined, I started working on the logistics products, and one of the first assignments took on was to build an allocation engine for logistics, which helped assign shipments to our courier partners. That project, which I completed in December 2018, saved the company a lot of logistics costs and is being used to this day. I am very proud of this, especially since this was one of my first ever projects.
More recently, I took on another major project called the Post Order Experience Revamp. We realised that our entrepreneurs are having to call our user support team to get updates on the delivery of the shipment, order status, etc. And this was leading to bad user experience. We wanted to provide all of this information on the app itself and we revamped the whole experience.
Now, after the user places an order most of the information that they need is provided to them on the orders tab. They are now able to track the shipments easily, and we have seen that this feature has been impactful in making our entrepreneurs successful and there was a significant reduction in the number of calls we received regarding these updates.
At Meesho, I have been able to make these meaningful contributions to our entrepreneurs and I am able to see the impact of my work quickly as well. I take pride in the work I get to do and also in our immense journey that the company has been on for the last two and a half years.
Meesho gave me the opportunity to work with and be inspired by leaders such as Kirti and Harshit [Madan, GM — Fulfillment & Experience], who taught me the importance of understanding the needs of our users and suppliers to build products that benefit them.
During the lockdown, I have certainly been missing going to the office and collaborating with my colleagues in person, but working from home has given me the opportunity to spend time with my family and the time saved on commute has given me some extra time to invest in reading books.
Nikita Dresswala reveals the magic mantra behind taking projects from 0 to 1
Meesho Superstars: Say Hi to Team Foodie at Meesho
Are you following us on social media yet? You might want to head over to Life at Meesho’s Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn pages if you are a fan of fun and positivity.
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https://medium.com/meesho-tech/product-manager-ekagar-gupta-on-meeshos-hypergrowth-from-x-to-50x-afc41f3c9531
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['Mangala Dilip']
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2020-10-09 11:11:56.607000+00:00
|
['Tech', 'Culture', 'Product', 'Business', 'Meesho']
|
Erasure Coding For The Masses
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How Can You Use Linear Algebra To Erasure Code?
If you want to erasure code your data, you have to dive into the “More Math…” part in the subtitle of this article. To make the mathematical concepts more accessible, you’ll build up an example [3, 2] erasure code to encode a melody written in the 7-letter musical alphabet from A to G. The small size of the alphabet makes it easier to illustrate the math involved without getting bogged down in large numbers. We’ll encode the melody for the line “Happy birthday to you”, which is “CCDCFE”.
If you want to [N, K] erasure-code your data, you start by processing the source data stream in fixed-size blocks of data. Each data-block consists of K equal-sized chunks. Figure 4 illustrates how this chunking and blocking works for the example melody data.
Figure 4 (image by author)
Since each chunk has a fixed size, you can define a numerical representation for the chunks. Then, each data-block specifies a K-component vector in a K-dimensional vector space. Figure 5 shows the numerical representation and data-block vectors for the example.
Figure 5 (image by author)
Erasure coding is a linear transformation from each K-component data-block vector to its corresponding N-component code-block vector. The code-block chunks are striped across the N encoded shards i.e. each code-chunk is appended to the corresponding shard. The linear transformation of a data-block into a code-block can be represented by an N by K matrix.
Will any N by K encoder matrix work? Of course not. The matrix must have one crucial property. If you want to reconstruct the K chunks of a data-block from any K of N chunks of the corresponding code-block, you need every K by K submatrix of the encoder matrix to have an inverse matrix. Each such inverse matrix is the decoder matrix for the corresponding K chunks of a code-block.
How can you construct an N by K matrix such that every K by K submatrix has an inverse? Recall that a square matrix has an inverse if and only if its determinant is non-zero. So the encoder must have a non-zero determinant for every K by K submatrix. One way to achieve this is to use a Cauchy matrix (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cauchy_matrix). How? Choose a set of N distinct numbers {x₁, x₂, …, xₙ} and a non-overlapping set of K distinct numbers {y₁, y₂, …, yₖ}. Then, the matrix element in the ith row and kth column is 1/(xᵢ-yⱼ). The determinant of the K by K square submatrix with the K rows {r₁, r₂, …, rₖ} selected is non-zero and is given by the following:
We covered a lot of ground above. Let’s illustrate all of that in our example of the “Happy birthday” melody. Figure 6 constructs a 3 by 2 Cauchy encoder matrix for the [3, 2] erasure code used in the example.
Figure 6 (image by author)
Figure 7 shows how the vectors for the 3 data-blocks (“CC”, “DC”, “FE”) are encoded into 3 code-blocks (each with 3 chunks) and how the chunks in each code-block are striped across the encoded shards.
Figure 7 (image by author)
Figure 8 shows all the decoder matrices for the example, for each of the 3 ways in which 2 shards can be picked out of 3.
Figure 8 (image by author)
Figure 9 shows how each pair of shards decodes into the source data using the corresponding decoder matrix.
Figure 9 (image by author)
There you have it. You now know how to use Linear Algebra to erasure code your data. To recap the main ideas, an [N, K] erasure code maps a K-chunk data-block in a K-dimensional vector space to an N-chunk code-block in a K-dimensional subspace of an N-dimensional vector space. The code-chunks in a code-block are striped across the code shards. The map is specially constructed, using a Cauchy matrix, to be reversible for any K-chunk subset of the N-chunk code-blocks, allowing the source data to be decoded from any K code shards.
|
https://towardsdatascience.com/erasure-coding-for-the-masses-2c23c74bf87e
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['Vishesh Khemani']
|
2020-12-29 17:27:22.297000+00:00
|
['Getting Started', 'Editors Pick', 'Data Science', 'Software Engineering', 'Mathematics']
|
Dental Emergency During Coronavirus Outbreak
|
Maybe you took dental treatment for granted until now, during the coronavirus pandemic, when it’s no longer easy to come by. Since most elective medical procedures including dental treatment have been sidelined by the current public health crisis, you’re likely worried about where to get treatment when you have a dental emergency.
Although the spread of COVID-19 has upended life as we know it, you still have some options for getting the dental care you need at this time.
Is Your Dental Appointment Cancelled Because of Coronavirus?
Although requirements vary by state per the local risk factors, the general recommendation by bodies such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is for dentists to temporarily stop providing elective dental procedures. Such recommendations and regulations are subject to change at any moment given the volatility of the situation.
What does this mean for you?
You must be ready to accept the possibility that your previously scheduled dental appointment could be canceled at the last minute.
Dental offices may have to close or cut down on scheduled appointments for reasons like:
A shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) including masks and face shields
Changes in the staff availability or dental practice finances
Sudden changes in local legislation governing the administration of dental care
Your dentist isn’t happy about cutting back on their work. It might seem that dentists are wealthy people with few financial worries, much of what they earn goes to things like the overhead costs of running a practice, paying their staff, paying off student and medical equipment loans, and lab fees.
Just know that your dentist is feeling the pinch, as well, and wants to do all they reasonably can to make sure you get the care you need. There’s no need to panic or get upset if your appointment is cancelled. Try to be understanding and realize that while a canceled dental appointment is an inconvenience for everyone, it is for a greater good in this fight against the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Dental care currently takes a backseat to the much bigger ongoing health crisis. But dental treatment is still necessary; dental emergencies don’t stop for human coronavirus.
The good news is that even if routine dental procedures are canceled, there’s still a provision for emergency dental services.
|
https://medium.com/@theteethblog/dental-emergency-during-coronavirus-outbreak-2b5ad171b4b2
|
['The Teeth Blog.']
|
2020-04-23 09:12:30.757000+00:00
|
['Teeth', 'Coronavirus Update', 'Stay At Home', 'Dental Care', 'Corona']
|
Hard Truth: Conference Calls Suck Because You’re Lazy
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Hard Truth: Conference Calls Suck Because You’re Lazy
It’s not the tech, friend. Here’s how to create a better and more inclusive call for everyone.
The conference call is a gangrenous finger on the clammy hand of human achievement.
Designed to bridge communication between distant parties, this particular technology is so sonically enraging it’s a miracle humans haven’t given up on talking altogether.
Scientifically¹ speaking, conference calls are bad². In a completely unofficial Twitter poll I conducted, every respondent lamented on various aspects of conferencing, most notably attendees not muting themselves. This leads to intrusive background noise including:
Dogs barking
Mysterious coughing
Unwelcome snacking (a nightmare for those with misophonia, myself included)
And in at least one case, toilet flushing
It’s not like this is a secret!
There’s an entire corpus of online coverage about the pox of conference calls.
Wanna learn five reasons why web conferencing sucks? There’s a piece for that very specific need. Wanna find five tips to improve conference call audio? We got that too. The list goes on and on and on.
Companies that make video conferencing systems love to take jabs at conference call audio quality, which is funny but not entirely fair. Video adds a whole other dimension of problems to a meeting, like frozen screens and pixelated participants.
“If people were generally considerate, [conference calls] would be fine,” one respondent to my twitter poll opined. “But let’s be honest, generally people are selfish dickbags and this translates to terrible conference calls.”
Experts? They agree.
“In a broad sense, people are ultimately kind of lazy,” Disquiet founder Marc Weidenbaum, who consults with companies on their acoustic branding, told me. “They’re not lazy in the sense that they don’t wanna do anything. Most people are not thinking of other people, and honestly they’re not aware. Acoustic literacy is just not something that’s taught in schools.”
Credit: Joanna Walters
Zoning out
Having “bad conference call hygiene” can deleteriously affect employee focus, Weidenbaum explained. Poor sound quality on a call — due to someone using speakerphone, for example — leads to people tuning out. Employees check their emails, answer texts, or do other work they could’ve been doing in lieu of the meeting.
This isn’t even done out of disrespect: it’s because most people don’t want to listen to something that sounds like a marching band leader humming “Yankee Doodle Dandy” through a traffic cone in the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
The consequences of sound
While these concerns might sound like mild annoyances, the financial implications of conference call gaffes are pretty significant.
Losing time in a meeting due to technological difficulties (and thus, lateness) is expensive, especially when a meeting is only about 30 minutes long. That wasted time becomes frustrating for managers paying employees to do work and employees who, well, just want to do that work and go home.
“There’s fundamentally a large problem in the abuse of meetings,” Dr. Julie Gurner, an executive coach with a doctorate in psychology, told me. “Managers forget there are bottom line repercussions as well as productivity drops associated with every person who is being paid for that hour and not able to accomplish their work.”
Who gets heard?
Feeling valued is at the crux of the conference call conundrum.
This is especially true for certain groups of people, including women and minorities, who already struggle to be heard in the workplace.
Research shows that women are overwhelmingly interrupted more than men and that Black, Latino, Asian, and LGBTQ+ employees experience workplace discrimination in multiple forms. The auditory nuisances of a conference call amplify this feeling of “not being heard” literally and figuratively.
“[Conference calls] require people to be more assertive than they may have to be than a real-life meeting,” Dr. Gurner said. “It requires another level of assertiveness and for certain populations who already feel reticent to engage, this can make matters worse.”
Anecdotally, employees experience this all the time on conference calls: A lot of people talking — usually at once — and not many listening.
“It’s ironic because these technologies meant to connect us actually create divisions,” Weidenbaum said.
Making lemonade from cursed lemons
Believe it or not, there are actionable things you and your team can do to make conference calls suck marginally less for everyone involved.
For one thing, Weidenbaum recommends mounting sound-absorbing art to office walls, which can help reduce background noise.
“One company I worked with had an office where the art on the walls were actually soft sculptures intended to absorb sound,” Weidenbaum said. “All these things that looked like paintings were on top of cushions, so they just didn’t look like normal sound buffers.”
To that point, businesses should spend more time and money considering the effects of sound in a conference room, not just filling it with unreliable and expensive gadgets.
“Companies will spend so much money on [conferencing] technology but not in the acoustics of the room where a call takes place,” Weidenbaum said. “Usually these rooms have a lot of glass and reflective surfaces, and then people are confused why their $10,000 speaker system doesn’t work. It’s because they’re spending money in the wrong place.”
Above all, managers can — and should — be more discriminating about scheduling meetings and determining who needs to attend them. Letting employees know what they’ll be asked to speak about ahead of time can make for a more productive conversation.
“Meetings shouldn’t be about just talking — they should be about doing work,” Dr. Gurner told me. “If you’re asked to attend a meeting, employees should be told in advance they’ll be invited to speak about something specific. This way no one is struggling to find something to say and everyone feels equally valued.”
My personal advice? Take your expensive conferencing system, throw it in the trash and light it on fire. Carrier pigeons all the way (or just Slack me next time).
But if you absolutely must circle back/sync/regroup with your team, maybe just use the mute button.
|
https://medium.com/article-group/hard-truth-conference-calls-suck-because-youre-lazy-1b93c065b232
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['Rae Paoletta']
|
2019-06-27 18:29:37.860000+00:00
|
['Work', 'Startup', 'Psychology', 'Creativity', 'Technology']
|
The Library Witch
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The Library Witch
The Limits of a Public Library
Betty wanders through the library muttering and hugging herself. In her seventies, with scraggly grey hair and a hard, troubled gaze, she resembles a witch, but in baggy sweats and a faded T-shirt instead of a black dress and pointy hat.
Because Betty once taught nursery school and is drawn to small children, she’ll hover by the elevator to the junior room. When the kids get off, she’ll be standing there, towering over them and glowering.
When they shriek with fear, she’s as alarmed as they are.
Betty also alarms our adult patrons, but since she doesn’t technically interfere with their use of the library, there’s nothing library staff can do. Being weird and inappropriate, while troubling, doesn’t violate any specific library rule of behavior. Betty chants nonsense in a singsong voice and emits bleats and clicking sounds, but quietly.
The fact that she’ll sometimes slip a hand down her pants and scratch herself is a little icky, but not illegal. She’s in a grey area both cognitively and in terms of library policy. She doesn’t really belong here but we can’t kick her out.
But there are times when we’d like to.
We’re here to serve our community. And Betty is part of that community. But we’re also a small library, and having Betty here for hours each day has made a difference. Before Betty, we were a pleasant, bustling library. Now we’re a bustling, creepy library — the library with the wandering witch.
Bob, the man who brings Betty in, isn’t her husband. We don’t know what he is. All we know is that he sits down at a computer and ignores her, leaving her to wander the library unsupervised. But she isn’t really unsupervised. He knows that library staff will stop her from invading the staff room, playing with the water fountain, or wandering out the front door.
“It takes a village to look after your demented girlfriend while you go online and pretend that she doesn’t exist,” one co-worker muttered angrily after an afternoon spent keeping Betty out of harm’s way.
“Cut the guy some slack,” said another. “Would you want to be in his shoes?”
She may not be his girlfriend. Maybe she was, once. Bob isn’t loving or affectionate with her. Nor is he angry or testy. Mostly, he’s exasperated.
“Sit down, Betty!” he’ll instruct sternly when we bring her back to him. “Stay with me.”
A moment later, he returns to web surfing and she’s off again.
I have a friend who lives on their block. “That no-good bastard is living in her house, on her social security check!” she claims. Their once tidy home is run down and packed with junk. When Betty gets out and wanders the neighborhood, naked and shouting, the cops just return her to Bob.
“Can’t you do something?” my friend once asked them.
They told her that removing Betty from her home and institutionalizing her wouldn’t necessarily make her life any better. “That’s what will happen if you call social services,” they said. “Are you sure you want to make that call?”
She wasn’t. Neither am I.
Perhaps there is some tenderness there. Who knows? Maybe she’s glad to have him. He seems to be all she has left. The loving constellation of family and friends we count on to take care of us has let her down.
We librarians, all of us strong, independent women, tell ourselves this won’t happen to us.
The public library is the heart of any community. Young parents bring in their newborns — tiny, loved and full of promise. Couples in their eighties come in, holding hands. When you work at a public library you see every kind of person, at every stage of life. You see where you’ve been and where you’re going.
You see both the future you want and the future you dread.
What will become of Betty? She’ll probably continue to haunt our library until she manages to spark a conflict with one of our more volatile patrons, perhaps the skinny bald paranoid who hisses at you if she thinks you’re looking at her funny. Betty will glance at her the wrong way and the next thing you know we’ll have a cat fight on our hands. Then we’ll call in the cops and they’ll both be banned from the building.
It will be a relief to have our pleasant library back, and to be free of responsibility of keeping Betty safe. But we’ll still feel as if we’ve let her down. We’ll tell ourselves the she didn’t really belong here. But if not, where does she belong?
( Roz Warren is the author of Just Another Day at your Local Public Library, in which this essay first appeared. She also writes for everyone from the Funny Times to the New York Times and has been in 13 Chicken Soup for the Soul collections. Drop her a line at [email protected].)
|
https://medium.com/its-a-hardback-life/the-library-witch-2ab7310e5585
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['Roz Warren']
|
2020-12-16 19:45:54.480000+00:00
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['Aging', 'Dementia', 'Mental Illness', 'Libraries', 'Relationships']
|
[LIVE] : SSV Ulm 1846 vs Schalke 04 (Livestream) — Full Match, German DFB Pokal TV Channel 2020
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WATCH Live Streaming (SSV Ulm 1846 vs Schalke 04) Full HD [ULTRA ᴴᴰ1080p]
| Live Stream
Live sport streams free all around the world. Visit here to get up-to-the-minute sports news coverage, scores…
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Watch Live Streaming : “SSV Ulm 1846 vs Schalke 04” live stream In HD
VISIT HERE >> https://t.co/31oooZlipQ?amp=1
●LINE UP : SSV Ulm 1846 vs Schalke 04, live
●Date : 12:30 AM, December 23, 2020
●VENUE: Donaustadion
Facebook Live, LinkedIn Live, YouTube Live, Periscope, Instagram Live Over the past several years, major social media platforms democratized and commodified live streaming, with YouTube Live launching way back in 2011, and Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others (R.I.P. Meerkat) following suit. Most recently, LinkedIn launched live streaming on its platform, too, so businesses and professionals can reach their network in new and engaging ways.
These free platforms are great for brands and businesses looking to dip a toe in the live streaming pond, but they are not viable solutions for long-term scale and growth of a video strategy. Why? While ease of use is a major draw, for sure, none offer onboarding or customer support. If your team hits a snag with an event, you’re left to your own devices to problem-solve in real-time.
What’s more, streaming is only possible on a platform-by-platform basis. This means if you want to stream to Facebook and Twitter at the same time, you’ll need two cameras to live stream from each device — creating twice as much work (or more) and a less-than-ideal experience for the on-screen talent and viewers alike. ANOTHER POST.
Nobody is ever thrilled to pay nearly $11K for a golfer they probably hadn’t heard of until a handful of weeks ago, but both Zalatoris, along with Sam Burns will be at the top of my list this week on DraftKings.
Zalatoris gets the slight edge with his outstanding play in nearly every metric that’s not near the green. He ranks first amongst players in the field in SG: total and fourth in SG: approach. We also joke about getting the putter hot for a weekend, and if Zalatoris can improve on his SG: putting which ranks 129th in the field, he should absolutely contend yet again. Other Games.
He’s finished no worse than T19 in his last five events, including three top six finishes. His T6 result at Winged Foot opened up plenty of eyeballs, so he’ll be a popular play, which makes him all the more worthwhile in cash at the top.
While I was impressed with the way Will Zalatoris played last week at the U.S. Open, I’m more inclined this week to go with the more experienced Tour pro. Will will (that’s funny “Will will”) be a fixture on the PGA Tour — if not this year than next. He is one of the top players on the Korn Ferry Tour now. However, Corey Connors made the Playoffs and has been playing well last season (this is so weird calling it last season already). I’ll have both in a lineup this week, but my gut has me leaning with the Canadian. MORE POST.
|
https://medium.com/@ootanori/live-ssv-ulm-1846-vs-schalke-04-livestream-full-match-german-dfb-pokal-tv-channel-2020-e5392ddf5495
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[]
|
2020-12-22 09:30:41.265000+00:00
|
['Social Media', 'Soccer']
|
Hadoop hive(beeline) drop multiple tables with same prefix
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other key words: drop table with wildcard
Solution in one command:
beeline --outputformat=tsv2 --showHeader=false -u "<JDBC URL>" -e "SHOW TABLES 'hans*';" | xargs -I '{}' beeline -u "<JDBC URL>" -e 'DROP TABLE IF EXISTS {}'
Solution in script(Option):
> beeline --outputformat=tsv2 --showHeader=false -u "<JDBC URL>" -e "SHOW TABLES 'hans*';"> output
> sed -i -e 's/.*/DROP TABLE IF EXISTS&;/' output
> beeline -u "<JDBC URL>" -f output
Test:
[Create table]
beeline -u "<JDBC URL>" -e "CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS hanstable1 (id bigint);" beeline -u "<JDBC URL>" -e "CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS hanstable2 (id bigint);"
[Show table]
> beeline -u "<JDBC URL>" -e "SHOW TABLES 'hans*';"
...
+-------------+--+
| tab_name |
+-------------+--+
| hanstable1 |
| hanstable2 |
+-------------+--+
However, above result can not pipe to next stage directly, because default output format includes tablebar and header. You can add following options: --outputformat=tsv2 --showHeader=false to get table name only.
> beeline --outputformat=tsv2 --showHeader=false -u "<JDBC URL>" -e "SHOW TABLES 'hans*';"
...
hanstable1
hanstable2
[Drop table]
> beeline --outputformat=tsv2 --showHeader=false -u "<JDBC URL>" -e "SHOW TABLES 'hans*';" | xargs -I '{}' beeline -u "<JDBC URL>" -e 'DROP TABLE IF EXISTS {}'
...
INFO : OK
[Check it out]
|
https://medium.com/@starzodiac/hadoop-hive-beeline-drop-multiple-tables-with-same-prefix-720f8d9b6327
|
[]
|
2020-12-24 09:05:00.699000+00:00
|
['Hadoop', 'Beeline', 'Hive']
|
Being a Mizrahi Jew on Social Media
|
By Sophie Sklar, 2020–2021 CAMERA Fellow at McGill University
Operation “Magic Carpet” (1949–1950). Many Yemenite Jews (called Teimanim, about 49,000) immigrated to Israel. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
During COVID-19 self-isolation, like many others, I’ve been spending hours a day on social media. In particular, I’ve thoroughly explored the social media app TikTok — an app that has exploded in popularity in the last year.
The app, which continuously streams curated 15 second to one-minute-long videos based on user interests, has a sizable Jewish user base. The hashtag #jewishtiktok has over 16 million views. While many of the short videos I have viewed have featured nothing but positive content — including Jewish families preparing for Shabbat, educational content highlighting Jews from different parts of the world, and challah-making tutorials — I have also encountered a number of heinously anti-Zionist and antisemitic videos. These defamatory segments perpetuate a narrative that I have seen countless times on social media: that Jews are land thieves, colonists, and white supremacists.
Here’s where the problem most noticeably manifests: Typically, when a Mizrahi Jew (a Jew with ancestral and ethnic links to the Middle East and North Africa) exhibits pride in their culture, the comments are flooded with users claiming that this culture is “stolen.” Oftentimes, when Israelis create videos that highlight Arabic-influenced music or dances, commenters claim that Arab influence in Israel does not exist and the creator of the video is a “colonizer.” This sentiment promotes the erasure of Arab citizens in Israel and also distinctly Mizrahi Jewish culture and music.
This phenomenon is troubling, as the music, food, dress, and culture of the Arab world was profoundly shaped and developed by Jews who resided in it for thousands of years before their ethnic cleansing in the 1940s-60s. [1] Once I noticed this increasingly common phenomenon on TikTok, I attempted to converse with some of these commenters who would erase history and separate Jews from the very culture they helped create.
This only revealed some users’ profound ignorance. In one incident, a commenter berated a (Mizrahi) Jewish creator for posting a video that featured a Hebrew song performed in an Arabic style, as well as a sudra — a traditional headdress worn by Mizrahi Jews. Nothing in the video was surprising in the least to me, as Hebrew-Arabic fusion is an art form that I know quite well, having grown up in a household that speaks Judeo-Arabic. But, that’s precisely why the ensuing comments alleging some kind of malicious culture theft on the part of the video’s creator were so disturbing. Arab culture is integral to the Mizrahi Jewish lifestyle, so how can I — as a Mizrahi Jew — steal my own culture? I tried to engage with a commenter, explaining that these were all elements of Mizrahi Jewish culture, and that I was puzzled by these allegations of cultural theft. I was told that if I wasn’t Levantine, I had no claim to elements of Arab culture, including Arabic music and dabkeh (a native Levantine folk dance, historically practiced by Jews and non-Jews alike throughout the MENA region). I responded to the commenter asking if they wanted to see a copy of my 23andMe DNA report which confirms that I am, in fact, of Levantine ancestry — I was met with no response to this.
In another exchange, when I tried to educate a commenter on the Israeli links to Arab culture by explaining that my family had fled to Israel after widespread ethnic cleansing in the Arab world, she responded with “no one cares” and a laughing emoji. Not only was it ironic that this commenter who purported to be such a staunch defender of Palestinian human rights entirely disregarded the human rights of Jews from the Arab world, but also, her profile revealed she was from Iraq — the very nation my own Jewish family was expelled from.
Most, if not all, of these claims stem from a lack of education and the consistent spread of misinformation. So, let’s break down the most common ones:
Jews stole/appropriated Arab culture
Likely, in the eyes of many social media users, all Jews are Ashkenazi, and all Israelis are European immigrants. Perhaps this is because many social media users who I interact with are North American, and the Ashkenazi population vastly outnumbers the Sephardi and Mizrahi populations in North America. In their eyes, Europeans have no place in the Middle East, even though all Jews’ ancestral homeland is the land of Israel.
Furthermore, Mizrahi Jews have been an intrinsic part of the Middle East and North Africa for millenia. [2] For example, in the poetic literature of Israel, there are various references to Jewish life throughout what is now the modern-day Arab world. Want proof? We need not look further than the many Jews in the Ottoman Empire who prospered culturally and contributed significantly to trade and industry. [3]
It is not only disingenuous, but factually inaccurate, to claim that Jews “stole” Arab culture. The hundreds of thousands of Jews who lived throughout the Middle East and North Africa were as much a part of that region’s culture as any other citizen, and contributed greatly to commerce, trade, and cultural development throughout the Arab World.
The presence of Arab culture within Israel’s Jewish communities is due to Israeli “colonization”
One only has to look at very basic Mizrahi Jewish history to understand that this inflammatory and politically-charged claim is false.
Despite thousands of years of Jewish contributions throughout the Arab world, during the 20th century, over 850,000 Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews fled or were expelled from Arab and Muslim countries. [4] During this time, most countries were hesitant to absorb Jewish refugees. However, the newly formed Jewish state made it a mission to assist the victims of these ethnic cleansing campaigns. Various Israeli operations spurned the rescue of Mizrahi refugees following the loss of their homes and livelihoods that they spent thousands of years building.
When these Jews arrived in Israel, they maintained their customs and cultural traditions, including recipes, their native languages, and their religious customs, all with a distinct fusion of Arab and Jewish elements. Simply put, Arab influences within Israeli Jewish culture do not come from colonization or through theft; it is simply the native culture of the hundreds of thousands of Jews who emigrated to Israel from the MENA region.
In fact, due to the anti-Jewish actions of Arab governments, Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews and their descendants comprise a sizeable portion of Israel’s population. [5]
I have even encountered the canard that Israelis are “white supremacists.” No matter if they are Mizrahi, Sephardi, or Ashkenazi, to employ such venom to describe Jews is to obscure the tragic reality that Jews have been (and are) murdered in some cases due to a perceived lack of “whiteness.”
It’s quite revealing that these comments often come from those who espouse the importance of diversity and cultural preservation of people of colour and minority populations. Seemingly, this does not apply to Jews of colour on social media.
Overall, while many of these claims on social media arise due to a lack of education, many are circulated malevolently. There is no shortage of social media users who will continue to assault Mizrahi culture, no matter how often they are confronted with historical facts. With this in mind, it is imperative that we share accurate information.
We owe it to the Mizrahi Jews who were forcibly expelled from the MENA region to fight against those who wish to strip them of their own culture. Use your voice to educate other users — even if they push back, you are doing a great service to Mizrahi Jews and their descendants by ensuring that their rich cultural heritage is acknowledged.
[1] https://www.oxfordstudent.com/2020/08/24/we-need-to-talk-about-the-ethnic-cleansing-of-middle-eastern-jews/
[2] https://www.bjhc.org.il/
[3] https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-ottoman-empire/?fbclid=IwAR3DIphTxwt1jCTbWrJ-8qcv5FomA9IY8r_ooG0f0PY7MENXt75YvRYrJ60
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/world/americas/04iht-nations.4.8182206.html
[5] Statistical Abstract of Israel, 2009, CBS. “Table 2.24 — Jews, by country of origin and age”
Read more articles by Sophie, as well as similar pieces, on CAMERA on Campus’s website.
Follow CAMERA on Campus’s #MizrahiStories social media campaign to spread the world about Mizrahi Jewry! Register to receive promotional material here.
|
https://medium.com/camera-on-campus/being-a-mizrahi-jew-on-social-media-48bdd244938b
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['Camera On Campus']
|
2020-11-15 11:14:46.397000+00:00
|
['Jewish', 'Palestine', 'Tik Tok', 'Zionism', 'Israel']
|
Former PM Ahmet Davutoglu Is No Remedy for Turkey’s Woes
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Turkey’s current course of political affairs offer little hope for a plausible change in the offing. Yet, for all the distressing picture, some politicians embrace the challenge to confront President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s tightening grip on the country by promising a return to normalcy — democratic politics. Former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is one of those politicians.
Former Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu spoke at a Zoom webinar with MEI.
In a Zoom webinar with the D.C.-based Middle East Institute (MEI) last week, Davutoglu shared his vision of new Turkey, his party program, and provided a wide-ranging commentary on the most divisive socio-political issues of the day. The professor of political science, despite all his professed wisdom, has failed to offer reassurance about how to bridge up the gap between his lofty words and deeds. The chasm between abstract theoretical talk and the actual practice is quite evident given his controversial record on implementing some of his doctrines into concrete policy successes during his tenure as prime minister (2014–2016). (His service as foreign minister was much better, though it was also tainted by his controversial role in Turkey’s embroilment in the Syrian conflict.)
Davutoglu, who is most known for his Strategic Depth doctrine that guided the Turkish foreign policy for more than a decade, struggled to defend his record when grilled by the moderator Gonul Tol about the human rights abuses and Turkey’s drift away from democracy during his premiership. The former prime minister outright rejected any responsibility and even dismissed some factual data about the initial signs of the breakdown of academic freedom and free speech during his time.
He insisted that there was not a single academic investigated during his time. But the Supreme Council of Higher Education (YOK) launched a probe against more than 1,000 academics for signing a petition that called for the cessation of urban operations by the security forces against outlawed militants in southeastern Turkey to avoid civilian casualties in early 2016.
Davutoglu clung to his claim that there was no shutdown of any institution during his time. But there were a number of media outlets were confiscated by authorities when he served as premier. During his tenure, the initial phases of the purge began in the police department, judiciary, and other sectors of the public service. He helped Erdogan stifle a corruption probe against former cabinet ministers in late 2013 and throughout 2014. His government simply ditched the case by blocking a parliamentary investigation. The Davutoglu government waged bloody urban warfare against the PKK in several cities that caused massive displacement and human cost. (To be fair, it must be noted that President Erdogan’s role was much more decisive in the renewal of 2015 fighting.)
The list of Davutoglu’s failures is no trivial. To survive in his post, he mostly countenanced Erdogan’s overreach and subversion of constitutional propriety in every layer of governance. But none of his appeasements protected his post when the president unceremoniously dumped him in a palace coup in May 2016.
The professor, when announced his resignation against his will, vowed to remain loyal to Erdogan until his last breath. He pledged not to have a separate political course. As of today, he seems to have breached most of his public pledges of fidelity to Erdogan. He now deploys all available vocabulary to disparage, discredit and attack his former patron. Yet, this does little to convince a skeptical audience except for his core supporters.
About the government’s Hagia Sophia decision, he offered his full-throated support for the designation of the museum as a mosque with a minor caveat. He did not criticize the move at its core but offered his reservation about how it was implemented. The former prime minister called the world reaction as hypocritical, reminding the lack of similar condemnation when the Spaniards converted Cordoba mosque to a cathedral in the 1200s in the medieval era.
Since his split with Erdogan, the professor has found himself in the crosshairs of the government. The president’s wrath is embodied by an overnight presidential decree that last month shuttered a university — Istanbul Sehir University — associated with Davutoglu. In the MEI webinar, the honorary board member of the university offered a heartfelt elegy, bemoaning the loss of a promising college.
“It was an inclusive institution where socialists, leftists, Islamists and other academics gathered under one umbrella,” he moaned. The way how the university fell victim to political revenge, he reckoned, only mortified his anguish and dashed his remaining hopes about academic freedom in Turkey.
Turkey’s current political system, the professor contended, has been irrevocably corrupted by the unprincipled partisan politics that found its expression in alliances between parliamentary parties. As to a question of whether his party would seek an electoral alliance, he simply rebuffed the idea as essentially corrupting.
Alliances, the professor asserted with conviction, distort the character of political parties in this presidential system. “Look at the AK Party. It looks like more MHP today.”
Davutoglu and Turkey Purge
There is a far deeper issue that belittles the former prime minister’s claim of moral high ground about his past record and current deeds. The professor, who occasionally rose to the occasion for raising the wide-ranging woes that have afflicted hundreds of thousands of lives shattered by the terror of post-coup purge, has in essence no different view or policy discourse than the government’s when it comes to the main target group of the repression. He has no qualm over embracing the default position of the government by free-floating of the “FETO” narrative. (The faith-based Gulen movement has been designated as an outlawed terror outfit by Turkish authorities.)
This blanket deployment of the term without offering a caveat or contextual differentiation only deprives the professor of any moral legitimacy about his lofty claim of restoring justice back to Turkey once he becomes a ruler again. The “FETO,” measured by how it was deployed by the government, only serves to make anyone a prisoner of a concept whose semantic and legal boundaries are as vague and far-reaching as the ever-shifting whims of the government. By parroting the government’s talking point, Davutoglu justifies, endorses and further enables a discourse (as well as a practice) that serves as the legal and political ground to discredit, vilify, terrorize, and even litigate anyone who dares to cross lines drawn by the government about a matter, or any matter, that entails vital importance in the domestic realm.
And Davutoglu naively errs in thinking that the adoption of that rhetoric would secure him from potential prosecution by endearing him to the authorities or demarcate the political borders where he stands. Absurd though it may seem, the “FETO” charge was ridiculously deployed against anyone without discrimination, even against Gulen’s universal foes who built their entire careers against the U.S.-based clerk’s organization and thoughts. In this political context of sanctified absurdity, the realm of the reasoned debate has never been rendered that narrow. This is also true for Davutoglu.
For someone who is fixated with inventing an ingenuine body of concepts to identify world problems as well as social affairs of his country, the blind admission of a political discourse tailored to conceal the regime’s fascist character is no small blunder. It is this indiscriminate “FETO” charge pointed against any government discontent that throttles the country’s democracy, and the very idea of the politics. The professor, if he ever intends to stand up to the task of saving the country, should reject this imposition not just for the sake of a reasonable argument about any matter of national importance, but also for the sake of politics itself.
Without ifs and buts, espousing political awareness for the predicament of KHK people (purge victims) is a must for any aspiring politician to bounce the country back from a headlong plunge into a costly moral abyss. The social cost of the purge terror has already left a moral stain on the public conscience. Before wasting further time on grand narratives and macro intellectual terms such as civilization, weltanschauung, and paradigms, what Davutoglu should do is crystal clear: to wage a battle for the lost building blocks of Turkey’s social fabric and legal setting — humanism, compassion, and justice, not just for himself but for every citizen wronged by authorities over the course of recent years.
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https://abyasun.medium.com/ahmet-davutoglu-no-remedy-for-turkey-woes-68836a0cc837
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['Abdullah Ayasun']
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2020-07-23 03:56:34.319000+00:00
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['Turkey', 'Erdogan', 'Justice', 'Democracy', 'Ahmet Davutoğlu']
|
How Does Your Strategic Plan Tie Into This Meeting?
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Effective meetings begin with considering the strategic plan of the organization.
Each meeting could be crafted to accomplish some task that helps in achieving the ideal state that the strategic plan lays out. It certainly helps have effective meetings if everyone knows why they are at a meeting and what the goal of the meeting should be.
The strategic plan is composed of strategies, of course, and also tactics. These are the types of things that need to be discussed at a meeting. When the discussion at a meeting ties into the strategic plan then the participants should leave with a sense of accomplishment that they spent their time doing something that was worthwhile.
I would ask the question — If we don’t have a strategic plan why are we having a meeting? What are we hoping to accomplish by getting together today?
Some organizations have a strategic plan that has never been documented. This can be the case for groups which have been together for a long time and are pursuing a straightforward goal. Such as the nonprofit that organizes the community parade each summer. Their mission is to have a great parade and I would imagine that everyone who attends the meeting knows this. I would have suggested though that it would improve the meetings if they spent a little time going around the table and getting the group to define what success looks like to them. This would ideally take place at the beginning of the planning process for the new parade each year.
What we are looking for when we craft a strategic plan is to be sure that the group agrees on where they are headed. The place that they are headed is often called the vision for the organization. I define it as the ideal state that the group is hoping to achieve. In the case of our parade example, the vision could be a 100-float parade, that involves all the community groups in the area and makes a little profit to send to charity. You see the idea.
Then if all of the participants agree that this is the vision — the conversation can start on how to achieve this vision. Understand that if the group agrees on the destination then they can disagree on how to get there, without the goal being in jeopardy. The concept is that the vision is safe with this group — they can disagree on tactics as long as they agree on where they are going.
You can see that each meeting now has a focus — which is answering the question how close are we to achieving our vision and what do we have left to do to get there. In fact, a strategic plan can allow the group to map out the theme of each meeting for the entire year.
If you are on this board or committee you would now know what is going to be accomplished at each meeting for the coming year. This knowledge will improve your attendance as well as you sense of accomplishment for serving on the committee and attending the meeting.
Building a strategic plan does not have to be a week long or even a day long activity. However just documenting the answer to the question where are we going will improve your meetings.
|
https://medium.com/governance-guru/how-does-your-strategic-plan-tie-into-this-meeting-fe8efc445648
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['Debi Peverill']
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2020-12-17 03:41:43.167000+00:00
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['Governance', 'Strategic Planning', 'Productivity', 'Meetings', 'Goals']
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#3 From Vila Franca de Xira to Quinta da Burr (beach life, pilgrim dinners, sunshine!)
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⏩Day 4 on the Camino Portugués!
Leaving Vila Franca de Xira around 8.45am ish — heading 19.5 km going past Carregado and Vila Nova da Rainha to end up in Azambuja!
🛣 Previously the Camino was along the highway — no more it has been re routed to a gravel track which runs parallel to the train tracks.
🔥 My calf’s are burning, I’m still wearing the knee support and making sure my glutes are being engaged- which is not as easy as it should be…
💥I was super organised this morning and made myself breakfast at the hostel, really simple food a cheese sandwich, plus a slice of chocolate cake and an apple. I find making lunch in the morning, when the food is there the best thing to do as it’s a super cheap meal and a great way to keep costs down. Plus it’s so nice to stop out on the walk and eat outside enjoying the view!
🐂 Azambuja is a cute little town, the albergue has got 12 beds and opens at 3pm — it is first come first served and when they are full, they are full — no more room! Therefore you do want to make sure you arrived in plenty of time. The places are simple but it has a shower, kitchen facilities and a place to wash your clothes — hand wash!! No WiFi — but that probably a good thing!
🎥I am vlogging the trip and will be sharing the vlogs on YouTube. Make sure you subscribe to the tough girl YouTube channel so you don’t miss out! The link is in the bio!
📚 My hike is being sponsored by @ciceronepress.
Cicerone has also got an awesome guide book about hiking the Camino Portugués which was written by the awesome Kat Davies @followingthearrows who has been on the tough girl podcast to share more about her walking adventures — she has done the Camino Portugués 3 times and has done the PCT and a bunch of other hikes! Well worth following 😀
#challengewithcicerone
Watch the vlog now!!!
|
https://medium.com/@_TOUGH_GIRL/3-from-vila-franca-de-xira-to-quinta-da-burr-beach-life-pilgrim-dinners-sunshine-763417b7d738
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['Sarah Williams']
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2020-12-18 10:02:32.079000+00:00
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['Walking', 'Challenge', 'Motivation', 'Travel', 'Adventure']
|
Petrichor
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Petrichor
The first crack of thunder was a warning,now the roar of God thundered across the skies. Listen Carefully. Or you might miss the yell of the angels through the shrieks of the wind that’s cutting through the air like a sharpened blade; circling with a frenzy, clouds darkening like God himself was throwing a fit. Thick dark clouds roll across the atmosphere, thick and dingy with water.
Do you smell that?
That sticky, earthy scent.
When the first drop hits, you’re already running towards sanctuary; A school, your house, underneath the folds of the bright pink umbrella. Or your feet take you to a new path, to the nearest window to watch the race between the thousand of streaks that cascade down the crystal substance.
The pitter patter of rain striking the concrete sidewalks, lulls me to sleep. Tune into the noise it makes as the cars drive by, rubber tires sending waves of dirty water across the pavement. Let the whiff of earth nurture you. So lean your head against the car window on a long car drive, letting your eyes follow the streams that gush down its side.
The rain excites me. I thrive in the heavy flow of icy water. The one to tip their head towards the heavens, wide spread smile as the drops kiss my cheeks. Growing still in the beauty of rain, safe in its downpour. Watch the enrichment of earths soil, the energy that’s produced For all earths creation. The rain is a song, a sheet of earths layer washed anew for another day it’s title.
Standing still as the water stains my shirt. The gentle warmth of sunlight is overrated, rain is what I need. I need the wild storm, trees that crack and bend,raindrops that gather on my eyelashes. Taking a look at earths beauty, the buds of flowers that will bloom for rain fell that day. Rivers that drink their fill, water we drink.
Rain continues to pull me in and out of its embrace And for that I’m forever thankful.
Next time I recommend instead of dismissing the storm I want you to blossom in it. Go outside barefoot, feel earth herself underneath your toes, let the wind pick up and scatter your hair, smile as the rain gives your cheeks a kiss. Dance, skip, walk, run , or jump into the puddles that bubble on the ground. I want a wave of excitement to course through you as the first drop hits the ground. Feel alive and once it ceases go inside, bundle up, and snag yourself a of the steamiest cup of hot chocolate.
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https://medium.com/@manderlygallahar9/petrichor-f11bd2157a14
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[]
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2021-07-07 07:33:45.192000+00:00
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['Petrichor', 'Rain', 'Dance', 'Earth', 'Sing']
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Pricing Transparency — Not for Consumers
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For starters, the chargemaster format is not standardized. While most provider tie charges to individual procedures (called a “fee-for-service” contract), the published chargemasters typically do not distinctly identify those procedures by CPT code, revenue code, or equivalent. This makes comparing prices at the procedure level nigh impossible.
Even though many of these line-items have decipherable descriptions, which a motivated patient or third-party could tie back to a CPT code, this still fails to address nuances which commonly affect costs — procedure modifiers, location, unit type (per day, per number of images, etc.), and other important cost factors. This skews prices and leaves the reported price questionable at best.
Finally, the chargemasters — as they are currently published — do not reflect the costs that most patients will experience. The current chargemasters only include Medicare contracted rates, whereas most patients will experience contracted rates negotiated by their health insurance or employer. While there is sure to be a correlation between Medicare costs and commercial insurance contracts, this will virtually never represent the costs to the consumer on a per-procedure basis.
DRG Costs Don’t Apply to Most Patients
Median Total Cost (in thousands) for Revision of Knee or Hip Replacement (Without Complications or Comorbidity)
Median total cost of DRGs, on the other hand, are much more standardized in their representation. CMS laid out specific guidelines for which DRGs needed to be included, and how to calculate the total costs. As a result, it is easier to compare DRG costs than chargemaster prices across hospitals. Unfortunately, the data still fails to serve consumers in a meaningful manner.
For starters, the total cost to Medicare for any DRG is hardly representative of the contracted rates for insured patients, and even less so for patients’ total out-of-pocket costs. While two hospitals may have drastically different prices for the same condition or treatment, the end result to the patient will largely depend on whether the hospital is in network, how their policy covers their treatment, and whether or not they meet their deductible along the way.
In the data I looked at, some hospitals cost more than twice their competitors in the same city for the same DRGs. As seen in the chart above, a joint replacement revision at Brigham and Women’s hospital costs more than twice that of Beth Israel Deaconess, despite both hospitals being located in Boston. However, most patients in the area wouldn’t feel the difference in their wallets, as they would reach their out-of-pocket maximum and insurance would cover the rest.
DRG Costs Lack Important Context
|
https://medium.com/@cloudcray/pricing-transparency-not-for-consumers-828e1cfd1daa
|
['Cloud Cray']
|
2019-01-21 19:52:19.240000+00:00
|
['Hospital', 'Medical', 'Doctors', 'Transparency', 'Healthcare']
|
Can you teach me how to code? Why my answer always starts with no and end with yes
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Can you teach me how to code? Why my answer always starts with no and end with yes
it’s not as glamorous as Hollywood makes it seem
Can you teach me how to code? Sit me down and flip open a book, going from beginning to end like a textbook? Can you teach me to code, so I can make games and maybe hack the Pentagon? Can you teach me to code, so I can make millions and billions, doing almost nothing but drag and drop?
Can you teach me to code?
The short answer, my young dreamer, is no.
The long answer is yes — just not how you want me to teach you.
The thing about code is that it’s not that glamourous. It’s long hours, days and nights spent arguing with a computer and the computer is always right. It’s a one-way relationship, with Google as your companion, and maybe a Stack Overflow friend.
It’s a series of one confusion after the next, silent failures and red errors.
Why?
Because code is a language and languages are tools of communication. You can route learn code, but to create something out of it — well, that’s a different story.
It’s the difference between tracing and learning to draw. Anyone can trace a picture, but not everyone can draw. The ability to draw includes the ability to identify shapes and replicate them on a medium. That’s what coding is — a process of identifying the different necessary parts to make a system. After that comes creating the pieces, the struts and the beams that make up the application.
When you code, you are the builder and the architect, the mastermind of your little plot of sandbox. But like in real life, you can’t just build a house and call it a day. There are resource consents, council permissions, engineering reports, provisioning, and even the weather forecast to take into account. The equivalent to this is your project manager, client demands, team member’s opinions and thoughts, and legacy code (if you’ve got any).
Over time, you find yourself spending more time in the process than the actual code itself. It’s easy to create code when you’re by yourself — but that’s rarely the case. Your work is absorbed into the multitude of moving parts that are supposed to work together like a seamless machine made of digital cogs mostly encased in curly brackets. Sometimes it gets edited by others, morphing into something completely different within a few months, if not weeks.
So can I teach you how to code?
Probably not — not the way you want me to teach you — the linear point A to B, x = y = z kind of formula. I’m not that kind of teacher.
You probably have a project in mind, a dream that you want to fulfill, an app, a game, a something that will materialize if only you knew how to code. Let me tell you this, you’re doing it backward.
If you’ve got an idea, work out the bits and pieces first. Figure out what you need as your features, why you need it, and how it's going to work. Figure out how the bits and pieces to group together and the relationships between them.
Then you can start coding. Pick the smallest set of features — the minimum collection of things you need to get your app, dream, idea running. Then jump right into it.
Get it working as quickly as possible. Learn to fail and fail often. Become friends with failure. Once you do, every time something falls apart, you get better at picking yourself up. You learn to fix things faster and recognize your potential failing points before they happen.
Because coding is nuanced to the language you choose. Learn the technical basics and get creating as quickly as possible. Read around topics that can supplement your app, dream, thing. Look up patterns. Create a series of dots that will eventually make sense.
And trust that these knowledge points will eventually make sense.
Code is a tool. It’s not some magical thing that will make all your dreams come true. Code is a thing that only materializes properly if you are clear on what you want to achieve from it.
So can I teach you how to code? Probably not.
Can I give you some of the pieces of the puzzles that you might need? Probably yes.
|
https://medium.com/madhash/can-you-teach-me-how-to-code-why-my-answer-always-starts-with-no-and-end-with-yes-7c94f7800f56
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['Aphinya Dechalert']
|
2020-08-04 06:01:01.075000+00:00
|
['Software Engineering', 'Software Development', 'Ideas', 'Web Development', 'Technology']
|
Tips to Avoid Buying Fake Components Online
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Photo credit: Pixabay
As designers and developers create electronics devices and IoT products, there’s an issue that many people might ignore easily, that is the quality of electronic components for their projects. Reliable and reputable sources for the components could be the important factor to determine your product success, not matter which stage you are at, design phase or ready for mass production.
From my experience, here is the list including 4 issues developers should consider in procuring components:
1. Price: Cost should not be the immediate factor to decide on what components are used for your projects. If you find the chips with unusually cheap price, you may consider if it’s reasonable and reliable to get the components.
2. Source: it’s definitely not wise to get the components from the vendors you are not familiar with or you cannot find any friends and peers who have bought chips from. Especially as buying chips online, you may find it risky to buy from the sellers on Alibaba and Taobao. Instead of placing order on the online store you don’t know much, you’d better buy from well-known and trustworthy distributors online or even from original manufacturers.
3. Incorrect part number and logo: Wrong logo and incomplete part numbers are quite obvious that the chips are counterfeits. It would be better to double check the logo and part number with the datasheet from manufacturer’s official website, and it could help you to distinguish if it’s a reliable one.
4. Package: Before opening the package you buy online, you’d better spend some time looking at the packing and then check what’s included in the box. You need to check if the package is sent from the website you buy from, and whether there’s any official documentation included inside. What’s more, if they give you more parts than you need, then you should be aware of it and might need a reliability test.
Photo credit: Pixabay
To maintain good quality of your electronics products, finding reliable and reputable sources for your components used in the project should come first. There are counterfeited parts in the market indeed, and somehow it happens to get the fake ones from your unfamiliar vendors. Do pay more attention to check all the details of the part appearance, source, and even package.
|
https://medium.com/@bmiller.1904.iot/tips-to-avoid-buying-fake-components-online-81b191b14f6c
|
['Bob Miller']
|
2019-04-15 08:35:05.922000+00:00
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['Ic', 'Chips', 'Hardware', 'Components', 'Ic Chip']
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Fine Art Delivery Service in New York: Richard Beavers Gallery
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Fine Art Shippers is proud to offer premium quality art pick-up and art delivery services in the New York metro area. As an international art logistics company with decades of experience in the industry, we work with many galleries, dealers, and auction houses, and we are ready to pick up and deliver artwork of any kind. Be it a large Old Master painting, a highly valuable piece of art by the prominent contemporary artist, or an antique sculpture, we will ensure that it arrives at the destination in perfect condition.
Our professional fine art delivery service is chosen by many seasoned collectors and art connoisseurs who entrust our team with packing and delivering the most fragile and delicate pieces. Our clients know that we will come to any location, pick up and pack all the items properly, and deliver them to any destination quickly, securely, and without delays. For instance, not so long ago, we had the pleasure of picking up art for our client from the amazing Richard Beavers Gallery in Brooklyn, NYC.
Richard Beavers Gallery, or as it is also known House of Art Gallery, was founded by Richard Beavers in 2007. The gallery is focused on urban contemporary art and artists whose work addresses various political and social issues. Whether you are a seasoned collector or art connoisseur, Richard Beavers Gallery has many interesting artworks to offer, from oil and acrylic paintings to photography and digital media collage. For example, you are sure to love works by Frank Morrison, Jamel Shabazz, Anton Pollard, Shawn Theodore, and Leroy Campbell.
It is always a pleasure for Fine Art Shippers to pick up artworks from Richard Beavers Gallery and work with the gallery’s knowledgeable owner. It is indeed a special place, one of the best in New York to enjoy and acquire urban contemporary art. Highly recommended!
At Fine Art Shippers, we have established relationships with many fine art galleries in New York, and we are ready to pick up art from any of them. We also provide art courier and art delivery services to local artists who need a reliable partner to deliver their works safely, securely, and on time. You can rely on our team with any fine art handling and moving needs, no matter how big or small. As for the cost of the art delivery, you will be pleased to know that our services are available at very reasonable rates that keep our clients coming back!
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https://medium.com/@fineartshippers/fine-art-delivery-service-in-new-york-richard-beavers-gallery-fdf1d4c75284
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['Ilya Kushnirskiy', 'Fine Art Shippers']
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2019-05-06 20:51:55.974000+00:00
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['Art', 'Moving Company', 'Contemporary Art', 'Delivery', 'Gallery']
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Too Much Data, Not Enough Insight
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It’s a strange phenomenon of modern business that we are absolutely awash in data but, frequently, it seems like the additional information doesn’t lead to insights or meaningful tools. For many enterprises — especially small businesses — market necessity makes it seem like a move to a comprehensive system with data-analytics is the only way to survive. But once they get Shopify or SalesForce or whatever SaaS or PaaS they fancy, how many companies actually start gleaning useful information at all, to say nothing of creating valuable data products as a result? Given that nearly half of businesses don’t even know where their data is stored, the answer is “not nearly enough.”
That’s not exactly what I said, Paul, but fine.
Drinking from a Fire Hose
Some of this comes down to the amount of information at play. Much of the time, when discussing the amount of data moving through the Internet, you hear about how there are more bytes online than there are stars in the Universe, or that in ten years we’ll produce more data than is stored in the Library of Congress every hour blah blah blah. We get it: there’s a lot of data.
Why, amid an absolute glut of data, are businesses finding it difficult to meaningfully deploy it for new, valuable purposes? A few reasons. That very volume of data can be overwhelming, and creates a sense of impossibility to manage. Consider the fact that, in the marketing industry — which is completely reliant on data both to devise its strategies and prove its worth — there was already a widespread sense of being overwhelmed by data, and that was five years ago. The relentless pace of data inflow has only accelerated since then. If marketers, whose lifeblood is data, can’t keep up, how can anyone else?
These stats and surveys hide the important facts while still pointing to them. Saying that there is a huge amount of data (“44 zettabytes!”) is meaningless: humans are cognitively incapable of processing what that kind of number means. Think about it this way: try to imagine 100,000 people in a football stadium. Not impossible, right? Now imagine a million different stadiums, each holding 100,000 people. Harder? Now imagine 5,000 planets, each with a million stadiums on them. Replace “people” with “bytes” and you’ve reach the amount of data Americans produce online — every minute.
I won’t lie, that paragraph took me 45 minutes to write.
What Are We Looking For
“But with all of that data,” the thinking goes, “there must be value and we should grab it!” It’s not unreasonable to assume so, but when you analyze it carefully, how much of that information is valuable to you? How does it tie to revenue? Who can make use of it in the immediate term, without needing to construct a massive machine learning tool?
Often, the problem is that we’re very focused on answers when we should instead be focused on questions. “Data” isn’t an answer, it’s just another way of saying “stuff.” When you look at the data you have internally or as a result of a partnership with another company, saying that you want to find a way to utilize data sounds profound, but when you come down to it, what you’re really saying is “I’m sure there’s a way to use this stuff.” Less professional, but no less accurate.
Asking the right question, then, is substantially more important than assuming there is an answer. But vague, generalized questions are just as useless as vast stores of data with no purpose. The best course is to ask yourself questions that don’t presuppose the answer, but instead cause you to explore the data you have or realize where the data you have is lacking.
Bad Questions, Good Questions
Consider the kind of inquiries that you would start, and what kind of data you would need, based off of questions like these:
What do customers want?
How much more money can we make by using data?
What are the best ways to change our marketing plans?
Which of our employees is the most effective?
You could spent months trying to figure out what these questions even mean. “What do customers want?” What, for Christmas? But this is exactly the kind of amorphous, vague inquiry you’ll get if you don’t push for concrete, real-world questions about data. Compare those questions to these:
What gaps do we consistently find in our client acquisition process and Know-Your-Client efforts?
What order fulfilment metrics are we not meeting, and why?
Which of our employees has the highest conversion rate when tying attendance at conferences to closing customer relationships?
Is there a correlation between our marketing spend and sales increases?
Are we finding a greater delay in resolving invoices since our migration to a new vendor management platform?
These questions are so much better largely because they can be answered. “Who is our most effective employee” has no measurement metric, where “who gets us the most business from going to conferences” is an answerable, measurable, verifiable question that would be super valuable if conferences existed anymore. Again, the key is to focus on finding the right questions that data can answer, not the other way around. If you do, you can wade through the “data lake” and find what’s really meaningful. Most importantly, you avoid the mistake of trying to do everything with your data and wind up doing nothing at all.
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https://medium.com/swlh/too-much-data-not-enough-insight-de8e014232f7
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['James J. Ward']
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2020-09-15 15:45:32.326000+00:00
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['Data Science', 'Data', 'Business']
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5 Minutes Left
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Prompt: Write a 650 word story in the suspense genre. It’s about a mountaineer and should include a pair of jeans. Also use the sentence ‘Repeat after me.’ Bonus prompt: There is a great storm.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
There I was, climbing this mountain with my kid. Jackson liked my stories and wanted to go with me. At first, I was a bit hesitant. But after some thinking and a little bit of researching how dangerous it was to mountaineer with a child, I decided to have him join on my next expedition. I chose to mountaineer a smaller mountain that I had climbed before so that I can keep a better eye on Jackson. Once we got there, the staff warned us about a storm that could come this way if the winds decided to blow to the west. I took no thought of this and told the staff,
“We’ll be back before the storm even gets here.” I got Jackson in his mountaineering outfit, and we started heading up.
As we got up higher, the more snow seemed to appear. I should have gotten snow pants instead of jeans. After a little over 2 hours and 30 minutes, we were ⅔ up the mountain when the snow started picking up. By the time we were at the top of that mini-mountain and finished, the snow was coming down hard. I had to carry Jackson because the snow had piled up to his upper torso, and could barely move on his own. The plan was to take a break at the top and have some food. But the snow was too deep now, so we had to head down almost immediately. When we barely got ¼ down the mountain, there was a giant crash somewhere. The snow on the plateau above us moved. I then just started booking it down because if something started an avalanche there, I didn’t want to be there.
I was running along the general path that we came from with Jackson in my arms. But, as I was running further and further down the mountain, it got harder and harder to tell where our footprints were when we first climbed up. It didn’t help when it started snowing so much that you couldn’t even see 3ft in front of your face. When I got ½ way down the mountain I turned around and saw the snow coming towards us at 50, maybe even 60 miles per hour. I ran like I never ran before in my life and somehow I was able to go faster than I was before even though my lungs were burning and I felt like I was going to collapse at any moment. I started to feel Jackson shake really hard from all of the cold. I held him tighter to try and give him some of my body heat to warm him up.
I decided to make one of the stupidest decisions of my life and looked back. I looked and saw that the avalanche was coming right for us and I couldn’t run anymore. I looked around for a tree, a rock, something to hold on to but it was too late. Right before the avalanche hit us I yelled at Jackson to close his mouth and clench his teeth and to not stop until I told him too. He did and once I followed suit and balled myself around him, the avalanche hit us and we started moving.
When you are in an avalanche, you are being tossed and turned around like in the ocean but it is a lot colder and a lot deadlier. Once I felt that we stopped, I opened my eyes to try and see if we were anywhere close to the surface. Answer, we weren’t. I tried to move but I was stuck and I started to shiver too. I looked down at Jackson and told him that he can unclench his jaw now. He opened his eyes and started freaking out. He was getting short of breath and started crying which was understandable.I tried to maneuver him as best as I could to hug him and try to calm him down. I remember somewhere that you would die within 15 minutes from suffocation in an avalanche. I don’t think we would be saved in those 15 minutes so I just held him and calmed him down for the possible last few minutes of our lives. After 10 minutes of comforting, he calmed down and lost consciousness. I proceeded to do the same and hoped that someone would save us in time.
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https://medium.com/@mypersonalwritingcorner/5-minutes-left-c850295dbb4a
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['Adrie Clendineng']
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2020-12-22 14:45:37.949000+00:00
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['Avalanche', 'Cold', 'Winter', 'Ski', 'Suspense']
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Twenty-Five Years Later, the American Mission in Bosnia is not Done
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Twenty-Five Years Later, the American Mission in Bosnia is not Done
December 14th marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement, which marked the end of the Bosnian War, and the dawn of another post-Yugoslavia sovereign state in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The war in Bosnia, as part of the greater breakup of Yugoslavia, was a gruesome display of the hatred humanity can show towards one another over nearly four years. The violence in areas like Prijedor, the Drina Valley, and Srebrenica approached the ferocity of World War II and shattered any idea of a peaceful end to the Cold War. The human cost was unthinkable: over 100,000 dead, up to 50,000 victims of war rape, and roughly 2–2.5 million people were forcibly displaced.
A quarter-century later, Bosnia has come a long way from many of the scars of war: millions of tourists visit each year, socioeconomic factors like infrastructure development and the standard of living continue to slowly improve, and governance remains stable — albeit dysfunctional. Most importantly, Bosnian people, although not universally, see themselves as neighbors and compatriots again, echoing the Tito-era “brotherhood and unity” message, and seeking to move past the ethnic ultranationalism that brought the region to conflict.
Unfortunately, the political class presiding over the Federation and Republika Srpska — the two separate entities within Bosnia created at Dayton — fails to share the same aspirations. This dichotomy not only showcases a human rights failure, with Bosnian citizens the victim, but it also continues to threaten integration with Europe and the West.
The most recent squabble was when Bosnia’s Muslim and Croat members of the Presidency boycotted a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov amid NATO membership differences and a ‘disrespect’ for the greater state by meeting in Republika Srpska, instead of Sarajevo. Milorad Dodik, the Serb member of the Presidency and sole representative to meet with Lavrov, represents a continuation of the same Serbian nationalism ideals held by Milošević and Karadžić — notably, a denial of genocide at Srebrenica and multiple calls for Republika Srpska to secede from Bosnia.
Dodik is against Bosnian ascension into NATO, and his desires for secession are undeniably the opposite of the pan-Europeanism ideals held by figures such as Merkel and Macron. He is yet another example of the strongman identity that Trump favors, similar to Vučić in Serbia or Orbán in Hungary. It is no coincidence that the Trump administration has fractured and disincentivized relationships with traditional allies and attempted to replace them with nationalists like himself in search of a conservative, inward-looking world order, and doing so has reversed years of democratic progress in vulnerable regions like the Balkans.
Secession and the subsequent creation of a unified Serb state is not only anti-European, but also a human rights threat requiring a strong, collective response. Milošević’s “Greater Serbia” ideal was the overarching reason behind massacres of thousands of innocent Bosniaks, Croats, and Albanians (in Kosovo) in an effort to cleanse areas of non-Serbs, and Dodik’s continued support of this is reprehensible.
Unfortunately, the Trump administration has effectively disengaged in Bosnia, and a lack of punishment or collective rebuke from Washington only enables further nationalistic vitriol and actions going forward. Previous presidential administrations were key believers in transitional justice through the ICTY and supporters of policy goals like capacity building, support for institutions, and greater integration throughout Southeast Europe. While civil servants, NGO’s, and think tanks continue to actively seek cooperation and development in Bosnia, the indifference held by the White House blocks meaningful growth. People throughout local communities are united in wanting to move on from the war and secure a better future, but they are jointly let down by national politicians who stoke the flames of ethnic tension, and by other governments who turn away when they are needed most.
The incoming Biden administration has work to do on the global stage; and it should begin with rebuilding relationships with our long-term allies in NATO. Although Bosnia and Herzegovina is not an alliance member yet, both local communities and all levels of government would benefit from enlargement. Integration into NATO — and eventually, the EU — brings benefits of infrastructure dollars, collective security, greater economic opportunities, and reduced barriers to trade and tourism, amongst many others, and it was a path to transatlantic success for decades following World War II. Geopolitically, it remains an opportunity to strengthen an alliance structure against ever-present adversaries in Russia and China, who continue to make inroads into the region through projects like the BRI or arms sales.
Beyond supporting integration, President-Elect Biden needs to deliver forceful rebukes against the authoritarianism and burgeoning radical nationalism that continues to spread in Bosnia and throughout the Balkans in an effort to show support for local communities and restore a human rights-focused message that disappeared under the Trump administration. Doing so will communicate a return to the institutional norms of prior decades while also reminding citizens throughout Europe that transatlantic cooperation, the guarantee of universal human rights, and the reinforcement of rule of law is critical towards self-determination and expanding democratic governance.
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https://medium.com/discourse/twenty-five-years-later-the-american-mission-in-bosnia-is-not-done-41e805221f1e
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['Alex Bliss']
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2020-12-22 03:49:09.169000+00:00
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['Biden', 'Foreign Policy', 'Politics', 'Europe', 'Bosnia']
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What is rugged tablet？
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Rugged tablet is a unfamiliar concept for some people.What the rugged tablet could be.What the difference compare with our daily tablet pc?
A rugged tablet computer refers to a type of tablet that is shock-resistant and anti-drop. It has certain impact resistance.And it also has waterproof and dustproof functions. So it also be call three-proof tablet.
What is the difference with ordinary tablets?
Consumer tablets are becoming more and more powerful, and even lower in cost. Why someone also still choose rugged tablets?
[1] The anti-risk ability of consumer tablets is insufficient. In some application scenarios with harsh environments. Such as easy to fall, high air humidity, and severe dust, the life of tablet will be greatly reduced. And the cost of anti-risk will be higher in the long run.
[2] Insufficient stability of consumer tablets will affect production efficiency.
[3] The rugged tablet can expand a variety of special functions. Such as wet hand touch, glove touch, Beidou high-precision positioningetc. You can also choose a variety of special modules , such as scanning head, RFID, NFC, ID card, and fingerprint . These are not available in consumer tablets.
Which application scenarios could be used? The application fields of the rugged tablet are very wide. For example smart factories, smart robots, smart warehousing, ocean-going ships, outdoor inspection, satellite communications, pipeline detection, education, medical care, drone control, customs inspection, automobile maintenance, logistics, oil exploration, military and police, surveying and mapping, vision systems, agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery, aerospace etc.
It is no exaggeration to say that the application ranges from the sky to the underground. It’s almost omnipotent. Let me pick two typical cases.
For example, PetroChina, in the process of petroleum exploration and pipeline measurement. It often needs to use a solid flat panel control terminal. One is to collect and transmit data. And the other is to assist in vehicle positioning and navigation. And realize remote management of personnel.
For example, car detection, as a control terminal with a rich data interface, rugged tablet can perform fast obd analysis of car faults. It also supports real-time data interaction, connects with the cloud platforms of major auto manufacturers, quickly accesses the resource library, and accurately analyzes different models of cars.
How to choose?
If you search the rugged tablet on the Internet, you will find that the product types and forms of the rugged tablet are dazzling. It is not easy to find a suitable tablet with guaranteed quality. I will share different article in different view for choose a right one later.
Iris is here.If you like my article or have some suggestion,just like my article or follow me.Any question,I am willing to help.☺
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https://medium.com/@irissu17/what-is-rugged-tablet-d102ecad1037
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['Leslie Bo']
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2020-09-04 02:16:26.335000+00:00
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['Rugged Solution', 'Windows 10', 'Waterproofing Solutions', 'Rugged Tablets', 'Industrypc']
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Entrepreneur: New Round of PPP Loans: I Went to Prison for SBA Loan Fraud, by Jeff Grant
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Entrepreneur: New Round of PPP Loans: I Went to Prison for SBA Loan Fraud, by Jeff Grant
Don’t let desperation cloud your judgment.
Jeff Grant
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
In the months after 9/11, I was frantic.
But my fears had less to do with the tragedy at the World Trade Center and more to do with the fact that, after 10 years of rampant prescription opioid abuse, my business was failing. I was searching desperately for an out. Meanwhile, the television and radio were blaring with ads for 9/11 FEMA loans administered by the U.S. Small Business Administration.
So, on an especially bad day, I lied.
I said I had an office near ground zero. I received the SBA loan I requested, and immediately paid down the personal credit cards I had run up while waiting for the SBA money. Even so, the loan did little to stop my spiral into drug addiction, mental health issues, marital problems and magical thinking.
In 2002, I resigned my law license and started on the road to recovery. But it all caught up with me about 20 months later, when I was arrested for the misrepresentations on my loan application. I served almost 14 months at a Federal prison for wire fraud and money laundering.
My objective in writing this piece is to offer some insight on what business owners should consider before they take out disaster loans. Certainly, the majority of people requesting these loans are honest and upstanding entrepreneurs who have immense need for the aid, and will use the funds properly. I am very glad there is help for them. That said, history has shown us again and again that when people are in dire need, they’re more prone to make impulsive, ill-advised decisions. My hope is that sharing my experience will help others avoid the consequences I faced. Here are seven takeaways.
1. Desperate people do desperate things.
There were thousands of fraud prosecutions after 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, Superstorm Sandy, and so on. Why? Whether because of overwhelming business issues, poor personal judgment, or just plain bad luck, people were wounded, desperate and willing to do anything, anything, to stop the bleeding. But if the wound is too deep, a Band-aid is not sufficient.
Practice point: In any situation, behaving desperately is unlikely to save your business.
2. Beware of the belief that rules are suspended in times of emergency.
The government is advertising that huge amounts of money are available to save our businesses. I recently sat in on a webinar run by a very reputable business consulting group that recommended that attendees get their SBA disaster loan applications in immediately, regardless of the facts or the actual needs of their business — they said we could always modify our applications prior to taking the money. State unemployment websites are actually giving instructions, in writing, on how to mislead and circumvent the system in order to get approved. Don’t take the bait! If you default two years from now, this “good-meaning advice” won’t matter to prosecutors.
Practice point: Be truthful at all times.
3. Beware of magical thinking.
This is a tough one because entrepreneurs are inherently optimistic. We believe that things will always be better tomorrow than they are today. It drives us, makes us successful, informs our risk-taking. But in times of trauma, that voice can be an entrepreneur’s worst enemy. Does this sound familiar? We have learned the hard way that there is no shortcut, and yet we desperately want there to be one right now.
Practice point: Instead of immediately reaching for a bailout or other quick fix, develop a good solid business plan. Maybe a disaster loan will fit into this plan; maybe it won’t.
4. This paradigm shift will affect all small to mid-size businesses.
We are in the midst of a massive reordering that has already had a huge effect on small and mid-sized businesses. Business owners are being called to closely examine if our business models are still viable, or if we must pivot to new ways of doing things. Example: the Swiss watch industry completely missed the shift to digital watches. Have we waited too long to have a robust online presence? Are our products or services even needed anymore? Have we been holding on by a thread for years, unwilling or unable to look at the hard facts?
Practice point: Get real, now. Don’t borrow money to save a business that can’t be saved.
5. Be cautious when borrowing from the government.
As is the case with any loan, the devil is in the details. The terms and covenants in the loan documents dictate what you can or can’t do with the money once you get it. You can only use the funds for the purposes you stated in your application — that is, to pay operating expenses of the business to keep it afloat until it starts bringing in sufficient revenue again. You (and your spouse) will probably have sign for the loan personally, and will probably have to pledge all available collateral, including a second (or third) mortgage on your house. If you maxed out your personal credit cards while anticipating your disaster relief funding, you can’t use the money to pay off your cards.
Practice point: Read the terms and covenants of the loan closely. Whatever the loan terms say to do, do, and whatever they say don’t do, don’t do. No exceptions.
6. We can’t save our businesses and our lifestyles at the same time.
Here’s the big trap. We have mortgages, car payments, school tuitions, and other personal expenses that have to be paid, and soon. But simply put, SBA loans are meant to save your business, not your lifestyle. Discuss all your options with advisors and friends you trust — ones that will tell you the truth! It’s like going to the doctor. Your diagnosis will only be as accurate as the history you provide. These are trying times, with a triage system designed to be more expeditious than thorough.
Practice point: There is no such thing as a free lunch. Borrowing money comes with responsibility and accountability.
7. Get acquainted with acceptance.
I hope we are all great entrepreneurs who can figure out ways to make our businesses survive and flourish. But let’s face it. Some of our businesses will not make it, even with the infusion of government funds. What should we do? We can pare down, embrace change and do things differently as we start a new chapter. Never forget that there will always be opportunity to start again, and to live a fuller, more abundant life.
Practice point: Sometimes less is way, way more!
Reprinted from Entrepreneur.com, link here.
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https://medium.com/@revjeffgrant/entrepreneur-new-round-of-ppp-loans-i-went-to-prison-for-sba-loan-fraud-by-jeff-grant-fab343e6ad39
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['Jeff Grant', 'J.D.']
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2020-12-23 22:47:46.345000+00:00
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['Loans', 'Crime', 'Prison', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Entrepreneur']
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Don’t Let Your Emotions Abuse You
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Let’s get this straight, nobody likes to be stuck in traffic. It is frustrating in fact. Imagine being in a car stuck in a long queue which seems to take hours and delaying you to get to your destination, with all this different type of cars; new, old, luxury and skorokoros, some of the people are complaining shouting at each other, hooting their bells and some are reefing their engines making noise all over with the smell of petrol and diesel disturbing your breathe. what a frustration!
Our emotions are like traffic. One emotion designs invitation letters and sends them to other various kind of emotions, then they all come to the party hosted by a situation, with the inviter first in line, the second and then the rest until they became a traffic of emotions in a long queue wanting to get into the party and make an impact. Once they are all in, they want to dance to the music and we cannot control them.
When you are in an emotional state is hard to come up with something solid. Many people try to win over a situation by pushing out the emotion through over thinking and coming up with a quick solution. Let me tell you, that’s like turning up the volume to the emotion’s favorite song. It will dance so much in a way that other emotions cannot resist the entertainment. They will all make a cycle to exchange dances like people competing to win for the best dancer’s trophy, which will be awarded to the most influential dancer by the party judge “Mr quick decision maker”.
The world today is over crowded with regrets as a result of emotional based decisions. Many people can’t get their lives right because they have become victims to their emotions which are now and then influencing every decision. Every decision they make is related to what happened, it is not forward structured and this has produced many problems in our family and communities.
Our emotions are supposed to be seen like a reporter who’s reporting the news over what just happened. To say “hey! This is what just happened” making us aware of a particular event that just occurred in our daily lives. They are not supposed to pressure us for a quick solution. As a people we must learn to listen to what our emotions are telling us and then process that information carefully to find a good way of dealing with that matter, considering the consequences and benefit of that final decision.
The weather is a beautiful example on how we should deal with the relationship between emotions and decisions. When it is raining the sun remains in the background deciding on how it is going to shine the next day when the rain is over. It doesn’t try to wrestle the rain because that may cause disaster, instead it leaves a room for the rain to perform its part-time job and once it is done it goes back to doing its daily rotten.
This should encourage us as a people to let emotions ease before making a decision, yes emotional situations will occur but that doesn’t give us a license to act immediately. We must normalize letting emotions ease first then start to make decisions while relaxed and not pressured by emotions. This will get us more positive results and allow us to a peaceful life.
Emotions are emotions, they will always be there to help us understand where we are but we shouldn’t let them have a hand in making decisions.
Thank you for reading!
please don’t forget to like and comment!
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https://medium.com/@baloyi-hlayisanid/dont-let-your-emotions-abuse-you-84528f9b92d3
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['Hlayisani D. Baloyi']
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2020-12-21 14:41:26.908000+00:00
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['Decision Making', 'Change', 'Emotions']
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Just Raise Some Money. Creation Takes Capital.
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I have this habit of immediately turning my family and friends’ passions into strategies for million-dollar businesses. It’s what I do; I’m a legacy builder. I’ve done it my whole life, starting with my mom. I made her so successful one year for Christmas she spent the whole thing in an anxiety-filled haze, crying while sitting at her sewing machine until 2am every night to get all the orders done.
It was a disaster.
She’s asked me not to “help” anymore.
Same, my dad’s cattle waterer company (are you tired of breaking ice in water troughs every winter?) Same, my brother’s spice company (are you tired of trying to go keto and not being able to find spices without sugar?) I made an entire career out of making men millionaires (a few were even capable of getting out of their own way and following the plan to success; most weren’t.)
I am surrrrrrrrrounded by geniuses. People are so dang creative. (I kinda feel like Data when he’s searching for Little Life Forms except I’m looking for Little Genius-es.)
It happened again today. My roommate just came up with The. Most. Genius. Scavenger. Hunt. Ever. It’s how we’re doing Christmas presents for the boys this year (at their request). She’s BRILLLLLLLIANT at it. It is, unquestionably, an amalgamation of her Unique Abilities.
So…I went into millionaire mode. Within an hour I had an entire strategy figured out, up to and including the questionnaires for parents; I’d deconstructed our entire process and figured out what was scalable and what wasn’t, where the tiers were, how much she should charge, and how to make it sustainable.
And if I’d have drawn that up in a neato package and handed that to her, it likely would have freaked her the fuck out and she’d have been overwhelmed by the size of the hard.
It was visions of Christmas with my mom all over again.
Since I’m in the process of writing this Tesla book, my mind is also on a parallel track of The Old Way v. The Tesla Way.
Tesla died penniless.
He’s been upheld as the Poster Child for struggling scientists and makers and creators. He’s been uplifted as the antithesis of capitalism. (I, too, am SO guilty of this; it’s been this deep-dive into his life and words via this book that have allowed me to remove him from the pedestal and see him not as a perfect inventor and scientist who got screwed, but as a fallible human.)
What’s the TRUTH? I, along with most of history have fallen into the trap of telling a story from an Old Way point of view. Yes, he died in debt. A lot of debt. But that’s because he wasn’t the best businessman, not because he eschewed the idea of money, or didn’t have it — he raised FOUR MILLION DOLLARS for Wardenclyffe. As with most any startup, he hit the rule of 4 — it was going to cost him four times as much and take four times longer than his original estimate. He needed another seed round, that’s all.
SO DID ELON MUSK.
Several, in fact. I haven’t looked it up, but Elon’s probably in his fourth, fifth, tenth round of funding. His first round didn’t get him there. Tesla’s didn’t either. Elon is surrounded by smart business people who are helping him raise. So was Edison. Tesla didn’t have that. So he did what worked the first time and he went back to his original investor — and never looked elsewhere. A terrible strategy that cost him the project’s completion. He didn’t get screwed, he just didn’t know what he didn’t know.
Tesla made a lot of decisions that impacted the bottom line of the business. The royalties he returned to Westinghouse so HE could raise money from investors would have kept Tesla well funded throughout his life (far better than Edison) and likely would have changed his trajectory.
But what of his legacy?
It was Edison’s fear of losing his royalties that created the war of the currents, allowed Westinghouse to underbid him for the World’s fair, and ultimately allow Tesla’s polyphase motor to become the world standard — his truest legacy that now accounts for 100% of the technological age in which we live. Had Tesla done the same, Edison likely would have won the bid, the war of the currents, and Tesla would have been nothing more than an employee of Westinghouse, forgotten to all of history.
Edison eventually went bankrupt and rebuilt another business from the ground up. In that, he was the far better businessman. He was The Old Way.
Money is a simple exchange of energy.
Our entire home was OVERFLOWING with the energy of the creation happening with that scavenger hunt. When I get to work on a client’s project, I am in the zone and yes, there are hard less-fun moments, but it’s all satisfying and makes me feel good. When I work on something like this, something that is the amalgamation of not only my unique abilities but a topic I am passionate about, I hit another level.
Edison’s first invention was an improved stock ticker, his most profitable, the battery. He sold his first one for $1.2M in today’s money, allowing him the freedom to create things he was passionate about without having to worry how they were going to make money. The lightbulb came a full DECADE after his first invention.
If my Mom could have sold her first sewing pattern for $1.2M she could have made a kajillion kids tents and hired a CEO and marketing team.
If my Dad could have sold his first waterer patent for $1.2M he could have gone to a kajillion expos and hired someone to run the business while he met with clients and sold units.
If my brother could have sold his spice recipe for $1.2M he could have stayed in the kitchen and come up with a kajillion other options and hired someone to deal with the marketing and sales.
If my roommate… Do you see the pattern?
Not all creatives can wear all the business hats it takes to get a startup off the ground. Elon Musk didn’t invent a car company, he stepped in and ran someone else’s.
Not all creatives can sell their first product for $1.2M and generate a multi-year runway to cover that Rule of 4 until we become an “overnight” success.
The Old Way says hobbies have to be side hustles. Edison’s was until he sold it. The Tesla Way is different. I think that by following this roadmap Tesla left us, there’s a way for side hustles to stop being side hustles and reward us with not only money but abundance in far greater ways.
The Tesla Way is the blueprint for how to leave a legacy. It’s a way to take our talents, our gifts, our very genius and turn it into something far bigger than a paycheck, something far grander than a 401k.
We have to stop using The Old Way.
Most of us run our hobbies as side hustles. We trade hours and blood and sweat and tears for something we believe in, something that is as delicate as an ember and must be tended to with extreme care and caution. Tesla devoted a lifetime to his wireless energy; it’s still a tiny ember. This Tesla project of mine? It would have been the sidehustliest of the side hustles, for it is like no other writing project I’ve ever taken on; I’ve allowed it oxygen and room to breathe. I’ve studied, I’ve learned, I’ve given it the best possible chance to become a wildfire. I could 100000% use an investor to license the rights to it so I can keep adding runway for future pieces.
Over the summer I got a COVID grant. That money is what’s allowed me to work on this project without stressing about how I’m going to pay my bills. I’ve had Edison’s freedom to create. What has been borne from that space is nothing short of genius. I’d like to sell it for $1.2M so I can continue to create.
And that is The Old Way. Plus, holymotherofcreation raising money is damn-near impossible; I know, I’ve tried. This is also Tesla’s only foible on the road of his legacy.
The vision for this project is grand. It’s masterful. It’s guided by the Man Himself. I am, as always, building a legacy. Two, actually. One for Tesla. One for me.
But I’m done building legacies The Old Way.
These are being built The Tesla Way.
|
https://medium.com/@jengreyson/just-raise-some-money-creation-takes-capital-7aeff356e2ca
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['Jen Greyson']
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2020-12-22 21:08:16.375000+00:00
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['Legacy', 'Raising Capital', 'Nikola Tesla', 'Tesla', 'Capitalism']
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The world’s first blockchain UGC game, CardMaker, is now launching an idea collection from players, with a prize of up to 1,000USD
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The world’s first blockchain UGC game, CardMaker, is now launching an idea collection from players, with a prize of up to 1,000USD CardMaker Nov 15, 2019·3 min read
After three years of development and two years of polishing in the field of blockchain gaming, CardMaker officially announced that the game is now preparing to land on Steam!
Who we are？
CardMaker is a interdisciplinary indie games which won the first prize in the Shanghai International Makers NEO Blockchain Black Horse Competition 2018, Best Game Award & Most Popular Award in the first NEO Blockchain Development Competition 2018, Top 10 Blockchain Game in Golden-Tea Award 2019, Sina Game Award in CGWR 2019, and is the first batch of ecology partners with Cocos-BCX, and is repeatedly reported by DappReview, Dapp.com.
Its fresh and cute game style, as well as the depth of the strategy can comparable to Hearth Stone, Slay the Spire, Night of Full Moon and other high-quality games.
What’s more, CardMaker opens the door for players to create their own cards, roles, modules, then realize game dream!
Our future
As we all know, Steam has about 7 million active users in China. The top four are 21 million users in the United States, 13 million in Russia, 8.7 million in Germany and 7.3 million in Brazil. China is the only Asian country in the top 10. How to let the conventional players on Steam understand the operation of blockchain and enjoy the fun brought by blockchain games will become the primary purpose of CardMaker.
Now, the game is still in intensive development for access to Steam, but the official registration has been made on Steam. We believe it will be updated gradually in the future.
Your idea matters
In order to let more players participate in the game, and through the feedback of players constantly improve the quality of the game. We now start to collect game ideas from all players!
Any good UGC solution is always welcome. You can come up with a complete and logical UI design, and you can provide great art style, material, or even complete module stories.
We will provide a total of 25 000 000 CAKE and 1000 USDT(ETH or NEO) as a design bonus pool (the bonus is from UGC pool), and we will choose according to the quality of the materials. When each update, bonuses will be delivered and town selected by the player.
The materials and the complete scheme can be sent to [email protected] via email in the form of text/document.
Turn your ideas into a fully executable solution to grow with the game you’re playing.
Follow us :）
Website: https://www.cardmaker.io
Game:
Asia node: https://neo.cardmaker.io/?from=medium
American node: https://neo2.cardmaker.io/?from=medium
User Center:
Asia node: http://neoa.cardmaker.io
American node: http://neoa2.cardmaker.io
Twitter: https://twitter.com/cardmakerio
Telegram: https://t.me/CardMaker
Discord: https://discord.gg/tNjgXUW
Facebook: fb.me/cardmaker.io
|
https://medium.com/@cardmaker/the-worlds-first-blockchain-ugc-game-cardmaker-is-now-launching-an-idea-collection-from-players-8007ffe22b0d
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[]
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2019-11-15 07:51:37.019000+00:00
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['Game Development', 'Blockchain', 'Blockchain Startup', 'Blockchain Technology', 'Games']
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Dapo in lagos traded and loss but he still earned part of his capital with this simple Steps.
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Dapo in lagos traded and loss but he still earned part of his capital with this simple Steps.
Dapo is trader who had been trading with negative results all these while; he isn’t an expert trader yet he keep trying his best to keep up with his trading pace. He tried currency pairs trading where he trade currencies against one another, he tried indices, he traded Volatility and all form of tradings, his profitability is less compared to otherwise. Dapo do lose like hell — just like losing was made for him. One day he came accross an ads on Facebook where this organization was talking about getting one’s money back irrespective of the trading result — that was out of his expectation and you know what, what first came to his mind was “So even i can lose and still earns, fantabulous” . Without allowing his emotion to rule over him, he headed to google and search for the company review. He was suprised of all what he saw, he couldn’t believe they’ve been in existence for more than 10years, so where was he? Why is he knowing now?
He found out that the organization even has easier deposit/withdrawal, he found out that their customer service are easy to get in touch to and they respond faster than the one he was using. “ So why am i not aware all these while!” — he lamented.
To king his suprise, upon open an account with them with this he noticed there is no manipulation in Trading result and also no issue of maintenance everytime, this further deepen his interest in the organization and he took it upon himself to test it out . Today , dapo is a promoter of This company and he even make himself an ambassador.
The story was about dapo who happens to be a losing trader 😆 before coming across robo which altered his trading mindset forever by just switching from his previous broker to this one
|
https://medium.com/@Nostresss/dapo-in-lagos-traded-and-loss-but-he-still-earned-part-of-his-capital-with-this-simple-steps-5846e609093f
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[]
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2021-06-17 00:17:46.829000+00:00
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['Trading', 'Forex', 'Indices Trading', 'Business', 'Forex Trading']
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CertiK Monthly Update: November
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Between DevCon5, Eurasia Blockchain Summit, and SF Blockchain Week, the CertiK team has built the first CREATE2 Audit Tool, continued development on CertiKOS, secured leading blockchain projects, and much more!
Stay tuned for all our announcements on Twitter!
CertiKOS
CertiKOS is the world’s first operating system that runs on multi-core processors and shields against cyber attacks — a milestone that could lead to a new generation of reliable and secure systems software.
Check out our video highlighting the research behind the development:
CREATE2 Audit Tool
In February 2019, the Constantinople hard fork introduced new changes to the Ethereum Virtual Machine, including a new instruction called CREATE2.
With CREATE2, in certain circumstances it’s possible to change the code of a smart contract that has already been deployed. CertiK has created the first easy-to-use tool for determining if a smart contract can be maliciously altered using CREATE2.
Simply enter the address of the smart contract you wish to audit and our tool will tell you if it’s vulnerable!
Security Spotlights
CertiK’s New Partner: ORION
ORION’s commitment to security is the reason they chose to partner with the industry leader in blockchain security. CertiK will audit not only the smart contracts built on ORION, but also the core modules that build the foundation.
VSYS Smart Contract Audit
CertiK worked to audit V SYSTEM’s Non-Turing-Complete smart contract technology. The development is planned into three phases: token creation, token trading, and optimal token performance. Considering that technology is constantly adapting, V SYSTEMS will eventually adopt the Turing-Complete model.
Reserve
Backed by a basket of stablecoins including USDC, PAX, and TUSD, $RSV is a stable and universally-accepted currency for people and businesses in countries with high inflation. CertiK completed audits for RSV’s Ownable, ReserveEternalStorage, Reserve, Vault, Basket, Proposal, and Manager smart contracts
Must Reads
Shanghai Blockchain Week Recap
Professor Zhong Shao spoke at the 5th Annual Global Summit during Shanghai blockchain week about trustworthy blockchain ecosystems. Professor Shao is the co-founder of CertiK, and the Computer Science department chair at Yale University.
Blockchain Trilemma
While some developers believe that the blockchain data structure itself has inherent limitations that prevent it from scaling, many architects, including CertiK, believe that it’s possible to build a blockchain project that hits all three targets: one that is scalable, decentralized, and secure.
Decentralized Finance
DeFi offers an alternative method that moves control from centralized entities back to the people. While the advantages of adopting DeFi methods may be impactful, the technology and use-cases of DeFi are still in an early stage and security may be an issue.
Consequences of Ethereum’s New Hard Fork
The Ethereum network is actively evolving, and developers are planning to introduce many changes in efforts to scale its current limit of 20 transactions per second to over hundreds of thousands of transactions per second. We’re here to help you understand how Ethereum’s code might change and what the impact of these updates are.
Smart Contracts 101
Learn the history and basics of smart contracts and how they enhance the functionality of blockchain technology.
Smart Contract Vulnerabilities
After conducting hundreds of smart contract audits across a multitude of use cases, we’ve compiled a few common — and sometimes fatal — vulnerabilities that you’ll want to remember in order to prevent some not-so-smart bugs.
Events
We are proud to have one of our co-founders, Professor Ronghui Gu, win the best paper award at the 27th ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles. “Scaling Symbolic Evaluation for Automated Verification of Systems Code with Serval” was 2 out of the 38 accepted papers and 276 submissions.
Thank you for always supporting!
The CertiK Team
|
https://medium.com/certik/certik-monthly-update-november-f817752da7e2
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[]
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2020-04-27 21:10:07.183000+00:00
|
['Blockchain', 'Smart Contract Security', 'Blockchain Startup', 'Blockchain Technology', 'Certik']
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A Holiday Essay
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The encounters where I cannot afford to give an answer to the question “What do you want for Christmas?” has finally come to an end, for now. I have been drawn thinking of the things that will make my holiday complete and it is more frustrating to give a definite answer as I identify myself as nonmaterialistic.
What do I really want for Christmas?
Another thing is, no one asked me this time but myself. After being able to surpass all the stressful amount of responsibilities, I have thought of giving myself solitude for the upcoming holiday. Maybe locking myself in my room for a day without thinking of anything that has got to do with the destruction of my life, or even dealing with people who bring me nothing but consistent exasperation would be a great present enough for me to save myself for at least a day in this detestable year to ever happen, yet. These thoughts living in my mind have been causing me extreme excitement I have not felt for a quite long time. I guess this desire of taking a break is another result of the growing up phase. I can never ask for more.
Then there you came, a present I thought I never needed.
Shamefully speaking, I am quite that temporary person you can encounter once in your life. Even I feel wary of myself. The need to always have people around is starting to grow apart from me until I met you. Who would have thought I’d still be making a friendship at the last month of the year? At first, I recognize you as another person who brings nothing but confusion and another headache. There are times you actually caused me those, though. But I am glad you always have a way to make it up to me, even if we both do not agree to a lot of terms. I see your arrival in my life as somewhat spontaneous; I didn’t need it, but now I don’t know if I could deal with life without hearing a word from you. The invisible string that connects you to my soul holds enough intimacy whenever I look at the calmness visible in your eyes and the way I feel your soul next to me when we play songs together even though we are miles apart gives me enough reason why I should always extend my gratitude towards the stars for leading me with their light towards a special place in your life. The bond I’ve had with others is nothing compared to what we have — as time passes, it gets stronger. And I cannot wait enough for the day where I will finally be able to share the same breeze with you, under the same sunlight, and witness how the universe will work together with the both of us. I have thought of giving myself peace for Christmas but you did it for me instead.
Love letters, Christmas tales, or any other dramatic anecdotes I have written in my life cannot define how certain I am with the happiness that radiates all over me because of you. If I will not have you anymore for the next holiday, I would just gladly keep on coming back to this very Christmas season where I felt nothing but bliss and genuine content I thought will never come upon me anymore. These words are not enough for me to describe how ecstatic I am when you sparked a light into such a troubled and dark year for me. You brought me to a good change ahead of the nearing hopeless end, and it’s all worth it.
To depict you as a holiday present alone is not fair. I am quite sure you are the gift I will always be excited to see. You are the greatest gift I ever had. You are the real game-changer.
|
https://medium.com/@iammoi/a-holiday-essay-e0d8a447ce
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['Moi Mendoza']
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2020-12-23 11:32:57.670000+00:00
|
['Essay', 'Friendship', 'Christmas']
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Agriculture Life Is Important — Theflashupdate
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Agriculture is one of the most important economic sectors in the developing countries. This sector provides a large number of jobs in the rural areas as well as it contributes to the social and economic welfare of the people.
Why Is Agriculture Important?
Importance of agriculture is an essential part of true agricultural science; and yet, all other aspect of it to help support a country’s economy sustenance. In this post, the value of agriculture and it’s significant contribution to a nation’s economy. Agriculture has played a huge role in the economic progress of any nation. Without it, there would be no reason to further improve infrastructure, no reason to invest in education and no reason to support healthcare.
Agriculture is most commonly defined as the production of food grains, livestock and other plant products for human consumption and other uses. It is one of the world’s largest industries, employing millions of people worldwide.
The key drivers of this immense industry are high production yield, high rate of planting, and efficient irrigation systems. These factors have created great prosperity for the country’s farmers, enabling them to feed markets around the world.
The food production is done in the following manner
The food production is done in the following manner: cultivation of the land, irrigation, harvesting, sorting and manufacturing of produce. In the United States, there are approximately 6.5 million acres of farming land which is used for the production of food.
The major food producing states are: Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, and Utah. There is an intense competition among farmers in the state, with a very less yield of food and high prices.
Agriculture has produced different types of food
Agriculture has produced different types of food. Grains, cereals, and root crops like wheat, corn, etc. are produced on a large scale. Food is processed through milling, crushing, canning etc. Fruits and vegetables are grown on small arable farms. Dairy cattle, hogs, horses, poultry, and game are also raised on farms.
Rice is the most important agricultural
Rice is the most important agricultural crop grown in the country. It is largely dependent on irrigation to provide water and adequate amount of sunlight. Farmers have to irrigate their fields annually, especially in the west where monsoon showers are almost absent. The rice harvest season is generally from mid-March to mid-May.
Why Farmers are so important for delivering food?
Farmers have to use the most efficient means for delivering the food grains to the consumers. For example, there are trucks, trains, airplanes, and trucks that carry produce from the farms to the urban centers. Automobiles play a crucial role in delivering processed food to the doorstep of the consumers as well. Farmers have to keep pace with modern technologies that have been developed to improve the processing of food.
Agriculture has contributed significantly to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country. Agriculture life is not just confined to farming alone. It is also encompassed by the business activities related.
Agricultural produce is used for domestic consumption
Agricultural produce is used for domestic consumption and export. Livestock production is also important in agriculture. Some of the other important farm produce include wheat, maize, cotton, jute, pulses, tea, coffee, and rubber. These agricultural products are traded around the world and help farmers to earn a stable income. In addition, agriculture indirectly contributes to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by promoting inter-regional trade, agricultural research and development and agricultural jobs.
Also read: best diet for healthy life
Agriculture produce various product for daily life
Agriculture is mostly related to the production and sales of food. Dairy, pig, meat, and poultry are the main farm production items. Agriculture is also associated with handling forests, managing stages, recycling waste, construction of roads and bridges, etc. The important activities related to agriculture include breeding of cattle, farming, horticulture, dairy farming, sheep dipping, etc.
Dairy is one of major sector of agriculture
Dairy farming is one of the major sectors of agriculture. It includes producing different types of milk like low-fat, whole, and fat. Dairy farming also includes production of butter, yogurt, cheese, and milk. The most important part of dairy farming is animal husbandry, which includes the rearing of cattle for milk, handling of goats for shearing, etc. Sheep dipping is also a very important section of farm management. It involves the process of milking, handling of sheep, and the cleaning of the face of the sheep.
Renewable Agriculture
Renewable Agriculture Although agriculture contributes to food security around the world, there is a need to address the issues related to the use of limited natural resources. Conservation and utilization of these resources have become an important challenge for farmers all over the world. Farmers who depend largely on the agriculture sector have to deal with threats posed by climate change, habitat loss, soil erosion, poverty, and occupational hazards.
Aldo read: how to become successful person
fruit and vegetable production
In terms of fruit and vegetable production, farmers use hydraulic or mechanical tillers for the cultivation of these crops. Farmers also use mechanical sprinklers for the irrigation of the fields. This helps to save water. Besides, agriculture is based on the production and sale of food. Therefore, it is important to adopt a better agriculture management system.
|
https://medium.com/@naushadansari11/agriculture-life-is-important-theflashupdate-cea33a13f4ff
|
['Naushad Ansari']
|
2020-12-23 08:02:27.466000+00:00
|
['Agriculture']
|
Predicting March Madness with Logistic Regression
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Every year after the tournament teams are announced on Selection Sunday, millions of people fill out brackets and try to predict the next Cinderella story. Everyone has their own strategy; whether it involves picking your favorite player or the best mascot, but below we’ll review how to use data to find value across the sports betting market. No one can predict what happens in March, but analyzing the data can help us identify some teams who aren’t getting enough love. In this case, we’re going to use a logistic regression model built off a few key metrics to predict the victor in a hypothetical match-up between two teams.
The Model
A logistic regression model allows us to use input variables to make a prediction on whether or not a binary (yes / no) event will occur. The model uses only the specified input variables to make a prediction without taking anything else into consideration. This approach removes all bias from the equation, so you don’t have to think about things like who has the higher seed. The model analyzes every game throughout the season and learns how important each variable is in predicting the winner of a game. Below are the variables used by the model when making a prediction:
Four Factors
Offensive & Defensive Effective FG %
Offensive & Defensive Turnover %
Offensive & Defensive Rebounding %
Free Throw %
Strength of Schedule
Margin of Victory
The first four variables listed are known as the Four Factors and have been used for years to predict NBA games. There is an increased level of parity when comparing the NBA to college, so we also need to account for a team’s strength of schedule. Adding the KenPom rank as an input variable means that each game throughout the season is weighted based off the level of competition. It is more impressive for a team like Duke, who plays in the ACC, to be statistically dominant than it is for someone like SF Austin. The final input variable is margin of victory, so a team is upgraded more for a 30-point win than a 3-point win.
How to Use it
If you used the model to predict the outcome of every game this year, you would have correctly predicted the winner in 76% of all games. The model also has a log loss under 10%, meaning that it performs better in predictions with a higher degree of confidence.
In order to find undervalued teams and good betting opportunities, we can compare the model’s predicted winning probabilities to the implied winning probabilities from actual Vegas lines. The bigger the difference between the model and Vegas, the bigger the betting opportunity. By calculating the difference between the expected win probability and the Vegas posted odds we can determine how big of an edge we have over the house. This edge will determine how much to bet in each game.
Before diving into the plays for Round 1 we’ll analyze the model’s performance from the 2018 tournament. All plays are in terms of units, which is the amount you typically bet on a game.
All of the model plays are on a Moneyline basis, meaning we are picking the winner of the game (not the team that covers the spread). Casual sports bettors have a tendency to bet on favorites, or the team with a higher probability to win the game. Vegas sportsbook will adjust lines accordingly to capitalize on the public’s tendency to bet on favorites and this dynamic often creates significant value on betting underdogs. When reviewing the plays below it’s important to look at the odds, which dictates how much a bettor is compensated for a $100 bet. The model had a record of 9–9 last year, but it was still incredibly profitable since most of the plays were on large underdogs. Over the entire tournament there were 18 official plays with a total of 25 units invested. The average odds on these 18 plays was +256 so even hitting 50% still generated a profit of 16 units, which is an ROI of 64% off 25 units invested.
2018 Model Official Plays — Full Tournament
The plays for Round 1 of the 2019 tournament can be found below.
2019 Model Official Plays — Round 1
The most underrated team in the tournament according to my model is the Houston Cougars. If you are looking for a future bet with positive expected value, considering taking Houston to win the Midwest at +500. This is a 0.5 unit play to win 2.5 units.
Power Rankings
We can also use the model for some more detailed analysis beyond head to head match-ups. The model makes a prediction for every possible match-up regardless of where teams are located on the bracket. Since there are 68 teams in the tournament, the model will generate a predicted probability of winning against all 67 competitors. For each team you can sum the predicted win probability in all 67 simulations and then divide by the total number of games (67), this gives you the average win %. The average win % tells you which teams the model predicts will have the most success throughout the tournament.
|
https://medium.com/the-intelligent-sports-wagerer/predicting-march-madness-with-logistic-regression-d424d2d7fe3a
|
['Fernando Murias']
|
2019-03-21 16:20:10.784000+00:00
|
['Machine Learning', 'Startup', 'March Madness', 'Sports Betting', 'Basketball']
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The best indoor air quality monitors: Identify the pollutants that can compromise your health and comfort
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The best indoor air quality monitors: Identify the pollutants that can compromise your health and comfort Steve Dec 23, 2020·6 min read
Research indicates 96 percent of homes have at least one type of indoor air quality issue. An indoor air quality (IAQ) monitor will report on the levels of common pollutants and other air conditions inside your home in real time.
The culprit could be anything from excessive dust to high humidity to emissions from household cleaners or building materials. The problem is, most people don’t know there’s a problem, and if they do figure it out—usually tipped off by allergy-like symptoms or more dramatic health effects—they don’t know precisely which pollutant is causing it.
Updated December 17, 2020 to add our Davis Instruments AirLink review, which is our new runner-up pick in this category. While this indoor/outdoor sensor can detect smaller particulate matter (down to PM1) than any monitor we’ve tested, it doesn’t monitor some other indoor air quality factors, such as the level of VOCs in the air.
Some indoor air quality monitors will also track outdoor air quality to provide context for your indoor readings. The measurements are then displayed on a screen on the device itself as well as in a companion app on your mobile device. Most IAQ monitors will alert you to unsafe levels via an indicator light and/or push notifications to your smartphone or tablet.
[ Further reading:The best smart smoke detectors ]Once you’re aware something has risen to hazardous a level, you can take action to reduce it—usually by opening some windows. Some monitors will even trigger other smart appliances—such as an air purifier, a fan, or a dehumidifier—to help improve the air quality. Ultimately, a good IAQ monitor should provide enough clues for you to investigate and eliminate the source of your air quality woes.
Here are our current top picks for indoor air-quality monitors. We’ve also included a guide to the pollutants a good IAQ monitor should track. And if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you’ll find links to all of our latest IAQ monitor reviews.
Best indoor air quality monitor Awair Element Read TechHive's reviewSee itThe Awair Element is a solid choice whether you want to improve your indoor air quality for reasons of health or comfort.
The Awair Element isn’t as pretty as the Awair 2nd Edition, which was wrapped in attractive hardwood, but this model is every bit as accurate when reporting carbon dioxide (CO2), volatile organic chemicals (VOCs), and PM2.5 (atmospheric particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns).
Runner-up Davis Instruments AirLink Read TechHive's reviewSee itThe AirLink measures airborne particulate matter as small as 1 micron and leverages a global network of trusted weather stations to report highly accurate air quality data.
Davis Instruments is well known for its excellent weather stations, and its AirLink air quality monitor exhibits the same precision and expert reporting. This device is unique among the monitors we’ve reviewed in that it can measure particulate matter as small as 1 micron, and it can be deployed indoors or out. But it doesn’t measure other types of air pollution, such as carbon dioxide or VOCs.
Second runner-up Airthings Wave Plus Read TechHive's reviewMSRP $269.00See itThe Airthings Wave Plus offers real-time radon detection in an all-purpose air-quality monitor.
Why two runners-up? Becauser the Airthings Wave Plus is just as unique as the Davis AirLink, but for a different reason: It’s the only device we’ve reviewed that can report on the presence of radon inside your home. Radon is one of the most common and deadly indoor pollutants, and it can’t be detected unless you’re actively looking for it. This monitor can also track the levels of carbon dioxide and VOCs.
Top indoor pollutantsIf our top picks don’t match your needs, this guide will help you understand the most common air pollutants, so you can find one that does. Most IAQ monitors currently available can’t monitor for all of these, so choose the ones that matter most to you.
PM level: Particulate matter, or PM, is a mix of particles and droplets in the air. PM varies in shape and size, but those of 10 micrometers in diameter and smaller can adversely affect your health because they can be inhaled. PM2.5 refers to fine particulate matter—that with a diameter of two-and-one-half microns. PM1 is particulate matter measure 1 micron.
Sufficient exposure to PM2.5 can irritate the eyes, nose, throat, and lungs, leading to allergy-like symptoms and shortness of breath in otherwise healthy people. It can also exacerbate existing medical problems, such as asthma and heart disease. The World Health Organization considers PM2.5 the world’s single biggest environmental health risk.
Indoor PM2.5 levels can be influenced by outdoor sources like vehicle exhaust, wildfires, and power plant emissions. But many indoor activities produce PM2.5 as well: Cooking, burning fireplaces, and smoking are just a few common sources.
VOCs: The acronym stands for volatile organic compounds, gases emitted from a variety of materials that can have short- and long-term health effects. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, concentrations of many VOCs can be up to 10 times higher indoors than outdoors.
Michael Ansaldo/IDG The Awair app gives you an air quality score and breaks down the temperature, humidity, and CO2 and “chemicals” levels.
Sources of VOCs include many common household products, including hairspray, cosmetics, cleaning fluids, disinfectants, paints, and varnishes. Burning fuels like wood and natural gas also produces VOCs. Formaldehyde is one of the most common VOCs and can be found in many building materials, including plywood, glues, and insulation. Formaldehyde is also used in some drapes and furniture fabrics. You can read more about formaldehyde and its sources in this article from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Short-term exposure to the low levels of VOCs can cause throat irritation, nausea, fatigue, and other minor complaints. Long-term exposure to high concentrations of VOCs has been linked to more severe respiratory irritation as well as liver and kidney damage. Products can emit VOCs even when they’re in storage, though to a lesser extent than when they’re actively being used.
Carbon monoxide: By now, most people are aware of the deadly effects of high concentrations of this odorless, colorless gas. But exposure to lower levels sometimes given off by fuel-burning appliances can also cause adverse reactions, including confusion and memory loss.
A few air quality monitors claim they can detect these lower levels. The only reliable way to be alerted to this notoriously hard to identify killer, however, is with a standard carbon monoxide detector.
Michael Ansaldo/IDG The Airthings Wave can report on the CO2 levels in your home as well as any detectable radon.
Radon: Radon is a naturally occurring colorless, odorless gas that is the leading cause of lung cancer in the United States after smoking, according to the EPA. As it’s a byproduct of the naturally occurring breakdown of uranium in soil, rocks, and water, it’s ubiquitous both indoors and out. Typically, indoor radon levels must be checked using charcoal-based kits and require you to test your levels for up to 90 days. You then need to ship the kit to a lab for analysis and wait for the results.
An indoor air quality monitor with a radon sensor can provide faster results by monitoring levels in real time. Currently, the Airthings Wave is the only monitor in our guide with this capability.
Carbon dioxide: While the effects of high levels of CO2 were long thought to be benign, research has found that concentrations as low as 1,000 ppm can affect people’s cognitive function and decision-making performance.
The greatest source of indoor CO2 is people themselves, as it’s a byproduct of our respiratory function. Coupled with poor ventilation, this commonly leads to high levels of CO2 in many homes. Fortunately, CO2 sensors can be found on most air quality monitors.
Temperature and humidity: These levels can affect more than your comfort. High temps and excessive humidity promote mold and mildew growth. These can cause structural damage to your home and cause allergy-like symptoms in those with sensitivities. Monitoring these levels can help you prevent home and health problems and tip you off to potential sources like foundation cracks or leaks and poor insulation.
Air quality monitor reviews Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details.
|
https://medium.com/@steve95997833/the-best-indoor-air-quality-monitors-identify-the-pollutants-that-can-compromise-your-health-and-2c05db11c670
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[]
|
2020-12-23 20:28:44.975000+00:00
|
['Connected Home', 'Security Cameras', 'Entertainment', 'Consumer']
|
Why Incubators Need Seamless Management to Skill Start-Ups
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You know how start-ups power the shift to a global knowledge economy apart from creating new markets and shoring up employment. The start-ups generate three million jobs each year. Worldwide, the start-up economy is valued at a staggering $3 trillion, rivalling the GDP size of a G7 nation. But before start-ups grow into successful businesses and make that dent in the economy, they need handholding during the incipient stages. And, when it comes to early stage support, incubators offer the optimal solution as they anchor and mentor the fledgling units. Sample this- before turning into billionaire entities, Uber and Airbnb had their early stage nurturing at a start-up incubator. So, what is an incubator? The Cambridge dictionary defines it as ‘a container that has controlled air and temperature conditions in which a weak or premature baby can be kept alive’. We can find analogy in the start-up ecosystem as an incubator helps a business in its ‘baby stages’ and acts as a dedicated babysitter. Born in the 1950s, the incubators have evolved considerably to offer a complete assisted journey to start-ups.
The Need for Automated Incubation Management
Incubators provide start-ups with the opportunity to gain traction in the market and grow. The program includes physical and technical support, as well as mentoring for acquiring real customers. However, this isn’t as easily achieved as avowed. The initial challenge for an incubator is onboarding of a start-up with serious intent. In the absence of a digitalized ecosystem, it gets tough to screen out a frivolous, fly-by-night ideator from a genuine entrepreneur. Mostly, the incubation management systems are either standalone or have restricted access to all stakeholders associated with a start-up.
As a result, compliances and information dissemination between investors and entrepreneurs are delayed. Showing achievements and progress is another challenge in assessing a venture’s status in real time. Hence, it is critical to integrate every step of a start-up’s lifecycle — from being selected to being mentored to managing — into a system that could communicate seamlessly with each other. Moreover, incubators and accelerators are witnessing a spike in investment, which has caused governments and corporations to seek a digital solution that would help with conceptualizing, designing, developing and managing an incubator.
CSM’s Incubation Management System- Letting Start-up Aspiration Soar High
Our Incubation Management System tracks and manages programs to support entrepreneurs. The robust system effectively implements, monitors, and reports on business incubation and enterprise development programs. The platform manages workflows between stakeholders, connects startups to funding and services, tracks project progress, monitors and evaluates performance, and manages the overall life cycle of the incubation support.
What are the system’s USPs?
Project creation for Incubators/Accelerators
Milestone creation and monitoring
Creation of partners & members and Mentorship Management
Funds and Investment tracking’
Infrastructure and Resource Management
Plug and play workspace with bandwidth and labs
Asset and Programme Management
Equity Slab and Management
Asset Requisition and Return
Knowledge Management
Marketing & Analytics
And, the Benefits…
Through our Incubation Management System, we allow all stakeholders — business incubators, accelerators, startups, mentors, and investors — to connect and exchange ideas. The system, thus, assures a seamless end-to-end incubation lifecycle management experience from onboarding, funding, mentorship, knowledge sharing, and milestone tracking to exit. The system offers tangible benefits:-
Management of the incubation process from start to finish
For greater impact, it helps create collaborative innovation ecosystems
Improves process efficiency and reduces redundancy
Accelerates the onboarding, mentorship assignment, and campaign management processes
Using collaborative tools on the cloud for collaboration & communication allows an easy way to access and share business applications & files
Providing a comprehensive mentorship program
Tracking the progress of startup teams and their mentors, and observing their results as they mature
What’s Next on Incubation Innovation?
Emerging Technologies like Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented Reality (AR) & Virtual Reality (VR) are spurring incubators to get more creative in anchoring start-ups. The future of incubation innovation rests on moving beyond the PoC (Proof of Concept) stage and tapping the downstream end of the innovation cycle. This way, incubators can unlock every lock of a truly digital transformation.
|
https://medium.com/@csm-technologies/why-incubators-need-seamless-management-to-skill-start-ups-d519a8cf10e9
|
['Csm Technologies']
|
2021-07-05 11:46:25.897000+00:00
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['Startup', 'Incubation Management', 'Incubator']
|
Tips to clear AZ-900 on the first attempt with just 5 days preperation.
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Tips to clear AZ-900 on the first attempt with just 5 days preperation.
Plan Your Exam Date
This is important because Microsoft keeps updating the syllabus as it keeps on updating its services and launch new services.
If you are new and have no idea of what Cloud is, have about 50 to 60-hour time frame to get a good understanding of the cloud concepts
If you already have an idea of what Cloud is and basics of cloud then less than 40 hours would be quite sufficient for you to clear the exams
Go by the latest syllabus.
If You are a person who loves to read, Microsoft Offical documentation is the best way to learn.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/exams/az-900
If you are a type of person who likes more of recorded content to learn than reading then make sure that you follow the updated syllabus, as most of the content available on the youtube might be missing some important as it may not be available in the syllabus at the time of the content creation. So ensure that you will follow the latest syllabus for not missing any topic.
here are some links with good quality content for AZ-900
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhLKc18P9YOD2Iu7rlZ7Y5AM1mv66kMI7
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGjZwEtPN7j-Q59JYso3L4_yoCjj2syrM
Still, some topics will be missing in these video as per the latest syllabus, So it is highly recommended to read the official documentation at least once.
Utilize Free Materials Available
Microsoft will offer you two ways to prepare for the exams
one is through online documentations
the second one is a paid service in which you will be taught by an instructor from Microsoft.
AZ-900 is a basic level examination you can prepare it yourself. So I recommend not to spend money on this especially when the free materials available are up to the mark.
courses from udemy and other learning platforms are also not required to clear the exams, but if you are planning to take one
nake sure the course you are picking up contains the latest syllabus and provides you with a collection of dumps (at least 500 questions.)
The More the number of questions you practice, the more the chance to clear the exams, so if are spending money on the course
make sure you have a bunch of dumps available with that
Practice Dumps
if you are not opting to get paid course and dumps, not to worry There are lot of free sites providing dumps for AZ-900, Even though you will not a full-fledged version of dumps what is available as a free version will be much helpful and I recommend spending 40 to 50 % time practising dumps.
here are some links which I found useful in practising the dumps
https://pupuweb.com/microsoft-azure-fundamentals-az900-actual-exam-question-answer-dumps
https://www.exam-answer.com/microsoft/az-900
https://www.examtopics.com/exams/microsoft/az-900
combining all the 3 you will get up to 200 to 250 unique questions to practice, with which you can expect the 50 % of the questions for your exams.
You will get an idea of how the questions will be asked in the actual exams. what are all the concepts that will be very similar to each other, what are their differences etc.
For Example :
VNET and VPN Gateway
both allow you to connect two virtual networks, so you have to understand when to use VNET peering and when to use VPN Gateway
VPN Gateway can be used when you need an encrypted connection between two virtual networks but will have bandwidth restrictions.
whereas VNET provides low latency, high bandwidth connection.
This is one such example, There are a lot of other things
Because at exams these are the ones which are going to confuse you in the exams and you might missout some valuable points.
once Your Preparation is completed spend some time to revise the topics ( say at least 2 to 3hours).
You are now all set to take up the exam.
Check IN EARLY.
This is very important, Microsoft asks you to check in half an hour before your scheduled time, but if are new to attend exams on Pearson VUE environment, I recommend you to join at least 45 mins before your scheduled time so that you get some time and don't have to hurry up the check-in process.
Follow the exam Rules
Microsoft comes up with a set of rules for taking up the exam, I highly recommend you to follow all the rules, A person will verify you with your identity and will always be watching you at your exams. So keep it simple and take the exam honestly.
Tips to utilize the PersonVUE environment
If you are taking exams in this environment, I have some tips for you.
One good functionality available in the PersonVUE platform is the Check later functionality.
In case of doubts in the answers, you can mark those questions to check later and move forward to the next question.
This will make sure that you will not run out of time and not stuck in some question.
All the very best for YoU.
|
https://medium.com/@amarnathgct2015/tips-to-clear-az-900-on-the-first-attempt-with-just-5-days-preperation-ea3866502be2
|
['Amarnath P']
|
2020-12-24 08:16:26.431000+00:00
|
['Azure Certification', 'Azure Fundamentals', 'Azure', 'Az 900', 'Tips Foraz 900']
|
Implement a Countdown Timer with RxJS in Angular
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Implement a Countdown Timer with RxJS in Angular
Implement a simple countdown in Angular
Photo by Eder Pozo Pérez on Unsplash
Counting down to some special event is something we do a lot.
In this guide, I will show you how to implement a simple and effective countdown timer in Angular using RxJS.
So far, 2020 has been a roller coaster year. How about we implement a countdown timer to the year 2021? The countdown timer we will implement will be updated to the second.
Without further ado, let’s jump into the code.
Create an Angular application
We will get started by creating a simple Angular application via the CLI with the following command.
$ ng new count-down-timer --defaults
Once the application is created go into its root directory.
$ cd count-down-timer
Then add a new component named count-down which will contain the logic for our countdown timer using the following CLI command.
ng g c count-down
At this stage, your project structure should be similar to this.
Implementing the countdown logic
The logic for the countdown time is not complicated. We need to find the difference between the D-day i.e., the day of our event and the current time.
The difference in the time we get is in Milliseconds, so we will convert it into corresponding units i.e., days, hours, minutes, and seconds.
To make sure that the time keeps updating every second, we will use subscription interval which will get the difference in time every second.
To avoid memory leaks in the application, we will unsubscribe from the subscription whenever the count-down component is being destroyed.
The component code should look as below. I have gone for readability over efficiency, so feel free to make modifications if you wish to.
I will not go into detail regarding the time difference calculations in this article, however, I have provided a link to an article regarding the same in the conclusion section.
In the corresponding template code, i.e count-down.component.html, we will display the time to our D-day in respective units using interpolation as follows.
Add some CSS styling to the component’s style template as follows. The styling will center our output and adjust font size.
The CSS is pretty basic, to keep things simple. Feel free to tweak it.
Displaying the timer
To display the time remaining to the D-day, we will inject the count-down child component into the app.component.html parent component as below.
Remove all the code in the app.component.html and replace it with the following single line of code.
The countdown timer in action
To serve the application in your default browser, you can run the following command.
ng serve -o
Here is a look at the countdown timer in action.
Conclusion
There you have it, a simple implementation of a countdown timer updated to the second.
For a comprehensive guide on calculating time differences in JavaScript, you can take look a guide by the Javascript Jeep🚙💨 here.
|
https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/implement-a-countdown-timer-with-rxjs-in-angular-3852f21a4ea0
|
['Mwiza Kumwenda']
|
2020-11-23 09:53:04.107000+00:00
|
['JavaScript', 'Software Development', 'Angular', 'Programming', 'Software Engineering']
|
From a fellow grandchild of Partition: a view on Mogul Mowgli
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“Our bodies can still keep the score, we can taste it. My DNA knows that they hunted me.”
These chilling lyrics are found in Riz Ahmed’s single “Once Kings” from the film Ahmed co-wrote with first time feature director Bassam Tariq. In the film, Ahmed’s character Zed is a rising British-Pakistani rapper on the brink of achieving his greatest success, only to be diagnosed with an autoimmune disease when traveling back home to England from New York. Having followed Ahmed’s work for some time and seen Partition come up as a consistent theme, I was struck by how affected Ahmed seems by Partition as someone that didn’t actually live through it.
It dawned on me that growing up as the child of Indian immigrants to the US, the Hindi films and TV shows we consumed through the 90s and into the early 2000s were plastered with images of violence from the Partition — images that are now buried deep into the recesses of my memory, but come to mind immediately when thinking of it. Images of violence in the trains, images of young girls being abducted when straying away from family, and images of hordes of women jumping into a well. These images are recalled immediately in Ahmed’s lyrics, when he references these events directly. For those unfamiliar with the Partition, these descriptions will sound dramatic to say the least — but they reference the true horror that occurred when one country (India) was divided into three parts (India, Pakistan, and eventually Bangladesh) and people were forced to leave their homes to migrate to the part they were assigned to based off their religion.
As a grandchild of the Partition, I was curious to see Ahmed and Tariq’s adaptation of how Partition seeps into identity. Both sides of my family lived in what is now Pakistan, and moved to India during the course of events that followed. Both sides of the family experienced the threat of violence and violence itself, both having to leave homes and all material possessions behind to build a life in what was now their country. Violence was perhaps the most dramatic aspect of the Partition, but in my opinion what lingered was in some ways more traumatic — a feeling of being an immigrant in your own country, having to live in refugee camps because of having lost everything overnight, and perhaps most transcendental of all: a mixed identity.
As much as we can cling to notions of being “Indian” or “Pakistani,” for a lot of us that identity feels somewhat incomplete, and it stems from knowing that our ancestors are not from the place our family currently lives in. Although Mogul Mowgli was rich with images of violence, I think it was the non-belonging that stood out to me the most. It cast dimension to a problem that is unique to Punjabi and Sindhi Indians, Pakistanis, Indian Bengalis, and Bangladeshis. How many of us have heard our Gujarati friends claim “Back in my parents’ village” and thought, “can’t relate.”
Immigration stories in the West often focus on the most recent struggle we’ve all faced — the move from back East to either the US or the UK, the confusion the children of these immigrants face, and the desire to find belonging that both parents and children face. Mogul Mowgli challenged me to examine for the first time how feeble my sense of belonging is given that my grandparents were refugees from a traumatic event, my parents moved to America, and I spent a lot of mental energy reconciling eastern and western culture. When your parents and your parent’s parents are all immigrants to somewhere, where are you really from?
A lot of us descendants of the Partition have our identities split between the geography of one place — with families that made their fortunes on a portion of land that we no longer have access to, and the customs of another place. Religion being the amoebic force that it is establishes itself in quotidian ways into languages and customs that passed across borders and across time. We continue to use phrases that reference one religion on a technical front, but feel forced to claim the identity of yet another faith entirely based off a line on a map.
One of the most powerful scenes to me was the scene of a family gathering and Zed’s cousin criticizing Zed for adopting the nickname. “That’s the name they gave you,” he points out — referencing the fact that Zed should go by his given name of Zaheer, and not a westernization. When asked about what he would name his child, Bilal responds “Ashfaq,” to which Zed responds “Why would you do that to your child?” and proceeds to point out that the name would sound like “ass fuck” to white people. Although this scene at surface level lends humor, it also does a few things at once. It shows Zed’s relationship with a family that is starting to see him as a slave to the West, and it also shows the internal struggles most children of immigrants face in the West when trying to blend in but hold onto the identity that their parents have tried to pass down.
Overall, I think Tariq and Ahmed did a fantastic job of reminding us about how we only understand fractions of our identity, and there is more to the story — a story that was robbed from us through a series of political events. The fact that this fractionality is amplified by the liminal space the narrative takes place in — on the verge of Zed’s recovery from a lethal disease, makes us eager to find the missing pieces of our own identities. I haven’t even begun to cover the performances, but Riz Ahmed and Alyy Khan’s portrayals of two individuals caught in these situations while reconciling their pasts are truly gripping. The only thing I would have liked more of would have been a heightening of Zed’s revelations. I feel that the story didn’t complete its arc for the series of discoveries that Zed had been set upon, and I found myself wanting more. However, perhaps Mogul Mowgli is challenging us to find those pieces of our own stories, and as a work of art it does not fail to move and inspire deeper thought in its viewers.
|
https://medium.com/@shabnum.gulati/from-a-fellow-grandchild-of-partition-a-view-on-mogul-mowgli-540184d5d53c
|
['Shabnum Gulati']
|
2020-12-14 04:29:38.517000+00:00
|
['Riz Ahmed', 'Pakistan', 'Partition Of India', 'Mogul Mowgli', 'Film Reviews']
|
Outstanding Returns Using Sentiment Analysis to Predict Alphabet (Google) Stock Price
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Outstanding Returns Using Sentiment Analysis to Predict Alphabet (Google) Stock Price
“Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance.”
-Abraham Maslow-
Photo of Google Headquarters from source.
*Disclaimer: I am assuming that whoever has the ability to comprehend and execute the content of this article is savvy enough to perform a robust back-testing in every corner of their trading pipeline before actually running it in production. However, there are some considerations that this article doesn’t take into account (spread, slippage and transaction costs, among others) and for that matter, this article is not to be considered financial advice. It is to be considered an educational step towards better performing results.
Intro
The goal of this article is to predict if the stock price for Alphabet (GOOGL) will be higher or lower at the end of any given day, using news from the closing time of the previous day’s trading session (4 pm EST for the NYSE) to before market hours of that day (9:30 am EST).
By applying Sentiment Analysis to news reports we will create numerical features and join them to our stock data by using the Proximity Blend Algorithm.
I will add a link to the notebook at the bottom of the article, so you can replicate this study case.
The Goal
This is a dataset of daily candles for the Alphabet (GOOGL) stock price. We’ll use the last 2 years.
We want to predict the percentage of ‘change’ between a given day’s closing price with respect to the open.
df_alphabet['change'] = np.log(df_alphabet['close']) - np.log(df_alphabet['open'])
Let’s look at the open and close prices plotted against the change.
If we zoom in, we can see that the green points are above the ‘zero change’ line when the closing price is higher than the opening price and vice versa. This means the green dots above the line is where investing would generate a positive return for that day.
Our goal is to predict if the change will be higher than zero for any given day using information from before that day so that we can decide to buy at the opening and sell at the close.
This is what the change distribution looks like:
change distribution (mean = 0.00053)
743 times change is positive (53%)
639 times change is negative (47%)
So the coin is already ‘tilted’ in our favor.
Let’s create a success/failure target feature by binarizing the change and adding a small handicap (0.003) to compensate for slippage, spread and transaction costs. (so that the investment results in a positive return).
df_alphabet['target'] = [1 if ch > 0.003 else 0 for ch in df_alphabet['change']]
Now we have a much more ‘inconvenient’ coin.
551 times target is 1 (39%)
832 times target is 0 (61%)
Our goal is to detect success on a proportion that generates income. We want to filter and find more days of positive returns to invest in (precision > 0.5).
Sentiment Analysis
To put things simple, a supervised ML model can be seen as a dependent variable explained by independent variables. When applying sentiment analysis, the independent variables come from text.
ŝ = sentiment | t = text
In our case (and in many cases), that dependent variable ‘ ŝ ’ goes to feed a second ‘dependent’ model with a particular use case for the sentiment (such as stock prediction).
x̂ = prediction of x | ŝ = sentiment
Where x is our target variable.
So, before we build a dependent model to predict our target, we need to create an independent model to classify news sentiment so we can use the result as input.
Sentiment Analysis is the art of quantifying subjective information.
The ‘sentiment’ representation can be seen as a multi-dimensional space filled with vectors facing many directions (as seen in ‘Multi-Dimensional Sentiment Analysis with Learned Representations’).
But for the purpose of this article, we will simplify and reduce sentiment to a numerical feature for every news headline.
Range of ‘Sentiment’
Every headline will have a ‘sentiment’ feature representing how positive or negative the news are with respect to a potential stock movement.
Now, let’s take a look at some -aggregated by day- news that mention google.
The subjective part is our opinion of what are positive or negative headlines for the stock price. We need to manually label a set of news for the model to be trained with that knowledge.
My interpretation of positive, negative and neutral.
I manually labeled over 500 news headlines from over 1,300 days of ‘google’ news (that’s right, I earned my up-vote) adding a sentiment of -1, 0 or 1.
Now, we need to come up with a model that can train to classify sentiment on new texts so we can automate this job and instantly use the sentiment as ML fuel for our target.
To accomplish this, we need to transform the text into a numerical format so we can apply ML. For this we need to tokenize and vectorize the text.
Tokenizing
Tokenizing is separating strings in words or groups of words (called n-grams). For example, let’s create n-grams for ‘1 and 2 words’ for one text:
List of n-grams (1 and 2 words) created from text
Vectorizing
Vectorizing is creating a sparse matrix out of an array of texts, where the columns are the n-grams and the rows are the mentions on each text.
Simple representation of text vectorization.
Let’s tokenize the texts and add them as numerical features:
We added 1550 columns to our sentiment dataframe. Now, let’s look at the top correlated (negative and positive) tokens with ‘sentiment’.
Of course, these don’t mean much by themselves so let’s create a machine learning model that combines them to predict sentiment.
First, a simple model to detect ‘positive’ news. Training with 365 and testing with 157.
Confusion matrix for detecting ‘positive’ news
It correctly detected 7 positive news, incorrectly labeled 1 and missed 28. It correctly discarded 121 ‘not positive’ news.
Now the exact same process to detect ‘negative’ news this time.
Confusion matrix for detecting ‘negative’ news
It correctly detected 12, incorrectly labeled 7 as ‘negative’ and missed on 28 ‘negative’ news. It correctly filtered out 110 ‘not negative’ news.
There was no overlap of classification between the two models (no news were both labeled ‘positive’ and ‘negative’).
Though there is huge room for improvement (by pre-processing data, model/parameter optimization, stemming and lemmatization, adding more data to train with, semantics analysis, running it through a neural network, etc..) this is good and simple enough for our main purpose.
Price Prediction with News
Let’s take a look at the sentiment along with the price.
The green lines are ‘positive’ news and the red ones ‘negative’.
Let’s remove the price curve.
Sentiment from news with GOOGL change
At simple sight, it is hard to see the relationship because there are too many ‘change’ points.
Let’s blend the news again and calculate an average sentiment for the last 24 hours using our ‘sentiment’ model.
Let’s try to predict if the ‘change’ will be positive (higher than our 0.003 handicap) with the variables we now have from the day before.
Again, trying out a simple model, training with a prior (chronologically) train set of 1078 observations and testing with a posterior one of 304.
Our model correctly predicted 85 price increments (change > 0.003), it wrongly accepted 65 ‘non-increment’ cases. It missed 50 increments and it correctly filtered out 104 ‘non-increment’ cases.
So, given that there are so much factors that influence the stock prices, getting these results with just news headlines and the information contained in the candles is quite outstanding.
Remember, there is no free money out there. Every investment involves a risk. It is always important to understand not just the math and the models but what those models represent.
You can download the notebook to reproduce all of this here.
|
https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/outstanding-performance-using-sentiment-analysis-to-predict-alphabet-google-stock-price-c74ef86c82a6
|
['Federico Riveroll']
|
2020-11-14 13:31:04.378000+00:00
|
['Machine Learning', 'Sentiment Analysis', 'Stock Market', 'AI', 'Data Science']
|
The Federalists
|
The Federalists
Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, leaders of the Federalist Party. — Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
The Federalist Party was started
During the year Seventeen Ninety-One.
They navigated waters uncharted,
Being the first faction ever begun.
The nation’s first political faction
Was led by Alexander Hamilton.
John Adams was also in the action,
As well as some other important men.
The Federalist Party did control
National government for some decades.
Keeping conservatism was the goal,
But the party would soon lose to new trades.
While the Federalist Party dissolved,
The party allowed issues to be solved.
|
https://medium.com/a-few-lines-of-history/the-federalists-4747392ff886
|
['Danielle Gibson']
|
2020-11-25 03:51:04.208000+00:00
|
['Government', 'History', 'Politics', 'Poetry', 'American History']
|
Layered protocols in distributed system
|
Due to the absence of shared memory, all communication in distributed systems is based on message passing. When process A wants to communicate with process B, it first builds a message in its own address space. Then it executes a system call that causes the operating system to fetch the message and send it over the network to B. Although this basic idea sounds simple enough, in order to prevent chaos, A and B have to agree on the meaning of the bits being sent.
Many different agreements are needed. How many volts should be used to signal a 0-bit, and how many volts for a 1-bit? How does the receiver know which is the last bit of the message? How can it detect if a message has been damaged or lost, and what should it do if it finds out? How long are numbers, strings, and other data items, and how are they represented? In short, agreements are needed at a variety of levels, varying from the low-level details of bit transmission to the high-level details of how information is to be expressed. To make it easier to deal with the numerous levels and issues involved in communication, the International Standards Organization (ISO) has developed a reference model that clearly identifies the various levels involved, gives them standard names, and points out which level should do which job. This model is called the Open Systems Interconnection Reference Model, usually abbreviated as ISO OSI or sometimes just the OSI model.
The physical layer is concerned with transmitting the Os and 1 s. How many volts to use for 0 and 1, how many bits per second can be sent, and whether transmission can take place in both directions simultaneously are key issues in the physical layer.
Read Complete article click here
|
https://medium.com/@pywix/layered-protocols-in-distributed-system-d528944c4e7d
|
['Digital Classes']
|
2020-11-21 06:56:31.674000+00:00
|
['Distributed Systems', 'Protocol', 'Computer Architecture', 'Computer Science', 'Layered Protocol']
|
Cointiger exchange just confirmed our listing next Wednesday. Congratulations
|
SatoBank Extreme Farming is the proof that there are other ways of doing smart farming today, https://satobank.money/
|
https://medium.com/@satobank/cointiger-exchange-just-confirmed-our-listing-next-wednesday-congratulations-35ec18de2ab2
|
['Satobank Smart Farming']
|
2020-12-04 22:29:51.556000+00:00
|
['Blockchain', 'Ethereum Blockchain', 'Trading', 'Farming']
|
Functional Programming Concepts
|
What does it mean to program in a functional way? Well, code written that way is based on, yes you guessed it, functions…these functions are tiny chunks of code that do something specific with the data that was passed to them. And in comparison with the object-oriented programming paradigm, these functions can be passed as arguments to other functions, which will receive them, execute them, perform some other computations and then either return some value or may this function is passed as an argument to another one. Ideally, these functions should complain about what is known as pure functions, which bring extra benefits to how the data flow through the execution of the code.
Now, what is a pure function? A pure function is a function that:
provided a given argument, it always returns the same results.
returns the same results. performs its computation without any kind of side effects.
Photo by Di_An_h on Unsplash
Those two characteristics make a pure function powerful.
If a function returns always the same results given the same input, it means that it has no dependency on the “external world”, it is just a standalone function that does its job without any kind of footprint.
Following the same line of thought, these functions do not change anything on their “surroundings”. That means that there is no data mutation whatsoever. You can trust these guys.
With that comes the next concept, immutability. Immutability is key in the Functional Programming paradigm; data binding occurs of course, but once a value is bounded to, let’s say, a name, there is no way to modify it. That leads a functional code to be referentially transparent. In simple words, if we replace all the value identifiers by their values, the program behavior does not change. For example:
In an imperative language, we can write
amount = amount * 2 def not_transparent(x)
amount = 10
x + amount
end
in the first line of code, the value of the amount variable is modified. Each time we execute that line, amount will contain always a different value (unless of course, the starting value is 0). Besides that, the not_transparent method modifies that amount variable as well, which in the case makes the whole scenario even worse. All that tells us, we are unable to replace amount by its value and expect that the behavior of the code to be the same. It is not transparent at all…in fact, assignment statements are never referentially transparent.
Now, if we take a look at
amount = 20 def transparent(x)
x + 1
end
the transparent method does not change state, it does not even try to modify its input. We can say, without any kind of problem, that that code is referentially transparent and it does not have any side effects. Functional programs exclusively use this type of function and are therefore referentially transparent.
|
https://medium.com/swlh/functional-programming-concepts-43e8cdcefa70
|
['Mario Viapiano']
|
2020-06-12 18:20:58.294000+00:00
|
['Programming', 'Functional Programming', 'Software Development', 'Clojure', 'Software Engineering']
|
Joe Rogan’s Podcast Goes Spotify Exclusive. What Does This Mean for Independent Podcasts?
|
Joe Rogan’s popular and controversial podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, is now exclusively on Spotify.
His show has already caused friction among Spotify employees, with reports alleging a recent episode with Alex Jones was taken down manually by an employee because of political disagreements.
However, no definitive proof an employee removing the episode has been reported publicly. Spotify and Rogan himself have stated it was a technical issue as to why the show was removed and then later reuploaded.
Fans of his podcast have been upset the show is becoming Spotify exclusive, and they don’t understand why he would pull the show off of Apple Podcasts and other podcasting apps.
Well, I can give you 100 million reasons why Rogan put his podcast exclusively on Spotify. I would be willing to make my podcast exclusive to Spotify for a few thousand dollars per year or maybe even less!
Joking aside (unless Spotify is really interested, then call me), the trend of making top name podcasts exclusive to one platform is not surprising but also concerning.
If you are a company in today’s modern media environment, you have to find ways to make your app or streaming service stand out from the rest. That’s why Netflix is paying top dollar to be the exclusive streaming home of shows like Seinfeld and investing billions of dollars per year producing content like Stranger Things. If Seinfeld was available everywhere, like music is, why would anyone watch on Netflix when they could just watch the show on HBO Max? Or stream the series on Amazon Prime? Or even watch on a free TV app like Pluto TV?
If you are in the streaming business, especially as a music app, you have to find ways to offer consumers something they cannot find anywhere else. From a business perspective, it makes total sense to sign a deal with Rogan or pay Michelle Obama to host a podcast available only on Spotify.
However, it seems podcasting is becoming more corporate and more consolidated like the rest of the media. Traditional radio companies and podcast companies are buying popular podcast production companies out, making it more difficult for smaller companies and independent show producers to compete.
This situation was almost predictable as podcasting continues to grow in popularity. It was only a matter of time before corporate America realized the potential millions of dollars in revenue that could be earned from podcasting and would want a piece of the pie.
If you’re a traditional radio company wanting to dip your toe in the digital waters as advertising dollars shift from AM/FM radio to digital media, podcasting is a great option.
My concern with podcasting becoming more corporate is how it will impact listeners? When you only have a handful of companies producing the largest shows, the content can become very cookie-cutter and sound very similar.
This has occurred in radio for decades. Can you really tell one country radio station from another? How about movies? How many times can the world be in a pickle that The Avengers need to handle?
Yes, Marvel movies are super popular but after a while, doesn’t it all seem kinda similar? Disney seems to only make Marvel and Star Wars movies now. Wouldn’t you like to see more creativity? See Disney or another film company take a risk and make a different movie?
Maybe it’s just me because these movies make billions, and so does radio, but I just hope podcasting doesn’t become an industry where only the corporate shows survive.
There are currently 1.6 million podcasts available on the Apple Podcasts app, which means there are many independent shows produced in the U.S. and around the world.
Hopefully, podcasting will continue to offer a balance between the professional, corporate produced shows and still have room for independent producers the way YouTube does.
Another issue with podcasts going corporate is freedom of speech and editorial independence issues. As Rogan is already seeing, once you go corporate, you lose a little bit of your freedom to do whatever you want on your show.
I don’t agree with all of Rogan’s viewpoints or his guests. However, I hope podcasting remains a medium where there is freedom of speech for all and opportunity for all to find an audience in the years ahead.
While I’m not opposed to corporations investing in the podcasting space because they can do things for the industry that independent producers can’t, I hope podcasting doesn’t become cookie-cutter, and we’re left with a situation where all podcasts sound the same and are the podcast equivalent of bro-country. Or worse, Nickelback!
|
https://medium.com/@chadwhittle/joe-rogans-podcast-goes-spotify-exclusive-what-does-this-mean-for-independent-podcasts-70874914967b
|
['Chad Whittle']
|
2020-12-20 21:53:39.660000+00:00
|
['Spotify', 'Podcasting', 'Joe Rogan', 'Podcasts', 'Joe Rogan Experience']
|
Writing for global audiences
|
Draft clear content so users know how to take action
Illustration by Alexa Ong, Next Billion Users illustrator
I wrote this story with assistance from Luke Easterwood, LeAnn Quasthoff, Jessica Caimi, and Erik Ninomiya, UX writers who have focused on the needs of the Next Billion Users.
John Steinbeck said that “Poetry is the mathematics of writing and closely kin to music.” The Nobel Prize winner in Literature understood the challenge of writing well. Writers must always consider the effect their word choice and grammar have on the meaning and flow of the text, as well as how those choices might make their readers feel.
It can be especially challenging to write for a global audience made up of different cultures, languages, abilities, and expectations. Before you begin, it’s essential to question your own assumptions, deeply understand your users’ contexts, and recognize the potential impact of your writing choices.
The writing guidance you see here includes principles and recommendations for both new and experienced internet users that were formulated after doing user testing around the world. Before going over writing examples, let’s review some of the main challenges involved in creating content for diverse groups of users.
Writing challenges
Challenges users face include limited literacy, limited technology experience, or both. Language and technical terms should be simple to accommodate a wide range of user fluency.
Tech fluency
Tech fluency means understanding the capabilities of devices and apps. Where mobile use is less common, gestures, such as swiping and dragging, can be unfamiliar. Visual cues and videos are needed as instructional tools. Showing how to swipe might be communicated with a simple animation of the horizontal scroll or swipe as the user lands on the screen. (To learn more, consider following the Material Design guidelines for gestures.)
Language
Users interact with language in a variety of ways. For example, many users in India find inputting text in Indic scripts, like Hindi, difficult due to the complexity of the script. Users might be more comfortable typing in English, in Hinglish (a mix of Hindi and English, written in the Latin alphabet), or in Hindi written in Latin letters. In Kenya, many use a Swahili interface, but search in English.
Translating many technology terms can be counterproductive to enhancing comprehension and can, in fact, make terminology more confusing. Many users first learned technological terms, such as Bluetooth, software, and hardware, in English and might be unfamiliar with the translations in their native language. To determine which technical vocabulary to keep in English, it is best to consult with a localization and translation expert.
Writing strategies for global users
As you’re designing experiences for global users, approach language with care and consideration, and keep the following best practices in mind:
Reduce ambiguity for users with clear and simple language
Provide translation guidance to translators and linguists
Create relevant content that matters in users’ daily lives
Examples
Here are some examples of these best practices in action.
Keep language simple
As explained in the Material Design writing guidelines, it’s important to keep words simple. This principle is especially important for emerging markets since non-native English speakers might be using apps in English and could find complex sentence structures hard to understand. New internet users might not understand technological concepts, so explaining steps, like opt-ins and permissions, requires even more care.
When possible, avoid long introductory clauses.
Do (green): The welcome message has a short introductory phrase. Don’t (red): The welcome message has a long introductory clause that may be hard to follow.
Use basic sentence structure. Try to target a single thought per sentence.
Do (green): The UI text has 2 sentences with a different thought per sentence. Don’t (red) example: The UI text has one long sentence with 2 different thoughts.
In general, choose clarity over brevity. Longer messages can add needed context and increase trust, while short sentence fragments can lead to confusion. Add clarifying details if you have the space.
Do (green): The longer message clearly states how much storage is available on the device. Don’t (red): The shorter message doesn’t explicitly state how much storage is available on the device or SD card, possibly causing some users to feel uncertain.
To learn more about the importance of clarity when writing about data storage and cost, read Nurture Trust Through Cost Transparency.
Consider using more words to avoid a potentially complex or unfamiliar term.
Do (green): The question about knowing more than one language is clear and understandable. Don’t (red): The term multilingual might be too hard to understand.
Refer to word lists available online. Different word lists focus on different goals. For example, Ogden’s basic English lists 850 of the simplest and most useful words. It’s composed of simple interactions, such as put, give, and go, and picturable words, such as arm and ticket. Consider using this word list — or one like it — to keep your UI language easy for everyone to understand.
You can also consider creating your own product, category, or location-based word lists as needed.
Lost in translation
As your app might be localized to other languages and regions, it’s key that your UI language can be easily translated into other languages.
Writers sometimes find it tempting to use idioms or slang to create a conversational and approachable tone. But it’s important to understand that colloquial expressions can prove difficult or impossible to translate, reducing global comprehension.
Where there is imagery, think about how the words and images go together. Idiomatic language that plays off an illustration might make it challenging for visually impaired users who rely on screen readers to understand the context and meaning. The language should be comprehensible on its own.
For example, a ride-sharing app might use the colloquial term “Your chariot awaits” when a car is approaching the customer’s location. The phrase might be cute for a native North American English speaker, but not make sense to approximately 20% of people in the US who speak another language at home and to those outside of the US whose device language is set to North American English. If a Bosnian-speaking user translates “Your chariot awaits” with an automatic computer translation service, it is literally translated to “Vaša kočija čeka,” not to the Bosnian equivalent of “Your ride is waiting.” The rider might wonder where their 2-horse chariot is! If the same app showed a notification saying “Hold your horses” to inform a waiting passenger that their ride is late, the non-native North American English speaker might also not understand that “Hold your horses” means to “wait.”
Do (green): “Your ride is here” is easy to understand and translate. Don’t (red): “Your chariot awaits” is too colloquial and may get translated literally.
Do (green): “New features are available” is clear and easy to understand. Don’t (red): “New awesomeness ahead” is too colloquial.
Do (green): “One moment” is clearly understood. Don’t (red): “Hang on” is too colloquial.
If you’re using slang or colloquial phrases, provide a description of what this phrase means to your localization partner or translator so they can properly translate the phrase to other languages.
Use global examples and highlight local references
When you reference examples in UI text, try to use global examples (information that’s understood by people around the world) when possible. Certain references, like local places and holidays, won’t always work for global audiences. If it doesn’t make sense to use a global example, be sure to explain the reference to your translator or localization team so that the translator can substitute a locale-specific example. Some instances where local references should be called out include:
Providers (internet and cable)
Locations (cities)
Names (common first names and nicknames)
Currencies
|
https://medium.com/google-design/writing-for-global-audiences-d339d23e9612
|
['Susanna Zaraysky']
|
2020-10-08 14:01:44.780000+00:00
|
['Next Billion Users', 'UX', 'Internationalization', 'Content Strategy', 'Writing']
|
Free Charging for All Americans
|
Free Charging for All Americans
Electric Vehicles as a Universal Basic Asset starts with ‘charge equity’
Governor Gavin Newsom’s executive order to phase out internal combustion engines by 2035 will effectively convert 10% of all traffic in America to EVs (Electric Vehicles). He signed the measure, despite the pandemic, to push distributed, smart electricity grids — a necessity when all those EVs get plugged in for recharging in the same window of a post-rush hour and for overnight slow-charging.
What happens when Californians cross the state line? And long-haul electric trucks for shipping? A serious demand wave for EV charging will swell over the next decade. A robust, equitable network with free charging as a public utility service is the prerequisite to EV adoption.
EV charging photo by Colin D on Unsplash
A 2019 survey from the Union of Concerned Scientists and Consumer Reports showed broader Electric Vehicle (EV) demand has arrived. More than 30% of Americans across most income levels want one. So why are EV sales declining?
Car dealers are still pushing “normal” cars over EVs. Salespeople struggle to sell the sacrifices: “Where do I charge it, when I’m not at home?” “Why do I have to buy a home charger?” All that risk is unaffordable, even for middle-class Americans considering a new generation of EVs priced nearly on par with gasoline engines. Reducing one’s carbon footprint loses to economics and day-to-day risk every time.
Carbon impact is an abstract, secondary concern for daily drivers. EV adoption is a problem of infrastructure economics. Americans depend on older vehicles to get to work, to navigate family and life stops, and to survive in the gig economy. Drivers in auto-centric America have a core need: to get around, with confidence and efficiency. We need to go wherever the road goes without fear of running out of gas, or charge. As Steve LeVine has detailed, we need charging stations to be as ubiquitous as gas stations to trust EVs.
The market has maxed out the number of people willing and able to put up with limited, uncertain charging. A hundred years ago, range anxiety limited car use — including the fifteen million Model T’s — until “the growth of a nationwide network of regularly spaced fueling stations” made gas engines a transportation standard.”
Make charging free, reliable, and accessible.
Both the Bernie Sanders version of the Green New Deal and now Biden’s Plan have provisions and a big budget for EV research. EV research and development should continue. Putting more EV’s on the road for more people before 2030 takes another thrust: a universal charger network.
“Biden will work with our nation’s governors and mayors to support the deployment of more than 500,000 new public charging outlets by the end of 2030.” — from his Plan for Climate Change
One of the first programs rolled out by the Biden administration has the opportunity to create a consistent connection for Americans to a “free energy” alternative: the nationwide Electric Vehicle Charger Network. Just as the gas station made owning a car possible in the 20th century, the EVCN would make electric vehicles possible. It would solve the first half of the equation for access and cost of ownership. Imagine what free, clean energy would do for most Americans living with a dependence on independent vehicles.
|
https://medium.com/climate-conscious/free-charging-for-all-americans-33ed7b063131
|
['Travis Kellerman']
|
2020-12-11 23:59:43.463000+00:00
|
['Equity', 'Policy', 'Electric Vehicles', 'Climate Action', 'Ev Charging']
|
Two Questions That Turn Mundane Meetings Into Productive Sessions
|
Giving honest feedback
It all started when my manager at the time asked our group for general feedback at the end of a regular meeting. I blurted out that perhaps we could try a different agenda setup because the current one was a bit blah (I don’t remember my exact words, but I remember thinking it). The agenda mainly consisted of status-reporting monologues, and it was keeping the general excitement level pretty low. The other members agreed that a change in the generic agenda would do us good.
Organizationally, we were a work group that reported to one manager, and shared office space. But mostly, each of us worked independently on our own projects. It just didn’t feel like we were a team. You know, the kind of team that is more powerful than the individuals in it.
Ironically, my complaint ended up on my own plate, and I was given the eminent task of bringing new facilitation ideas to the table by the next team meeting. Clever boss.
Identifying the root issue
While googling ideas (and agonizing over my rookie mistake of not keeping my mouth shut to spare myself from additional tasks), I analyzed what really was bothering me.
I was not a fan (and that’s an understatement) of the snooze fest that was a round-table status reporting, where each participant would simply give (what felt like an endless) speech about what he/she was currently working on. Bi-weekly meetings on this topic made staying authentically interested a bit of a struggle if you know what I mean.
This setup also made me anxious because it had me focusing on being perceived as busy while having everything under control. When in fact that was more times than often, not the case.
The meetings were actually of no true value to anyone but possibly our manager.
Starting meaningful conversations
I was the newbie in the group at the time, so I was struggling a bit to find and identify stakeholders, understanding the how’s and the why’s, getting traction, etc. Luckily I had a good set of co-workers in the group who’d provide me with the necessary information. But what I personally needed — or wished for — was full access to the collective and combined brainpower of the group to help me level up.
I knew from previous chats and discussions that they all were both capable and open enough to share deeper insights, but it would make more sense to take up certain time-consuming issues at a designated time.
In the next team meeting, when I was supposed to dazzle the team with my “progressive facilitation skills”, I simply said that I only had a minor change to propose. The new round-table plan was to have each individual answer the following questions:
1. What recent success, or positive event at work are you happy about? 2. What work-related problem/challenge are you currently dealing with?
I gave some examples and everyone liked the idea and its simplicity. We revisited these questions the following team meetings and I noticed some positive changes.
Becoming a team that collaborated as a whole
This minor change in the meeting agenda had an impact on the team dynamic. We turned into a supportive and productive mentoring group that not only reported status on what currently matters but also helped each other find possible solutions to current issues. This enabled each individual to leave the meeting with a plan going forward.
I actually started looking forward to our meetings because they had become fun, unpredictable, and challenging.
I got unstuck, and on top of that; it was was very rewarding to experience the supportive and empathetic side of all teammates. I got to share some of my highest moments and got through my toughest challenges with the help of these people.
Why did it work?
It wasn’t until a couple of years later that I learned that what we had going was a mastermind group; a common success factor among business titans in entrepreneurship. This was a concept I had stumbled upon in books and articles on personal growth.
It was no fluke that this combo of individuals made up a successful mastermind group — we had some important denominators in common that enabled us to function well as one.
Growth mindset
Starting a conversation on a high note to highlight and share success stories stirs positive emotions. The energy levels rise and prepare a positive mindset, which is beneficial to team productivity according to an Oxford study where researchers found a 13 % increase in productivity when the mind was in a happy state.
Solution-oriented growth mindset? Check.
Psychological safety
Showing vulnerability by opening up about current challenges or problems was no barrier for our group. We were not only colleagues but also good work friends with chemistry. Naturally, we felt safe enough to share problems and give helpful guidance.
In turn, that opened up for discussion and brainstorming in the group, which created meaningful conversations that further strengthened trust. This specifically, is the most important team dynamic linked to effective teamwork, according to this Google study.
Psychologically safe culture? Check.
|
https://medium.com/be-unique/how-i-accidentally-built-a-team-daab47e5baa5
|
['Sara Kiani']
|
2020-06-29 01:33:19.150000+00:00
|
['Work Culture', 'Life Lessons', 'Mastermind Group', 'Inspiration', 'Leadership']
|
HyperX CloudX Flight Wireless Gaming Headset Review
|
HyperX CloudX Flight Wireless Gaming Headset Review
Photo taken by Alex Rowe
HyperX’s CloudX Flight is a new wireless gaming headset designed exclusively for Xbox One consoles and Windows 10 computers. It’s a re-imagining of the original Cloud Flight, adding native Xbox Wireless support, game/chat balance buttons, mic monitoring, and green LED lights.
It costs more than the original non-X model thanks to the expensive licensing associated with making an Xbox headset, and it has no backup wired connection option.
If you’re a die-hard Xbox user, it still manages to just barely clear the bar.
GENERAL OVERVIEW
The HyperX CloudX Flight (official product page) is a wireless-only, closed-back gaming headset that sells for $159. It includes a detachable mic, a USB dongle, and a short micro-USB charging cable. I bought mine for full price from Best Buy, the main brick-and-mortar retail partner for this headset in the US. Here’s my review policy.
In order to work with Microsoft’s consoles, wireless headsets need special tech licensed from the platform holder, unlike the PS4 and Switch which will both output stereo audio to many generic USB devices. Xbox wireless headsets often cost more than others on the market, because of the extra licensing and hardware costs involved. The connection uses a Microsoft-proprietary variant of Wi-Fi Direct.
Peripheral companies employ one of two different designs for their official Xbox headsets. They either incorporate an Xbox Wireless chip directly into the hardware, or use a licensed USB dongle that the console thinks is a wired controller.
The CloudX Flight uses the latter option. They’re near-identical in terms of audio quality and latency performance. However, the integrated chip method lets you turn on the console directly with your headset and see how much battery life remains, both features I missed here. On the plus side, the CloudX Flight’s dongle means it’ll work on Windows 10 PCs without the need to buy an Xbox controller adapter.
In a vacuum, the higher $159 price point makes some amount of sense against the $139 price of the non-X Flight. However, that older model works wirelessly with PS4, Switch (docked), PC, and Mac, and has a wired backup connection for use with all other devices…though in wired mode the mic doesn’t work.
The standard Flight also regularly goes on sale for $99, making the price of this CloudX variant seem all the more silly.
SOUND QUALITY
The CloudX Flight has a natural, balanced sound profile, with the same clean consumer-friendly sound that other HyperX headphones are known for. It has some extra oomph in the mid bass, a vibrant midrange that’s more cold and prominent than some might like, and a bump in the treble that adds a little extra sparkle and should help you pick out small footstep noises.
It compares favorably sound-wise to the Cloud Alpha, one of my standards for headset audio. The Alpha sounds richer and warmer, and less clinical. Both are within the same general ballpark for sound quality. I think the Alpha’s punchier sound will appeal more to most gamers, but on certain days I prefer the extra bite of the Flight’s midrange and treble.
Since the headset only uses a wireless connection to the dongle, it’d be bad if the compression killed the sound quality. Fortunately, the dongle pumps out solid-sounding audio with no noticeable lag or interruptions. I had to walk to the other end of my apartment, about 40 feet away, before the connection died, and the sound quality was great till I got there.
Other competing Xbox Wireless headsets have built-in selectable EQ modes. You can find this feature on the Astro A20, the Turtle Beach Stealth 700, The RIG 800, and the Arctis 9X Wireless, just to name a few. It’s a shame HyperX didn’t include this option here, given the high price point and the locked-down nature of the headset. If you don’t like the default sound signature, and you want to kick up the bass impact or warm up the mid range a bit…you can’t.
Photo taken by Alex Rowe
COMFORT
True to its name and its legacy, the HyperX CloudX Flight is a comfortable headset. It’s a bit tight the first time you wear it, but the clamp relaxes after a session or two.
The ear pads use a slow-rebounding memory foam, though they’re more compact and thinner than the pads on the Cloud Alpha and Cloud Mix. The interior foam is soft in case your ears bump into the back wall of the cup, and the odds of that happening are higher than on many other HyperX products as the inner walls aren’t angled. I have minimal contact in there, but it’s still fine.
Up top, the headband pad is thinner than I’d like. It gets the job done, and at 288g the headset isn’t too heavy, but the headband pad isn’t as dense as I’d like, and it doesn’t use memory foam, squishing flat with the lightest force.
Adjustment range shouldn’t be a problem for anyone. I only have to extend it about halfway through its eleven click range, and I have a larger head. The cups also have ample rotation and tilt both vertically and horizontally, so finding a good seal is easy.
DESIGN/BUILD
The industrial design here is identical to the original Cloud Flight, but now with “Xbox Green” LEDs. Even the light inside the USB dongle is green.
In spite of its plastic frame, the CloudX Flight feels robust. The hinges feel pleasant, and during two weeks of regular use I’ve noticed zero creaks, squeaks, or pops. The plastic has a nice matte finish to it, and feels just premium enough for the price.
Most of the controls reside on the side of the left ear cup, but the buttons feel premium thanks to a soft touch finish. This sort of finish tends to wear out over time as it’s exposed to dirt and finger oil, but I still think it’s a good design choice.
The cable running between the two ear cups is exposed (and bright green), but fortunately it’s tucked into a channel and reinforced with thick rubber, so I don’t think it’ll get damaged at all.
FEATURES/BATTERY
HyperX rates the battery life at 30 hours, when using a medium volume and no lighting. That seems right in my testing…though as mentioned above, the integrated battery meter on the Xbox can’t read battery life from dongle-based headsets like this one, so you’ll have to rely on the headset’s power light to warn you when your juice is low.
If you turn the green lights on, battery life drops to around 12 hours, and you can squeeze out 18 if you toggle to “breathing” mode. Changing the lighting mode requires you to short-press the power button while the headset is on, and sometimes this didn’t respond correctly and I had to push it again. I spent most of my testing process with the lights off.
The game/chat balance function has ten different steps to it, and a beep indicating the middle. The integrated digital volume wheel on the back of the right cup is nice and smooth. In Windows, setting the OS volume control doesn’t do anything. Your system will pump out max volume no matter what, and you’ll have to set your desired volume with the wheel on the headset.
I wish that HyperX had thrown one of their trademark cloth bags in the box, considering the inflated price . They could have even put a bright green HyperX logo on it.
MICROPHONE
The microphone is a solid performer. It has some noticeable digital compression to it, but it cancels out background noises well. When I reviewed the original Cloud Flight in 2018, I didn’t like the aggressive noise gate applied to the mic. The noise gate is still present on this model, but toned down, which is great. I didn’t have to shout to get the microphone to respond.
You can activate a side tone feature by holding down the mic mute button on the left ear cup, and it sounds great. In fact, the side tone sounds better than the final mic output.
Here’s a quick mic test I recorded.
Photo taken by Alex Rowe
FINAL THOUGHTS
If you must have a wireless Xbox headset from HyperX, this is your only choice. I wish it offered more for its slight price premium over the standard model other than Xbox functionality, side tone, and green lights.
It’s also up against some stiff competition. The Astro A20 sells for about $119, and copies its feature set blow-for-blow, losing only the removable mic. It also has different EQ modes and larger, softer ear pads. And that’s just one of the many compelling alternatives to this.
The HyperX CloudX Flight is a thoroughly competent product that is exactly what it claims to be, and nothing more. It’s neither exciting, nor extremely flawed. The price is probably too high, and just a couple more features would have pushed it to the top of the pile.
If you’re a HyperX fan and you want their best Xbox-specific offering, well, here you go. But you can use any of their other headsets wired to an Xbox controller, and either save some money or get more features in the process.
A hypothetical CloudX Stinger Wireless, with Xbox support integrated into the hardware and a $99 price point, would excite me more in today’s crowded market.
|
https://medium.com/@xander51/hyperx-cloudx-flight-wireless-gaming-headset-review-e1f5af91bce3
|
['Alex Rowe']
|
2020-02-12 19:24:39.758000+00:00
|
['Gaming', 'Xbox One', 'Gadgets', 'Headphones', 'Technology']
|
Topic Modeling of Scientific Literature on Online Sexual Abuse Materials(CSAM)
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Topic Modeling
Topic modeling is an unsupervised machine learning text analysis technique capable of detecting word and phrase patterns within a collection of documents. The detected patterns are then used to cluster the documents into specific topics. It is a frequently used text-mining tool for discovering semantic structures within text data.
In simple terms, a document about a particular topic will more or less contain certain words particular to that topic.
The goal of this task was to collect text data for scientific articles, apply topic modeling to cluster the documents into separate topics, then create a visualization of this clustering using a Graph Network.
Data Collection
Before any analysis could be done, one of the first tasks performed was to collect data on CSAM. Articles were collected from a number of repositories including CORE, IDEAS, Research Gate, Directory of Open Access Journals, and WorldCAT. We shall be focusing on the articles collected from CORE in this article.
The data was collected via API. To make requests, we registered for an account with CORE and received an API key. We would need the API key and search terms to put in a request. Search terms used —
#query = "((internet OR online OR technology OR chatroom OR chat) AND (minor OR child OR underage OR children OR teenager) AND (abuse OR exploitation OR grooming OR predation) AND (sex OR sexual OR carnal)) OR (internet OR online OR technology OR chatroom OR chat) AND (predators OR offenders) AND (sex OR sexual OR carnal) OR (child sexual abuse material OR CSAM)" #query = "(internet OR online OR technology OR chatroom OR chat) AND (predators OR offenders) AND (sex OR sexual OR carnal)" #query = "(child sexual abuse material OR CSAM)"
Python code to collect data —
CORE extraction code
CORE data frame
Data Cleaning & Preprocessing
As with any type of data analysis, we had to first clean the data. A visual inspection of the data showed there were duplicate rows present. Duplicates were dropped based on a number of columns including the Title, abstract, and DOI. These were looked at individually and also in combination.
core_df = core_df.drop_duplicates(subset=['Title'])
We used the clean text library, a python package that combines a lot of cleaning steps including removing punctuation, numbers, and extra spaces, and changing text to lower case.
The data were filtered by checking that certain keywords were present in the abstract and/or text columns.
keyword filtering
This manual filtering method, however, resulted in many relevant articles dropped. A different approach was eventually taken. More on this later.
After the preprocessing steps, we have 35K rows in the data frame —
Cleaned text — Image by Author
TF-IDF Vectorization
In Natural Language Processing, the text must first be converted into something a machine can understand. The transformation into numbers allows us to perform mathematical operations on them. There are many text vectorization methods, in this article, we shall be exploring TF-IDF vectorization.
TF-IDF stands for Term Frequency Inverse Document Frequency. This is a technique where we assign an importance score to words in a corpus or dataset. The importance is assigned based on two criteria —
Term Frequency — This is defined as how frequently the word appears in a document divided by how many words there are.
Inverse Document Frequency —of a word is how rare or common the word is in the corpus. This may be calculated by taking the logarithm of the ratio of the total number of documents and the number of documents that contain the word. We calculate the TF-IDF score by taking the product of these two terms. The higher the term is, the more important the word is.
TF-IDF vectorizer
The parameter value max_features of 10000 refers to the max number of top features to consider. The ngram_range specifies we’re considering unigrams and bigrams. The output of the vectorizer is a 35000x10000 sparse matrix with 35K referring to the number of articles and 10000 the max_features.
Dimensionality Reduction
This is the transformation of data by reducing the number of dimensions of features in a dataset from a high-dimensional space to a low-dimensional space such that the low-dimensional representation still retains some relatively meaningful properties of the data.
We ran into some issues with fitting the data on the RAM for K-Means clustering. We opted for dimensionality reduction using Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) or truncated Singular Value Decomposition (on SKlearn).
As with any dimensionality reduction technique, to decide on the number of components to select, we checked on a number of a different number of components and selected that with the highest explained ratio.
Dimensionality Reduction
We chose a number of components of 2800 which had an explained variance ratio of 0.89.
K-Means Clustering
K-Means is a popular unsupervised learning clustering technique to group data points into non-overlapping subgroups. Clusters are defined as groups of objects that are more similar to other objects within their clusters than they are to objects outside of their cluster.
Similarly, we ran K-Means for a number of cluster numbers in a range of 2–80 and calculated the silhouette score for each. The cluster with the best score was chosen.
K-Means Clustering
Silhouette Score Plot — Image by Author
We chose 72 as the initial number of optimal clusters.
remove irrelevant topics
Upon manual inspection of the clusters, we noticed a number of clusters deemed for removal. We noticed clusters of documents not relevant to the domain, as well as clusters in a different language. The clustering worked as a really good way to filter out irrelevant articles.
word cloud
WordCloud Visualization — Image by Author
The word cloud above shows the most important words of each segment the first time the clustering was implemented. Cluster-ID 4, 10, 14, 18, and 44 for example, we notice are not in the English language.
Network Graphs
Photo by Alina Grubnyak on Unsplash
Network graphs are a way to show the interconnectedness between entities. The goal of this sub-task was to visually represent the relationships between the different articles. To achieve this, we chose to highlight two types of relationships, the different topics the articles belong to, and a numerical measure of the similarity between the articles. We decided on two different techniques to achieve this —
Cosine Similarity
This is a measure of how similar documents are to each other. It is used to measure the cosine of the angle between two vectors projected in a multi-dimensional space. This tells us whether the vectors are pointing in more or less the same direction.
Another common approach to measuring the similarity between documents is to count the number of words they have in common. There is a problem with this approach, however, the larger the document, the more words they are likely to have in common irrespective of the topic. Cosine Similarity works here as it captures the orientation of the vector and not the magnitude.
Louvain Clustering
Louvain clustering for community detection is an unsupervised machine learning technique for understanding and detecting communities in large and complex networks.
Louvain Clustering implementation
Topics
From Louvain, we get 5 distinct communities. A manual inspection of the communities suggest—
Institutional, Political(legislative) & Social Discourse
Online Child Protection — Vulnerabilities
Technological Perspective
Analysis of Offenders
Commercial Perspective & Trafficking
distribution of topics — Image by Author
Visualization
With Cosine Similarity calculated and Louvain Clustering implemented, we now have what we need to create a network graph. As mentioned, a network graph shows the connection between entities, an entity can be represented by a node (or vertice), and connections between nodes are represented by links (edges).
Cosine Similarity output is a number between 0 and 1 representing the range of no relationship to perfect relationship respectively. The more similar the documents, the stronger the links. The nodes can be colored based on the topic the article most identifies with.
The visualization was created using D3.js and hosted on Netlify’s free Github hosting service (refresh the page if it doesn’t load properly the first time) and may be found here.
Network Graph Implementation
Hover over the nodes to view the titles of the articles and of other linked articles. The nodes may be dragged for better visibility. To allow for better visibility, we have set a threshold for link strength meaning links with less than 0.3 should be excluded from the visualization.
Also, to prevent the nodes from straying too far from the visible screen area, we have set around a border and this is what forms the square border shape around the visualization.
A similar analysis was done for newspaper articles and the visualization for that may be found here.
Future Work
A number of different areas may be improved. TF-IDF has a number of limitations — can be computationally intensive for large vocabularies, and does not capture semantic meanings of the words. Baffle and confuse, for example, are similar in meaning but TF-IDF may not capture that.
More advanced methods include word embeddings, word2vec, and doc2vec(for documents as opposed to words).
A more state-of-the-art method to measure document similarity, for example, is using Bidirectional Encoder Representation from Transformers (BERT) using Transformers, an attention-based model to learn word embeddings.
One possible application of this would be to create a search functionality to query articles within particular topics within some range of similarity to a specific article. This could be achieved with the help of graph databases that are capable of storing data with the graph structure. The intuitive structure of graph networks allows one to make complex queries that are typically not possible with relational databases.
Neo4j Database — Image by Author
The particular data loaded at the moment is quite simple with some number of nodes, properties, and only one relationship (cosine similarity) defined. However, thanks to the flexibility of graph databases, it would be possible to add more nodes and labels, as well as define more relationships in the future or as the need arises. These relationships may be derived using machine learning, as well as other non-ML methods.
Neo4j also allows the installation of third-party plugins including, data science/ML plugins that allow implementing and applying machine learning algorithms within the database including Louvain Clustering and Community Detection.
References
Nasar Z, Jaffry S W, Malik M K (2018) Information extraction from scientific articles: a survey http://faculty.pucit.edu.pk/swjaffry/rpr/Scientometrics18InformationMining.pdf
Stecanella R (2017)The Beginner’s Guide to Text Vectorization https://monkeylearn.com/blog/beginners-guide-text-vectorization/
van der Maaten, Laurens; Postma, Eric; van den Herik, Jaap (2009) Dimensionality Reduction: A Comparative Review https://members.loria.fr/moberger/Enseignement/AVR/Exposes/TR_Dimensiereductie.pdf
Pantola P (2018) Natural Language Processing: Text Data Vectorization https://medium.com/@paritosh_30025/natural-language-processing-text-data-vectorization-af2520529cf7
Prabhakaran S (2019) Cosine Similarity — Understanding the math and how it works https://www.machinelearningplus.com/nlp/cosine-similarity/
Bostock M (2017) Force-Directed Graph https://observablehq.com/@d3/force-directed-graph
Raghunathan D (2020) NLP in Python- Vectorizing https://towardsdatascience.com/nlp-in-python-vectorizing-a2b4fc1a339e
Jayaswal V (2020) Text Vectorization: Term Frequency — Inverse Document Frequency (TFIDF) https://towardsdatascience.com/text-vectorization-term-frequency-inverse-document-frequency-tfidf-5a3f9604da6d
Bach T (2020) Finding similar documents with transformers https://www.codegram.com/blog/finding-similar-documents-with-transformers/
Borad A (2020) NLP Text Pre-Processing: Text Vectorization https://www.einfochips.com/blog/nlp-text-vectorization/
|
https://towardsdatascience.com/topic-modeling-of-scientific-literature-on-online-sexual-abuse-materials-csam-749a3e42250b
|
['Sijuade Oguntayo']
|
2021-03-26 17:58:43.983000+00:00
|
['Clustering', 'Machine Learning', 'Topic Modeling', 'Naturallanguageprocessing', 'D3js']
|
Five Fascinating Ways to Say “I Love You” in Medieval Europe
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Five Fascinating Ways to Say “I Love You” in Medieval Europe
This is how people expressed their love in Medieval Europe.
Photo Credits: The Best History Encyclopedia
The words honor and chivalry are heard most of the time in juxtaposition with medieval Europe, with knights in flashy armor challenging people to defend their beloved’s honor. It was a time when everything was romanticized to the highest degree possible, be it religious fervor, romantic aspirations, loyalty to the crown, or war.
That is why so many of these stories survive the test of time and live today in our lives, as feats that might be considered impossible today since everyone is divided by mostly self-fulfilling desires, and society has progressed to strongly believe in putting yourself first and things like love, religion and nationality second. However, today I will focus on love in medieval Europe, and look at five fascinating methods that were used to express it.
1. The Ivory Comb
Perhaps one of the strongest amongst these methods would be the use of an ivory comb. Ivory has a pure white and smooth surface and is a very beautiful material that is often used to depict angelic beauty and was one of the gold standards of female beauty for a very long time. The Parisian ivory comb was crafted in 1320 and was decorated with three distinct scenes describing lovers in a garden. The acts the figures are seen doing and their body language describe the process of new love, and how it blooms into a beautiful flower.
It was a very popular method of communicating romantic desire amongst the aristocracy. The most intimate facet of this romantic gesture, however, was when a man combed his beloved’s hair in a private moment, a scene that is often depicted in King Arthur era romances featuring Gawain, Lancelot, and Guinevere. Although a small number of these combs survive to this day, those which do are in almost mint condition which proves that the people who received these gifts valued them highly.
2. The Maiden’s Knight
This piece of romantic love was presented by a maiden to her lover and was a horse saddle. It was too delicate to be actually used and was used as symbolism for a gallant knight fighting for his lover’s honor. Traditional methods of doing so in the medieval ages were usually a handkerchief bearing the mark or the house of the maiden and were given as a sign of patronship and love.
The saddle from Tratzberg in Austria shows the courtly figures of two women sitting beside a young, bearded knight, one sporting a falcon and the other holding a scroll, signifying wisdom and protection. The piece was made using a wooden frame, covered with rawhide and plates of engraved bone. The figures are intoned with a beautiful German subscript, which reads,
“I hope for dear summertime; wait — be willing in favor of me; smile, love, smile.”
3. A Tool of Trade, a Commodity of Love
They might not look like grand gestures, but mundane items with emotions and memories attached to them are often more valuable. Spindles were a common sight in medieval Europe, and scores of women used them to spin yarn for personal use and commercial purposes.
They date back to as early as the 12th century and are found in Oslo. The deduction that this simple household item might have been used to depict love was made from the inscription on one of them, which said,
“Nikulás loves well the woman called Gýrídr, step-daughter of Pitas-Ragna.”
4. The Staff of Unrequited Love
Talking of mundane items in medieval Europe, how can one forget the topic of unrequited love? It was even more of a popular source of perpetual heartache than it is today back in medieval times. A plain wooden stick was discovered in the ruins of Bergen in Norway from a wharf, and it has the romantic and moving inscription that reads,
“I love that man’s wife so much that fire seems cold to me. And I am that woman’s friend.”
You can almost see the picture in your mind of a lonely and decrepit man whittling away the tale and sorrow of his one-sided love story on a piece of wood, and we can often relate with the idea of impossible love ourselves.
5. Le Channsonier Cordiforme
The beautiful manuscript of love songs commissioned by a French bishop called Jean de Montchenu is shaped like a heart when closed but depicts two hearts conjoined when opened. It dates back to the 15th century and contains poems and songs from 43 French and Italian maestros of the time, who composed them with great love and care. In the third part of the manuscript, a lady in the arms of a black-robed man is depicted, which might be a hint to Jean’s own love affair which motivated him to commission the manuscript.
Although these ways of communicating one’s love and desire might seem mundane and rudimentary in today’s era, they were the great symbols of their time, and inspire us today to go above and beyond in our quest for true love. Which one was your favorite?
|
https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/five-fascinating-ways-to-say-i-love-you-in-medieval-europe-d468318777b0
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[]
|
2020-12-17 16:30:34.075000+00:00
|
['Relationships', 'History', 'Love', 'Culture', 'Medieval']
|
Author Interview on Booked 4 Books
|
Note: This interview was originally posted on booked4books.com
The world is so full of stories waiting to be shared.
The book cover of Manali’s latest book The Art of Being Grateful and Other Stories
DECEMBER 14, 2020
An Interview with Manali Desai
Booked4Books became a platform for the Digital launch of Manali’s latest book, ‘The Art of Being Grateful’ in the month of July. Now, with the launch of the paperback/hardcover version, she give us details about her book and a sneak peek into her exciting journey.
B4B:- For those who don’t know could you start by telling us a little bit about your latest book The Art of Being Grateful & Other Stories?
Manali: So, my latest book The Art of Being Grateful & Other Stories is a collection of 8 short stories (flash fiction rather). These are a mixed bag of all genres like horror, thriller, romance, a slice of life, etc.
The book has been getting great reviews so far and has been liked and appreciated by people of all ages
At just 49 INR and consisting of 63 pages, it’s a quick read at a very reasonable price proving the ‘less is more’ mantra of the millennials.
B4B: How is it different from your other two books The Untold Stories and A Rustic Mind?
Manali: My first two books were completely different in the genre because A Rustic Mind is a collection of poems and The Untold Stories is a collection of micro tales.
Yes, but the thing common between them all is that they cover various genres in one book: as in they’re all the ‘complete package deal’
B4B: How do you come up with a book title?
Manali: There’s no magic trick to it. For my first book, I knew it already because my pen name A Rustic Mind was already out there and known.
For my second book, I took up the opinions of a few close friends who had read the first draft and were part of the entire process. One of my friends suggested ‘Ankahi kahaniyaan’ after reading the first thirty or so micro tales from the book and that’s what I started sending out the book proposal with, calling my book ‘The Untold Stories’ which was a literal translation of Ankahi Kahaniyaan.
In fact, a few choices were provided by the publisher too, once everything was in place. But, out of all options, The Untold Stories seemed to fit best so I stuck with it.
For my third and recent book, the title came after the final selection of the book cover. You see, the book is a collection of eight short stories and I always knew the title will be one of the stories from the book. Once, we had finalized the book cover, came the title which The Art of Being Grateful & Other Stories.
B4B: Your very first story from the book ‘Warned in Love’ is a thriller that left the readers at a curious end. Would you like to take that story further?
tory cover of Warned in Love, one of the eight stories in The Art of Being Grateful & Other Stories
Manali: To my honest and utter surprise, that story has been one of the most well-received stories in TAoBG and I have had my DMs flooding with requests to know what exactly happened in the story. Now, there’s a kind of pressure on me to take the story further and I don’t want to give false hopes and get ahead of myself here, but hopefully, soon, YES! there will be something to take the story further or add to it.
B4B: Your book has many different characters which one is closest to you?
Manali: Maanvi from ‘Self Happiness Above All’ is a character I relate to the most. Like her, I used to be someone who was constantly worried about ‘log kya kahenge’.
Other than that, I love Sumit’s character from ‘No Witnesses’ too. The kind of grey shades he has, it’s hard not to feel empathy for him. He loves Abhay, his son, but there are so many layers to his love that one needs to understand why Sumit feels the way he does.
B4B: Which one is your personal favorite story from the book and why?
Manali: My personal favorite is Love in The Air because it’s not just about Prerna’s first-ever solo trip. One has to understand that the solo trip is a metaphor for her coming of age and overcoming so many internal as well as external challenges.
Also, it was so challenging to maintain a gender-neutral dialogue throughout the story, which I enjoyed writing!
Story cover of Love in the Air, one of the stories from The Art of Being Grateful and Other Stories
B4B: What are the things that you feel, you are grateful for in life?
Manali: In the current world crisis that we are all living in, I’m only grateful for three things:
Having a roof over my head. Being able to have four square meals per day, without much physical or mental stress. Being able to earn a livelihood by doing something I like.
B4B: Your latest book is about short stories. Was there anything that took you by surprise?
Manali: You mean while writing or after the book was out?
Well, I am going to answer it both ways. While writing it, what took me by surprise was how I enjoyed the challenge of exploring new genres like horror, LGBTQ, and thriller. I had never written these genres and I quite loved trying these out.
After the book was out, what took me by surprise was the overwhelming response to the stories, especially to ‘Warned in Love’ (one of the stories from the book). I never expected readers to enjoy this story the most but hey! No complaints because I am enjoying the appreciation all the way!
B4B: Have you always wanted to be a writer?
Manali: Professionally, what I wanted to do, remained a big question mark till the time I was 27. I dabbled in various professions like being a Marketing Executive, a teacher a content writer, etc.
Though these jobs were varied, ‘writing’ was the one common thread between them all as all three of these had some or the other writing tasks involved.
So, no I did not always want to be a writer, but it became my calling, even though quite late in life. However, it was always a hobby. I used to write poetry and maintain a diary right from when I was a teenager. But never thought of turning this into a profession till the time I realized that it was actually something that could help me earn money and that it was the only thing that would give me true work satisfaction.
B4B: What inspires you to write?
Manali: Life experiences and everyday incidents, the stories of people I come across or hear about; these are my biggest inspirations.
The world is so full of stories waiting to be shared that I feel inspired to write about everything, be it small or big.
B4B: Do you judge a book based on its cover?
Manali: It’s a lie when people say they don’t do that. It’s actually like one of those lies which everyone knows about, but nobody admits to doing it. I have no qualms about admitting it though. My judgment or buying decision for a book is a three-step process:
Look at the cover Look at the blurb Look at the reviews
This process however is for those books which I haven’t already been recommended or heard/read about.
B4B: What was the best money you ever spent as a writer?
Manali:
Monetizing my blog. Every piece of reading I pay for (be it books, newspapers, magazine subscriptions, anything that helps me know and learn more about writing)
B4B: Do you believe that movies can be inspired by our real lives too?
Manali: Oh yes! They most definitely can be. And why not? Someone has rightly said that entertainment is a reflection of our society
B4B: There are people who criticize or judge us, how do you keep your self-happiness above that?
There are two rules that I go by on the professional front.
Does the work I do satisfy me? Does the work I do fetch me money?
If the answer to both these questions is in the affirmative, I don’t really bother much about anything else. And that’s how I am able to keep self-happiness above all and ignore those who judge and (wrongly) criticize my work. I used the word ‘wrongly’ here because I’m all in for constructive criticism which would help me grow professionally.
B4B: Why did you decide to get your book out in paperback?
Manali: A lot of people in my network and through social media platforms, contacted me after reading the reviews inquiring about the paperback version and then when I said it’s only available as an eBook currently, they would say, “That’s sad. I only read paperbacks’ or ‘Let me know when it comes in print and I’ll definitely read it’. This made me realize that my book was not reaching quite a few readers just because of this simple limitation. Hence, the decision to bring out the paperback.
B4B: Do you also indulge in the idea that reading a book from paperback provides ecstasy?
Manali: Honestly, I used to be that kind of a reader who only reads paperbacks, but seeing the ease and convenience that comes along with eBooks, I’ve now made my peace with both print and digital versions of reading all and any books.
B4B: How is paperback different from Kindle?
Manali: The only difference I see is the look and feel of it. Other than that, it doesn’t matter to me anymore.
Talking about my book The Art of Being Grateful & Other Stories, the major differences between the kindle and the paperback versions are these:
-Currently, A LIMITED EDITION CARRYING MY DIGITAL SIGNATURE IS AVAILABLE (only the first 100 copies will carry this signature)
– It has a foreword by the popular and bestselling author of multiple books, Kevin Missal.
– It has words of praise by many known authors, including a few lines on the book cover itself, by popular author, Ajitabha Bose
– Some of the story covers inside the book have been updated.
B4B: What are your views on audiobooks? Would you like to try them for your book?
Manali: I’m yet to explore that bit, both as a reader and a writer. But yes, I’m keeping my mind open to explore the option of converting my books into audiobooks.
B4B: What is the cost of the book in paperback?
Manali: The book is priced at 150 INR in paperback. It is also available in hardcover; that is priced at 250 INR.
B4B: Have you picked your next project?
Manali: Yes, I actually have. My next book is going to be a nonfiction book covering the life stories of 50 inspiring women who have broken many barriers to making a name for themselves in their respective fields of work.
B4B: Any parting words or advice for the readers.
Manali: Focus on the little things that bring you happiness, that’s where your calling is. And, read as much as you can.
Also, if you’ve read till here, please do check out my books on Amazon.
Buying links:
|
https://medium.com/@arusticmind/author-interview-on-booked-4-books-1b77f61f3d40
|
['A Rustic Mind', 'Manali Desai']
|
2020-12-16 13:33:02.830000+00:00
|
['Book Promotion', 'Interview', 'Authors', 'Books', 'Book Marketing']
|
My90’s Next Chapter
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TL;DR
My90 launched in response to crises between communities and police. Five years later, we are joining Axon to scale our work. Read our personal story of founding My90 and why we believe in Axon’s potential to shape the future of public safety.
Mustafa: My first memory of police is being falsely accused of shoplifting with my mother at a mall. The officer searched us in front of other shoppers. When people started to gather and look, he shuttled us through an emergency exit. I was four.
Mustafa’s family in the early 90's
My second memory of police is when my father led large community marches in front of drug houses where frequent gun violence occurred. There were threats against his life, so officers would close off the streets and protect the crowd. They would watch my father’s back. I was seven.
Every interaction is an opportunity. It’s also a risk. How do we create more opportunities? How do we reduce risk? How do we protect life?
Kona: Mustafa and I started building My90 in 2014, when Michael Brown was killed. Mustafa grew up near Ferguson. For him, Michael Brown’s death was familiar and tragic. America’s longstanding fractures were exposed.
The deaths of Sandra Bland and Philando Castile followed. With tragedy came an opening. The conversations between public safety leaders and community members began to shift. There was an opportunity to make procedural and legal changes in policing.
We decided to name the company “My90” when a sergeant told us that “we miss 90% of the story when the public and the police interact.” Then we heard the exact same thing from community leaders and organizers. We began to ask, how could we improve policing for everyone if we could uncover that missing 90%? When we announced My90’s launch, I wrote:
Most people never give feedback about our local police. The barriers are serious. Many departments offer just one option: filing official commendations or complaints in person during business hours. Community members often fear police retribution if they complain. And just speaking up isn’t enough. As one community member put it, “I have lots to say about the police — but I want to know my voice is heard, too. I want to know that it all means something.”
Then five police officers in Dallas were killed and nine others were injured. Another tragedy. People stopped listening. This time, a closing.
Mustafa: Protecting life is not only an action taken during a moment of potential violence. It’s what you do before the moment. It’s what you do after the moment.
It’s what you do to make sure the moment never occurs.
We built My90 to understand the tens of millions of interactions between the public and police. If we want to build a comprehensive public safety system, we must understand these interactions. The perceptions can be as important as what happened. We want to know, “Were certain procedures followed? Did you need a sworn officer to help solve this problem?”
Chief Eddie Garcia in 2018 using My90 at a San José community event
Kona: We founded My90 as an independent platform that facilitates conversations between communities and police departments. My90’s goal is to change how we communicate. We collect anonymous feedback via online surveys, analyze data to inform policing, and increase the flow of public information.
My90 has to serve both community members and police officers in order to succeed. We must be a trustworthy platform for community members to confide in us. Police departments must find value in the results. After years of research, testing, and learning, we have reached a point where we are ready to scale this work.
Us: We are excited to announce that My90 is joining Axon. This acquisition is an opportunity to grow My90 into an international, data-driven solution that improves police performance using community feedback about traffic stops, service calls and more.
We initially began working with Axon’s Community Impact Team last year. During that time, we have seen a surge in demand for My90 from public safety agencies around the country amidst intensified demands from community members for change. We are joining Axon because we want to be part of that change in the biggest way possible, which we think will happen in three ways:
Communities and public safety agencies are demanding we bring our solutions to their cities fast. Axon’s network of customers and partners is one of the largest in the world. The depth of expertise across Axon’s product, sales, and community impact teams is unparalleled. Joining Axon allows us to accelerate our impact. Axon offers unique advantages because it has traditionally been a hardware company that develops tasers and body worn cameras. As a result, it is one of the only companies in the world where My90 can combine community feedback, officer feedback and device data to determine best practices about issues such as use of force, de-escalation, and trust and legitimacy. This allows My90 to transform from a public sentiment gauge to a comprehensive public safety performance tool. Within Axon’s existing product ecosystem, there are opportunities to streamline the feedback process so that officers and community members find it easier to share insights and benefit from new data. The more we evolve beyond surveys, the better we can pinpoint opportunities to solve challenges in our cities.
We are more motivated than ever to make a meaningful impact. Last year, the deaths of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Elijah McClain brought us to a new tipping point, one even more momentous than what we saw in 2016. We believe that improving performance will benefit everyone.
Our family in 2020
This will be true even as policing continues to evolve. Cities that civilianize certain police duties (like non-violent 911 calls) will need this type of performance data in order to evaluate staffing, develop strategies, and respond to community needs.
We have our own family now, and we hope that My90 will help make the world safer and fairer for our children. We will continue to uncover the “90% of the story” that’s lost when police and community interact, because what we can understand, we can make better.
—
We would like to sincerely thank all of the police departments, city agencies, community partners, investors, advisors and supporters who have helped My90 reach this point.
View the press release here
|
https://medium.com/@kona.shen/my90s-next-chapter-c1083b40d21c
|
[]
|
2021-09-09 16:29:24.045000+00:00
|
['Civic Engagement', 'Community', 'Police', 'Startup', 'Public Safety']
|
Walk a Mile in His Shoes
|
Walk a Mile in His Shoes
A poem about perseverance in spite of weariness
Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
After
Sunset, beneath
Moonlight, I stroll about
Pondering life is simple
After all—
Too simple
For he who
Is weary but
Must keep on walking
Long into tomorrow.
©2020 MDSHall
|
https://medium.com/beingwriters/walk-a-mile-in-his-shoes-74b394045f9
|
[]
|
2020-08-31 10:54:56.556000+00:00
|
['Poetry', 'Life', 'Adversity', 'Perseverance', 'Poetry On Medium']
|
I Was Hanging by a Thread, Then I Knitted a Sweater
|
Photo by Giulia Bertelli on Unsplash
In high school, I felt terribly suicidal. I found myself in relationships that felt strained. I felt unloved and unimportant, always stuck in a fight with words both yelled and unsaid.
I was tired. I stayed up too late. I idealized and devalued my body, never feeling like I was at home inside of it.
I worried about the future. I tried to run from the past. I sought out validation in the wrong places, telling myself I was in control when I was not.
I was hanging by a thread. I didn’t know how much longer I could stand it. I reached senior year and yearned for college, counting down the months. I cried by the side of the road, using sticks to draw in the dirt and poke holes.
I listened to a lot of Bon Iver and The Fray, crying in my bed, crying in the shower, crying outside. I lived on the depressed side of Tumblr and forums in which I found others who struggled in similar ways. I told myself it was validation, when it was all really just triggering.
I looked for hope and grabbed it anywhere I could find it. I talked to friends. I talked to family.
I found quotes that encouraged me. Painted the quotes. Hung the paintings up on my wall. Looked at the paintings before I went to sleep.
I listened to new music. Taylor Swift, One Direction, even Fetty Wap. Watched YouTubers into the hours of the night, cuddled under blankets, trying to not let myself go hungry so I could sleep.
“It’s time,” I heard God say. “It’s time to recover.”
I worked on loving myself better. I worked on fighting for myself, for what I wanted, for what I deserved, for what was rightfully mine.
I was still hanging by a thread, but I was also beginning to knit a sweater.
As the sweater got bigger, I became more warm. I went to college, made friends, asked for help when I needed it, accepted it when it was offered. I went to therapy, letting a volcano flood out of my mouth. I didn’t want to be afraid anymore.
It’s not always easy finding a home in a dorm bed, especially when a boy stole a part of me in it.
But I would not let him unravel the sweater I had been knitting. I would not let him watch me collapse. I would show him who was in power now.
I wondered if that was okay for me to do. I questioned the validity in my experience and my emotions. Was I resilient or scared? Was I resilient or safe from the start?
I went back to therapy. Let the volcano rush out again. Said the words that tasted like gasoline. Played with the hair tie on my wrist. Listened when she said what happened to me was what I thought it was.
Several more boys would tear me down. Several more fights and traumas would occur. My experience with suicidality was far from over.
But even though my sweater stretched, the threads didn’t break. My progress was not undone, even when it felt like the seams were close to ripping.
I tried to love myself again and again. I found worth not in how others treated me, but in who I was, who I knew myself to be in my heart.
I helped others, finding my identity in advocacy. I tried to hear myself when I told others they were beautiful and worth it.
I kept knitting the sweater, and now it’s complete. Stretched sometimes, worn sometimes, faded sometimes, but certainly whole.
|
https://medium.com/inkmend/i-was-hanging-by-a-thread-then-i-knitted-a-sweater-3046704c94bd
|
['Ashley Broadwater']
|
2020-07-29 20:45:36.131000+00:00
|
['Life Lessons', 'Relationships', 'Self', 'This Happened To Me', 'Mental Health']
|
Employee Challenges for Going Remote
|
Employee Challenges for Going Remote
Individual freedom is a key underlying driver why many employees to go remote. A lot of employees would love to move to a place of their choice. And continue working for their current employer. But challenges abound for work-from-anywhere. Here are the top ones from my network:
Disinterested Leadership
Unless you are the business owner, your leverage is less. If the leadership has strong views against remote work, an employee can’t do much. The best option for an employee is to change employers.
Misaligned Policies
Employers who have adopted remote work have announced their relocation policies. As with anything in life, these policies veer from one extreme to the other. On the left, the compensation change is so high that employees don’t find it worthwhile to move. On the far right, employers pay everyone the same. And the best ones even provide a one-time cash bonus to offset relocation costs.
Secondary Offices
This reminds me of the Henry Ford statement in 1909. “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black”. Many employers are adopting remote work policies like this. “You can move to any place as long as you are within our designated secondary offices”. It is understandable why employers are doing this. They need a critical mass, hiring predictability, and coverage for specific locations. But this creates a constrained set of choices for the employees who want to move.
Lifestyle Infrastructure
My previous note, Removing our Tethers: Part 1, highlights these constraints. Solving these constraints can alter the city-suburb-rural demographics. The three biggest ones that constrain employees are:
Connectivity: Work in current times has high dependence on being available.
Education: The lack of highly-rated public schools takes out many locations from consideration.
Airport: Being close to a decent airport is a massive time-saver.
Spousal Career
A location that provides good career options for both partners is not always easy. But this is an easier problem to solve. At least the employer isn’t constraining the employee.
The best approach is to focus on solving challenges under your control. And work around the rest.
Next Note:
Employer Challenges for Going Remote
Related Notes:
Let’s Talk: If you have a true experience that resonates, please send me an email.
Original: https://www.visionpassage.com/employee-challenges-for-going-remote.html
VisionPassage Newsletter: https://www.visionpassage.com
#startup #founders #startupfounders #startupjourney #startupstories #startupsuccess #lessonslearnt #startupideas #remote work #work-from-anywhere #distributed work
|
https://medium.com/@VicKapur/employee-challenges-for-going-remote-8af8decc1da2
|
['Vic Kapur']
|
2020-12-01 05:41:25.933000+00:00
|
['Startup Life', 'Startup', 'Founders', 'Remote Working', 'Startup Lessons']
|
Don’t forget the most important screenwriting lesson of all: Have fun.
|
Photo by Austin Pacheco on Unsplash
"You know when you’re a kid and you get crayons and papers and just draw whatever you want and it’s just a bunch of messy lines, but to you it makes sense, and then they put it on the fridge? From that point on, you’re always trying to get back on the fridge, you start drawing things that look like something, like, the more it looks like a horse, the more chance you have of getting it on the fridge. We wanted to get back to that place before we were trying to make the fridge." - Ryan Gosling
This theme has been running through my life in multiple ways this week: this idea of getting back to being a kid, to re-discovering play, to getting back to the place before I was trying to "make the fridge."
What can you do this week just for the love of it? Not because of some potential outcome? What can you write this week that isn't influenced by all the "how-to" blogs and books and podcasts that have sucked the joy out of writing?
You can have a perfectly structured, perfectly formatted screenplay that checks all the boxes of what the industry is "looking for" and it will be dry and boring and dead on arrival if it is not drenched in your deep-seated passion.
Start with that passion. What is the movie you most wanna see right now that no one is making? What is the idea that you could disappear into for weeks without coming up for breath because you're so excited about it? A script that is fun to write is a script that is fun to read. Go play.
|
https://medium.com/scriptblast/dont-forget-the-most-important-screenwriting-lesson-of-all-have-fun-5a6a63640d64
|
['Hudson Phillips']
|
2020-12-07 11:03:16.217000+00:00
|
['Screenplay', 'Scriptblast', 'Screenwriting', 'Filmmaking', 'Writing']
|
After Trump Scolds GM For Reversing On CA Emissions, Automaker Sends Him Chevy Volt With “Extra Voltage”
|
After Trump Scolds GM For Reversing On CA Emissions, Automaker Sends Him Chevy Volt With “Extra Voltage”
CEO Barra: “For you, Don, we’re calling it the Chevy Jolt.” (Credit: https://www.cnn.com)
Donald Trump is about to get a “stunning” new car.
The gift was announced by General Motors CEO Mary Barra, after the president scolded her for reversing a decision backing his attempts to prevent California from setting stricter emission standards.
“We’ll be sending Mr. Trump a Chevy Volt this week with a lot of extra voltage,” said Barra on Wednesday. “We hope this will jolt the president into realizing the future of America and the world is clean energy, not gas or HOT AIR!”
He’s about to get some GM-assisted electro-shock therapy, and he needs it.
The Chevy Volt has been GM’s signature electric car but upping its voltage could prove to be dangerous to the president.
“Oh, he’ll be alright,” assured Barra. “Maybe the electric shock will give that defective brain of his a reset. Worst case, when he flips the ignition switch the 300-volts will send his toupee flying. No harm done.”
****
See more of my daily satirical posts here.
And here’s more Donald Chump mockery as we wait for him to vacate. Check it out.
|
https://extranewsfeed.com/after-trump-scolds-gm-for-reversing-on-ca-emissions-automaker-sends-him-chevy-volt-with-extra-461b62f31142
|
['Allan Ishac']
|
2020-11-25 21:00:18.718000+00:00
|
['Climate Change', 'Satire', 'Automotive', 'Funny', 'Humor']
|
Aragon Q1 Development Update
|
Releasing Aragon Core v0.5, The Architect, was the biggest development milestone during the first quarter of the year. For some more information on the actual launch, you can check the official announcement:
What was released with Aragon Core v0.5
It is worth noting that there is not a single line of code in Aragon Core v0.5 being reused from the previous releases. This release is a full DApp (served using IPFS); we have discontinued the native desktop clients for the time being.
Finishing the refactor to a new modular architecture.
Support for running first and third party Aragon apps completely sandboxed from the rest of the app. Also added support for running multiple instances of one app in an organization.
Brand new Onboarding process with different templates to create and launch organizations.
Brand new signer view that provides accurate, human-readable, descriptions of the transactions the user will sign.
New Voting app: binary-choice that can be used for performing arbitrary actions in the organization or signaling.
New Finance app: with economic abstraction, Aragon organizations can hold and manage ERC20 assets and ETH.
New TokenManager app: for minting, burning, and issuing normal and vested tokens. Allows for the creation of non-transferable tokens that can be used as a multisig.
All Aragon DAOs and apps in this release work with the latest release of aragonOS 3.
Brand new Kernel and ACL that replaces the old Bylaws.
that replaces the old Bylaws. Full organization upgradeability (every part of a DAO can be upgraded according to permissions in the ACL)
(every part of a DAO can be upgraded according to permissions in the ACL) New Aragon Package Manager as an Aragon DAO, that allows for seamless app upgrades (both contract and frontend)
For more information on aragonOS 3, you can check the full announcement post we released in January:
Two different audits were started in Q1 and we expect to have the reports published in the coming weeks.
We separated the JS library that is used to interact with Aragon DAOs to its own package, this allows for easily creating different clients (different UIs, mobile apps or CLIs)
(different UIs, mobile apps or CLIs) Loads the state of an organization , its different apps and ACL permissions from the blockchain.
, its different apps and ACL permissions from the blockchain. Cache state locally for quicker and leaner loads.
Support for aragonOS transaction pathing , which allows users to directly invoke an action on an app, even if they don’t hold the required permissions themselves, and it will calculate what needs to happen (e.g create a vote).
, which allows users to directly invoke an action on an app, even if they don’t hold the required permissions themselves, and it will calculate what needs to happen (e.g create a vote). Radspec integration for describing transactions in a human-readable form.
for describing transactions in a human-readable form. Aragon ID integration for identity management.
Safer alternative to Ethereum’s natspec.
Basic DSL (Domain Specific Language) for describing and computing the side effects of transactions.
(Domain Specific Language) for describing and computing the side effects of transactions. Calls to arbitrary contracts (e.g. getting the token symbol from a token address)
(e.g. getting the token symbol from a token address) Basic math arithmetic operations.
ABI is baked in to the descriptions themselves, so no need to bundle ABIs for all of your contracts dependencies
First release of our CLI for developing Aragon apps . All Aragon apps that are part of this release were published using aragon-dev-cli.
. All Aragon apps that are part of this release were published using aragon-dev-cli. Create new Aragon apps from our provided boilerplates.
from our provided boilerplates. Create new repositories in APM and publish versions to those.
and to those. Implementation of IPFS and HTTP (dev mode) file provider to host app content.
Our design framework with React components that are used to build the wrapper and our own Aragon apps.
Implementation of new components, totalling at 24 components that have been released with this version: AragonApp, Badge, BadgeNumber, BaseStyles, Button, Card, CircleGraph, ContextMenu, Countdown, DropDown, Field, Footer, HOC, Header, IllustratedSection, Info, Input, LayoutGrid, Link, PreFooter, Radio, Section, SidePanel and Table.
that have been released with this version: AragonApp, Badge, BadgeNumber, BaseStyles, Button, Card, CircleGraph, ContextMenu, Countdown, DropDown, Field, Footer, HOC, Header, IllustratedSection, Info, Input, LayoutGrid, Link, PreFooter, Radio, Section, SidePanel and Table. External third party apps are already using aragon-ui for non-Aragon apps like tcr-ui.
Deployment
DApps that can be shut down by shutting down a company’s servers are not decentralized apps, just normal web 2.0 apps that use Ethereum as a settlement layer. This is certainly an improvement from using a centralized payments or database provider, but these apps could still be instantly stopped if a powerful enough actor feels threatened by it.
We feel very strongly about Aragon Core being a true decentralized app, resistent to censorship, no matter who doesn’t like a given organization or Aragon app, it should be up to each individual to decide whether they want to use it or not. This applies to Aragon itself, no matter if the team disappears overnight or if we are asked to shut down Aragon Core or a particular organization, we have architected the system to not have such power.
However, given the current state of the decentralized web infrastructure, we had to make some trade-offs to ensure our beta could be used by anyone with as little friction as possible.
aragonpm.com: aragonpm.com runs apm-serve which is our easy to use bridge from web 2.0 to APM. When requesting aragon.aragonpm.com, apm-serve fetches the APM package at aragon.aragonpm.eth , along with the latest version of the content from IPFS and serves it through HTTP(S). We will be working on making it easier to run apm-serve locally and not require using our server for this.
aragonpm.com runs apm-serve which is our easy to use bridge from web 2.0 to APM. When requesting aragon.aragonpm.com, apm-serve fetches the APM package at , along with the latest version of the content from IPFS and serves it through HTTP(S). We will be working on making it easier to run apm-serve locally and not require using our server for this. Metamask (and therefore Infura): we made Metamask the default, easy way to use Aragon Core. This results in using trusted nodes by Infura as default.
It is worth noting that during our testnet beta, there is certainly less at stake than once we go to Mainnet. We are working on ways to easily create trustless local setups for people to use Aragon Core without relying on any piece of centralized infrastructure.
Community Contributions
We always appreciate community contributions, so a big thank you to all the community members who contributed during Q1!
Open bounties
To incentivize more community contributions, we also have some bounties posted that are free for anyone to submit a claim to! We will also be posting more in the next quarter, so make sure to check back!
Tokens: ANT: 10.00
Tokens: ANT: 20.00
|
https://medium.com/aragondec/aragon-q1-development-update-b5525e9477c4
|
['Jorge Izquierdo']
|
2018-05-11 19:23:59.921000+00:00
|
['Development', 'Ethereum', 'Bitcoin', 'Blockchain', 'Open Source']
|
Hitler’s Plan to Kill Churchill Using Exploding Chocolate
|
Hitler’s Plan to Kill Churchill Using Exploding Chocolate
The Nazis are infamous for their murderous schemes and willingness to use any means necessary during World War II. In 1943, the war had turned sour for them. The massive gains they made in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were being chipped away, its navy decimated and the Battle of Britain had inflicted heavy losses on the air force.
With the prospects for a land invasion of the UK gone, the Germans tried a hilariously sneaky trick to sow chaos — killing Winston Churchill with deadly chocolate. Rather than using poisoned chocolate that would be harder to detect, the Nazis decided to use bombs with a thin layer of chocolate.
The bombs looked like a regular chocolate bar and would explode when one of the ends were snapped or pulled off — presumably by a hungry Prime Minister. The plan involved german spies placing the ‘chocolate’ in the dining room of the War Cabinet. The explosive treats were apparently designed to have a blast radius of a few metres, enough to kill everyone in a medium sized room.
You can guess how the plan unfolded. British agents in Germany heard of the scheme and alerted British intelligence. On the fourth of May 1943 Lord Victor Rothschild, an intelligence officer at Britain’s MI5, caught wind of it and wrote a letter to an illustrator called Laurence Fish. It read:
“We have received information that the enemy are using pound slabs of chocolate which are made of steel with a very thin covering of real chocolate.” “Inside there is high explosive and some form of delay mechanism…When you break off a piece of chocolate at one end in the normal way, instead of it falling away, a piece of canvas is revealed stuck into the middle of the piece which has been broken off and a ticking into the middle of the remainder of the slab.”
The letter remained hidden for 66 years, until it was uncovered by Fish’s wife after his death in 2009.
But the Nazis didn’t stop at exploding chocolate, they planned a whole platter of deadly treats. They managed to create explosive versions of:
Tinned plums
Incendiary eggs
Soap
Lunchboxes
Wine bottles
Chewing gum
Vegetables
Sardines…
The list probably goes on but we may never know the full menu.
Perhaps the UK was lucky in facing the Germans, one can only imagine what the French or Italians would have come up with!
|
https://medium.com/@mangobreeze/hitlers-plan-to-kill-churchill-using-exploding-chocolate-b9ee962aa2a2
|
['S Pats']
|
2020-11-21 20:54:38.626000+00:00
|
['History', 'War', 'World War II', 'Nonfiction', 'Society']
|
Italy’s deficit: a new recipe for the same old story
|
Originally published at nyta.us on October 12, 2018.
From the left: Vice PM Di Maio, PM Conte and Vice PM Salvini. Photo: LaPresse
The Italian government approved a new budget plan last month that shocked the stock market and started a heated debate among its citizens.
The plan sets the deficit target at 2.4 percent of the GDP, almost three times the goal of the previous administration. This makes Italy’s situation even worse considering that, in the first quarter of 2018, the country already occupied the second to last place in EU’s debt ranking.
Italy is governed by a two-party coalition formed by the Five Star Movement, a populist group created by a comedian in 2009 now lead by Luigi di Maio, and the League, Matteo Salvini’s far-right party. After winning the elections in March 2018, each insisted on their right to become Prime Minister. Months of negotiations eventually led to the appointment of Giuseppe Conte, an independent candidate, as PM, while Di Maio and Salvini settled as Deputy PM and Minister of Labour and of the Interior, respectively.
The budget plan is one of several promises made by both Di Maio and Salvini during the electoral campaign; Di Maio said that the extra deficit would enable the government to “erase poverty.” However, critics have quickly pointed at its flaws and possible negative outcomes.
One of the plan’s most controversial proposals is that of a universal basic income: a sort of unemployment monthly allowance of 780 euros for unemployed adults. To receive the monthly payment, unemployed adults must register at a job centre and accept one of the first three jobs offered by the centre. Therefore, eligible people would receive the allowance only for a limited period of time during which they are supposed to be actively looking for a job.
The guaranteed basic income was Di Maio’s warhorse during the elections, and it secured him thousands of votes. But its opponents claim that it will incentivize unemployment or encourage irregular work, because people could declare themselves jobless while working illegally.
Another innovation is pension reform. Italian citizens currently retire at the average age of 67. The new law states that, in order to retire, the sum of your current age and the years you have spent in the workforce must amount to 100. This will allow people to retire earlier, forcing the government to pay more pension checks.
Critics of the reform say that the burden of the increased national debt will fall on the younger generations. Alberto Magnani, an economic journalist for the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, said that “those that today are 10 years old will have to pay the state a higher amount than their parents did.”
Opponents also questioned whether the funds raised with the increased deficit would be enough to comply with all the promised reforms. Magnani said that the government hasn’t been clear about its financial plans so far, but that a quick analysis shows that the numbers don’t add up: “The only quantified measure is the basic income, for which the planned expenditure is 10 billions euro,” he said. “But actually, it appears that to implement the initiative the needed sum would amount to 60 billions euro.”
The budget plan is also contentious at a European level. The Italian government knew that the new deficit target would clash with the European Commission’s expectations of a planned deficit of no more than two percent of GDP. The Commission will analyze the budgetary plans from October 15 to November 21 and get back to the national governments. It is unlikely that it will approve Italy’s proposals.
Foreseeing this reaction, Salvini and Di Maio already declared that they would not surrender to international and financial pressures. However, following the EU’s severe comments, the Italian Prime Minister held a summit with his deputies and the Minister of Economic Affairs Giovanni Tria. They jointly declared that the deficit will represent 2.4 percent of GDP only for 2019, then gradually decrease to 2.2 percent, and eventually 2 percent during the subsequent years.
The question remains if this will be enough to please the Commission. “This is a step ahead,” said Magnani. “The deficit is not a factor that could determine a collapse in Italy’s financial accounts, and what matters is the final result. The first reactions were strong, but now we need to think straight and clearly”. The stock market, for example, had “a catastrophic first reaction to Italy’s plan presentation, so the immediate impulse was to doubt of Italy’s decisions and fear for a new Greek case. After the initial shock the values rearranged to their normal(ish) levels.”
|
https://medium.com/laura-loguercio/italys-deficit-a-new-recipe-for-the-same-old-story-413e01892083
|
['Laura Loguercio']
|
2018-11-14 10:53:27.736000+00:00
|
['Italy', 'Pil', 'Europe', 'Politics']
|
Renovating Your Place? Maybe It’s Time For You To Invest In Carrara Marbles
|
One of the most unnaturalized building materials, Carrara marble comes in the premium segment. Carrara marble got its name from Italy, where it is exacted most commonly. The marble became instantly popular among builders, architects, engineers, and property owners for its greyish blue or white hue.
Atlas Tile & Stone, being the largest and promising marble supplier in Melbourne import a wide variety of this marble including Dramatic, Bianco and whiter Carrara Marbles in Melbourne.
Carrara Tile has a history for sculpting, is nowadays usually used in homes as countertops and floor tiles. The stone is principally valued for its clean and aesthetic features.
We modernize our house in distinct ways and sometimes the redecorations make the house something different from the others. Carrara marble is awesome and ideal to embellish both residential as well as commercial buildings.
However, there are some features or factors, one should consider before investing in tiles for the decoration.
● The refined and graceful white marble tile balances the look of both modern as well as conservative buildings.
● Reverse the aging of your building. It becomes quite tedious to compute the age of the building once decorated with marbles or tiles.
● Ideal for office and home beautification, Carrara marbles comes in different design and colour. They are also available in dark or transparent shade with a little touch of vein and twisted design.
We, Atlas Tile & Stone are the largest importer and supplier of natural stones In Melbourne.
Being one of the largest, prominent, and reliable marble suppliers in Melbourne, we supply attractive, strong, and stunning marble carving and patterns to our clients. Our marbles are ideal for your kitchen, dining hall, portico, floors, and passages. These marbles also resist the heat and help in keeping your surroundings cool, especially during the summer.
Our Dandenong showroom represents all the unique visuals of our stone tiles and stone slabs collections. Our professional and dedicated staff is always ready to deliver the best of their services and transverse you through the showroom for you to select the stone best suited to your pocket and requirement.
|
https://medium.com/@atlastilestone/renovating-your-place-maybe-its-time-for-you-to-invest-in-carrara-marbles-57fc8458368
|
['Atlas Tile']
|
2019-11-21 12:10:47.771000+00:00
|
['Home Decor', 'Home Improvement', 'Carrara Marble', 'Carrara Marble Melbourne', 'Marble Suppliers']
|
Ruby: Object Lifecycle (1)
|
Photo by Jason D on Unsplash
After going through a mock technical interview through Skilled, I realized then that there was a lot missing in my fundamental knowledge of basic programming. I’m going to start writing out what I currently know now and look back to it in the future. To start off is the object lifecycle in Ruby. One of my main struggles starting out were methods with undefined variables. This can be solved and once defined it can be utilized for later use.
What is a class?
In object oriented programming, a class is essentially a template with data that contains the information and behaviour. In a class, we can instantiate a new object and give it attributes. We can even instantiate multiple objects within a single class with new attributes as well.
Classes and Objects
These few lines of code in Ruby allows us to create a new class:
class Videogame
end
Creating a new class in Ruby essentially creates a new data type for us to add attributes into. Attributes are information that we provide for the given example of our new class. These attributes can be written like so:
class Videogame
attr_accessor :name, :studio, :genre, :price
end
We can then see that the attributes of a videogame contain a name, studio, genre, and platform. Now that we’ve told Ruby that information, we can then create objects that represent individual instances of our Videogame. We want to create a new Videogame and store that data-type. We’ve defined that it’ll have these attributes so now we can create a new object for it.
class Videogame
attr_accessor :name, :studio, :genre, :price
end videogame1 = Videogame.new()
videogame1.name = "Cyberpunk 2077"
videogame1.studio = "CD Projekt Red"
videogame1.genre = "RPG"
videogame1.price = "$60"
An object is basically an instance of a class. So now the videogame1 object is inside our program that we can interact with by giving it information. If you enter the object with it’s attribute in the console you can then see the following information. We’ll create an additional object inside that class with new attributes as well and also receive what we’ve entered:
class Videogame
attr_accessor :name, :studio, :genre, :price
end videogame1 = Videogame.new()
videogame1.name = "Cyberpunk 2077"
videogame1.studio = "CD Projekt Red"
videogame1.genre = "RPG"
videogame1.price = "$60" # puts videogame1.name
# "Cyberpunk 2077" videogame2 = Videogame.new()
videogame2.name = "Sims 4"
videogame2.studio = "Electronic Arts"
videogame2.genre = "Sandbox"
videogame1.price = "$60" # puts videogame2.genre
# "Sandbox"
Next, we can call on a new object using the initialize method.
class Videogame
attr_accessor :name, :studio, :genre, :price def initialize(name, studio, genre)
@name = name
@studio = studio
@genre = genre
@platform = platform
end end videogame1 = Videogame.new("Cyberpunk 2077", "CD Projekt Red", "RPG", "$60")
In this example, we’re telling Ruby that these are attributes that the user will be passing parameters into. The attributes can be anything that the user enters that can also be returned to us when called on. Notice how the videogame1 object is now all in a single line compared to before?
Next we can add a new method to our class.
class Videogame
attr_accessor :name, :studio, :genre def initialize(name, studio, genre)
@name = name
@studio = studio
@genre = genre
end def on_sale
# will return a boolean value
end end
We can define what will return true or false for our object. Let’s say, if a videogame is an RPG then it will return true and if not then it is false.
class Videogame
attr_accessor :name, :studio, :genre, :price def initialize(name, studio, genre, :price)
@name = name
@studio = studio
@genre = genre
@price = price
end def rpg_game
if @genre == "rpg"
true
else
false
end
end end
We’re comparing an object’s attribute here to see if a certain videogame is an RPG genre. We know that Cyberpunk 2077 is an RPG so therefore it will return true. However, if we were to have another object like videogame3.genre of “Sports” then that will return false since it is not an RPG game.
Debugging Errors
Let’s look at this code for example and see what’s wrong with it:
class Videogame
attr_accessor :name, :studio, :genre, :price def initialize(name, studio, genre, :price)
@name = name
@studio = studio
@genre = genre
@price = price
end def rpg_game
if @genre == "rpg"
true
else
false
end
end def indie_game
if @studio == indie
true
else
false
end
end end
If we run this code it will return an error because we haven’t defined a method that Ruby would understand whether a studio is an independent one or a corporate run studio. In the past when making something like this, it would fall on me to add additional attributes to define whether a studio is independently run or not. That way if we were to use “indie”, then it can return a boolean value. Otherwise, we’ll encounter errors since it was never defined.
On my next post, I’ll write about key concepts of Object Oriented Programming with Ruby and some pointers to avoid mistakes like I have.
_____________________________________________________________
Social Links
LinkedIn
GitHub
Twitter
Instagram
YouTube
|
https://medium.com/dev-genius/ruby-object-lifecycle-1-a29a62615b97
|
['Shirlen Detablan']
|
2020-12-24 09:22:46.318000+00:00
|
['Object Lifecycle', 'Object Oriented', 'Programming Languages', 'Programming', 'Ruby']
|
Mining Cryptocurrency Is Very Easy
|
Abstract
The existence of Cryptocurrency is increasingly recognized by many people in the world. This is one advantage of the blockchain technology that benefits can be enjoyed directly by the global community, and many other potentials of blockchain technology are still being explored and developed.
Generally, peoples are interested in cryptocurrency as an investment because the value of bitcoin continues to increase dramatically since a few years ago. The operation of bitcoin as the main cryptocurrency that is open-source is immediately followed by various other cryptocurrencies. All cryptocurrency operates on a blockchain basis. To operate, blockchain requires a Node that functions to verify each transaction. In general, every participant in a coin’s network is a node and performs certain actions according to the task. Nodes on blockchain networks are not bound and free, each node can join or exit from the coin’s network at any time. Without nodes, blockchain won’t work. For this reason, every cryptocurrency offers rewards for attracting nodes to join the coin’s network depending on the consensus method used by cryptocurrency itself
Generally, there are three types of consensus methods available, that is proof-of-work, proof-of-stake, and proof-of-service. but of the three available consensus methods, only proof-of-stake which results in a positive and profitable ROI.
Problem
On the other hand, New Altcoin (non-Bitcoin cryptocurrency) continues to appears. Generally, they appear with the mission of fixing bugs from the bitcoin network or offering new ways to mining and transactions process. But in reality, a lot of various problems that occur in Altcoin which continue to appear both existing or still in the ICO process.
Some of the problems that happening quite often are:
Mining is very difficult , Mining on cryptocurrency is a very complicated process, not only requires a computing device with a high specification but also the smartphone does not support to start the mining process. Most people don’t have high equipment and technical knowledge about the mining process on cryptocurrency.
, Mining on cryptocurrency is a very complicated process, not only requires a computing device with a high specification but also the smartphone does not support to start the mining process. Most people don’t have high equipment and technical knowledge about the mining process on cryptocurrency. High Transaction Fees , Transaction fees are a way to pay miners because they protect the transaction and as validation or consensus on the blockchain network. The most transactions can be processed without fees, but users who send transactions for free have to wait several days or weeks, even the fees can add up over time. In addition, transaction fees used in transactions only burden the network, and because these fees do not relate to the number of coins sent, the price may be very expensive.
, Transaction fees are a way to pay miners because they protect the transaction and as validation or consensus on the blockchain network. The most transactions can be processed without fees, but users who send transactions for free have to wait several days or weeks, even the fees can add up over time. In addition, transaction fees used in transactions only burden the network, and because these fees do not relate to the number of coins sent, the price may be very expensive. The Absence Of Ecosystem s, The absence of an ecosystem in a coin will only create a massive dump in the market. The absence of the utility of coins will make the value of the coin will go down and even make the value of the coin becomes worthless in the future.
s, The absence of an ecosystem in a coin will only create a massive dump in the market. The absence of the utility of coins will make the value of the coin will go down and even make the value of the coin becomes worthless in the future. Many Altcoin Projects End up Being a Scam, With various factors and reasons many altcoin projects that end up being a scam, so that many investors have suffered huge losses and it makes many investors have a bad experience of investing in cryptocurrency.
Terra Credit As a Solution
Terra Foundation has been present to solve all problems and challenges in the world of cryptocurrency. Terra Foundation has designed a cryptocurrency called Credit based on consensus Proof-of-Stake (PoS) to offer easy mining for everyone, PoS also offer payment systems based blockchain for a free and fast transaction, Credit is the answer to make cryptocurrency more accessible and flexible for everyone. In addition, the purpose of Credit is to facilitate online and physical payments on various different devices and is designed to be simple and relevant for anyone who has a basic computer or smartphone.
Technically, mining with Proof-of-Stake is faster and more efficient, everyone can do mining with easy. In essence, Credit uses Proof-of-Stake which allows each user to become a block producer. Proof-of-Stake also offers a scale relative to the percentage of blocks that can be confirmed with the Mining Rig itself, so the process will be adjusted to the number of coins owned by the user. Moreover, Proof-of-Stake also prioritizes the staking rewards according to the level maturity of coins.
Proof-of-Stake is a green solution because PoS does not consume large electrical energy. Generally, mining with PoS only requires lightweight computing devices, such as a home computer or even a smartphone device. So, anyone can do mining with easy and everyone will get the level of maturity of the coins that will be validated periodically.
Some other benefits of Proof-of-Stake are:
Coins that owned by holders do not need to be moved. The position of the coin will remain stored in the wallet itself so that the coin will be safe from attackers.
Reward from staking can be obtained by everyone, not limited to certain parties, so the impression is very friendly to everyone.
Easy management. The holders only need to save coins on the wallet client for staking and can stop the staking process at any time.
PoS able to solve the problem 51% attack because to be able to do this, an attacker must have 51% coins/tokens from a project that will require a very large cost with a very large potential loss too.
Future And Update
Credit has been listed on CoinMarketCap and available for trading
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/credit/
Based on Coinmarketcap, For now, Credit has an average price of $0,000020.
Terra Foundation has been decided to reduce total supply from 74 billion to 74 million, Credit will be swapped to the new Credit coins (Credit 2.0) on the 1st of August 2020. Swap ratio from old Credit coins to new Coins is 1000: 1 The exchange listing price of new Credit coins will be :
1 Credit = $1
Users/investors don’t need to take any technical steps because Swap will be automatic. Also, the new update will introduce TerraBit Masternodes, Other features also include desktop mining and easy Masternode management. This swap and update will give benefit to all credit users/investors. One of the main points is a decrease in the supply of credit in circulation, the limited total supply will increase the demand for Credit in the market. So that it will make Credit prices going up in the future.
Credit is different from other Altcoin projects, Credit has an ecosystem that will keep the value of the credit, not only offering easy staking with PoS but also the utility of credit as a payment system will increase demand for credit on the market, supply and demand will create an ecosystem that will keep credit prices stable at a high price and even possibly go up in the future.
How To Start Mining
The concept of mining of Credit is very easy and not difficult for everyone, it does not need expensive equipment and technical knowledge such as cmd, stratum, python, and does not need high CPU/GPU Specifications.
To start mining Credit, First, you need to have a credit wallet that can be download on the website https://terra-credit.com/wallet/
The wallet client supports Windows, Mac, and Linux Os. The wallet also supports smartphones, in Terabit you can install Apps for Android smartphones.
After you have a Credit wallet, Then you only need to buy some Credits on the market, and then you only need to store your Credit coins to the wallet client that already installed on your computer device or smartphone. You can enjoy a passive income without doing anything.
Conclusion
Credit is a consensus network that enables a new digital payment system. Credit is a decentralized peer-to-peer payment network that can be fully controlled by its users without any central authority or intermediary so that Credit functions like cash in the internet network. The purpose of Credit is to help people who don’t have a bank account or credit card. As a payment system, Credit can be used for anything according to what do you want, you can send Credit to friends and family (both local and overseas) buy goods online, receive salaries, and etc.
Also, Hardfork and updates will provide various kinds of benefits and advantages for everyone, a decrease in total supply will make the value of the Credit will be stable and have a high price, network update from Credit to Masternode will make an easier mining process, increase security, and make transactions faster.
Advantages of using Tera-Credit:
Easy mining , Most Altcoin projects, for staking coins/tokens (PoS/PoW) they just support wallet clients for computer devices only and do not support smartphones. If you don’t have a computer device, Terra Credit allows you to mining cryptocurrency by just basic smartphones. Terra credit provides a wallet app for android smartphones, so you can do mining easily without a computer device.
, Most Altcoin projects, for staking coins/tokens (PoS/PoW) they just support wallet clients for computer devices only and do not support smartphones. If you don’t have a computer device, Terra Credit allows you to mining cryptocurrency by just basic smartphones. Terra credit provides a wallet app for android smartphones, so you can do mining easily without a computer device. Fast Transaction , Credit has been designed with frequent block production rates, with thousands if not millions of nodes all producing blocks at the same time. Credit can handle millions of transactions in one minute so that every transaction with credit will be instant.
, Credit has been designed with frequent block production rates, with thousands if not millions of nodes all producing blocks at the same time. Credit can handle millions of transactions in one minute so that every transaction with credit will be instant. Low Transaction Fees , There are no high fees for sending or receiving Terra-Credit, and most wallet clients have made it possible to control the cost when making a transaction. Credit transactions are truly instant and fees equal to 0 credit, the reason is that the base fee for each transaction is 0,0001 Credit and unlimited payments can be added to one transaction.
, There are no high fees for sending or receiving Terra-Credit, and most wallet clients have made it possible to control the cost when making a transaction. Credit transactions are truly instant and fees equal to 0 credit, the reason is that the base fee for each transaction is 0,0001 Credit and unlimited payments can be added to one transaction. Payment System without limitation , As a payment system, Credit Allows you to send and receive money instantly anywhere, anytime, without limitation or any restrictions. Terra-Credit gives users/holder complete control over their money.
, As a payment system, Credit Allows you to send and receive money instantly anywhere, anytime, without limitation or any restrictions. Terra-Credit gives users/holder complete control over their money. Low Risk , Transactions with Terra-Credit are very safe and do not contain personal information. This protects all users from loss due to fraud or manipulation.
, Transactions with Terra-Credit are very safe and do not contain personal information. This protects all users from loss due to fraud or manipulation. Security and Control , As a payment system, Terra-Credit Users have full control over their transactions. It is not possible for sellers to make unwanted or unnoticed bills as can be the case with other payment methods. Payment with Terra-Credit can be made without including a personal identity for the payment process. This provides strong protection from identity thieves. Terra-Credit users can also protect their money with backup and encryption.
, As a payment system, Terra-Credit Users have full control over their transactions. It is not possible for sellers to make unwanted or unnoticed bills as can be the case with other payment methods. Payment with Terra-Credit can be made without including a personal identity for the payment process. This provides strong protection from identity thieves. Terra-Credit users can also protect their money with backup and encryption. Neutral and Transparent, All information related to the Terra-Credit currency supply stored on the blockchain can be seen by the public in real-time. This is very useful for people who want to verify their wallet address or transaction. There is no individual or party who controls and manipulates the Terra-Credit protocol because it is cryptographically secured. This makes Terra-Credit completely neutral and transparent.
Coin Specification
Algorithm: Scrypt
Block type: Proof-of-Work/Proof-of-Stake
Coin name: Credit
Coin supply: Total supply will be reduced from 74 billion to 74 million
Premine amount: will be 30800000 coins
PoS percentage: 100% per year
Last PoW block: block 10000
Min. stake age: 8 hours
Max. stake age: Unlimited
Coinbase maturity: 20 blocks
Target spacing: 60 seconds
Target timespan: 60 seconds
Transaction confirmations: 6 blocks
Node 1: 159.65.107.185
Node 2: 206.189.195.40
(Note: This Coin spec information may change after Hard Fork and updated)
Company HQ
Nelson Mandela Square. West Tower, 2nd Floor, Maude Street, Sandton, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2196
Phone: + 2711 881 5566
Email: [email protected]
Website: https://terra-credit.com/
Github: https://github.com/CREDIT-2-0/TerraCredit
Dev and Team
Terra Foundation is built by people who are professionals and have high credibility, developers and teams have experience and expertise in their respective fields.
Social Media
Facebook: https://web.facebook.com/terrabitofficial
Twitter: https://twitter.com/terracredit
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/terra-bloockchain/
Telegram group: https://t.me/terracredit
Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPuDgHaN3yKPP945YfLQkcg
Whitepaper: https://terra-credit.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/whitepaper.pdf
Writer: Mbahokey
Bitcointalk profile link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=978568
Proof of Authentication: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5260785.msg54874207#msg54874207
|
https://medium.com/@mbahokey/mining-cryptocurrency-is-very-easy-5a71a66e7e11
|
[]
|
2020-08-09 22:11:31.666000+00:00
|
['Cryptocurrency', 'Business Development', 'Investment', 'Passive Income', 'Mining']
|
Pluton — Liquidity Injection Programme
|
Dear Plutus Members
In 2015, Plutus was introduced to the Ethereum community. One year later, we hosted a crowd sale to issue our decentralised loyalty token, Pluton (PLU), and raised circa. $1M across nine days.
Plutus has conducted research and development; thoughtful coding; and developed established partnerships since its inception. Plutus now has thousands of members across the UK and Europe.
At the time, 20,000,000 PLU were created for our in-app Pluton Rewards programme, of which 850,000 (4.25%) was pre-sold via the 2016 public sale.
Our Pluton Rewards feature is now live and the 3% rewards users receive for using their Plutus Card is taken from the remaining 19.15m pool.
Whilst the initial crowd sale allowed us to develop a full finance application, it has not helped us ensure seamless PLU swaps on our peer-to-peer PlutusDEX, nor create token awareness on third party exchanges. We are now looking to list PLU across several exchanges and conduct some low-cap token sales to help in achieving these goals.
Exchange Listing(s) & Token Sale Partners
Having conducted due-diligence on numerous exchanges and token sale platforms, we have established long-term partnerships with five credible partners. We have opted for exchanges and platforms with reputable marketing teams and active user bases who may be open to joining start-ups such as ourselves.
We will conduct three micro-sales in October 2020. The success of these will enable a follow-up listing and token sale held several weeks later on a well-known Tier 1 exchange. This will be followed up with an additional Tier 1 listing before the end of the year.
The collaborations carry multiple deliverables by our partners, including joint marketing campaigns and co-branded cards. This will expose Plutus to a large audience and will help in attracting a new customer base.
Community Vote
With the aim of improving accessibility and awareness of PLU, Plutus is seeking to re-allocate two million tokens from the Rewards Pool to the Plutus Development Fund. The community will vote on whether they approve of the decision to relocate the PLU.
Current Tokenomics
There is just under 19.15m PLU locked in the Pluton Reward pool to be emitted to our customers. Every time a user spends with their Plutus Debit Card, they will receive up to 3% of the purchase back in PLU; the reward pool algorithm is designed to have a longevity of 100+ years. There is currently just over 850,000 PLU in circulation from the pre-sale. Since March, users have acquired 5,363 PLU from rewards which equates to $100,000+ at PLU’s recent highs, increasing the total circulating supply to ~855k.
We are looking to transfer 2m PLU from the 19.15m Reward Pool to the Plutus Development Fund approved by a community voting process. Once the re-allocation of 2m tokens has been completed, a portion of those tokens will come into circulation. Visit the Pluton Longevity Calculator for additional details on the longevity of our rewards programme, or our Yellow Paper for full details on the tokenomics.
Details of Upcoming Allocation
The token allocation will be divided into three parts.
15% (300k PLU) will be allocated to an initial sale.
35% (700k PLU) will be designated towards our PLU initiative and short-term development.
50% (1m PLU) will be locked away for two years in the Plutus Development Fund.
Initial Sale (300k PLU)
The 300k PLU will be sold across four external exchanges plus our own platform at a 40% bonus. PLU will be sold at a 30-day average price determined on the day of the listing.
For an unspecified amount of time, PLU can be sold on our PlutusDEX at whatever the listing price is on the day of sale, regardless of what it is trading at on external exchanges. This is a safety measure for new purchases in case market forces push the price down.
Note: Each of the above exchange listings will collaborate with market makers. Due to the nature of the contracts, the above listing partnerships can only be announced by the exchanges first.
Plutus Development Fund — Short Term (700k PLU)
Below is an outline of how the 700k PLU set aside for the Plutus Development Fund will be allocated.
Community Based Marketing (100k PLU)
This is allocated towards community-based marketing activities with the aim of increasing awareness of Plutus and PLU.
Further Development (300k PLU)
This is allocated to infrastructure improvements, as well as co-branded products/features with our exchange partners.
Governance & Legal Costs (50k PLU)
Funds derived from this will go towards operational and legal costs that are necessary within the financial sector.
Accessibility of PLU on External Exchanges (250k PLU)
This is designated towards further exchange partnerships throughout the year and market makers.
Plutus Development Fund — Long Term (1m PLU)
The remaining 1m PLU will be locked across two years for future development.
500,000 PLU will be unlocked on 30th September 2021.
500,000 PLU will be unlocked on 30th September 2022.
Note: We may move some coins back into the reward pool if the additional PLU is no longer required.
Plutus Roadmap
Here is a detailed explanation as to where any resulting funds will go towards.
Marketing
The contract agreements include obligations from all our partnered exchanges to exercise marketing campaigns on our behalf including digital advertising, email newsletters, community AMA’s, and a heap more. The raised funds will enable higher intensity campaigns by Plutus.
Longevity
The Pluton Liquidity Injection Programme will allow us to continue operations and help in scaling Plutus from a start-up into a business. This programme is essential to maintaining and elevating the Plutus app and card.
Product
There is still numerous features and updates that Plutus aims to develop, including the required infrastructure and services necessary to obtain a banking license.
Over the next year, we will be seeking to close additional partnerships with traditional investment and VC firms to achieve our long-term roadmap. This includes:
|
https://medium.com/plutus/pluton-liquidity-injection-programme-4b7670dae509
|
[]
|
2020-11-19 09:51:07.705000+00:00
|
['Blockchain', 'Bitcoin', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Announcements', 'Fintech']
|
Last Requests
|
Last Requests
Poetry
Image by author
We don’t unmask ourselves to each other
skin thickened by a thousand cuts
veins bled dry.
We become our facades
and retreat
impenetrable by necessity.
So I begged you,
“Come away with me to the desert
give up your heavy garb of stoicism”
Alone with each other we might speak
of wordless truths
of moths
silently seeking the globular moon
harmonizing with sage and crickets.
And here,
I lay my thoughts before you
small stones in the sand
for ants to interpret
with their Formic myth.
And I don’t remember being so bare and cast out
as I was in the fury of loves ocean.
Will you take me now?
My quivering old flesh?
Call me blade of grass
cut my trembling shaft
then bear my body away.
Call me snail or tortoise
I live inside myself
permanently masked
for the comfort of all.
Andrea Juillerat-Olvera 2020
|
https://medium.com/scrittura/last-requests-2dbd08fec5e7
|
['Andrea Juillerat-Olvera']
|
2020-12-08 10:22:53.439000+00:00
|
['Poetry', 'Desert', 'Scrittura', 'Poem', 'Solitude']
|
Warm Season’s Greetings
|
Warm Season’s Greetings
Warm wishes to you and your family for a happy, healthy, prosperous, and blessed holiday season! 🥳❄️☃️
May love, light, and peace be with you for the end of 2020 & all of 2021! 💛✨✌🏽
Here’s to merry minds, pleased bellies, joyful smiles, and warm hearts! 🧘🏽♀️🍯😁🔥❤️
|
https://medium.com/paper-poetry/warm-seasons-greetings-14f170292d81
|
['Melissa Bee']
|
2020-12-24 13:31:29.578000+00:00
|
['Paper Poetry', 'Holidays', 'Love', 'Gratitude', 'Poetry']
|
Germany: A Tale of Greenginering Country
|
Article by: Jerni Tania
Our world is a fantastic place! Can you imagine that it has already sustained everything living on it for a million years? Although, if we look closer, our presence brings more damages to its existence before, it does not mean there is no hope of making it a better place to live. Nowadays, some sustainable traveling platforms promote this idea: traveling while preserving nature, such as B’n’Tree.
Personally, as someone who comes from Indonesia, where the environment system is not as advanced as some other country, often time I feel tortured. I can not contain the feeling of being hopeless to see trashes everywhere, broke environmental systems that caused natural disasters, like FLOOD! Especially in the capital city, Jakarta. I wrote it in italic because I do believe there are some solutions to prevent this, the so-called: natural disaster from happening. Elaborating all the possibilities and solutions, then pointing out a finger finding somebody to blame will not automatically solve the problems itself.
Living in Germany for almost three years has changed a lot of the way I behave and think about the environment. I won’t say it is always fun and easy; there are some of the moments where I do want to give up being in this country. For example, the complexity of the system, but to adopt the idea of making this world a better place to live in, and to sustain its availability a little bit longer for our offsprings seems like a stable system other countries need to reflect on.
Environmental Policy helps me do it!
“The state of the environment in Germany has improved markedly since 1990. Nevertheless, considerable further efforts are needed. Priorities in environmental policies are set on climate protection, sustainable use of energy and resources, a further reduction of substance inputs to the environment and promoting the transition to a green economy”, as I quote directly from the European Environmental Agency website. Germany is one of the countries that take environmental issues at any stake to a severe level. For example, Germany is known among ex-pats for its complicated recycling system, and the dirty looks from your neighbor if you are not recycling correctly. The first time, I arrived here, and I have to sort out every trash I had, it took me literally half an hour stood in front of the colorful garbage can, tried so hard not to mess things up by accidentally put the wrong materials of waste into the wrong bin. It sounds exaggerating, but taking waste management seriously is an essential part of Energiewende (energy system transformation).
One thing that I pay attention to is alternative transportation here, especially during summer. Extensive public and bicycle transportation encourage fossil fuel independence. There are 200 long-distance bicycle paths cross the country in 70,000 km of well-maintained trails, and some cities, for example like Freiburg, have made bike-friendly traffic improvements as a part of environmental policy. When it comes to public transportation, the German system is relatively efficient, with 88 percent of inhabitants live near a bus or train stop, or so to say the distance is within walk distance. I, myself, live across the tram station with no complaint of having no car, because it is so convenient to access public transportation, and it’s only 1-minute walking distance to the nearest tram station plus 10 minutes to the city.
Hike, hike up to the Green Hills
Those two things I mentioned above only small examples of how Germany trying to the maximum limit on how to improve its environmental system. The awareness of environmental policy also being a natural part of the people who live in the country. It is clearly stated on European Climate Law point number 12, which established together by WWF and Green Peace, that given the scale and pace climate action required across society, which is meant the whole EU citizen and non-citizen living inside EU.
The dirty look from your neighbor like I mentioned above, is one of the minor attitude ex-pats will receive if trying to ignore the environmental policy itself. But, by this saying, the result is truly incredible. I have a lot of ultimate delightful experiences exploring the nature surrounding. I have never been a hiking woman before and made me want to climb up the hills and the mountain, and seeing the wildlife. So far, my most unforgettable experience with nature was in the zoo, SeaWorld, or even museum as I am coming from the big city. I did not have any authentic experience on how animals live in their natural habitat unless I read it on books and wildlife series on TV. Being in Germany, participating in some of the small hikes surroundings, make me appreciate the nature and environment even more.
Here and now, I realize that this earth is worth fighting for, maybe we can not prevent it from getting degenerated by ages, but surely we could help it to suffer less or helping it to sustain a bit longer. If you take a walk to the forest, seeing the different types of trees and small insects — even if you are lucky to spot a deer run across — your whole being existence knows instantly that this universe is truly a beautiful place to live. If we can make a small impact on changing the situation, would you not like to be a part of it? Sometimes small acts seem like nothing, but simultaneously we will see the difference after some years. Are you up for this challenge?
Keyword: sustainable, earth, green
Data source: WWF, EU
More Pictures IG: @mimpikreatiff
|
https://medium.com/@jernitania/germany-a-tale-of-greenginering-country-6ddb598e192a
|
['Jerni Tania']
|
2020-02-04 19:00:47.691000+00:00
|
['Germany', 'Sustainable Travel', 'Earth', 'Hiking', 'Green Energy']
|
My President Hates Me and I Hate Him. ACA under attack again.
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The only thing that I can surmise from Trump latest assault on the ACA is that he doesn’t give two shits about US citizens. Our leader, who is supposed to represent all the people of the nation is trying his hardest to harm my family and loved ones as well as millions of other Americans Insured through the ACA Marketplace.
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I get so stressed out every time a politician attempts to FOOBAR the ACA.
The ACA is working now, for the first time since the law went into effect there is competitiveness in the markets and the products offered reflect that energy. Of course there are issues with the law, it’s complex is was attempt to correct the screwed up health insurance products that existed prior to the ACA.
If your insured health insurance is through a group plan, don’t think Trump is not gonna fuck with you. The less properly insured citizens, the higher the health care cost to the group insured.
Health Care expenditures account for such a large part of the US GDP that nullifying the law could be just the push needed to send the economy into another nose dive. Add to that the manufactured stress that we are all living under and we can expect to see a continuing increase in US mortality rate.
There is no question that we need to expand health care insurance coverage; there isn’t a bean counter alive that would opine that reducing the number of citizens with health insurance is a good thing.
The stress is real, about ten years ago I was seriously contemplating divorcing my wife, divesting my wealth and impoverishing myself so that my health issues wouldn’t drag my family into bankruptcy. The other alternative I was looking into was becoming an expat. I would have to leave my family behind; the only other option was to depart this world.
Of course, I know I am not alone; millions of other citizens are being treated horribly by their President and the lawmakers that would see the ACA go away. If you’re not in an ACA plan and you are fighting against it, you need to search your soul and see if you can find out where you empathy has gone. if you an evangelical or a devote Christian, and you against the ACA on religious grounds, I hate to tell you, but your lack of empathy for those insured through the ACA is a pretty good justification for being turned away from those pearly gates. That’s right, you just might be sinning by harming others with your self righteousness. Sorry but G_d gets really pissed off when humans get all preachy and forsake the needs of others for their own needs. As an example I know Hell has a reserved seat for Trump and Mitch McConnell, the there are the zealots from the Heritage Foundation, Betsy DeVoss being one of them, they are going to hell, yes sir, hot, hot hot.
There is no latitude on this issue; if you are against the ACA, then you are against your fellow citizens. If you an American state or federal lawmaker then your action will bring death and destruction and great suffering to thousands of your constituents. If you’re the President of the US then, you are not my president the act of effecting the demise of the ACA should be considered involuntary manslaughter.
The ACA was a monumental accomplishment, not a surprise that Republican Conservative imps are trying to tear it down.
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https://medium.com/@allanrosenducat/my-president-hates-me-and-i-hate-him-aca-under-attack-again-61c52a63eb41
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['Allan Rosen-Ducat']
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2019-03-27 20:49:06.462000+00:00
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['Healthcare', 'Religion', 'Trump Administration', 'Trump', 'ACA']
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Loved and Lost… and Lost and Lost.
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Image by Alex Green from Pexels
“Congratulations. You’re pregnant!”
I was almost shaking with the revelation. Pregnant! Of course, we’d been planning on this, we were supposed to be excited but I was nervous and scared. Would I be a good mother? Would I be able to care for this baby? Why had I done this? Maybe I wasn’t really ready.
The one thing I knew about pregnancy: you’re not supposed to bleed. So mark my surprise when only a few short days after the nurse told me I was pregnant, I saw the one thing I wasn’t supposed to see.
I had a miscarriage.
When it was all over, I laid in my room with silent tears falling down my cheeks, wrapped in a baby blanket that was too small to grant me any warmth. I wondered if I would ever feel warmth again. I felt empty, I felt cold. I didn’t really know what to feel.
Pregnancy should be about life, but when a pregnancy ends in death before you even have a chance to know the baby, it just feels wrong. It’s not what you want to expect when you’re expecting.
Over the next two years, this experience repeated itself three more times. It’s not what a woman wants to expect, but eventually it becomes what she does expect when it happens over and over. Each time I got a positive pregnancy test I worried.
The emotions I had to deal with every time I experienced a loss were vast and deep and often confusing.
Sometimes I felt responsible. I thought “if only I hadn’t taken that hot bath, had that flu medicine before I knew I was pregnant, binged on all that sugar a few days before I lost the baby. If only I hadn’t done those things, it all would have been different.”
Sometimes I felt relieved that I wouldn’t have to start this big, scary journey of motherhood yet. And of course, I felt guilty whenever I felt relieved. And other days I just felt this deep, aching, gut wrenching sense of loss. Often I cried without knowing exactly why I was crying.
Jamie Anderson says it so perfectly I can’t think of a better way to express it.
“Grief, I’ve learned, is really love. It’s all the love you want to give but cannot give. The more you loved someone, the more you grieve. All of that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes and in that part of your chest that gets an empty and hollow feeling. The happiness of love turns to sadness when unspent. Grief is just love with no place to go.” — Jamie Anderson
I feel this to my core. They talk about loved and lost, but they don’t talk about loved and lost and lost and lost again. Enduring multiple miscarriages takes a toll on a woman. I didn’t tell many people about my losses, and as I’ve gotten older and wiser I wish I had been more open about it. It’s so hard to go through this, but going through it alone and feeling so cut off from others was not healthy.
After my fourth miscarriage I couldn’t do it any more. We stopped trying, we moved to a different part of the city. I went through therapy after a bout of deep depression, and I just took some time to heal, time that I hadn’t given myself before.
Almost two years after my last miscarriage we decided to try again, and I was so scared. We’d found a really good OB/GYN, I’d learned some things about my medical situation that could have been the cause for my previous miscarriages, so I took a nervous breath and tried again.
We got pregnant almost instantly. But seeing those two pink lines on a pregnancy test was not a relief. Questions plagued my mind: would I ever meet this child? Or was I subjecting myself to another round of heartbreak? How long would this pregnancy last? 9 months… or 9 weeks?
The doctor ran blood tests to check my hormone levels and said there was a certain hormone that was borderline low. He wanted to give me a prescription for it, and I was chomping at the bit to get that prescription. I was hopeful that this would be the ticket, that this would be the thing I needed to be able to carry my baby to term. And then, only one day after starting the medication… I began to bleed again.
I’d always wanted a fairly big family. I grew up with four siblings and I loved it. That night when I started bleeding, my husband and I went for a walk, and I laid in the grass under a tree and cried to him. I said, “I’m going to have as many miscarriages as my mom has had babies!” I was sad, I was angry. I was ready to give up trying to conceive forever.
But a miracle happened. I continued to bleed and spot for another two weeks but never bled too much. I never lost the baby. Twenty weeks later I was told it was a girl. Several months later I was getting kicked in the ribs, or being kept awake at night with hiccups that weren’t mine. Nine months later I held a tiny little child in my arms and as we looked into each other’s eyes we realized there was such a thing as love at first sight.
To this day, the babies I lost still touch my heart, and despite how hard it was to go through those losses, I’ve been able to help many, many other women who have had the same experiences. Motherhood is an incredible gift, and losing that gift before you even get to open it is incredibly hard. We are always touched by our children, whether we hold them in our arms or not.
Every day I wake up to the voices of my children and realize how blessed I am to have them. Yes. I have loved and lost and lost and lost. But I have also loved and loved and loved and loved.
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https://medium.com/@leann-forsyth/loved-and-lost-and-lost-and-lost-5e572f18d8cb
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['Leann Forsyth']
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2021-08-10 20:36:03.390000+00:00
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['Loss', 'Love', 'Mwc Death', 'Miscarriage', 'Baby']
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Untitled
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HOW CHATBOTS CAN LEADS GENERATIONS AND SALES:
If you are any person who is running a business on internet then this article is worth reading for you.This will take only your 5-6 minutes but can benefit you in millions so go ahead and give a read to this amazing article.
Are you tired and had spent hours to find a fact that why your business is not growing,why your website is not going to appeal customers and why your customers are not satisfied with your management although you are providing them good services then you are lacking to communicate with your customer in an effective way .Yes it’s a fact that communication is the main key to access towards customers.
Chatbots are the revolutionary invention in the field of artificial intelligence that can help your business to grow. A chatbot is an AI based customized software which is designed to communicate with the customer without any human intervention and supports the CSS and makes it more efficiently during peak hours and seasons.”
It is a basic and important tool in your business marketing.Chatbot was first introduced by Facebook in 2016 and in just short period of six months 4% companies implement this technology for their marketing purposes.A study shows that 80%of the companies will have chatbot program by 2020.Juniper Research claims that business and consumer can save up to 2.5billion hours through the use of chatbot by 2023,and they can also save their customer service cost by 70% of total.These facts are amazing.
A research says that most of your customers or clients leaves the website even before 1 minute after visiting because they don’t know how to use and where to go.Chatbot can resolve this and makes it simple if you have a chatbot program on your website this will start a conversation with the visitor “ Hey!what can I do for you?”this will engage the customer provides a basic information but an amazing fact is that this program can also give answers to the customer’s questions within a seconds.
This kind of strategy appeals to the customer,traffic on the website automatically grows and builds a good relationship between customer and management.Customer comes to know that you value your customers.A chatbot works 24/7 so you don’t need to worry about your customer service.Chatbot solves user queries and complains with automated responses all round to clock.
Getting stopped over calls and listening to customized response is the thing that can leads user to get frustrated but in a chatbot platform all these problems can be solved by live chats and timely responses without wasting of time and putting a load to customer service team.
All the above mentioned uses are just a start a lot more to know about this program..A chatbot is just like a jackpot for your business.This program captures the users attention,gains a basic data within a short span of time in most effective way and will going to show them products what they want to see and buy.This is not enough the gained data will be saved by chatbot and this software is going to re-use it in a future.
Saving a personalized data by customer service is the most hardest task to do and this process is the attention and time gainer still has the chance of error.If you have a chatbot platform this is going to be an easy task as it saves the personalized data and will use it for future purposes.In this way chatbot will not cut off user and management relationship even for a second and helps to stay connected with a user forever.
Your customer service team spends an hours to promote business through different ideas but chatbot can make your way easier in this aspect too.Whenever your business site has a new stock or offers chatbot program will notify the user about it as per according to their personal preference as it saves the specified data of an individual user.
This eliminates the human errors,provides better customer satisfaction,seamless user interface and more.All these ways you can lead a generation and increase your sales.Its the ultimate future!
A chatbot for website of an e-commerce business is the complete and full proof solution it will decreased your customer service cost helps you to compete in a business marketing, leads a generation.It can also improve your external environment as well as provide you help in maintaining a good internal communication.A chatbot is a solution of all.
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https://medium.com/@areebahidayat135/untitled-1664e2957cb7
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[]
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2020-12-24 18:57:31.155000+00:00
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['Chatbots For Business', 'Future Of Work', 'Need To Know']
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Importance of keywords in resume. Broadly, if you look at the literature…
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Broadly, if you look at the literature on the internet, a resume is defined in two ways. The most common definition is one from Wikipedia that is which defines a resume as a document created and used by a person to present their background, skills, and accomplishments. If you look at the oxford dictionary, it defines resume as a noun, and a written record of your education and the jobs you have done, that you send when you are applying for a job. Now, this bookish definition of a resume is right and there is a better way to define a resume
I am going to quote Marc Cenedella on this, who says that
“Your resume is a professional advertisement targeted towards your future boss, to land an interview for a job that can succeed in”
Now paying attention to the different parts of it, the first element, a resume is a professional advertisement, whose core job is to entice the recruiter to pick your resume and to interview you over others. The second element of the definition talk about who it is a target too, and the resume is about the recruiter, and it is not about you.
Hundreds of application posts on the website, Resume first filtered by recruiters in which many were getting filtered just because not having proper keywords or using the same resume for the different job profile.
What is a resume keyword scanner?
A resume keyword scanner is a software used by hiring sites for looking out specific keywords in the resume and then sort and It is also known as ATS.
What are the benefits of resume keyword scanner?
· Time-saving
· Filtering of unwanted candidates
· Data saving
According to the OGC survey, 66% of large companies and 35% of small companies use resume keyword scanners. So it is essential to use keywords which is the best match with the job description.
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https://medium.com/@s17shreya/1-importance-of-keywords-in-resume-bfade5a31327
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['Shreya Tripathi']
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2020-11-19 12:53:48.554000+00:00
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['Resume', 'Recruitment', 'Job Search', 'Keywords', 'Job Hunting']
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Thought i had a good relationship with the broker.
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Thought i had a good relationship with the broker. It started out with an “Oscar Ford” telling me that my initial investment of $2,500 will be matched by him. Less than one week later after he had manipulated the figures in my account to look like i’m winning he said that if i put in $10,000 i will get a contract to the effect of being 30% insured, and because he never looses and invests in small amounts my $10,000 will be safe. Plus i could withdraw that money at any time I choose with no issues. A few days later after he had my account reflecting a further $20,000 in winnings, I was encouraged to put another $10,000 towards another investment. This time my money is 100% insured, he said, and again i could withdraw at any time. My account got to around $47,000 in about 2 weeks and i needed to withdraw as we had agreed that I needed the $20,000 at a particular date and that I will be leaving the $27,000 to continue trading. At this time i stopped hearing from him because he had tried to convince me that making a withdrawal takes away the benefit of insurance etc. I insisted because i needed the money. My account went up again a little over $54,000. I started to contact support in order to make my withdrawal. After a while they became very rude, the person i was trying to plead with to give Oscar my message told me that i was giving him attitude. then as i continued to call their number, Mr Oscar Ford called me back to say he just came out of a 9 hrs meeting and was fired because he had lost a client’s $3,000,000. It was a totally made up story and I knew it. Before the conversation, my account was over $54,000. By the end of the conversation when i checked again it was suddenly down to $1.00.
This is a well laid out scam by the company, when you ask to withdraw they will make you fill out forms confirming that you give them the money hence there is no argument there. According to them this was what was needed to make the withdrawal. But even after filling out several forms I was completely ignored and finally banned from their company website.
It seems all everyone does is lie these days. I got scammed by them and their fake agents I also went and lost funds to 53options in the process but that’s a different story because i got to withdraw twice on their platform. I was so gullible but I was willing to get back what I had lost Recoveryexpertszero@gmail made sure I got a full refund from both companies. I really do not know how they do it, but I am satisfied with the outcome and I’m definitely never doing any of these again.
Note: the “zero” at the end of recovery experts is the figure zero but medium make it look like o.
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https://medium.com/@michealjunior777/thought-i-had-a-good-relationship-with-the-broker-7499d38b09e4
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['Micheal Junior']
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2020-01-15 06:35:41.273000+00:00
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['Bitcoincash', 'Bitcoin', 'Bitcoin Mining', 'Binary Options']
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What identity politics misses: It’s not an absolute
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In the past month, I’ve been accused multiple times of not doing enough to recognize my privilege as a white cisgender straight male as if that’s the biggest sin one can commit.
Just because society has drastically shifted in the past few years does not mean it is accurate or beyond critical reproach.
Defining yourself by your gender, orientation and race is a school of thought. It’s not a law of physics. In fact, it’s a very very recent way of defining the world and you will find very little literature or even mentions of intersectionality, micro-aggression, white privilege, tone policing, etc in English speech as recently as 2012–2013.
I was talking to an anthropology professor who said she doesn’t teach POC in her classes and wants to vomit at the sound of that. I have a master’s in public policy, an undergraduate in geography, where I studied conflicts all over the world. It’s a massive oversimplification to say that all white people have been oppressing non-white people forever and that’s the long and short of it. Suicide rates are highest in those living in the former Soviet Union and the biggest genocide of the mid-90s was in what was then known as Yugoslavia. Slavery was practiced by most societies before it morphed into a uniquely terrible institution. Oppression and brutal civil wars happened on the African continent as well as among the Japanese, Chinese and Mongol empires. Read up on the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda or the abolitionist experiment that created the war-torn nation of Liberia. I am equally aware of the 1885 Berlin conference where Europe created a map that split up Africa in untenable ways and screwed those people over a million times, but things are complicated.
The idea of explaining the world through the lens of intersectionality where the “oppressed” can be placed in three tidy little boxes — women, LGBT, and POC — is at best an attractive over simplification. It frees people from having to think of complex policy situations and allows people to feel good about themselves without having to actually understand the world. It’s also a macroscopic measure that’s being used the wrong way to define good and bad, justice or injustice, poverty and wealth.
The costs are higher because those people who preach privilege and identity politics are out of touch with how the world works. If you believe people’s patterns of human activity and voting are based entirely in privilege, then you’re coming at those you wish to influence from a place of distance and alienation.
If you wish to help marginalized groups using that definition of marginalization, that’s amazing but there shouldn’t be such massive negative consequences for people who don’t subscribe to that school of thought. As far as I’m concerned, this way of looking at the world is a mistake and my heart doesn’t go out to people along that definition as it does people who are poor, immigrants (from any country), people afflicted by a natural disaster, or those bullied for their thoughts.
The justification but Groups A, B, and C have been bullied for centuries doesn’t satisfy me personally. What we should be concerned about is an accurate assessment of the degree to which these groups are oppressed in 2020 rather than a constant reckoning of and a balance that’s somewhat accurate instead. Otherwise you have atrocities like the decision in Oregon to over-award the black population in that state for Coronavirus relief.
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https://medium.com/@orrinkonheim/what-identity-politics-miss-its-not-an-absolute-7c3ce2dad4a9
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['Orrin Konheim']
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2021-02-22 04:42:18.132000+00:00
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['Cancel Culture', 'Wokeness', 'White Privilege']
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Donald and His Duckling Gang (1977) … Production Company
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https://medium.com/@lstrawimtnc/donald-and-his-duckling-gang-1977-production-company-56ca7f39bc37
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[]
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2019-09-01 14:45:18.940000+00:00
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['Startup']
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Visualization is Important for EDA, Why?
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Data Visualization
Visualization is Important for EDA, Why?
Importance of visuals for data scientists
Photo by Lukas Blazek on Unsplash
When we firstly look at the data in the pandas dataframe, we generally can understand columns’ characteristics. With the simple codes, we can see types of columns (.info), and other statistical numbers such as min, max, median, mean (.describe), etc. But, one of the most important points for EDA is to determine outliers and understand the trend of target and other features. And, it is super easy to see them with visualizations. In this blog, I will give some examples to show what we can define with simple and quick visualizations.
Outliers:
When I was working on the Tanzanian water well dataset, I realized that some of the locations in the data were out of Tanzania. The graph above helps me to describe this problem. It is super fast and easy to visualize the longitude and latitude of the water wells with a scatter plot and understand if the data has outliers or wrong values for corresponding columns.
Distribution of Features:
The graph above shows the distribution of the feature (water quantity of the well) according to the target. We can see the same results in the dataframe also, but when I visualize the distribution, it helps to see the overall picture easily and save my time to figure out the insights of data. Seaborn’s count plot is super useful for this type of graph.
Maps:
This map shows the location of the water wells. Each color represents the status of the wells as functional, non-functional, and functional but needs repair. We can do this mapping using the Folium library in Python. We can see clusters easily and learn more about the distribution of the wells according to status. Another good feature is that Folium is an interactive library, we can zoom in. For example, we can look closer to selected regions which has large clusters, even street by street. As another approach, we can choose only one label of the target which we want to focus more. For instance, the below graph shows the functional but needs repair water wells distribution;
Easy Comparison:
When we visualize the data, we can see lots of important things in the same graph. For example, I can compare weekly holiday sales according to store types in the same graph above, even we can see average lines that the red line shows the average holiday sales and the green line represents the average non-holiday sales. This is just an example, we can add many indicators to the same graphs for comparison.
Another good example of an easy comparison below;
This graph shows the weekly sales of the store. We have 52 weeks to compare, so we can sort them in the dataframe and look the list up to down. We can calculate differences between them, take averages, or do advanced statistical analysis with this dataframe. But, for the first insight, visualizations help us to see everything in the same place and give the opportunity to a quick comparison.
Last example for comparison;
Box plots are super useful to see the minimum, first quartile, median, third quartile, and maximum values and compare different labels according to these statistical values.
Peak points of Time Series:
When we look at the stock prices or sales data of the stores, we have to focus on extreme changes such as peak points or lowest points. The graph above shows the average weekly sale of the retail store. When we visualize this data, it is obviously seen that the last months of the year have a different distribution than other months. It is not easy to see this distribution in the data frame.
There are many other reasons to use visualization techniques for EDA. For example, word clouds are useful visuals where the words are shown in varying sizes depending on how often they appear in your data. Like word clouds, there are many other useful visualization techniques to see the features of the data and it is obvious that the first step before the modeling is EDA because we cannot model the data well if we do not have some strong insights about data.
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https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/why-visualization-is-important-for-eda-dc008390b81e
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['Ezgi Gumusbas']
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2020-12-15 19:34:55.403000+00:00
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['Seaborn', 'Matplotlib', 'Data Science', 'Data Visualization', 'Exploratory Data Analysis']
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Will Coronavirus Kill Snap (SNAP)? — Market Mad House
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Snap (SNAP) the owner of Snapchat shows that social media cannot always make money. Moreover, Snap’s revenues are declining because of coronavirus.
For instance, Snap Inc. (NYSE: SNAP) reported a -$310.61 million quarterly operating loss on 30 June 2020. That quarterly operating loss grew from -$286.36 million on 31 March 2020 and -$253.60 million on 31 December 2019.
Moreover, Snap’s quarterly revenues fell from $560.89 million on 31 December 2019 to $462.48 million on 31 March 2020 and $454.16 million on 30 June 2020. Thus, Snap’s moneymaking capacity is declining.
Snap Loses Money
Snap Inc. (SNAP) saw its quarterly common net loss grow from -$240.70 million on 31 December 2019 to -$305.94 million on 31 March 2020 and -$325.95 million on 30 June 2020.
Snap began 2020 with a quarterly negative operating cash flow of -$66.84 million on 31 December 2019. The quarterly operating cash flow rose to $6.28 million on 31 March 2020 and fell to -$66.55 million on 30 June 2020.
However, Snap reported a $350.38 million quarterly ending cash flow on 30 June 2020. The quarterly ending cash flow fell from $902.25 million on 31 March 2020 and rose from -$209.55 million on 31 December 2019.
In addition, Snap borrows enormous amounts of money. Snap reported a quarterly financing cash flow of $909.06 million on 30 June 2020. That means Snap borrowed $909.06 million in that quarter. However, Snap reported a $3.13 million quarterly financing cash flow on 31 March 2020.
Interestingly, Snap had $2.830 billion in cash and short-term investments on 30 June 2020. Thus, Snap can retain some cash. Notably, Snap’s cash and short-term investments grew from $2.082 billion on 31 March 2020.
What Value Does Snap Have?
Snap (SNAP) had $4.704 billion in assets on 30 June 2020. Snap’s quarterly assets grew from $3.899 billion on 31 March 2020.
Thus, I think Snap has little value for the owner of what Statista labels the 7th largest social media platform. To explain, Statista estimates Snapchat had 397 million active users in July 2020.
In contrast, the largest social media platform Facebook (FB) had 2.603 billion active users in July 2020, Statista estimates. Moreover, Facebook’s Instagram, Snapchat’s biggest direct competitor had 1.082 billion users in July 2020. Notably, TikTok a controversial Snapchat competitor had 800 million users in July 2020.
Statista estimates that Snapchat had 238 million daily active users in 2nd Quarter 2020. That number grew from 203 million in 2nd Quarter 2019.
I think Snapchat shows a social media network need will 700 or 800 million users to make money. Unfortunately, I think there is no way Snapchat could grow to that size.
Can Snapchat compete with TikTok?
Moreover, I think Snap (SNAP) and Snapchat cannot compete with TikTok. Notably, TikTok grew from no users in 2016 (the year it launched) to 800 million active users in 2020, Oberlo claims.
In contrast Snapchat launched in September 2011, yet it had 397 million users in July 2020. Thus, it took Snapchat almost nine years to acquire 397 million users and TikTok four years to attract 800 million users.
Observers think TikTok grows so fast because artificial intelligence (AI) operates it. To elaborate, people think TikTok’s AI can analyze a user’s viewing habits and identify the videos a person will watch. For example, if you always watch cat videos, TikTok’s AI will bombard you with cat videos.
Will TikTok Kill Snapchat?
TikTok could become a direct competitor to Snapchat because its owner ByteDance Ltd plans to set up an American company called TikTok Global. TikTok Global will have high-powered owners in the form of Walmart (WMT) and Oracle (ORCL).
Under the deal ByteDance organized to keep President Donald J. Trump (R-Florida) from shutting down TikTok’s US operations down. Walmart will own 7.5% of TikTok Global and Oracle will own 12.5% of TikTok Global.
TikTok grows at an astounding rate. Between 2016 and April 2020, Sensor Tower claims people downloaded two billion copies of the TikTok app from Google Play and the App Store two billion times.
Snap (SNAP) cannot compete with TikTok Global
I do not think Snap (SNAP) can compete with TikTok Global. Thus, I think a smart move for Snap could be to sell itself to TikTok Global.
To elaborate if it becomes part of TikTok Global, Snap could get access to ByteDance’s artificial intelligence and machine algorithms. Snap could add TikTok’s algorithms to Snapchat.
In addition, Snap could get access to cloud resources and money from Oracle (ORC) and retail expertise and cash from Walmart (WMT). Oracle could use Snapchat to distribute its business enterprise solutions, and Walmart could adapt Snapchat for retail advertising and marketing efforts.
In conclusion, I think Snap (NYSE: SNAP) has no value in today’s social media market. I believe Mr. Market overpriced Snap at $27.83 on 16 October 2020.
I think investors need to avoid Snap and examine social media companies that make money-such as Facebook (FB). Additionally, I think investors need to investigate TikTok Global when its stock appears. I think TikTok Global could make money someday, but Snap never will.
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https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/will-coronavirus-kill-snap-snap-market-mad-house-981110528061
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['Daniel G. Jennings']
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2020-10-18 18:26:15.606000+00:00
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['Tik Tok', 'Social Media Strategy', 'Snapchat', 'Social Media Marketing', 'Social Media']
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What the Apple Newton taught us about UX 27 years ago
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Application View
The proto view was the building block of the Newton’s base application. The Newton used a series of screens to display an application’s UI, just like we see today on mobile phones and tablets. The default view would have a title at the top and nav bar at the bottom.
In this example, there is a small pop up clock button on the left and a close button on the right. Since the Newton had a dedicated navigation area at the bottom of the screen, most navigation UI was towards the bottom of the application’s view.
Headers
You can add a header to the application. This usually consists of an icon on the left, some text, and a horizontal line that goes across the rest of the screen.
This helped display the title, a custom title, and could even have additional icon buttons for contextual actions.
For all of the forward-thinking that went into the Newton’s UI, there were no rules around how an application could look or feel. So most developers implemented custom looking layouts, which meant that things we now take for granted like a consistent location for the time, date, and notifications did not exist.
Folder Tab
Applications could also make use of a folder tab that went along the top of the view.
While this is commonplace now thanks to web browsers, back in the early ’90s, this was a new concept. The newton actually implemented this as a drop-down menu instead of the way we know of tabs today. To make use of the space, developers could also include the clock, which wasn’t a fixed UI element along the top of the screen like we have today.
In addition to the folder tab, developers had access to sub-tabs for jumping between data views in an application. Here is an AZ tab navigation example typical on the Newton.
Since the Newton was limited in how many pixels it could display on the screen with its 320 x 240 pixel resolution, designers had to cram in as much as they could. Here you can see that the tabs automatically increment two letters at a time since it wouldn’t be possible to display 26 individual tabs at a time. Some letters actually touch the border of the tab because there simply isn’t enough space to have consistent padding.
This wouldn’t acceptable with today’s UI design. Most likely, tabs would be missing to allow for scrolling left and right, so each letter would have the same spacing and padding.
Manu Bar
As we saw earlier with the default application view window, the bottom of the screen was reserved for an application menu bar.
There was always an information button on the left to display help pop-ups for users. Next was usually the font and keyboard input options. Then it was up to the developer what they wanted to display. Since there was no drop-down menu like you would have on a desktop computer, most actions were buttons in this menu bar.
When there wasn’t enough room to display all of the actions in the static menu bar, developers used a floating bar with additional options.
Finally, all applications needed a way of closing, so the exit button was always the last opinion along the far left of the menu bar. A lot of thought had to go into minimizing the actions of an application depending on what kind of buttons you used in the menu bar and how much space was available.
Buttons
Buttons are the building block of any UI, so it’s not surprising that the Newton supported several types of buttons from simple text to borderless icons.
One thing that was rare on the Newton was compound buttons that combined an icon and text. This was probably due to the limited space on the screen, especially when it came to action buttons in menus.
Input Fields
I could write an entire article on the Newton’s text input components. The most basic one was just a simple input field with a label no the left and a dotted line indicating it could be edited.
Because of the Newton’s unique handwriting recognition, there were some additional options that became available when access text input fields allowing you to toggle between script or the virtual keyboard.
Radio Buttons
The Newton had radio buttons developers could also include in their user choice options.
These radio buttons were minimalistic, using a dotted outline for an unselected option and filled circle for the current selection. Today, the dotted line circles would read as disable or not selectable, and I wonder why they didn’t go with standard circle outlines? Perhaps with all of the other think outlines, it would have been too difficult to stand out on a crowded screen.
Checkboxes followed a similar design with dotted rectangle outlines for unselected options and a small checkmark on top for selected.
Pickers
Pickers are usually a combination of a button and some kind of scrolling list. The Newton had support for pickers as well, and these often took on the appearance of what we would consider contextual pop-up menus that appear when right-clicking on today’s computers.
These pickers were always triggered by a button and could contain icons, text, checkboxes, and even horizontal dividers.
Based on the location on the screen, the picker would appear below, next to, or above the button.
The Mac was well known for its use of icons throughout the OS, so the Newton leaned heavily on clear iconography wherever possible. I like this example of a person, company, and group used in conjunction with the text to add more personality to the picker.
Finally, additional UI elements could be combined with pickers to create more complex interactions. In this example, there is a title, a list of text, sorting tabs on the right, scrollers below, and a close button.
Today this would be too much UI for a single picker, especially since the close button is redundant. Now we expect to close a pop-up picker by clicking outside of it or making a selection.
Modals
Modal and pop-up views were a big part of the Newton’s UI. These could be simple display screens telling you about the current application or show some kind of help message.
Modals could also promo the user for action or modify settings.
While a modal could contain most of the standard UI components, a typical application was only able to display one at a time.
Finally, the border, title, and close options were consistent across the OS.
Scrollers
It wasn’t particle to expect the developer to be able to display all of the content a user needed on a single screen at a time. So the Newton had a scroller that could be tied to lists for paging up and down.
Scrollers typically sit to the right of the UI component they control. Unlike desktops operating systems, these scrollers didn’t extend to the hight if the viewport.
While this may have been efficient in small lists, using these scrollers for lists taking up the entire screen was not ideal.
There was no “smooth scrolling” on the Newton. Lists refreshed slowly, line by line when you scrolled up or down, making this a chore in most applications.
Sliders and Progress Bars
Visually, sliders and progress bars were identical. The only difference being the handle on the slider.
One downside of the slider, and most of the Newton’s UI, was the size of interactive elements. In the case of the slider’s handle, it was difficult to click on even with the stylist. Components requiring dragging tend to be a bit frustrating to use, especially with the Newton’s slow redraw rate.
For progress bars, used in the battery gauge example, the slider’s handle was removed and managed programmatically.
Dividers, Titles, and Status Bars
While I touched a bit on some of the standard title bars an application could display across the top of the screen, there some additional UI components a developer had access to for breaking up the visual flow of a screen. Even back then Apple knew the importance of grouping UI together in order to create a readable visual hierarchy. All of these elements shared a similar design aesthetic stating with the divider.
The Newton UI used a lot of heavy horizontal lines to separate elements on the screen. The divider was unique in that it allows text to in the middle of it, unlike the traditional horizontal rule we use in web design.
The same design aesthetic applied to the status bar, which we saw in the beginning.
Unlike the divider which breaks around the text, the status bar’s icons sit on top of the line. This was a strange design choice and made these status bars feel a bit cluttered when a lot of options or icon buttons were in them.
Finally, there was an individual title that supported a small icon, text, and a line below the two.
I wasn’t able to tell if you had any control over changing the thickness of these divider lines. It appears that each component had a set line thickness, and it was up to the developer to place them according to what works best for the visual weight on the screen.
Fonts
The Newton had an impressive collection of built-in fonts. Users were even able to adjust the size of the fonts as well. In total, the Newton had around 12 or so fonts that were common on the Mac OS of the time.
Also, developers had access to similar font display options you’d expect today.
While some of these fonts were better than others, text elements in the core UI components all shared a similar font and set size based on the default design of the component. As far as I know, these could not be changed, and there was no way to increase the system font size for people without 20/20 eyesight. Overall, the UI fonts on the Newton were tiny to display as much information as possible on a single screen.
Everything Else
There were a lot of additional UI components I didn’t go into detail above but wanted to call out quickly.
There were different types of expandable and collapsible rolled lists as they called them:
Outside of accordion lists, there were scrollable images that were masked off inside of a viewport:
For tabular data and help with laying out content in a view, developers had access to tables:
And finally, there were several ways to visualize the date and time from simple calendars:
Along with analog and digital clocks:
You can start to see the early shift toward skeuomorphic design in their UI. The digital clock example is reminiscent of an old alarm clock radio that used number cards attached to a wheel to display the time. You can see this reference in the dotted line across the middle of the digits.
|
https://uxdesign.cc/what-the-apple-newton-taught-us-about-ux-27-years-ago-427c6be66a59
|
['Jesse Freeman']
|
2020-07-11 11:16:17.815000+00:00
|
['User Experience', 'Design', 'Education', 'Technology', 'Startup']
|
# 78: Africa
|
Gallmann, Kuki (1992). Ich träumte von Afrika, 97. (English version from Google Books)
Story behind the Passage
A few days ago I caught myself saying: “Covid is bothering me now.” That was the first time I really thought so. I believe, as soon as human beings see the light at the end of the tunnel (vaccines are coming), we want to get there as soon as possible. Or maybe I am generalizing. Maybe it is just me who thinks this way.
What I really start missing is travel. This year was the first one in my life when I only traveled abroad once. That was right before the outbreak of the pandemic. It was my first time to Scotland. That was it. Most of my friends and acquaintances did travel a lot this year despite or even because of the circumstances. For me, there was no reason. I did not even travel inside Germany that much. At the same time, however, I did not really miss it as much as one would think — given the fact that I am a frequent traveler in “normal” times.
This reflection about travel and my increasing longing to go abroad again made me look for a book about Africa in my shelf today. I had a period during my teenage years when I read almost every book, especially biographies, about people who grew up or emigrated to Africa. Well, that is not correct, actually. This was not just some period. I have remained a fan of books and movies about Africa until the present day. But for sure, my own life experiences would have been different had I not read and learned much about Africa when I was younger.
I cannot remember many details from I Dreamed of Africa. What I do remember is the intensity of the story. It is one of the most moving life stories I have ever read about a European woman moving to Africa. Gallmann lost her husband and her son in Kenia. Still, she stayed. It is her country. The ranch is her home. Even though, as I just read now, her life remains difficult (McConnell), there is no way that she could leave. I understand that. Maybe others understand it too. I had no idea that the story was turned into a movie. I will talk about the book — as always.
My Learnings
“Few things give me such a sense of fulfilment as building from nothing, with whatever natural materials are available, a space to live in, in harmony with the untouched landscape of Africa.” Whenever I pick a sentence that fully describes how I see the world, it is very difficult to add some sort of explanation or interpretation. The word “fulfilment” here really is what I feel when I build stuff from scratch. Actually, every book you write follows the same logic, even though logic sounds quite out of place in this context. Nevertheless, this experience that you can create something with hardly anything is so unique, so outstanding, that it automatically eases any wrong aspiration for perfection. If you start with nothing and you come up with something — that is incredibly much.
This especially holds true if you build something in the middle of “nowhere,” as some people might think about rural Africa. I am using quotation marks here because to me, the “untouched landscape of Africa” is not nowhere to me. It is really the center of the world if you love being in places where you feel that you are so close to nature that you are closer than ever before to yourself. This is how I read this sentence. It does not necessarily make me think of Africa, it makes me think of the desert.
I remember when I went to the north of Ghana for a few days, it was like a trip to a different country. The north of Ghana is very different from the center and the south. Well, that might sound funny because many countries show such diversity (just think of Israel). Still, to me, it was quite surprising to actually experience it, even though I had read about it before. This is unusual for me, by the way. Usually, I do not read much about the countries I visit. I go there first to experience everything and then I can read up on stuff.
In the case of Ghana, however, I had to use my last weeks in the country very wisely and I longed for going somewhere else — away from the Christian-dominated Kumasi area. And I did not regret it. Indeed, the north was very different. It is the Muslim-dominated region, more quiet and more rural. There is not much real desert there as we know it from North Africa. It is mostly savanna and the architecture with typical mud huts but also an impressive white Moorish mosque impressed me very much. I had never seen any buildings like these anywhere in the world.
Now I am starting to sound like a tourist guide author. That is funny. What I wanted to get at is simply that this scenery just came to my mind now when reading Gallmann’s sentence. Especially the mud huts always give me this feeling that you can build something purely with the material the earth gives you as a gift. It is all there and even after you as a human being interfere with nature because you are constructing something that would not exist otherwise, the result still blends in with the landscape because all of it is made with the same material — soil.
“It must be a work of love and understanding, and of humbleness for intruding with our presence in the silence and dignity of nature.” There are two words in this rather short sentence that have come to mean so much to me: “humbleness” and “dignity of nature.” Feeling humbled for me usually is related to experiencing nature. You do not have to travel to Africa for this. You can go to the local forest or just step outside and watch the sky. Wherever you are: there is some nature surrounding you. And the reason why I say humbleness is related to nature for me is simply that, the older I get, the more I understand that nature holds all wisdom. If we study the laws of nature, we understand how the world works.
With respect to “dignity,” I do relate the word to nature but especially to human nature. For me, dignity is something that we all need to fight for every day. I do not necessarily mean fighting for one’s own dignity. I mean: stepping up for protecting the dignity of others. No, I am not some wannabe Mother Theresa or Jeanne d’Arc. Still, it drives me nuts to see how the dignity of some people is being trampled upon. I am not even talking about people who are “officially” labeled outcasts of society. I also mean all the daily encounters with injustice and stupidity in which people are afraid to speak up and to protect themselves.
Well, all this might have to do very little with Africa. I am not so sure. I think, this insane love for Africa which I felt back then and which still comes back to me sometimes, taught me a lot about dignity and many other truly meaningful words in life. Even though I did not end up spending as much time in Africa as I did in other regions of the world, I have always been able to identify with people like Gallmann. Yes, there is always criticism involved when Europeans go to Africa to live some sort of Hollywood romance. Fine, so be it. It is correct that this is always a double-edged sword. Still, it makes me happy to read that Gallmann continued pursuing her dream of building her vision “from nothing.”
I just hope that more people in our society will learn this again — to build things with hardly anything. The first raw material that is needed for this is not even any natural resource. Neither does it take any investments or strategic partners. Building things from scratch requires just one thing at the start: imagination and the willingness to go through whatever hardship life has to offer.
Reflection Questions
1) Do you understand all this “idealization” of Africa which you find in books and movies?
2) Where exactly do you feel the “dignity or nature”?
3) Which countries/world regions did you preferably read about when you were younger? Why?
|
https://medium.com/@silkeschmidt-32637/78-africa-8bfc1fa986ed
|
['Silke Schmidt']
|
2020-12-19 21:07:12.217000+00:00
|
['Biography', 'Africa', 'Dignity', 'Covid Diaries', 'Travel']
|
Korean Aesthetic Fashion Terbaru untuk Gaya Kekinian
|
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://thread.zalora.co.id/korean-aesthetic-fashion-terbaru-untuk-gaya-kekinian-9b6da2e93dbf
|
['Wulandari Natlia']
|
2020-12-22 08:48:52.347000+00:00
|
['Trends', 'Style Guides', 'Fashion Trends', 'Fashion', 'Style']
|
New listing on KickEX: NEAR
|
New listing on KickEX: NEAR
Trade on KickEX
Dear KICK community! We have another cool news for you: NEAR — the token of the NEAR Protocol platform was added on KickEX exchange.
The NEAR coin is already available for purchase and sale on KickEX in the NEAR/USDT pair!
Russian programmers Alexander Skidanov and Ilya Polosukhin created NEAR Protocol, an open-source blockchain on Proof-of-Stake. It is a decentralized platform for creating web-applications. The project was launched only a year ago, but since then the company has grown from a 2-person startup to one of the most discussed crypto-projects of the year in which former employees of Facebook, Google, Nuatic work. They inspired Andreessen Horowitz and obtained funding for $21.6 million.
Alexander and Ilya are innovators who aim to create the Open Web. Their idea is that in the future a person can’t lose access to their data, even if the service stops working.
NEAR token is part of the NEAR Protocol ecosystem, which was added for transaction processing and data storage fees, launching validator nodes in the network through NEAR token staking, and conducting network management voting.
More advantages of NEAR:
The total value of the token reached $2.3 million; At the moment, the NEAR Protocol token is on the 53rd place in the CoinMarketCap rating; The creators of the NEAR Protocol were able to provide high throughput capacity, speed and good cross-compatibility for decentralized applications; Vitalik Buterin (the creator of Ethereum), as TechCrunch writes, admitted that the NEAR Protocol can make a serious competition for his project.
We are very happy to see our compatriots with a really worthy project on our exchange. And we are even more pleased that our users will now be able to buy NEAR on KickEX!
And don’t forget trading on KickEX has become even more convenient: on August 31th, the KICK Crypto Exchange & Wallet app for iOS became available in the App Store!
If you don’t have any experience in cryptocurrency trading, then take a training course at Kick Academy. You can also use our multilevel referral program.
Join the KICK community on social networks so that you don’t miss important news!
Telegram chat
KickEX Twitter
Anti Danilevski’s Twitter
Instagram
KickEX exchange
KickRef
KickICO
|
https://medium.com/@kickecosystem/near-on-kickex-f36a7eafde2f
|
['Kick Ecosystem Official']
|
2021-09-01 13:48:00.465000+00:00
|
['Cryptocurrency', 'Kickex', 'Crypto', 'Near Protocol', 'Listings']
|
The Importance of Hash Maps
|
Applications of Hash Maps
One of the biggest advantages of using hash maps is that they provide a constant time of O(1) for search, insert, and delete operations. This makes them more suitable for problems related to finding duplicates, finding the frequency of items, and finding distinct elements.
1. Problems related to item frequency
Hash maps are useful for solving most problems related to item frequency. An example of such a problem is finding common characters in a list of strings. If an item appears twice in all strings, it needs to be included twice in the output:
Input: ["bella","label","roller"]
Output: ["e","l","l"]
To solve this problem, we can use two for loops to compare one string with a list of other strings. But the time complexity of such an approach is O(n²). To minimize the time complexity, we can use a hash map to store the characters as keys with the string number and frequency as a pair for value. We can then iterate the hash map to check for common characters found in all strings along with their frequency. This reduces the time complexity to O(n).
2. Dictionary
A dictionary is another common example where hash maps are used more frequently. If we were to make an online portal for searching the meaning of a word, we would be building a dictionary in the back end to store the word along with its meaning. When a user searches for a word, it uses the find hash function to retrieve its meaning.
3. File systems
Hash maps are used to link the file name with the path of the file. To store the correspondence between the file name and path and the physical location of that file on the disk, the system uses a map. That map is usually implemented as a hash table.
4. Password verification
Consider a web application that allows user login and authentication when a user enters their username and password. In most modern systems, the username and password are not sent as plain text to the back-end server for authentication. Instead, they are encoded as a hash value and sent to the server. The server then checks the received hash value with the stored hash value. If there is a match, the user is allowed to log in. Special cryptographic functions are used for this purpose, so the user is secure.
5. Storage optimization in the cloud
Dropbox uses hash tables for storage optimization in the cloud. Suppose there are multiple users who upload the same video to their Dropbox accounts. Since storing multiple copies of the same video will consume too much storage, Dropbox stores a single copy of the file with the link provided to each user for access. When a new user uploads the same file, Dropbox computes the hash value for the file. If it matches the value stored in the hash table, the user is returned the link to the file.
6. Compiler operation
To identify the keywords in a programming language, the compiler stores them in a hash table. The compiler then checks the program with the hash table to verify if the program syntax is correct.
|
https://medium.com/better-programming/the-importance-of-hash-maps-831884307806
|
['Supriya Sirbi']
|
2020-08-24 15:42:23.191000+00:00
|
['Data Structures', 'Startup', 'Programming', 'Computer Science', 'Software Development']
|
A Moment of Change: Challenges and Opportunities When Covering Hate Speech and Mis/Disinformation
|
Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, news coverage of hate speech and mis/disinformation has skyrocketed. What was once a sleepy beat led by freelancers and activists has become a central topic of coverage for almost every news organization. As the news cycle is transformed by coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic and coverage of the 2020 presidential election ramps up, this beat is again at a critical juncture.
To better understand the challenges and changes associated with this inflection point, we conducted 10 in-depth interviews with prominent journalists covering this beat. These interviews underscore critical debates in the field about platform accountability, the news agenda and news organizations’ infrastructure and support systems.
Key Takeaways
PLATFORM ACCOUNTABILITY AND AGENDA SETTING
Takeaway #1: The resource journalists most need is access to the data associated with social media and search platforms. Journalists need better data about what’s visible on platforms and who it is accessible to, as well as stronger tools for data management.
Stronger, more in-depth work on platform accountability is only possible with additional platform visibility and data management infrastructure to support journalistic work and research.
Takeaway #2: Since the bulk of news coverage has shifted to public health concerns, and because news organizations themselves are affected by COVID-19, the pandemic will be as significant a turning point for this beat as the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Further, our understanding of platform accountability will change as COVID-19 takes a stronger grip on the news cycle.
As the pandemic dominates the global news cycle, news organizations will choose to cover the pandemic at the risk of not covering other important beat-related subjects. Within the context of such a change, platform accountability reporting will shift from a techno-criticism framing to a public health framing as the pandemic persists across the world. There is also a greater likelihood that reporters on other beats will stumble onto pandemic-related hate speech and mis/disinformation as more reporters become COVID-19 reporters; this is one example of how the working practices of news organizations are being impacted as the pandemic affects workplace procedures and coverage strategies.
Takeaway #3: Because both the 2020 U.S. presidential election and COVID-19 require careful coverage of mis/disinformation, this beat is likely to become a permanent one.
Coverage of the 2020 U.S. presidential election will become as much a public health beat as it is a political one. This change to the news agenda will increase the need for coverage on this beat, inflame current political tensions, and possibly generate fatigue on the part of newsrooms and journalists. The prevalence and visibility of mis/disinformation in the 2020 election might also cause a shift in the current support and recognition of this beat.
Takeaway #4: As growth on this beat has skyrocketed, concerns about oversaturation are beginning to rival awareness of strategic silence and the risks of amplification.
Journalists clearly recognize the risks of amplification and the need for strategic silence, and have established reporting practices that account for these considerations. However, they also express concerns about unchecked growth in this beat. In an environment where most stories focus on the 2020 election and COVID-19, concerns of oversaturation (related especially to increased news coverage, changes in audience attention and the prevalence of mis/disinformation) have come forward as a possible challenge to work on this beat.
NEWS ORGANIZATION INFRASTRUCTURE AND SUPPORT SYSTEMS
Takeaway #5: Constant exposure to bad actors while covering this beat can lead to negative mental health consequences and safety concerns for reporters and their families.
Taking care of mental health and safety is essential for reporters to be able to perform this work. Oftentimes, safety concerns revolve around those close to journalists, e.g. their family and friends. Aspects of a journalist’s personal identity can affect how comfortable and safe they feel while doing their reporting.
Takeaway #6: There is a deep disparity in resources available between freelance and staff journalists, which can be seen as a reflection of larger problems within the journalistic field.
Freelance journalists have a much harder time consistently accessing resources such as editors, data tools, and security infrastructure- resources that are critical to being able to report on this beat efficiently. Some freelance journalists in this area also feel that their work is being absorbed by staff reporters in larger newsrooms, causing tension and feelings of job insecurity.
Takeaway #7: Although reporters specialize in hate speech and mis/disinformation online, they are still heavily dependent on traditional reporting methods.
While being online and on social media is a key element of the job, traditional reporting methods like attending events, collecting sources, and picking up the phone to talk to others are just as important on this beat. Training on this particular beat is oftentimes informal since the beat changes very quickly and tools are ever-evolving. The most technically adept journalists may not be the best mis/disinformation reporters if they do not also have a strong background in traditional methods.
Takeaway #8: Evaluating success based on broad impact measures rather than a single measurement is critical to doing productive work in this space.
Across the board, thinking about audience and impact were the most important considerations for journalists when deciding what to publish. Focusing on any one metric like SEO performance or clicks/shares is not adequate to measure impact. Reporting on those affected by the bad actors instead of amplifying the bad actors themselves, as well as choosing when to be strategically silent, are critical editorial decisions.
Recommendations
Based on the findings from our interviews, we’ve prepared a set of suggested actions for stakeholders in this space, including technology platforms, non-profits, academics, editors and journalists, as we collectively navigate this critical moment for news coverage and society as a whole. These actions are based on key needs and challenges such as navigating relationships with technology platforms, mitigating potential risks of this beat and furthering support systems for those working in this space. These recommendations are discussed in more detail in the report.
|
https://medium.com/mit-media-lab/a-moment-of-change-challenges-and-opportunities-when-covering-hate-speech-and-mis-disinformation-c7d0f1edc05c
|
['Mit Media Lab']
|
2020-06-08 17:02:09.008000+00:00
|
['Community', 'Data', 'News', 'Misinformation', 'Journalism']
|
Application update: Cryptology v 1.3
|
Hi, Сryptologists!
We’re constantly improving our mobile application and let us tell you what the new release brings.
Cryptology v 1.3:
— There are already many tokens and even more coming. So we’ve made a special interface to support lots of wallets and still stay easy to use.
— You may see address info in the deposit and withdrawal transaction history now. And there is also a Block Explorer link to check if everything goes as planned.
— There is a brand new withdrawal address validation for cryptocurrencies for you not to lose any tokens by mistake.
— You may now find a FAQ link in the Settings section. Check it please from time to time. We try our best to tell everything you need to know about the use of our app.
— And we’ve also had a bunch of Bug Fixes and Minor Improvements.
New version is already available for download in Apple Store and Google Play.
|
https://medium.com/cryptologyexch/application-update-cryptology-v-1-3-cb82f095e530
|
[]
|
2018-09-07 09:23:43.524000+00:00
|
['Ethereum', 'Bitcoin', 'Crypto', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Cryptocurrency Investment']
|
React Native App in 5 Minutes!
|
Starting a React Native Project can be a hard task if you don’t have much experience with React and/or React Native.
This article is meant to be a quick project setup, giving you a simple structure that you can use to build upon.
Creating the Project:
Install the React Native CLI
npm install -g react-native-cli
2. Create the React Native Project
react-native init QuickStartProject
3. Run the project on your Device/Emulator
//ANDROID DEVICES
react-native run-android //IOS DEVICES
react-native run-ios
After this 3 Steps, you should have a screen like this:
It’s now time for a fresh start, let’s clear our App.js and add Folders to our project, so we have a solid structure to start with.
4. Clearing our App.js:
import React from 'react'; import { Text } from 'react-native'; const App = () => { return ( <Text>Quick Start!</Text> );
}; export default App;
5. Project Struture:
In React projects, there isn’t a “Perfect” Structure as there are multiple ways to do it.
However, to make sure the project can scale and to avoid spaghetti code, it is important to respect a few rules:
Give every page you build a separated folder.
Keep your components as small and simple as you can, if you can break a component into several, you probably should!
Reuse your components.
Keeping this in mind, here is simple project structure to help you start:
src \
HomePage \
Home.js AboutPage \
About.js App.js
Thank you for reading!
|
https://medium.com/@nunes.pedroms/react-native-app-in-5-minutes-a55de4b7b527
|
['Pedro Nunes']
|
2020-12-09 02:45:56.450000+00:00
|
['Mobile', 'Mobile Apps', 'React Native', 'JavaScript', 'React']
|
Analyzing your data
|
BOX PLOT:
import seaborn as sns
sns.boxplot(x=”drive-wheels”,y=”price”,data=df)
Box plot gives us information like the five lines in each box from the x-axis represents the min value, 25%, 50%, 75% and the max value respectively. The lowest line is the minimum price and the top line represents the max price. In the first box, 17000 is the median price, 25% cars have price below 13000 and 75% cars have price below 22000. Max price is 36000 and min price is 7000.
SCATTER PLOT:
Scatter plot basically represents relation between 2 features in a 2D plane.
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
x=df["engine-size"]
y=df["price"]
plt.scatter(x,y)
plt.xlabel("engine-size")
plt.ylabel("price")
plt.title("Scatter plot")
CORELATION:
pearson coefficient — to check corelation between 2 features on the basis of corelation-coefficient and p-value.
corelation coefficient has +ve relation if it’s value is nearly equal to 1, has -ve relation if it’s value is nearly equal to -1 and no relation if it’s value is nearly equal to 0.
p-value shows strong certainty if the value is less than 0.001, moderate certainty if the value is less than 0.05, weak certainty if the value is less than 0.1 and no certainty if the value is greater than 0.1.
corelation coefficient close to 1 or -1 and p-value less than 0.001 is considered strong corelation.
import seaborn as sns
ax = sns.heatmap(df.corr(), vmin=-1, vmax=1, center=0, cmap=sns.diverging_palette(20, 220, n=200), square=True)
Corelation coefficient values of each feature with each feature is given above. The boxes that are more coloured are more co-related and hence must be used as a feature.
DISTRIBUTION PLOT:
This is basically used to check our results and visualize training output and test output together for better understanding.
x axis has y/yhat output values and y axis has frequency
import seaborn as sns
from sklearn.linear_model import LinearRegression
lm = LinearRegression()
X = df[[“horsepower”, “curb-weight”, “engine-size”, “highway-mpg”]]
Y = df[“price”]
lm.fit(X, Y)
Yhat = lm.predict(X)
axl = sns.distplot(Y, hist=False, color=”r”, label=”Actual Value”)
sns.distplot(Yhat, hist=False, color=”b”, label=”Fitted Values”, ax=axl)
We used linear regression to fit our training set. From the figure below, we can clearly get how the price gets changed. Also, we get to know at what price the frequency is higher or lower both before and after training.
Thanks.
You can reach me via mail, linkedIn, github.
|
https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/analyzing-your-data-e71489fea111
|
['Ashish Gusain']
|
2020-07-18 16:06:54.871000+00:00
|
['Matplotlib', 'Seaborn', 'Data Visualization', 'Data Science', 'Visualization']
|
The Subtle Art of Persuasion and Influence
|
At the most basic level, influence and persuasion hinge on arousing specific emotions in others.
Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash
Persuasion is the art of swaying others and winning them over to your ideas or proposed course of action. People who are persuasive or who have influence are skilled at winning people over and adjusting their presentations to appeal to their audience.
A couple of years ago, I was privileged to be part of an exciting start-up competition called RampUp Weekend Manitoba. The premise for this competition was simple, about 50 competitors pitched their business ideas to strangers. Competitors then tried to persuade others to join their team and transform their ideas over the weekend of the competition into a live business. Business ideas were then presented to a panel of judges for amazing prizes.
I had a business idea that aimed to tackle the scourge of fake news and bias and was able to pitch my idea to strangers. I ended up putting together a strong team consisting of a lawyer and a couple of software developers to put together a minimum viable product.
Although my team didn’t win the competition, it was a good exercise in using my social skills to influence and persuade others to my cause. I have been able to improve these skills since then and they have been vital to my professional success. It has been responsible for helping me to land amazing opportunities in my career as a consultant, win over new clients, expand my influence as a coach and add strong connections to my network.
Social skills refer to the skills needed to handle and influence other people’s emotions effectively. This may sound like manipulation, but it can actually be as simple as understanding that smiling at people makes them smile back, and can therefore make others feel much more positive.
People adept at influence are able to sense or anticipate their audience’s reaction to their message and are able to use this information to effectively carry everyone along towards an intended goal.
At the most basic level, influence and persuasion hinges on arousing specific emotions in others whether that is respect for your power, generating passion for a project, inspiring teammates to outperform a competitor or generating appropriate outrage over some unfairness.
People adept at influence can sense or anticipate their audience’s reaction to their message and can use this information to effectively carry everyone along towards an intended goal. Individuals with this skill are also able to use strategies like indirect influence to build consensus and can stage dramatic events in the right settings to effectively make a point.
The strategies used by star performers to persuade others include impression management, appeals to reason and facts, dramatic arguments or actions, building coalitions and behind-the-scenes support as well as emphasizing key information. Dramatic actions can often capture the attention and arouse emotion if well done.
“Dramatic” doesn’t necessarily mean having flashy visuals in presentations; sometimes the effect is felt through the most mundane means. For example, an outstanding parts salesman can impress a prospective client by spending the better part of the day using his product to fix a piece of equipment that had been purchased from a competitor. This dramatic demonstration of customer service can wow a prospect and get their attention.
Star performers know that sometimes a good argument is not enough to win others over. The ability to sense when other tactics are needed to persuade key decision-makers is key to superior performance. It is critical to know when logical arguments are falling flat and when more emotional appeals are needed. This emotional competence is a hallmark of star performers and is key to building influence.
Mediocre presenters
Without an accurate reading of how your listener is taking in your ideas, your ideas will be in danger of falling on deaf, indifferent or even hostile ears.
Do you find it difficult to connect with others? Do you find it difficult to connect emotionally with your audience? If you do, you will most likely find yourself at the bottom of the influence competency hierarchy. You may mean well but without the right approach, you won’t be able to get your message across.
If you rely too heavily on the persuasive effects of aids such as elaborate overhead projections or elegant statistical analysis of data, you will most likely miss the boat on connecting and influencing your listeners, your audience must be emotionally engaged.
Mediocre presenters rarely go beyond the same dry litany of facts, regardless of how flashily they are displayed or how elegant the PowerPoint presentation is. You have to take into account the emotional temperature of your audience, without an accurate reading of how your listener is taking in your ideas, your ideas will be in danger of falling on deaf, indifferent or even hostile ears.
No matter how intellectually brilliant you may be, that brilliance will fail to shine if you are not persuasive. This is particularly true in fields like engineering, science, medicine or law where entry is mostly based on exam scores and book smart. To get into engineering, law or medicine, you need to be highly adept at solving complex problems. But to make things happen, that’s just not enough, you have to be able to persuade.
What are the signs of weaknesses in persuasion and influence skills?
Failure to build a coalition or get “buy-in”. Over-reliance on a familiar strategy instead of choosing the best one for the moment. Stubborn promotion of a point of view or perspective regardless of feedback. Being ignored or failing to inspire interest. Negatively impacting those around you.
Photo by Start Digital on Unsplash
Building Rapport
Empathy is key for wielding influence; it is difficult to have a positive impact on others without first sensing how they feel and understanding things from their point of view. If you are poor at reading emotional cues and incompetent at social interactions, then you are likely to struggle to build influence. The first step in influence is building rapport.
Rapport is a connection or relationship with someone else. It can be considered as a state of harmonious understanding with another individual or group. Building rapport is the process of developing that connection with someone else or a group of people. Sometimes rapport happens naturally and you naturally hit it off or get on well with someone else without having to try. However, rapport can also be built intentionally and consciously developed by finding common ground and practicing empathy.
Creating rapport at the beginning of a conversation with someone new will often make the outcome of the conversation more positive. Persuasion is lubricated by identifying a bond or commonality and taking time to establish one is not a detour but an essential step in persuasion and influence.
How can you build rapport?
Use non-threatening and safe topics for initial small talks. Talk about established shared experiences like the weather, how you travelled to where you are, things you can both observe in your surroundings. Avoid talking too much about yourself and avoid asking direct questions about the other person. Actively listen to what the other person is saying and look for shared experiences or circumstances. This will provide you with more things to talk about in the initial stages of communication. Try to inject an element of humour. Laughing together creates rapport and goodwill, be open to making a joke about yourself or the situation you are in. You however want to avoid making jokes about other people. Be conscious of your body language and other non-verbal signals you are sending. Try to maintain eye contact and adopt an open body shape. Don’t cross your arms or legs, relax and lean slightly towards who you are speaking to, to indicate listening, mirror their body language if appropriate. Show empathy. Try to put yourself in their shoes and demonstrate your intention to see things from the other person’s point of view. Rapport is all about finding similarities and being on the same wavelength of someone else.
Charm and social polish in themselves do not add up to competence at influence and persuasion. Social skills in the service of oneself, and to the detriment of the group as a whole, is sooner or later recognized as a front and a charade. True influence as a positive competence is very different from an obsessive drive for personal success at all costs and should be in harmony with the collective goal, rather than exclusively for selfish desires. True influencers do not pursue their own status, prestige or gain at the expense of others.
|
https://medium.com/the-innovation/the-subtle-art-of-persuasion-and-influence-9e5b6ad6b087
|
['David Owasi']
|
2020-09-11 20:44:03.685000+00:00
|
['Influence', 'Emotional Intelligence', 'Self', 'Work', 'Persuasion']
|
Phillies welcome all-star fan Joshua Scott
|
It’s been a bit of a whirlwind for the rising high school sophomore since his kind gesture went viral in April.
After snagging a Freddie Freeman home run ball (that is, after dropping it into the Braves’ bullpen twice), the North Carolina-based Phillies fan found a kid wearing a Freeman jersey and handed him the baseball.
The broadcast captured it all and Joshua’s kindness, combined with the hilarity of the catch, blew up on social media. The next day, Joshua and his father, James, were invited back to Truist Park where he was surprised by Freeman himself before the game.
Freeman told Joshua he admired what he did and presented him with a baseball signed by himself and Harper. After seeing a wild Phillies victory, he was even given a game ball and game-used bat by Rhys Hoskins and J.T. Realmuto.
The Phillies organization also reached out right away, sending Joshua a care package including a personalized jersey and plenty of Harper merchandise.
A week later, Joshua appeared on SportsCenter where it was Harper who made a surprise appearance. Over the video interview, Harper invited the Scott family to a game in Philly on the team’s behalf.
That promise was fulfilled Thursday night when Scott, his father, James, and his grandfather, Thomas Jacobs, were treated to VIP behind-the-scenes access to the ballpark before the game.
Joshua even made a home-run appearance in the broadcast booth.
“Joshua was not only engaging and energetic, but his words word wisdom were beyond his years,” Phillies broadcaster Tom McCarthy said. “We always love having guests, but it will be hard to surpass Joshua’s presence.”
“Joshua was unfazed by the entire experience and kept saying how truly appreciative he was,” Phillies Vice President of Marketing and New Media Michael Harris said. “From meeting Bryce, to seeing the World Series trophies for the first time, to completely stealing the show on our TV broadcast.
“He’s a very special kid, from a very special family. Joshua’s selfless act of kindness in Atlanta made our entire organization extremely proud,” Harris added. “It was awesome to finally host him in Philadelphia and we can’t wait to see him at Citizens Bank Park again very soon.”
Joshua’s story may not have even happened if he followed through with his original plan. Both Joshua and James plotted on their four-hour drive to Atlanta that they’d throw any Braves home run ball back on the field.
In the moment, their plans had to change.
“I feel like God gave me the opportunity to actually drop that ball,” Joshua said. “Once you drop the ball, you can’t throw it back. And then I turned around and it gave me the opportunity to see that kid.”
For James, his son’s decision to give away a souvenir from last year’s National League MVP wasn’t just a kind gesture in the moment. It was a perfect representation of the generosity he shows each day.
In 2009, a year after moving from the Philadelphia area to Greenville, James and his wife, Tara, created Freedom Within Walls, an organization dedicated to ending child hunger and providing nourishment for impoverished communities.
The group distributes healthy snacks and meals to more than 5,000 kids per year and has served more than 2,000,000 meals since it began. Its data is currently being tracked by research teams at Johnson C. Smith University and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte to measure its full impact.
It’s a family effort. Joshua’s grandfather was even put to work delivering meals when he traveled from his home in South Jersey to visit the Scotts.
Joshua grew up around a culture of giving, doing his part as much as he can.
“During the summer in between sports and stuff, I’m bagging lunches for kids who need food,” Joshua said. “I’m used to it.”
“Honestly, that’s really who he is,” James added. “Literally that’s his rhythm, whether it’s helping out with us, at church or community projects, that’s what he does.
“Nothing bothers him,” James added. “Other than the drop.”
Joshua is an athlete himself. It’s why he got dozens of texts and social media messages from his baseball teammates after they saw him drop a home run ball on TV. He hadn’t made an error in the outfield or at second base all season for his team. So, he was due for some teasing.
His other love his football, where he plays both corner and wide receiver. He recently caught the eye of Clemson coach Dabo Swinney in wide receiver drills at a football camp. He plans to play both throughout high school.
But when he’s not playing sports, he’s watching Philly sports, even from North Carolina.
After an appearance on Philadelphia’s sports radio station WIP, Joshua was told by hosts Jon Marks and Ike Reese that he put the city on his back. Joshua has embraced that, proving to outsiders that Philly fans’ brutal reputation isn’t all true.
“I didn’t do that because I wanted a few laughs or a few views or couple likes,” Joshua said. “I did it because it was the right thing to do. That’s what anyone should do and it’s what God wanted me to do.”
— Beyond the Bell contributor Graham Foley
If you would like to learn more about Freedom Within Walls, please visit freedomwithinwalls.org/.
|
https://beyondthebell.mlblogs.com/phillies-welcome-all-star-fan-joshua-scott-a3dec9700607
|
['Philadelphia Phillies']
|
2021-07-26 17:19:04.260000+00:00
|
['Giving', 'Philadelphia', 'Kindness', 'Baseball', 'Atlanta']
|
How to Accelerating the Genetic Revolution with a New Class of Synthetic Medicines?
|
Tribe Public Event — Dec. 22, 2020 — NeuBase Therapeutics’s CEO Dietrich A. Stephan Ph.D. — “Accelerating the Genetic Revolution with a New Class of Synthetic Medicines”
Tribe Public LLC is a San Francisco, CA-based organization that hosts complimentary worldwide webinar & meeting events in the U.S.
We are excited to be hosting a Webinar Presentation and Q&A Event with Dietrich A. Stephan Ph.D. Chairman & CEO, Founder of NeuBase Therapeutics (NASDAQ: NBSE) on Tuesday, December 22nd, 2020 (8:30 am pacific / 11.30 am eastern)
FREE registration is at Neubase.TribePublic.com
Speaker Background
Dietrich A. Stephan, Ph.D. is an industry veteran who is considered one of the fathers of the field of precision medicine, having trained with the leadership of the Human Genome Project at the NIH and then going on to lead discovery research at the Translational Genomics Research Institute and serve as professor and chairman of the Department of Human Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh. Stephan has identified the molecular basis of dozens of genetic diseases and published extensively in journals such as Science, the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature Genetics, PNAS, and Cell. In parallel, Dr. Stephan has founded or co-founded 14 biotechnology companies and has advised an additional 12 companies. These companies are backed by top-tier investors such as Sequoia Capital, KPCB, Thiel Capital, and Khosla Ventures as well as corporate partners such as Life Technologies, Pfizer, and Mayo Clinic. Dr. Stephan received his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh and his B.S. from Carnegie Mellon University.
Company Background
NeuBase Therapeutics is developing the next generation of gene silencing therapies with its flexible, highly specific synthetic antisense oligonucleotides. Last week, NeuBase announced positive in vitro and in vivo preclinical data for its PATrOL
-enabled anti-gene therapies for the treatment of myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1). These new data show that PATrOL-enabled Compound A can rapidly resolve mis-splicing without negatively impacting DMPK protein levels. They also support the potential of NeuBase’s anti-gene approach to comprehensively treat the underlying cause of DM1.
By registering for this event you are agreeing to join Tribe Public & to receive future FREE invitations. Disclaimer: https://tribepublic.com/disclaimers.
|
https://medium.com/@abiodunchris09/how-to-accelerating-the-genetic-revolution-with-a-new-class-of-synthetic-medicines-907d91500e40
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[]
|
2020-12-20 03:02:13.783000+00:00
|
['Disease', 'Industry', 'Webinar', 'Cell Body', 'Company']
|
Why Chicago’s Kids are Failing in School
|
Why Chicago’s Kids are Failing in School
You really don’t know?
More parents are taking homeschooling seriously
Here’s the answer. School is not teaching anything that they’re interested in. I hate to be bold and blunt but this truth is a hard-core.
These kids don’t care about what their school is teaching them. The only thing these kids care about right now is being heard and being understood. And yes, everything is a rush and they want it now!
5th — 12th-grade students all across Chicago don’t want to wait until they’re 30 years old to figure it out. That’s too old to be figuring out life. To many of them, life should be simple. Many of them are asking, “why does life have to be so difficult?” They’re asking questions like, ‘why did mommy and daddy divorce? Why did my uncle touch me like that? Why did they kill Brandon? Why did Grandma die? Why did the police pull out their guns? Why doesn’t my dad love me? Where did my mom go? Why did they talk to me that way? Where am I going to sleep tonight and what am I supposed to do with these feelings for the rest of my life?’ These are the questions that Chicago’s youth are asking themselves today and school isn’t giving them space, nor time, to get these questions answered. Educators talk inquiry, work, and project-based learning but schools are not helping kids understand some of life’s most basic questions like, “how am I supposed to be an Adult?”
Schools should be helping these young people understand their place in life and their value in the world. That means, in this fast-paced technology-filled environment, educators have the obligation of slowing this generation down to help them understand the importance of having a plan.
If a kid wants to be a YouTuber, an MMA fighter, a gamer, a computer programmer, a doctor, a lawyer, a firefighter, a real estate agent, a dancer, a barber or hairstylist, a nail technician, an actor, a model, a business owner, a husband, a housewife, a good son, daughter, mother, grandparent, or whatever… you want to have a plan and not all plans require a lifetime of planning to figure it out. Educators have to help students who are academically behind, understand the importance of creating a plan of action for their lives. Educators also have to answer questions about childhood traumas (which will help them appreciate therapy). Educators have to switch up what they’re currently teaching young people so we can help them heal from past hurts and live amazing lives.
So while Pearson is pushing standardized tests in this existing climate, Chicago’s youth are failing in school because school isn’t giving them the lessons that are going to help them cope as adults. That’s why SEL (Social and Emotional Learning) is so important in schools today. Even as we prepare to return to the school building, there is never going to be a, ‘pick up where we left off’. Now it’s, ‘we are going to start where we are now and focus on getting to where we want to be in the future’. This requires a return to the education plan.
Over the past 18 months, Chicago’s educational system has been turned on its ear. Students have physically been out of the classroom for nearly a year (9 months). No longer is it important to teach math or science the way we used to. For example, right now, we have the opportunity to teach writing by giving opportunities for students to write for the school website, school blog, or newsletter, and maybe now handwriting becomes part of art class (because obviously handwriting has become a lost art).
I am proposing a new curriculum that consists of five core subject areas to be taught from birth to 18 years old (pre-k — 12th). This new curriculum includes the following courses:
Health and wellness Home economics Microeconomics and personal finance Entrepreneurship/ business Technology
Math, science, reading, and writing can and should be, incorporated in these five core subject areas with an emphasis on how these concepts are applied in the real world. This is project, inquiry, and work-based learning in real-time.
My second suggestion is to adjust how often kids are asked to be on a computer a day. I recommend no more than two days a week online (not to exceed three hours per day) and three days of self-directed, project-based learning time. Under this model, teachers should still be posting content regularly particularly creating YouTube videos explaining the content and hosting virtual group discussions about the topic.
And this is exactly why programs like Lion Chasers (offered by Genius Lab) are so important. Lion Chasers helps young people understand the five principles of getting past those ‘lions’ that can prevent us from moving forward in life. Imagine walking down the street and seeing a lion. I bet you would not continue to walk down the street. But what if I told you that the only thing the lion could do was roar? As a Lion Chaser, students begin to recognize that the lion’s roar is harmless and it really can’t do anything to you. If you understood that, more people would take more risks about things that they are super passionate about. As a Lion Chaser, when you walk towards your fears with confidence, purpose, and meaning, those lions will get out of your way. Educators want to develop people to have the confidence, the audacity, the veracity, and the perseverance to go for what it is that they want in life.
This is how we move nations forward; by having people who are well researched, who are morally balanced, who take responsibility, who are accountable, and who show compassion. This doesn’t mean that people won’t ever get hurt or be angry, but it does mean that fewer people will resort to violence to solve their problems.
This is not a catch-all solution, but this is a damn good start towards continuing to educate youth for the next 30 years to become amazing adults. All is not lost in this generation. As a matter of fact, I predict that this generation, generation 2037, is possibly the greatest generation in post-modern history.
Final thought, find out what your student wants to learn and encourage them to learn that.
|
https://medium.com/carre4/why-chicagos-kids-are-failing-in-school-97be1cdc6cad
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['Scott L. Steward']
|
2020-12-20 04:33:47.321000+00:00
|
['Teachers', 'Schools', 'Chicago', 'Back To School', 'Covid 19 Crisis']
|
6 Important Lessons From My First 6 Years in Business
|
When I started commercial real estate brokerage, my mentor told me I had entered the “big leagues.” At the time, I thought he was talking about the breadth of knowledge required to do the job: marketing, sales, finance, etc. Years later I discovered what he actually meant: that you better know what you’re doing or prepare to get ripped apart.
There were days when I felt ripped apart. Boneheaded mistakes and sleepless nights. Experiences that not only made me lose confidence in myself, but sometimes in the entirety of American capitalism.
But for every heartbreak, there were breakthroughs and, eventually, triumphs.
I thought I was alone in my hectic journey. But the more I talked to people, the more I realized that most young professionals go through a similar experience.
Here’s what I’ve learned in my first 6 years post-college. I wonder if you can relate?
|
https://medium.com/swlh/6-important-lessons-from-my-first-6-years-in-business-70b73b9fb167
|
['Cal Axe']
|
2020-11-25 16:44:12.336000+00:00
|
['Work', 'Productivity', 'Leadership', 'Business', 'Marketing']
|
R2D2 as a model for AI collaboration
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This essay is about the way we design relationships between humans and machines — and not just how we design interactions with them (though that is a part of it), but more broadly, what are the postures we have towards machine intelligences in our lives and what are their postures toward us? What do we want those relationships to look and feel like?
As I’ve been thinking through these ideas, science fiction characters are one of the lenses I’ve been finding helpful as a way of thinking about different models for our relationships with machines. Specifically, I’ve been using these three — C3PO, Iron Man, & R2D2 — as notable archetypes that describe different approaches to how we might design machine intelligences to engage with humans.
C3PO
C3PO is a protocol droid; he’s supposedly designed to not only emulate human social interaction, but to do so in a highly skilled way such that he can negotiate and communicate across many languages and cultures. But he’s really bad at it. He’s annoying to most of the characters around him, he’s argumentative, he’s a know-it-all, he doesn’t understand basic human motivations, and often misinterprets social cues. In many ways, C3PO is the perfect encapsulation of the popular fantasy of what a robot should be and the common failures inherent in that model.
Now this idea didn’t emerge in 1977. The idea of a mechanical person, a humanoid robot, has been around since at least the 1920s. Eric the Robot, or “Eric Robot” as he was more commonly known, was one of the earliest humanoid robots. He was pretty rudimentary, as you can see from the kind of critique that was leveled at Eric by The New York Times in the above quotes — it critiques his social demeanor and also questions his utility — why is a robot that moves and converses better that the one that can tell when the water levels in Washington are too high? Is this the best form or use for a robot?
But despite these criticisms, people were fascinated by Eric, as well as by the other early robots of his ilk, because it was the first moment that there was this idea, this promise, that machines might be able to walk among us and be animate. We’ve had this idea in our social imagination for nearly a century now—the assumption that, given sophisticated enough technology, we would eventually create robotic beings that would converse and interact with us just like human beings.
Our technology today is many orders of magnitude more sophisticated than Eric’s creators could have imagined. And we are still trying to fulfill this promise of a humanoid robot. We see the state of the art today with robots like Sophia.
This is so much closer to that humanoid ideal than Eric was, but it falls so short and just feels awkward and creepy.
On the software side (“bots” vs. “robots”), we have examples of the failure of the C3PO model in the voice assistants we use every day. They’ve gotten pretty “good”, but still can’t understand context well enough to respond appropriately in a consistent way, and the interactions are far from satisfying. It turns out that even with incredibly rich computational and machine learning resources, interacting like a human is really hard. It’s hard to program a computer to do that in any satisfying way because in many ways it’s hard for humans to do successfully either. We get it wrong so much of the time.
Interacting like a human is hard (even for humans).
We don’t all talk to each other the same way. We don’t all have the same set of cultural backgrounds or conversational expectations. Below are charts created by British linguist Richard Lewis to show the conversational process of negotiating a deal in different cultures.
These challenges have come to the fore lately with everyone from search engines to banks trying to create convincing conversational interfaces. We see companies struggling with the limitations of this approach. In some cases they have addressed those challenges by hiring humans to either support the bots or in some cases actually pose as chatbots.
Welcome to 2020, where humans pretend to be bots who are in turn pretending to be human.
Stop trying to make machines be like people
Obviously, the ideal of creating machines that interact with us just like people do is incredibly complicated and may actually be unattainable. But more importantly, this isn’t actually a compelling goal for how we should be implementing computational intelligence in our lives. We need to stop trying to make machines be like people and find some more interesting constructs for how to think about these entities.
The reason people started with the C3PO model is because human conversation is the dominant metaphor we have for interacting and engaging with others. My hypothesis is that this whole anthropomorphic model for robots is fundamentally just a skeuomorph because we haven’t developed new constructs for machine intelligence yet, in the same way that desks and file drawer metaphors were the first attempts at digital file systems, and when TV first emerged, people read radio scripts in front of cameras.
Instead, a more compelling approach would be to exploit the unique affordances of machines. We already have people. Humans are already quite good at doing human things. Machines are good at doing different things. So why don’t we design for what they’re good at, what their unique abilities are and how those abilities can enhance our lives?
|
https://alexis.medium.com/r2d2-as-a-model-for-ai-collaboration-9a2638bfbd09
|
['Alexis Lloyd']
|
2020-11-21 16:39:03.281000+00:00
|
['AI', 'Robots', 'Design', 'UX']
|
How to identify High-Potential Employees?
|
However, in the large tech-savvy teams, such as Softray Solutions, constituted of young professionals with a relatively short retention span and the dynamism of the ever-changing workforce, the HR team should also turn to the agile mode and work on the go. This also refers to the strategies of finding, identifying, training, and rewarding their HiPos.
The optimal approach here is three rules in setting up the auspicious conditions that would promote the seasoning of those desirable traits and their unraveling into the future team leaders.
The first step should be a clear-cut and well-defined selection, profiling, and setting up of the expectations between the company and the candidate.
The second step would be recognition of their key talents, followed by the projection of their growth and the subsequent planning of the career path within the company while taking into account the candidates’ preferences, their cultural fitness, and their autonomy.
The third step would be the transactional model of knowledge/experience exchange between the employees of varying seniority. The theory behind this approach promotes the idea that the employees with the higher seniority when put in a mentor position vis-à-vis zealous junior colleague, can be positively challenged by the zeal of their younger colleague. The same goes in the case when we want to give an extra push to the already-progressive junior developer — where the leadership skills come to the light when challenged with the player known as the intern. This strategy of accelerating the emergence of the mentor archetype among the employees that indicate the possibility of a HiPo by putting them in a challenging position is a great method to identify the hidden traits.
Although, one must differentiate between the high potential and high-performance players — a confusion that sometimes results in a mismatch between what one can do and what one could do, so to speak. There is nothing worse than presuming that just because the employee does her job without a speck in her code, means she would manage a team of people doing the same. The cost is losing an invaluable employee in a position in which they perform well, to placing them in leadership and managerial roles for which they are far from qualified.
To circumvent these failures, it would be useful to mention Wittenberg who suggested four types of agility inherent to true HiPos:
People agility — getting on well with the professional diversity within the workforce;
— getting on well with the professional diversity within the workforce; Results agility — stepping aside and grasping a whole picture;
— stepping aside and grasping a whole picture; Learning and Mental agility — cerebral adaptability to organizational change;
— cerebral adaptability to organizational change; Change agility — being open to challenges.
These different agility types are good indicators of the employees’ engagement in their work and company environment, as well as their future trajectories.
By paying close attention to the people dynamics, posing a challenge, as well as investing and supporting your people, HiPos will come to you without employing those extensive “personality testing kits”, or losing people to one’s unsubstantiated HR intuition voice.
If you enjoyed reading this, click on the clap button so others can find this post.
|
https://medium.com/@softraysolutions/how-to-identify-high-potential-employees-615d1b13633
|
['Softray Solutions']
|
2021-06-23 12:33:19.704000+00:00
|
['Employees', 'Information Technology', 'Recruitment']
|
Watch ‘J O K E R (2019) Sub Eng Movie Online —
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Watch or Download here : http://watch.movie4u.xyz/movie/475557/joker
J O K E R (2019)
Watch or Download here :://bit.ly/2LAHBrv
Title : Joker
Genre : Crime, Thriller, Drama
Stars : Joaquin Phoenix, Zazie Beetz, Robert De Niro, Brett Cullen, Frances Conroy, Douglas Hodge
Release : 2019–10–02
Runtime : 118 min.
Production : DC Entertainment
Movie Synopsis:
During the 1980s, a failed stand-up comedian is driven insane and turns to a life of crime and chaos in Gotham City while becoming an infamous psychopathic crime figure.
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List New Movie 2019 :
? It Chapter Two >> http://bit.ly/2zXHnoP
? Ad Astra >> http://bit.ly/2zZZRVW
? Hustlers >> http://bit.ly/2A9QIKx
? Night Hunter (Nomis) >>http://bit.ly/314iVxQ
? The Art of Racing in the Rain >>http://bit.ly/313qEfF
? Don’t Let Go >>http://bit.ly/316MuyY
? Sahoo >>http://bit.ly/30YpVfP
? Overcomer >>http://bit.ly/315e3IS
? Erotic Tutoring 2 (18+ only) >>http://bit.ly/311u4j2
? The Banana Splits Movie >>http://bit.ly/314FS3Z
? Angel Has Fallen >>http://bit.ly/3154JVA
? Anna >> http://watch.movie4u.xyz/movie/484641/anna
? Ready or Not (2019)>>http://bit.ly/3127ruN
? Chicos Buenos (Good Boys) 2019 >>http://bit.ly/311Ykul
? Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark >>http://bit.ly/313rR6H
? Dora and the Lost City of Gold >>http://bit.ly/3199eyw
? Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019) >>http://bit.ly/3199ldq
? THE LION KING 2019 >>http://bit.ly/2A1fmN3
? Men in Black: International >>http://bit.ly/2A1fnR7
? SPIDER-MAN FAR FROM HOME >>http://bit.ly/2A1QLb7
? CRAWL 2019 >>http://bit.ly/2zVP4fn
? ALADDIN 2019 >>http://bit.ly/2A0zZJq
? Once Upon a Time in Hollywood >>http://bit.ly/2A1R6up
|
https://medium.com/@memerson374/j-o-k-e-r-2019-fbdb9fe48139
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[]
|
2020-04-03 04:21:44.273000+00:00
|
['Facebook', 'Movies', 'Drama', 'Twitter', 'Médium']
|
Python programming exercises and solutions pdf
|
In this article on “Python programming exercises and solutions pdf” i will share the best books for python programming code and examples
Here are the links for downloading the pdf for free:-
|
https://medium.com/@gunjannayak2k20/python-programming-exercises-and-solutions-pdf-b068961b88fb
|
['Technical Nayak']
|
2020-12-21 15:18:58.440000+00:00
|
['Books', 'Python', 'Python Programming', 'Programming', 'Coding']
|
White People: Stop Oversharing on Social Media
|
Photo by Dominik Martin on Unsplash
Next came a survey about whether or not people wash their legs when they take a shower.
The poll finished at a little over 850,000 votes and 80% said yes. While 20% said no.
Though we had an inkling of the demographic that said no, we didn’t know with certainty. Had they opted to remain silent, no one would’ve known the culprits of the dirty 20. It would have remained speculation.
Until…white people, seeing the negative responses, came into twitter threads to defend themselves linking article after article that they feel absolves them of their nasty pastime.
Many defenders of foregoing leg washing all had the same verbatim defense — “the soap runs down”. The next common line that ties in with the articles was how washing your legs dries out your skin.
Naturally, Black women parried with, “that’s why you moisturize” and some even named their favorites to assist white people in this, hopefully inevitable, transition.
Regrettably, it’s likely there will be some that will remain entrenched in the dark side of leg washing. After all, one white women said she just cleans her face and armpits and showers twice a week rather than succumb to classism.
Who is she implying is the class that is “obsessed with cleanliness”? Upper class? Middle? Poor? She implies that she’s bucking that “bullshit”. The responses to this were certified gold.
Are we saying it’s only white people who don’t wash their legs? No.
But they exceed all in their hell bent determination to share their plague bringing habits on social media. If any people in our camps are whitewashing, so far the majority have the good sense to avoid online confessions.
Nor is it all white people participating in this custom, as evidenced by the white people who a) knew we weren’t talking about them and b) participated in ribbing fellow white people.
But for them, as exhibited by how many white celebrities and politicians exist with their foot perpetually embedded in their mouths, remaining silent about their questionable actions appears to be intolerable to them. They must have their say, even at their own detriment.
|
https://medium.com/swlh/white-people-stop-oversharing-on-social-media-90696e2f4283
|
[]
|
2019-06-17 13:04:43.507000+00:00
|
['Social Media', 'Whiteness', 'Hygiene', 'Humor', 'Race']
|
Planning to Migrate a WinForms App to ASP.NET MVC? How to Get Started
|
If you have a WinForms app, there’s a good chance you’d like to modernize it by migrating it to an ASP.NET-based model-view-controller (MVC) architecture. Doing so can make it easier to extend the application or integrate it with new frameworks.
Undertaking a WinForms-to-ASP.NET MVC migration takes work. In this post, I’ll explain the first key technical considerations when planning your migration.
In some cases, the desktop application cannot be extended because of desktop application limitations (such as an IoT integration). Independent of the reasons to migrate, some considerations need to be analyzed before starting the migration.
This article will discuss those considerations by highlighting the first items you should consider when migrating a WinForms app.
Migrating to an ASP.NET MVC architecture
1. The conceptual migration: Make sure migration is the best option
The first consideration is making sure that migrating to an ASP.NET MVC architecture is the right decision in the first place. In some scenarios, you could more easily modernize your app in other ways. For example, you could possibly containerize the application and share the access with a distributed team without rewriting. (As some developers say, the best code is the code we don’t write.)
2. Identify the platforms’ points of similarity
If migration is the only option, we need to identify the points of similarity in the current technology in comparison to the new one. Of course, the migration from WinForms to ASP.NET MVC could be softer if the current application was developed with layers separating the logic in a similar construct to MVC. But we know that is almost impossible in most cases.
Although the concepts of WinForms and ASP.NET MVC differ, the classes could be the code most reused. Because of this, it should be a better starting point.
Many applications developed with WinForms have a persistent storage layer implemented inside the project including SQL code or a call to some procedures. Identify which your application is using, and after migrating the classes, start the migration of queries and functions from procedures.
3. Identify fundamental platform differences
The most challenging problem is the layer of viewers. Desktop applications involve many native events, and most could be migrated to events of the web page as mouse and keyboard events, but for other resources, such as the file manager, rethinking implementation is necessary.
Other aspects of migration will be the implementation of the controller, moving management of routes, and the logic of page redirects.
4. Identify code changes to migrate from WinForms to ASP.NET MVC
Now that we’ve discussed the considerations to keep in mind before starting the migration from WinForms to ASP.NET MVC, let’s take a look at what you should expect to change in your code in order to perform the migration.
As mentioned before, if you have SQL code in your project like the sample above, you can reuse the SQL in the query on the ASP.NET MVC project. Let’s seek to understand this better by analyzing the code used to search users by country in the WinForms project.
// The SQL code to get users by country.
string sql = "SELECT * FROM Users WHERE countryID = @countryID"; // The connection treatment.
using (SqlCommand sqlCommand = new SqlCommand(sql, connection))
{
// Inclusion of parameters to query.
sqlCommand.Parameters.Add(new SqlParameter("@countryID", SqlDbType.Int));
sqlCommand.Parameters["@countryID"].Value = countryID;
try
{
connection.Open(); // Reader to get the users.
using (SqlDataReader dr = sqlCommand.ExecuteReader())
{
DataTable dt = new DataTable(); dt.Load(dr); // Attribute the data table to the data grid view shown on the screen.
this.dgvUsers.DataSource = dt; dr.Close();
}
}
catch
{
MessageBox.Show("ERROR");
}
finally
{
connection.Close();
}
}
This code has SQL code, the treatment of the connection and the attribution of the result to the component used to show the list in the form. The communication with the database code and the view is strongly linked here. In addition, the treatment of errors starts a visual action showing an alert window.
Now, let’s see the ASP.NET MVC code.
public async Task<ActionResult> UserDetail(int? countryID)
{
// Verify if the parameter is valid, if not return the HTTP error.
if (countryID == null)
{
return new HttpStatusCodeResult(HttpStatusCode.BadRequest);
} // Find the users by countryID without using the SQL code.
List<User> users = await db.Users.FindAsync(countryID); // Or search using the SQL query.
string query = "SELECT * FROM Users WHERE countryID = @p0";
List<User> users = await db.Users.SqlQuery(query, countryID).SingleOrDefaultAsync(); // Verify if has some result, if not return the HTTP error.
if (users == null)
{
return HttpNotFound();
} // Send the list of users to view.
return View(users);
}
This code uses two means to create a search. The first is from the Entity Framework and the second uses the raw SQL code that could facilitate the reuse of code from a WinForms project with significant amounts of raw SQL code. But the Entity Framework is preferred because of improved use of ASP.NET MVC resources.
In the view, we can loop the list of users and print the users in the CSHTML file:
<ul>
@foreach (var user in users)
{
<li>
@Html.ActionLink(user.Name)
</li>
}
</ul>
5. Decide how to build a new interface using ASP.NET: interface and windowing considerations
In addition to migrating the backend of your application, you also have to think about how to build a new interface using ASP.NET.
Fortunately, this is not as difficult as it may seem, even if you are not a frontend developer by trade. The MVC architecture approach makes it possible to use simple HTML and JavaScript for building an interface. That means that building an interface for your app after the migration requires only basic web development knowledge. Plus, JavaScript provides common events like click, hover and focus that are equivalent to those available from the WinForms, so it is easy to implement this same interface functionality after the migration.
Here’s some sample code showing how you might approach crafting an interface after the migration without having to rearchitect your code to a significant extent. The only big difference in the example below in the interface before and after migration is that the web alert has no title on the prompt window.
// WinForms
Button alertButton = new Button(); alertButton.Click += new EventHandler(alertButton_Click); Controls.Add(alertButton); void alertButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
MessageBox.Show("My message", "My title", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error);
} // MVC
<button onclick="openAlert()">Open alert</button> <script>
function openAlert() {
alert("My message");
}
</script>
Migration Next Steps
WinForms has been in use for years, and ASP.NET MVC is a stable framework to build and migrate applications. What’s needed in a migration scenario is a deep knowledge of how the current application works and what can be done with it. Migration is difficult and slow; the work should be done with an enthusiastic team.
Additional things to consider:
Business intelligence conversion — C# WinForms to C# MVC or JavaScript
Discuss client-side to client-server events
Rest APIs
Cloud services — converting local storage to cloud data storage
Syntax differences
We will provide the next steps in a following article. In the meantime, if you have any questions, please leave them in the comment thread below.
by Brena Monteiro
Originally published on GrapeCity.com
|
https://medium.com/grapecity/planning-to-migrate-a-winforms-app-to-asp-net-mvc-how-to-get-started-e2854505c74e
|
['Grapecity Developer Solutions']
|
2019-01-24 19:30:29.793000+00:00
|
['Development', 'Technology', 'Web Apps Development', 'Web Development', 'Migration']
|
Agile boards: A DIY Guide for newbies
|
First things first
You can rely on many different resources to build your team board, so make it as personalized to your needs as possible. You can set up the tickets’ required and optional fields and the different possible statuses for each kind of ticket. IMHO the basics you’ll need are: Release information, priority, ability to add comments, dependencies, labels, story points, estimated and actual hours.
QAF: Questions to ask frequently
The board and tickets workflow should be designed according to their needs by all team members, cooperatively. As a matter of fact, both should also be reviewed every now and then to validate that it still reflects the actual development process.
Well… you’ll need to start with something so, by asking yourselves the right questions, you’ll hit the nail.
Who‘s the squad?
By knowing the people that will be part of the project we should be able to determine the different phases that the development would need, creating both time and space for everybody to do and track their work. For instance, while creating sub-tasks for a User Story, we should consider if the team has Back-end and Front-end engineers. Also, on native mobile apps, iOS and Android development and testing can be tracked separately with User Stories or sub-tasks.
When speaking about Quality Control, there are different aspects of the development that can be tested, and different moments and experts to do it, so this information is also vital while defining item statuses, or sub-tasks.
The important thing is to have a convention that works well for everybody involved.
Which are the steps of our delivery process?
To design the structure of the tickets, it’s necessary to know what it takes for any Feature to be completed:
· Define and prioritize the Scope
· Create the backlog
· Set up product architecture and database
· Design user interface
· Validate with the business
· Write down Requirements
· Development [Front-end, Back-end, Integration]
· BA sign-off
· Quality control
· User Acceptance testing
These phases can be managed with stories, sub-tasks, statuses, or a combination of any.
Remember to configure the ticket fields to the team’s necessities. For instance, testing could be indicated using a US status or a sub-task like it is in the schema above.
What does it take to have a User Story ready for Development?
A usual tacit assumption is that if a user story was included in the sprint work, it is ready to be worked on.
User-story readiness has to do with previously completed definitions to ensure that the development process runs smoothly during the sprint. For instance:
· Specifications are complete, clear, and approved by the business.
· Database is ready
· Project architecture is ready
· User Interface is designed
· Blockers or strong dependencies with other teams are resolved or near to completion
On some occasions the pre-planning ceremony is useful to review all these aspects of the stories inside the sprint backlog, and for the team to raise concerns about any of them. Otherwise, including stories in the Sprint backlog is the green light the developers should be waiting for.
Nevertheless, it is a good practice to use dependencies across stories included in the same sprint, and ticket priority so that higher priority items are finished first, avoiding carry-overs of tickets of great value for the business or tickets that could cause a bottleneck for other developments.
Which is our development process?
The sub-tasks and item statuses should be planned based on the steps of the development process. Some basic questions to consider are:
How many environments does the team handle and which is the purpose of each?
Are Back-end and Front-end developments handled separately?
Do we include Units Tests for each user story?
Are Code reviews required?
When and where is it tested?
The answers to these questions determine not only the number but also which sub-tasks should be created by story as default and which need to be completed before another can be started.
By no means this implies that all the activities involved in the development process should have their own sub-task. It could be agreed with the team members involved, that one or several of these activities should be completed for the task to be marked as done.
My suggestion is that the task should be tracked separately depending on these 2 factors:
The level of granularity or details that is required by managers or any other stakeholder:
Stakeholders may require different amounts of information depending on things such as the stage of the project, or the number of projects they handle. The board should be granular enough to allow all kinds of reports to be extracted from it.
2. The completion of one task conditions other team members work:
When a team member or a team process depends on the completion of a specific task, it might be worth tracking it to avoid confusion. E.g: Deployment to a test environment permits the testing to begin.
Workflow example using statuses and sub-tasks.
How do we handle story bugs?
Bugs happen. Therefore it is important to include them in our plans.
First of all, it should be determined at which level is the testing will be performed and then, the team should set up clear definitions regarding:
To which items should the bugs be related and at which level of the tree structure
Bug severities [Which are blockers for the user story to be completed]
In which sprint will the bugs be handled (current, next one?). Include bug severity in the definition.
When is the testing phase finished? → Is it possible to complete the testing with bugs opened?
The discussion and agreement on these topics would help not only define our ticket structure but also to understand the exact status of any item on the board. It would also provide information on which fields are mandatory for this item type and which are optional. Conditions can be changed after some time, with feedback on what’s working and what’s not from all the team.
When is a story “done”?
The sprint goal is to complete the work the team forecasted during the planning meeting. Therefore the Definition of done is vital for the development team, because it will provide everybody a shared understanding of what work needs to be completed for an item to be released or even presented at the sprint review.
With this information the team can create specific statuses and play with sub-tasks that will reflect the processes needed to achieve that goal. Finally, they’ll determine the person or role responsible for closing each task, and the one giving the final sign off that will mean: “This ticket meets the expectations to be presented to the client”.
Depending on the development process, the sign-off could be given by a Business Analyst, a Quality Control Engineer, or the Product Owner itself.
How is our progress monitored?
Whether it is to send a report to upper managers about the status of the project at high level, or to monitor development hours completed and pending, the project managers should count on the information that they can extract from the team’s board.
All the data contained in the work items, can be transformed into valuable information if used wisely.
So, plan ahead on what it will be required by upper management, cross-teams, yourself, and the team to monitor their progress. With this in mind, make sure to include all the fields and granularity that you will need later, to turn raw data into a reflection of your progress and opportunities to learn, grow and shine.
|
https://medium.com/@marilynjael/agile-boards-a-diy-guide-for-newbies-62b8ac8c9560
|
['Marilyn Rodriguez']
|
2020-12-22 18:27:17.482000+00:00
|
['Agile Methodology', 'Scrum', 'Project Management', 'Software Engineering']
|
A Promised Land by Barack Obama
|
I’d been meaning to read this book since it came out about a year ago, as I am an unabashed and unashamed Barack Obama fanboy — perhaps even more so since he has left office, and has continued to pursue his goals of teaching young political activists how to sustain their quest for a better world. Much like the former President himself, this book is many things: meticulous, well-researched, polished, self-effacing, optimistic, and, at times, somewhat long-winded, clocking in at an almost ridiculous 701 pages — and it only covers the first half of his Presidency! Mr. Obama is a fabulous writer, and gives the reader a detailed, play-by-play of everything that happened from the time he decided to run for office through the killing of Osama Bin Laden in 2011 — a dramatic stopping point that neatly sets the stage for Act II in his yet-to-be-released second book. Ever the pragmatist and idealist, preferring to see the world both as it could be but also as it is, Mr. Obama is genuinely honest about his failures and shortcomings, while also acknowledging the inherent hypocrisy of his critics, both from his “adversaries” on the far-right to those within the Democratic Party who thought that he wasn’t “liberal” enough for their tastes. There is certainly a great deal of hubris here — as much as he has to say and as great a writer as he is, there is really no reason for this book to be 700 pages and for his Presidential memoirs to be two volumes. That said, the next installment promises to be very, very interesting as it will almost certainly wade into the 2016 campaign and election of Donald Trump, and I think we are all curious to see how deeply he dives into his true feelings about what went on behind-the-scenes and how it affected him and his family, personally. The ramifications of 2016 are still felt to this day, and I think Mr. Obama will be as honest about the end of his Presidency as he was about the origins of it: a vision for a better future that will have unforeseen obstacles and potholes, and an America that sometimes needs to take a step backward before taking small, intermediate baby steps forward. I, for one, am thankful that he (and Michelle) are still active, engaged, and involved in shaping our future — although I do hope that his next book is a tad bit shorter! If you are an Obama fan or are just interested in the politics of the Presidency and what goes on in the Oval Office, this book is for you.
|
https://medium.com/@amarks555/a-promised-land-by-barack-obama-62f202473e8a
|
['Adam Marks']
|
2021-11-21 23:44:59.729000+00:00
|
['Barack Obama', '2016 Election', 'A Promised Land', 'Obama Administration', 'Obama']
|
Conspiracy: Jumpstart #03: Muzzio
|
Conspiracy: Jumpstart is a National Game Design Month project, where a game (or, in this case, a Magic: The Gathering product) is designed in one month, during November 2020.
Previous Devlog Updates:
Product Updates
Mechanic Revision: Sway of the City
Couple updates since the revision shown in the Selvala blog post: simplification and correcting unintended gameplay design.
Simplification: I’ve now removed the last ability where sway of the city goes away if you hadn’t gained sway of the city that turn. It’s a negative reinforcement to encourage you to keep up triggering gaining sway of the city. The thing is, you already have a positive reinforcement in the form of drawing cards the first time you gain sway of the city in a turn. Thus, only need one of them. Drawing cards is the point of the mechanic for game design reasons, so the negative reinforcement was removed.
Unintended gameplay: Previously, the ability for giving +1/+1 was given only to creatures attacking your opponents. The problem is that once combat is over, those same creatures won’t get the buff but will have taken combat damage. In some cases, a creature may end up dying right after attacks due to state-based effects checking for lethal. Now, we give the buff until end of turn, making it a trigger upon attack.
Card Designs: Mana Cost Pips
I hadn’t thought about this until I was designing Selvala’s pack. I found I was designing a high ratio of cards that wanted two or more colored mana pips. I prefer to keep these mana pips to a low percentage, like they usually are in actual sets. I figured 25% (3 out of 12 cards) is a good number for indicating “low percentage” of color-dense-costed cards.
Pack Contents: 1 Reprint
Most Magic products come with reprints. Sometimes, a reprint is excited just because of the secondary market. That’s a moot point for this product. But one aspect that’s appealing to me is seeing old game pieces in interesting new contexts. I’ll aim for having 11 new designs and 1 reprint, going forward.
Templating Update: “…that isn’t one of your opponents…”
Minor update to ensure templating is consistent with existing cards that key off of opponents. This is seen on the City Connections land each pack has as well as in Muzzio’s pack below.
Muzzio
Muzzio’s mechanical theme is artifact creatures. Since I’ve coded Constructs in Conspiracy: Jumpstart as having modal ETB effects, non-Construct artifact creatures debut with this pack.
Like Selvala, Muzzio has a low Citizen count in favor of his cogwork creations. Unlike Selvala, he also has just the one conspire card, supporting that he’s the only monocolored character in the product.
UPDATE: Some cards have been updated after feedback on Beacon of Creation Discord server, from perryk and Juliet.
|
https://medium.com/millingfor53/conspiracy-jumpstart-03-muzzio-9690d246181b
|
['Bradley Rose']
|
2020-11-29 22:10:09.788000+00:00
|
['Magic', 'Nagademon', 'Game Design', 'Magic The Gathering', 'Conspiracyjumpstart']
|
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