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Pomodoro Experiment’s Experience
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I have to complete Project #4 assigned by Amal Academy in which I have to complete the course “Productivity: The Secret of Getting Things Done”. For this, I have set up 4 alarms which are required for Pomodoro’s technique.
In this activity, I start working on the course by setting the first alarm of 02:25 pm. Then I take the break of 3 minutes and jotted down all the distractions that I have faced. At this time, I have been distracted by my friend who comes to meet me and by my social media notifications.
Then in 2nd part of this activity, I resume my work on the course by setting a second alarm of 02:55 pm. Then I take the break of 3 minutes and jotted down all the distractions that I have faced. At this time, I have been distracted by my phone’s charger to charge up my phone, and also I have to wake my roommate.
Then in 3rd part of this activity, I resume my work on the course by setting the third alarm of 03:25 pm. Then I take the break of 3 minutes and jotted down all the distractions that I have faced. At this time, I have been distracted as I have to stand out to pick up my laptop’s charger as the laptop’s battery is down.
Then in the 4rth part of this activity, I resume my work on the course by setting the fourth alarm of 03:55 pm. Then I take the break of 3 minutes and jotted down all the distractions that I have faced. At this time, looking up at the mug to wash and looking outside the window to see the pleasant weather can make me distracted very much.
Experience:
As far as this activity is concerned, it helps me to look:
What are the things that actually distracted me while I am working on any project..! Moreover, it was my first experience with the Pomodoro technique and it shows wonderful results to me.
|
https://medium.com/@hamza-amjad190/pomodoro-experiments-experience-5ba254a59ac8
|
['Hamza Amjad']
|
2021-04-15 13:22:21.130000+00:00
|
['Amal Fellowship', 'Amal Totkay', 'Amal Academy']
|
Where Bluebirds Fly
|
Where Bluebirds Fly
Creating and releasing your art.
Photo by Johannes Plenio from Pexels
Releasing your art into the universe is a delicate thing. But the act of creating art is something entirely different.
You wade through the brutish, clunky, elementary swamp of impulse with your minnow-fine nets. Only then to dump it all out in front of you — a heap of potential possibility — more scavenging.
A collage emerges — bits of symbology, logic, theory, hurts and curiosities.
The incubation period for your art is a critical element and deeply connected to how easily goes your birthing it. The longer you labor, the more difficult the delivery.
Yet deliver, you must. You are an artist.
|
https://medium.com/flicker-and-flight/where-bluebirds-fly-f791c6462115
|
['Wendy S. Bradfield']
|
2020-10-31 09:52:26.874000+00:00
|
['Poetry', 'Poetry On Medium', 'Artist', 'Self-awareness', 'Creative Process']
|
Know this.
|
I was in Kandy over a weekend in March. After visiting the Dalada Maligawain the evening, I decided to take the scenic route around the lake back to where I was staying. Traffic was teeming on Dalada Veediya. The pedestrian path around the lake was spotted with half-finished construction rigs, so I meandered between the walkway and the grass closer to the water. I came across other walkers and the occasional duck, making their way home.
When I first saw you, you were a typical young man ambling in the opposite direction. As you walked towards me, I angled my body to let you pass. Then you reached out, viciously groped my breasts, and ran. I froze. Then I screamed. Then I ran after you. As you turned in surprise, I pushed you down onto the ground and lobbed my camera bag at you several times. You picked yourself up and ran into the night.At a safe distance from my anger and flailing arms, you turned back one last time, held my gaze for a split second, and shrugged. It was a small, almost imperceptible movement, but deliberate enough to tell me this. It was no big deal Akka; you just overreacted. Also, I’m getting away with it again.
In my line of work, I constantly think about why people choose violence. I also think about what persuades people to pick up new attitudes and behaviours different from how they habitually operate. I’ve been frustrated by campaigns that preach to the converted and don’t measure impact beyond catchy hashtags and how good it makes donors feel.
Today, for what it’s worth, I’m going to try talking to you and others like you. There are a few things I’d like all of you to know.
I was in Kandy visiting the woman who had looked after us as children. We had spent our morning catching up over Maalu Paanat Devon Bakery and ourafternoon at the Dalada Maligawa. I love that place. There’s something about the smell of coconut oil and the sight of barefooted worshippers that stirs my own (maybe ironically) Christian faith. I had seen her off to the bus halt, and that’s when I decided to take that walk. I want you to know that I had a story before our encounter. I am a person, with a name and a full life. Yes, I am also someone’s daughter, sister, girlfriend and mother. But that’s not your business. My value doesn’t lie in my relationship to someone else, least of all, in my potential kinship to you. I am someone. Know that.
I think about why you did it. There was nothing about that moment that was sexual. I’ll never reach out and grope a man, expose myself to a man, masturbate in front of a man, or sexually assault a man. But each of these things has happened to me at least once. I’m not going to put it down to your maleness. You did it because you felt entitled to it and because you knew you’d get away with it. You’ve been raised in a culture that’s told you that men initiate and women submit. You live in a society with few or no consequences for violence against the ‘less powerful’. I have a son. I’m only sharing that to say that I am constantly finding ways to teach him not to use his power, whether it comes from physical strength, gender, ethnicity, class or education, to make someone else feel less. Since our little encounter, I am even more determined to raise a different ‘male’ to the one I met in Kandy that evening. Know that.
I think about how I reacted. If you knew my story, you’d know that wasn’t typical. I never react impulsively leave alone physically. But I snapped that day. My anger uncoiled and bit. I wasn’t doing it in self-defence. I did it in retaliation. See the thing is it’s happened to me before, and it will probably happen to me again. It keeps happening to my friends. I read about it happening to other women. I was reacting for events past and future. I was reacting on behalf of my group. I apologise for hammering you. My parents didn’t raise me that way. As much as I’d like to believe in my upper arm strength, I likely barely left a mark on you. But I hope you’ll remember that I didn’t let it pass. I didn’t ignore it and keep walking as countless of us do countless times. Even if you don’t change, even if bystanders don’t come to help us, even if this country won’t enforce penalties, we will start reacting. Know that.
Remember my face. I can’t remember yours. Know this too.
March 2019.
|
https://medium.com/@dilrukshi.fonseka/know-this-263aeeab67ed
|
['Dilrukshi Fonseka']
|
2019-06-17 13:21:32.276000+00:00
|
['Sexual Harassment']
|
Recap งาน TensorFlow Dev Summit 2018
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in Both Sides of the Table
|
https://medium.com/skooldio/recap-%E0%B8%87%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%99-tensorflow-dev-summit-2018-cca05aac620e
|
['Sirinart Tangruamsub']
|
2018-05-24 16:01:11.003000+00:00
|
['Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'TensorFlow', 'Technology', 'Data']
|
Fun stay at home kid activities — 20 fun activities for kids
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In extreme temperatures and situation around us with respect to the pandemic, it’s not possible to go out and enjoy the fresh air and tire out highly energetic children. There are lot of reasons we may find ourselves stuck inside, not able to get out and play. If you are stuck inside then keeping children busy and entertained is a huge task in itself. It is the perfect time to enjoy fun activities with family. Here are 20 fun stay at home kid activities which will definitely strike a chord with children worldwide. Engage in these fun activities for kids.
Cooking
Children love to involve themselves in household work especially if you make it a lot of fun. Based on how old your child is, you could probably look at creating some snacks together. I have a 5 year old boy and he simply loves to put together a sandwich for himself when he is hungry. This is stay at home kid activities plus you have another hand at your disposal.
Baking
Baking is a great way to spend family time and is one of the fun activities for kids. Baking a pie or a simple cake doesn’t need much effort. Probably you can bake a cake and let your children decorate it.
Organizing or decorating rooms
I haven’t seen a house where there is no scope of improvement. It is time to design your rooms with your kids and may be create wonderful interiors using available stuff. You can probably plan to reorganize cupboards or drawers to make your life easier. I have been in isolation for a week now and have cleaned and organized all wardrobes. During this exercise you can segregate waste as well. This might not be too much fun but you could ask your little ones to help you. I am sure they will figure out a way to make it a fun activity.
Creativity is contagious pass it on — Albert Einstein Check DIY easy craft activities for young child
Turn Artistic
It is time to bring out the artist in you. Just sit and start drawing anything. This is a no brainer and one of the fun activities for kids and parents especially when done together. Colors not only enhance creativity but also add positivity in life. Most kids love to draw. May be you can look at creating puzzles or an Agamograph.
Quiz time
Quiz time is always fun. May be you could play a song quiz and movie quiz especially on Google Home and Alexa. To enhance knowledge of your children, you could play a GK quiz. It is always a good way to teach children. Google home makes it more fun since you can play with people around the world.
#fun activities for kids #stay at home kids activities
Learning Music
Music is a great way to communicate and express. You may notice creative people can express their emotions quite well. Now is the time to learn something new. May be your little one can learn some new tunes or a new instrument. Learning something new is always fun. This is a great stay at home kids activities
Stone painting
Stone painting is a lot of fun and when a complete family is involved they can enjoy painting stones together. Another stay at home kids activities that would enhances creativity and can keep your child busy for atleast an hour.
# fun activities for kids
Scrapbook
It is always fun to create your own scrapbook. Create a lovely DIY scrapbook. Think together and prepare a lovely design. Filling your scrapbook with what you think will happen next. This will become a lovely memory later.
# fun activities for kids
Family tree
Make your family tree and enjoy recollecting lovely pictures. Share memories with your children. Who knows you are able to relive memories.
# stay at home kids activities
Board games
Board games are a great way for families to connect. A simple game like snakes and ladder could be a great timepass and fun. It allows you to bond with your children and spend quality time with them.
# stay at home kids activities
Play Dough
It is time to unleash the creative monster within you. Make your own dough and play with it. It is simple recipe and you can enjoy for hours. # fun stay at home kid activities
DIY activities
I am sure most of you have tons of toilet paper rolls and if you missed out on those than let me tell you, you will have your chance to get them. There are done of DIY activities you could work out at home using those toilet paper rolls. There are tons of CIY activities you could do sitting at home.
# fun stay at home kid activities
- Make paper bracelets
- Use old jars to decorate the house
- Make paper puppets
- Make tattoos
- Make frogs
- Use old plastic bottles
DIY bookmarks
Collate some craft items together and give your kids a chance to use their own creativity and make some lovely bookmarks for you.
# fun stay at home kid activities
Reading
Read is a great way for kids and adults to learn and expand their thoughts. I am sure some us might love reading. This is the time when you could read together as a family. May be do an online reading challenge within the community. One in the community can volunteer and other participate.
# fun stay at home kid activities
Create a collage
This is a great way to collate your favourite pictures and create collages. You can choose to do it online or can do it physically. Doing it with family is always fun. It is always better to involve children in such activities. This is a great way to enjoy family time together.
# fun activities for kids
Bubbles time
Most children love bubbles and this is a great way to spend time. Children can spend time playing bubbles. You don’t need much just a little soapy water and you are all set. Let them enjoy at one part of the house.
# fun stay at home kid activities
Flipbook
I am not good at art but I have tried creating a flip book and it is a great to spend time. It takes a lot of time for people who are making it for the first time but it is a lot of fun. Your children can also enjoy creating one and playing endlessly with it.
# fun stay at home kid activities
Studying
It is important to allocate some time daily to study as well. Home schooling has picked up in past few years and it is important for children to start focusing on self-study and appreciate knowledge. Most children are used to spoon feeding and this becomes a huge problem later in college. Incorporating self-study at the beginning is very important and this is a great time for children to stay at home and appreciate the benefits of how much they are learning.
I am sure most of you are following this but you could prepare worksheets for children and let them spend time finishing it. Added bonus, you get some me time
Cleaning mess
I haven’t encountered a single household that doesn’t have a messy area especially after staying at home for so long. May be this is the time when you can clear mess at home. Personally, I follow minimalist approach and try to get rid of things that are not used for 6 months or more. This approaches not only saves money but also helps me clear the mess.
Stitching
This is great to explore stitching. For some children, this could be a great activity. You could pull out an old piece of cloth and teach your child basic stitching. Since this would be a new activity, it would keep them engaged.
Living in isolation is difficult but would bring you closer to your family. Distribute duties among family members and enjoy this time together. There is lot of uncertainty in the air but we need to stay positive and also productive.
There are thousands of way to engage your children and enjoy family time together. Please feel free to share your thoughts in comment section below.
#stayindoor #staysafe
|
https://medium.com/@colossalumbrella/fun-stay-at-home-kid-activities-20-fun-activities-for-kids-2b2ec2f3cce7
|
['Pooja Malkani Sharma']
|
2020-03-26 15:50:29.813000+00:00
|
['Motherhood', 'Work Life Balance', 'Stay At Home Mom', 'Parenting Advice', 'Parenting']
|
Pinterest COO Settlement Ignores Black Women Who Blew Whistle Back in June
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Pinterest COO Settlement Ignores Black Women Who Blew Whistle Back in June
In what was likely seen as a nice step forward for women fighting gender discrimination in the workplace, particularly at the often all-male C-suite level, former Pinterest chief operating officer Françoise Brougher received a $22.5 million settlement, the largest of its kind to date. Unfortunately, the settlement highlights the difference between how Black and White women are received when raising issues of discrimination and inequality in the workplace.
Two months before Brougher, a White woman, filed her suit, two Black women, Ifeoma Ozoma and Aerica Shimizu Banks, came out on social media with their claims of racial and gender discrimination. Ozoma and Banks’ allegations inspired more women to share their experiences at Pinterest, and Brougher herself credits the pair for giving her “the courage to come forward.” But Ozoma and Banks didn’t receive the same treatment as Brougher. Initially, Pinterest came forward and claimed the two women had been treated fairly before eventually admitting that the company needed to “do better.”
Now, the company is receiving criticism once again for how it treated the initial claims from two Black women versus the seemingly swift manner in which Brougher’s allegations were treated — Brougher’s case was settled in just four months when cases of this kind typically take years to be resolved.
“This week, we saw, yet again, another large corporation display clear inequitable treatment of Black employees in Silicon Valley,” says Jade Magnus Ogunnaike, senior campaigns director at the racial equity organization Color of Change. “Pinterest’s handling of Françoise Brougher’s lawsuit — paying out $22.5 million — compared to how the company practically ignored Ifeoma Ozoma and Aerica Shimizu Banks after they called out intense discrimination, is blatant racism in practice.”
|
https://momentum.medium.com/pinterest-coo-settlement-ignores-black-women-who-blew-whistle-back-in-june-d4bcb4b649e2
|
['Tracey Ford']
|
2020-12-21 06:32:20.682000+00:00
|
['Racism', 'Discrimination', 'Sexism', 'Business', 'Pinterest']
|
Industry 4.0: What Is Pharma 4.0?
|
Pharma 4.0 is the trademark of an initiative launched by the International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering (ISPE). The aim is to bring the pharmaceutical industry more fully in line with the concept of the smart factory. It offers practical guidance and regulatory best practice for the industry, in order to speed up the transformation of existing facilities to Pharma 4.0 standard.
In line with the general ethos of Industry 4.0, all aspects of production are undergoing an advanced technological revolution. This aims to bring factories and other facilities to a new level of speed and accuracy in production, and to integrate machine intelligence and automated technologies into the workflow. While the pharmaceutical industry does share many practices and procedures with other industrial sectors, it must also take into account some highly complex product portfolios and critical product life-cycles.
What Is Pharma 4.0?
In its most simplified form, Pharma 4.0 is the updating of the pharmaceutical industry to incorporate advanced digital elements and enablers into the current Pharmaceutical Quality System (ICH Q10). This will enable greater opportunities for process improvements throughout the life-cycle of pharmaceutical products. There’ll be a greater degree of connectivity and transparency, which will provide closer control over operations and quality, and allow faster decision-making. On the downside, upgrading to Pharma 4.0 will demand higher levels of security, owing to the increased vulnerability of interconnected automated systems.
Due to the nature of their products, and their capacity to impact on human life, the biotech and pharmaceutical industries are subject to much more stringent regulatory challenges than other industrial sectors. These become increasingly complex in the 4.0 environment, and it’s essential for the industry to determine carefully which digitalisation and automation technologies they can apply. Data integrity, documentation and process validation are all rigorously regulated, so that the opportunities for improvement can frequently be outweighed by the necessity for compliance. Adoption of new techniques is therefore relatively slower than in other industries.
The ISPE Vision
The Pharma 4.0 plan as envisioned by the ISPE is holistic, aimed at a product’s life-cycle across all aspects of the industry. These include business priorities as well as IT and manufacturing, together with a paradigm shift in company culture. They believe that business goals will be achieved more quickly, companies will become more agile and competitive, and overall costs will be reduced. Pharma 4.0 is also aiming at a transformation of the manufacturing workforce towards a model of more human-centric workflow, embedding best practices in respect of health regulations.
Pharma 4.0 is also designed to eliminate data silos within organisations, by improving communications between regulators, the industry and its healthcare and other stakeholders. This holistic approach is not solely an IT project, but an operating model which incorporates the organisational and cultural aspects, as well as those related to processes and resources. This would bring both established and innovative industries into alignment with contractors and suppliers, so that all areas of the industry eventually arrive at an appropriate desired state. Pharma 4.0 is currently being pitched as offering a competitive advantage rather than an essential development, but in the long run, all aspects of the industry must inevitably fall into line.
What Is Pharma 4.0 In The Broader Spectrum?
As a manufacturing paradigm on the lines of Industry 4.0, Pharma 4.0 will allow manufacturers to alter and iterate their operations and to connect their workers with their resources. This will ultimately produce better patient outcomes, with a better quality product. The model can be introduced wholesale as a new enterprise, or in stages aimed at achieving gradual digital maturity. This begins with elementary computerisation and works its way up towards self-regulating, intelligent automated facilities.
The simplest step on the road to Pharma 4.0 is the replacement of elementary manual processes with basic automation and digital technology. This will help manufacturers to decrease process variability, and improve consistency in product quality. They can simplify complex processes such as machine changeovers or line clearance, and improve their data integrity. Repetitive tasks which can be performed better by computers form the groundwork for creating a digital infrastructure, which is then expanded by increasing IT connectivity.
Once the Internet of Things (IoT) becomes integrated with manufacturing and its related business functions, Pharma 4.0 enters the world of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and the whole world of interconnected functionality. Adopting the IIoT will offer manufacturers substantial improvements in processes and productivity. The software connecting machines to people and processes will also provide greater transparency and a significant digital production record. This big data can be analysed to offer insights into potential improvements, and to help make data-driven decisions in real time.
Pharma 4.0 is working towards integrated solutions that will provide manufacturers with a faster and more flexible way to plan improvements. These are intended to work within the wider scope of manufacturing execution systems and quality management. Alongside fast configuration and deployment, data collection runs automatically to provide manufacturers with the more holistic production picture that Pharma 4.0 requires to progress. Paper processing of records will be replaced by electronic logs. These can store a much greater quantity and scope of information, which can then be expanded to incorporate regulatory and patient health factors for a vastly improved performance.
The greater availability of data and big data analytics offers a higher degree of predictability, so that manufacturers can benefit from predictive maintenance to fix problems before they occur. At the final stage of integrated digitalisation, the automated systems themselves anticipate potential problems and initiate the appropriate remedial action.
The Pharma 4.0 Road Map
The pharmaceutical industry is still a long way from the most advanced, fully autonomous self-correcting automated systems. However, Pharma 4.0 is the road map for initiating the necessary steps, the most basic of which can be made by most existing facilities. A digital transformation strategy starts with finding small opportunities for improvement which can be scaled up as required. The exigencies of Pharma 4.0 demand an agile but flexible approach; a steady evolution instead of the more rapid revolution taking place in other sectors.
|
https://medium.com/rowse/industry-4-0-what-is-pharma-4-0-860242c79364
|
['Ryan King']
|
2021-07-06 09:43:58.982000+00:00
|
['Pharmaceuticals Industry', 'Pharmaceutical', 'Industry 4 0', 'Industry']
|
The 12-step UX designer’s journey
|
The UX/Product Designer role has evolved past simply designing solutions in a silo. To build the best solutions we know Designers should be involved throughout a project's lifecycle & work cross-functionally. We all know at a high level a design process looks like this: define, ideate, prototype, & test. It serves its high-level educational purpose but doesn’t include the cross-functional aspect or provide enough detail & guidance to do the actual job.
UX Designers have a lot to consider & think about at each stage. It’s important not to miss something as it will have a negative effect later on down the line. This may be something that impacts the end product, user experience, or a business function like engineering or even design. For example, if you forget to define your strategy for accessibility, your customers may not be able to access the product on their preferred device, engineering won’t know which devices need supporting & designers won’t have constraints to consider & work with.
With all of the above in mind, I wanted to create a cross-functional design process with enough detail for UX Designers to follow & use as guidance.
The UX Designer’s Journey
If you enjoy writing stories you have likely heard of the Hero’s Journey. It outlines the 12 stages that many popular books use to tell a story. I realised it also works well for breaking down a project’s journey starting from the existing product to launching & analysing improvements. The Hero for this story is the UX Designer.
The UX Designer’s Journey diagram, highlighting step 1 the existing product
1. Existing product (Ordinary world)
The UX Designer’s everyday life where we learn crucial details about the product, its true nature, capabilities & outlook for its customers.
The current state of the product & business before any changes are even considered. Everyone in the office is working in their usual way, it’s an ordinary day. For a Designer, this is a chance to concentrate on work that is hard to accomplish during a project with tight deadlines.
Generative research to find opportunities & new insights
Evaluative research to find pain points & joy
Present research to the team (presentations, reports)
Add & prioritise tasks to the design & research backlog
Update the Design System (update components, document guidelines, etc.)
Educate the team on all things design
Assist product direction (strategy or hypothesis workshop, discussions, etc.)
The UX Designer’s Journey diagram, highlighting step 2 the challenge
2. Challenge (call to adventure)
This disrupts the comfort of the existing product & presents a challenge or requirement.
Depending on how your team works & is managed the challenge may come in many forms. The size of the challenge will also vary & can be big, small or somewhere in-between, very focused or more open-ended.
Pick up the next backlog item
A meeting to discuss a business goal (improve a KPI, metric, etc.)
A meeting to discuss a business idea
Note down assumptions & questions, add to the research backlog (this should happen throughout a project)
The UX Designer’s Journey diagram, highlighting step 3 understand & plan
3. Understand & plan (refusal of the call)
Although the UX Designer may be eager to accept the challenge or requirement, at this stage they will have questions that need answering.
Decide on the strategy moving forward, what questions need answering, & what needs to be considered. Start by deciding on a design method to follow:
Design sprint (large high-risk challenges, quick validation, business ideas)
Lean UX Design process (large to medium challenges, business goals)
Ideate, prototype, test (small challenges, backlog items, tweaks)
Depending on the method chosen & size of the challenge the following steps may not be relevant or happen in a different order. Next start asking questions & running exercises to deepen the understanding:
What is the purpose of the project or task? If unknown, run a business outcomes exercise.
Who are the users/customers? If unknown, run a proto-persona exercise (need validating later on)
What problems are we solving? If unknown, run a user outcomes exercise
What does success look like to both the business & the customer? (business & user outcomes)
What tasks are critical to accomplish? Run a quick user mapping exercise (users left, goals right, text & arrows in between).
Has this challenge been attempted before? (existing research, outcomes)
Then find out the questions the design needs to answer:
What would cause this project to fail?
Turn the answers into How Might We questions
Define the design criteria checklist. (specific enough to guide the project but open enough to explore ideas, look at research & problems)
UX Designers also need to at this stage start laying the groundwork for accessibility & inclusivity. Make sure to discuss, consider, & plan:
Supported devices, software, & hardware
Supported versions of the above
Consider multiple cultures & diversity (if global) & what may be impacted (appropriate timing, colour usage, language, etc.)
Include these rules in all tasks created for the project (easily forgotten about & overlooked)
The UX Designer’s Journey diagram, highlighting step 4 experts & users
4. Experts & users (meeting the mentor)
Whatever the experts provide the UX Designer with it serves to dispel their current understanding & give them the strength & knowledge to begin designing.
The business's knowledge is divided between the various functions, it’s the UX Designers' job to bring it all together. Each function is an expert in a certain area, the customer, technology, marketing, business, etc. In the end, UX Designers will have a full cohesive view of the problem or opportunity & not just their own perception.
Nobody knows everything - Jake Knapp (Design Sprint)
Set up 15-minute meetings to run through the challenge & plan with:
Project leads/deciders
Marketing
Sales
Customer support
Engineering
Research
& more…
Use questions to get the information needed, for example:
What will make this project a success?
What’s our unique advantage or opportunity?
What’s the biggest risk?
What would cause the project to fail?
Walkthrough previous planning & exercises, get their input
The challenge may require upfront research to find opportunities or existing product issues. For example, if the challenge is a business goal to increase checkout conversions. If so:
Generative research to find opportunities & new insights
Evaluative research to find pain points & joy
Present research to the team (presentations, reports)
Great UX Designers can synthesis all of this information into the best solution.
The UX Designer’s Journey diagram, highlighting step 5 ideas & solutions
5. Ideas & solutions (Crossing the threshold)
The UX Designer is now ready to act upon the challenge & truly begin building a solution.
Whether as a group or alone this stage remains relatively the same. If in a group it is better to follow the philosophy of together alone. Meaning the louder voices & senior positions don’t overpower the group thinking. All of the exercises should be done alone & anonymous without discussion including reviewing & voting.
Start by finding inspiration, it doesn’t have to be from the product's domain. Users also prefer interactions & patterns learnt from other products, especially products they use often. Use another exercise like Lightning Demos (in a group or solo):
Once inspired, review all of the information collected so far. UX Designers should be full of ideas at this point.
Sketch ideas
Use crazy 8’s or six up (explore/iterate an idea)
If struggling to exhaust an idea use the SCAMPER method of questioning:
Substitute: What can be substituted without affecting the process?
Combine: Can we merge two steps of the process?
Adapt: How can we make the process more flexible?
Magnify: What if the product is double the current size?
Put to another use: Can we recycle components or interactions for another use?
Eliminate: What would happen if we removed this part?
Reverse: What would happen if we reverse the process?
Review, vote (if in a group), & decide on the best ideas to create the:
Solution sketch
Navigation (site-map)
Task flow
Finally, to ensure there are no gaps in the solution create a detailed storyboard using the rough map from stage 3 & the solution sketch. For example, a recent project uncovered the need for social media ads & follow up email templates. A lot of the time the focus is purely on the product, the core part of the journey & not anywhere else.
Story mapping
At this point, it may be worth running a story mapping session to break the idea up & determine the MVP (Minimal Viable Product). Especially, in an Agile Sprint environment where work is iterated over. As the UX Designer, ensure the usability is not severely impacted, minimal doesn’t mean unusable… Try to enforce the idea of an MUP (Minimal Usable Product). Depending on how the team works story mapping could also happen once the idea has been validated using a prototype.
The UX Designer’s Journey diagram, highlighting step 6 feedback & direction
6. Feedback & direction (tests, allies, enemies)
The UX Designer must overcome feedback & critique presented with on the journey towards the final solution.
During a cross-collaborative workshop, the best ideas are voted on & the direction decided, for example, during a Design Sprint. If however the solution has been designed by the UX Designer only, they will need feedback from the various stakeholders.
Project managers/deciders (meets the spec? Gives approval)
Engineers/tech (technically possible? compatible with supported devices?)
& more… (depending on the challenge)
During a review, the UX Designer needs to sell the solution through a presentation. Think about:
Setting the scene, who are the users, what is the scenario, what has to be true, how did they get here?
Run through the prototype as the customer
Don’t miss secondary paths & details like notifications, loading, errors, etc.
Every design decision should be justified, try to use evidence
Takedown notes preferably where they can see it (for example, InVision comments)
If in disagreement argue your point professionally, if they continue to push then take it down as a note & say you will look into it (A/B test if necessary)
All critique is valuable, don’t flat out disagree, don’t take it personally
Sometimes it may take a few iterations to get past this stage, especially for large technical problems. Ultimately, it’s down to the decider/s to give the go-ahead. Once this has been acquired start recruiting participants for user testing/validating the solution. Unless using a 3rd party recruiting service or panel.
Try to find 6 - 7 participants to account for potential no-shows
Book an hour for each session in the calendar (if moderating)
Allow time between sessions (15-30 mins)
The UX Designer’s Journey diagram, highlighting step 7 build the prototype
7. Build prototype (approach to the inmost cave)
Final preparations are made before taking that final leap into validating the solution.
It’s important to distinguish a prototype from a fully completed design spec to be handed over to developers. At this stage, we are looking at the former. This means creating a Minimal Viable Prototype at a strong enough fidelity to obtain the validation needed. First, decide on the fidelity & prototype:
Paper (low-fi)
Wireframes (low-fi)
Visual design (high-fi)
Dummy data (coded)
Landing page test (coded)
Feature fake (coded)
Wizard of oz (coded)
Fully functional (coded)
Next, decide on the roles required to build the prototype. Sometimes this falls entirely on the UX Designer but ideally, there would be a mixture of skills.
UI Designer
Graphic Designer
Copywriter
Asset manager
Developer (if coded)
Use the correct tool for the job:
pen, paper, scissors, glue, etc. (paper prototype)
Balsamiq (wireframing)
Sketch, Figma, Studio, InVision (visual design)
HTML, CSS, JS (coded)
& many more…
If the prototype is either coded or a high-fidelity, follow best design practices & guidelines:
Consistency & components
Hierarchy & contrast
Simplicity, proximity, target size, & many laws
Responsiveness (if testing multiple devices, otherwise choose one platform come back to the others in step 11)
Feedback (keep users informed)
Tabbing orders (if coded, otherwise wait till step 11)
The UX Designer’s Journey diagram, highlighting step 8 test the prototype
8. Prototype testing (ordeal)
Experiencing the performance of the solution with customers grants greater insight that’s necessary in order to reach the journey’s end.
With the prototype in hand, it’s time to start the validation process. Ideally, this will also include a 30-minute discussion with the participants. First, start by gathering all of the project’s assumptions, questions & prototype then build a plan & script. Think about & include:
The purpose of the research & method chosen
What needs to be learnt (assumptions, questions, prototype features)
Check the research backlog for relevant assumptions & questions (if the script is short)
Who the target participants should be (all users impacted, novice vs advanced, diversity, uniqueness)
How success will be measured (task success, time on task, error rate, satisfaction, etc.)
Screener questions & compensation
Then start to write the script, think about:
An introduction to set expectations
Acquiring their consent & providing compensation as a thank you
Avoid leading, closed questions or introducing bias, use relevant questions for the audience
Prioritise questions & tasks (highest to lowest value)
Write each task without bias & order in a way to prevent bias
The goal of each task & what to observe
Lack of questions? If time permits run broader research (surveys, observational note-taking, etc.)
Before running the participant sessions perform a dummy run with a colleague, if possible. This will help to uncover hidden issues with the script & ensure the session meets the time available.
By this point, the participants have been booked in, the prototype & script is ready. All that is left to do is run the sessions, ensure:
The participant is at ease & warmed up through professional friendly discussion (offer a drink, ask about their day, can back out anytime, etc.)
Check if the participant has any questions/concerns
Embrace the silence, give the participant time to think, add more detail, etc.
Probe into answers, ask why
Don’t lead on tasks, let them explore, try not to help
Handle participant questions, use boomerang answers (what do you think?), rephrase the task if necessary (don’t introduce bias though!)
Wrap up each session by allowing the participant to express any remaining thoughts & explaining to them the next steps. You could also ask them to complete a post-test questionnaire to capture:
Net promoter score (NPS)
System usability scale (SUS)
Additional quantitative data
The UX Designer’s Journey diagram, highlighting step 9 research findings
9. Research findings (seizing the sword)
The Reward may come in many forms: problems, greater knowledge or insight, or even validation.
Document the findings from the previous step to guide the project forward & to refer back to if the research is useful in future challenges. Use the same document as the research plan & script, this way you don’t need to explain the project again & everything is in the same place (prevents others needing to jump between docs). Include:
General overview/summary (visualisations, net promoter score NPS, system usability scale SUS, etc.)
Which assumptions & questions were answered (provide evidence, update the central knowledge bank if one exists)
Individual task stats (average task success & error rate, time on task)
What worked well
What caused problems
Product defects (if coded)
Recommendations
When writing the findings ensure to:
Write the important info first, summary, recommendations, etc.
Write to your audience & what matters to them (project manager or team, researchers, marketers, everyone, etc.)
Include evidence (video clips, manuscript, etc.)
Watch out for findings that conflict, including other project research (may need further exploration)
Be clear & avoid miscommunication
Explain what can be done with each new insight
Protect your participant’s personal information (unless consent is provided)
If possible, involve the project team with the research. This can be done by using team members as note-takers, either while watching in real-time (anonymously), a recording or in person (1 at a time). This way the team can understand first hand rather than second hand via a report. As an added bonus I also find it motivates the team.
The UX Designer’s Journey diagram, highlighting step 10 move forward or back
10. Move forward or back (the road back)
The journey is not yet over & the solution may still need updating based on its performance.
At this point, there are a few different directions that can be considered depending on the results of the test. The best-case scenario is that the solution was valid & requires some minor tweaks & updates. Worst case the solution failed.
Design should have the permission to fail — Lean UX
Take the recommendations from the research findings & either:
Update the validated solution to better serve users based on the findings, usually, there are small tweaks that can be made (re-validate using an unmoderated user test to save time)
Partial validation will require going back to step 5 to generate new ideas for the parts of the prototype that failed
If the prototype failed entirely then take the findings & recommendations to re-evaluate. Do users actually need this? Can the solution be better? Use the research to understand & decide whether to go back to step 5 (ideas), rephrase the challenge & understanding, or move on to the next challenge
Set up a meeting with the team to present the research, test results & updated prototype. Make your recommendations & suggest a direction (one of the 3 above). Going backwards is always the hardest to gain support for, unfortunately, it is perceived negatively & in the age of sprints there usually isn’t enough time… Use the research findings to explain why from both a business & user perspective it would be better to go back. Ultimately, it is up to the decider on how to move forward.
The UX Designer’s Journey diagram, highlighting step 11 the final design & implementation
11. Final design & implementation (resurrection)
The design will have far-reaching consequences to the existing product & the work of the engineering team.
With the solution approved & validated the design can be finished to include anything that wasn’t required for the prototype & information developers need to know but can’t interpret from a visual design:
Responsiveness (devices, accessibility, screen size)
Tabbing order & scroll behaviour (accessibility)
Unique pages (404, terms of service/privacy pages, etc.)
Empty spaces & onboarding/help
Browser favicon & default images
Loading, error, & success states (allow time for users to react & take action)
Hover & focus states
Animations & transitions (don’t make them slow & avoid flashes)
Target sizes (buttons, links, menu items, etc.)
Final copy & alternative text for media (images, video, audio), collaborate with copywriters
Consider a secondary calmer colour palette that doesn’t use vivid colours (if necessary, reduce distractions & anxiety, use a colour mode switcher on-site, accessibility)
This is also the time to start thinking about how the new product/feature will be measured to determine its success & ongoing improvement. Build a measurement plan & ensure developers apply the correct tracking code. Think about:
The business or project objectives
The strategy & tactics to support the objectives
The KPIs that need to be tracked
The interactions that need tracking
Conversion funnels
3rd party applications (Hotjar, Google Analytics, etc.)
Micro vs macro goals
Create a tracking task for developers to implement
Developers by this point being involved in the journey should have a good idea of what they need to implement. Ensure they can easily access & understand the prototype & accompanying assets. It helps to present everything in a meeting so that questions can be asked if there is any confusion. Remain available to developers to help resolve any issues that come up throughout implementation. Sometimes minor tweaks need to be made to the design.
Periodically review the implementation as it is being built to ensure it is on the right track & matches the design spec. Ensure there is a task to perform a final review of the finished implementation. Designer sign-off should be required! In this review:
Check every page & it’s various states on all the supported devices (visually)
Confirm alternative content on images, videos, & audio
Use a keyboard-only, screen reader, braille reader, etc. (if available)
Check target areas, hover & focus states
Confirm animations & transitions are correct
Run a contrast & font-size analyser
Ensure all notifications are understandable, especially error messages
Don’t rely heavily on the quality assurance team to notice design & accessibility issues unless trained.
The UX Designer’s Journey diagram, highlighting step 12 launch & analyse
12. Launch & analyse (return with the elixir)
A direct solution to the problems or perhaps a new perspective for everyone to consider.
Once the developed solution has been quality tested & launched the product is now in a new state. It has changed from stage 1, hopefully for the better. It’s now time to allow it to collect data, depending on its determined frequency of use & user base size this may take weeks or even months. Once it has had the time, create a report or presentation to:
Confirm the project's value (time & money invested, the business value generated/conversions/profit, etc.)
Analyse the business goals/KPIs (Achieved? A step closer or back?)
Analyse the micro & macro goals defined in step 11 (what’s working & not working?)
Analyse the conversion funnel, is there a high number of drop-offs at a certain step? or steps?
Analyse the basics (acquisition, engagement, bounce rates, events, etc.)
Triangulate multiple data points to provide greater understanding (usage data, heatmaps, existing research, etc.)
If the results come back negatively it may be worth performing a retrospective to understand what went wrong, what could have been done better.
If the results have moved the team closer to the overall goal or KPI & provides evidence for improvements. It may be worth spending time strengthening these areas. This may help push the project over the line. Otherwise, add the insights into the backlog & pick up the next challenge to continue pushing towards the overall business goal.
Have your say
This is a living process & I’m sure it will change/evolve over time. No doubt I’ve missed things, UX Designers have a wide range of skills & are involved throughout the project journey. Does this process mimic roughly your own process? What would you change? Or add? What have I missed? Let me know in the comments!
|
https://uxdesign.cc/the-12-step-designers-journey-694de2568153
|
['Blayne Phillips']
|
2021-01-05 11:59:28.227000+00:00
|
['Product Design', 'UX Design', 'User Experience', 'Process', 'Methodology']
|
Comprehensive Impacts of Trump’s First Year: Education
|
2017 was a surreal year. Just when we think things can’t get any worse, lo and behold, a new tweet comes out. Or a new policy is introduced. Or a new world leader is so offended that we get closer to doomsday. Trump’s election has normalized and publicized the proverbial anonymous yahoo comments, and it’s hard to imagine that he still has a small but loud base of support and that people chose this narcissistic, sexist, racist sociopath consciously. He has exemplified our slow, subtle transformation from intelligent citizens to mindless consumers to salivating spectators who have a constant need for entertainment and outrage.
I always said that when voting for president, what we’re really voting for was the Supreme Court. I am going on record to say that I was wrong. Dead wrong. Trump has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are so many ways a president can be harmful other than by Supreme Court appointments. To be sure, judicial appointments are one major way that Trump is detrimental to the country, and it will take at least a generation to recover from those appointments alone. But this document shows that a president can do deep and lasting damage in many ways.
Although I vacillate between disgust and defeat and anger, I am trying very hard to channel all of those feelings into fighting against our spiral toward Idiocracy. The only way to do this is for everyone who is eligible to actually get out and vote in every single election. This November’s midterm elections will tell us if Americans are really ready for progress or if they’re apathetic enough to continue our moral, ethical, and constitutional decline.
There have been several year-end round-ups about Trump’s first year. Many of them are laughably revisionist. But there were some informative ones. Axios created a great chart of search trends for some of the biggest news events of the first year, showing how we’ve all jumped from one four-alarm news fire to another. Rolling Stone summarized the damage of Trump’s first year. And Roger Cohen with the New York Times editorialized our frightening reality in If This is America.
This piece is meant to be a comprehensive assessment of the impacts of Trump’s first year as President of the United States of America (let that sink in). There are many things that happened during the campaign that are not included. Included are impacts from January 20, 2017, to January 31, 2018 (in some cases, February 1). There are sure to be things missing, but I have done my best to record these impacts. The impacts are listed under 19 different categories:
1. Cabinet Appointments;
2. Science & Environment;
3. Women & Families;
4. LBGT;
5. Judicial/Constitutional;
6. Ethics;
7. Targeting free press/free speech/Privacy;
8. Health & Safety;
9. Consumer Protections;
10. Education;
11. Transportation/Infrastructure/Housing;
12. Immigration;
13. Social Contract;
14. Business/Economy/Budget;
15. Military/Defense/Police;
16. World;
17. General Governance;
18. Character; and
19. Some good news. Because there is always some good news.
Of course, some of the impacts may fit under multiple categories. For example, does Trump’s encouragement of police to treat suspects violently fall under Health and Safety or Law Enforcement? Or maybe Ethics or Character? There are many such conundrums, and I have tried to categorize each example appropriately. Some may disagree on the categorization. And that’s OK. As a researcher, I’m still pondering good ways to visualize all of this data, but in the meantime, it’s listed here. Fair warning: This is long. The items may not necessarily be in chronological order.
Since this will take me months to write, I will publish each section as I complete it. This tenth article is on Trump’s impacts on education.
I want to acknowledge Amy Siskind’s weekly list of subtle changes that experts in authoritarianism say to watch out for. Amy’s in-depth listings were invaluable, and a must-read itself.
Buckle your seatbelts.
Education
Photo by David Pennington on Unsplash
As mentioned in the article on appointments, Trump chose Betsy DeVos to head the Education Department. DeVos is best known as an anti-public school zealot who is uniquely unqualified and knows nothing about our public education system. She has also made millions of dollars on for-profit education and student loan collection companies. In a status report six months after DeVos’s appointment, Anya Kamenetz reported on DeVos’s negative impacts on the country’s students related to “school choice,” for-profit colleges and student loans, campus sexual assaults, and transgender students’ rights. And Ella Nilsen and Carly Sitrin wrote about how DeVos is quietly erasing President Obama’s education legacy by dropping protections for transgender students and sexual assault victims, changing the goals of the Office of Civil Rights, cutting professional development funding for teachers, dumping regulations related to school lunch nutrition, and creating a friendlier environment for for-profit colleges and student loan collectors. Here are some impacts of the Trump administration that we’re seeing in the area of education:
· Advocating charter schools, private religious schools, and homeschooling under the guise of “choice,” Trump declared a National School Choice Week proclamation. Turns out, “school choice” really means taxpayer-funded private religious school to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. Among the lies found in the “teaching” of voucher schools are textbooks claiming that evolution is destruction of faith, that Jews plotted to kill Jesus, and that slavery is really black immigration.
· The administration also rolled back President Obama’s school nutrition standards, reducing whole-grain requirements, allowing higher levels of sodium entrees, and restoring higher-fat and sweetened milk to school cafeterias, thus increasing the risk of obesity and diabetes among children across the country.
· The Trump administration opted out of a new standardized test that 28 other countries are implementing to test whether kids can spot and avoid fake news, assessing students’ ability to tell when data is being presented in a misleading way and the difference between fact and opinion.
· The top federal student aid official resigned from the Department of Education due to having a conscience. DeVos replaced him with a student loan company CEO who profits from student loans. But that’s not all. The new chief of student loan enforcement comes from a for-profit college.
· These are not the only shocking appointments. DeVos appointed Candice Jackson as acting head of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, which enforces Title IX and civil rights law in educational institutions. Jackson has argued against feminism and affirmative action, and has suggested that women are “fake victims.”
· The effects of these appointments were fast. The Department of Education moved to limit the scope of civil rights investigations in schools, which means that investigations into discrimination complaints could become shorter and more narrow. In addition, the Department of Education will negotiate agreements with schools without releasing any investigation findings to the students or parents involved in the complaints. The new rules leave parents out of the process completely, leaving parents with no ability to advocate for their children.
· In higher education, Trump and DeVos removed guidance from President Obama regarding investigating sexual assaults on campus. Colleges and universities can now decide themselves what standard of evidence they want to use instead of using the “preponderance of evidence” standard to decide whether someone is guilty of sexual assault. President of the University of California system Janet Napolitano said that this change would “weaken sexual violence protections, prompt confusion among campuses about how best to respond to reports of sexual violence and sexual harassment, and unravel the progress that so many schools have made.” And president of the National Women’s Law Center Fatima Goss Graves noted that this change will “discourage students from reporting assaults, create uncertainty for schools on how to follow the law and make campuses less safe.”
· DeVos also decided to meet with men’s rights activist groups to talk about campus rape rules. These groups are known to be anti-women and to fight against the Violence Against Women Act and rights of victims and survivors of sexual assault. Among other things, these groups have suggested that rape and domestic violence are simply overreported and that the “radical feminist” legal system is what poses a real threat to men everywhere. One of the groups DeVos is prioritizing even suggested that women initiate violence themselves.
· Women aren’t the only students in danger. Trump and DeVos also rescinded guidelines to protect the rights of transgender students. President Obama had said that students’ gender identities were protected under Title IX requirements, which forbid federally funded schools from discriminating on the basis of sex. Trump and DeVos decided that it was up to local and state governments — or Congress — to adopt policies or laws to address discrimination, bullying, and harassment. Or not to. A subsequent guidance document instructed the Office of Civil Rights to investigate discrimination complaints the same way they were before President Obama’s guidance.
· DeVos rolled back two regulations made under President Obama that held unethical for-profit colleges accountable and provided financial relief to students who were defrauded by them. This is in spite of the evidence that showed how the regulations were working better than expected to protect students and taxpayers from unethical and predatory for-profit colleges. She has been sued by more than a dozen states for this act. During the Department of Education hearing on this matter, DeVos blocked attendees from streaming the meeting, even though it is supposed to be a public process.
· Trump and DVos also stopped cancelling student loans for those who were defrauded by for-profit colleges that ended up closing. At least 25,000 people were frozen out of the system by July 2017.
· Under Trump and DeVos, the Department of Education also wants to phase out public service loan forgiveness, as well as other debt forgiveness programs.
· Trump is actually trying to revamp the entire Higher Education Act of 1965. The bill “eliminates every key consumer protection established by the Obama administration.” In addition to ending public service loan forgiveness, this revamp will cap student loans and income-based repayment options, changes funding for historically black colleges, and changes definitions of “success” so that for-profit colleges are less scrutinized. The Wall Street Journal noted that the only winner in Trump’s revamp are for-profit colleges.
· Trump tried to eliminate nontaxable tuition waivers for graduate students who work as teaching or research assistants, which would have added at least $2,000 to students’ tax bills. As Ethan Siegel noted, this would have destroyed graduate education. Thankfully, this part of the tax plan did not come to fruition.
The next article will cover the impacts of Trump’s first year on transportation, infrastructure, and housing.
|
https://medium.com/comprehensive-impacts-of-trumps-first-year/comprehensive-impacts-of-trumps-first-year-education-f626484a2f69
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['Dr. Amy Bacharach']
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2018-07-19 20:14:54.518000+00:00
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['Politics', 'Education', 'Higher Education', 'Government', 'Trump']
|
This is How Airbnb is Contributing to the Bay Area Housing Crisis
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Airbnb Headquarters in San Francisco
Airbnb, the short-term rental platform founded in 2008, went public last week, pricing its initial public offering (IPO) at $68 per share but closing most recently at around $157 per share, as of the time of this writing. Obviously, investors see lots of potential and value in the company. But how valuable is Airbnb really to the world beyond investors?
Having lived in the Bay Area for several years now, I have always had generally positive sentiments towards Airbnb and even got to visit the company’s beautiful headquarters a couple of years ago. However, I also know that housing in the Bay Area is a touchy subject. As a renter myself, I know how expensive it is to live here, and rental prices are only increasing.
Airbnb’s original intention was to follow a sharing economy model in which hosts would only occasionally rent out their spaces. However, according to Inside Airbnb, there have been concerns in recent years that owners are listing their properties permanently, more like hotels, which is against the law in many locations and could lead to a number of downstream consequences such as gentrification and lack of affordable housing. Airbnbs that operate like hotels are also able to avoid certain taxes and regulations that other regular hotels must endure.
As a result, I decided to use data on 5,185 listings in Santa Clara County as of October 25, 2020, from Inside Airbnb to find out if there are any negative impacts of the company.
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https://medium.com/@evanchen13/this-is-how-airbnb-is-contributing-to-the-bay-area-housing-crisis-3d5bfd6c8ed2
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['Evan Chen']
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2020-12-21 06:40:07.256000+00:00
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['Airbnb', 'Housing', 'Data', 'Data Science', 'Public Policy']
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Why Is Burger King Asking You to Eat at McDonalds
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Now Burger king asking you to order from McDonald’s is akin to a Republican asking to vote for Biden. Or Coca Cola asking you to have Pepsi. It just doesn’t happen.
To get a little perspective, and to understand the intense rivalry among the two giants, let’s dig into some of the bizarre Burger King campaigns that have sucked all the juices out of your Big Macs.
The Whopper Detour
What do you do if you have to make people download your app on their phones? You give an offer, a discount or a freebie. Likewise, Burger King gave a Whopper for just 1-cents.
But being able to gorge on the whopper after downloading the Burger King app was not the reason this marketing campaign won the Titanium, Direct and the Grand Prix awards at the 2019 Cannes Lions International.
The Whopper Detour
The whopper was available for next to nothing only if you downloaded the app and then ordered the Whopper within 600 ft of a McDonalds restaurant. A clever mix of technology — Geofencing if you were wondering — and marketing ingenuity.
Not that Burger King had created a print ad or a tv commercial that trolled its rival — a ploy that we often saw during the cola wars. It was the fact that people themselves were trolling McDonald’s that made the campaign so brilliant. People were literally sitting at McDonalds parking lots, ordering Whoppers.
What can be more embarrassing for a behemoth such as McDonalds where its own employees are pointing customers to the nearest Burger King joint?
Never Trust a Clown
From McDonalds parking lots, enter the movie hall.
Stephen King fans would remember the movie IT. There was much fanfare about the movie and people went in hordes to watch the movie. But no one knew that along with the horrifying chills while munching popcorn and slurping coke, they will also get a shot of marketing ingenuity.
As the movie finished and end credits started rolling, a message flashed on the screen which said,
“Moral of the Story: Never Trust a Clown.”
Bang!
The entire audience went bonkers.
Never Trust a Clown
Burger King called it their longest ad ever. And indeed it was. Their message fitted right in the movie’s context and delivered a painful low blow to their rival just as they were about to dash out of the hall.
They topped up the campaign by sharing the McDonalds tagline as I am Loving IT from the original I am loving it.
Along with the buns, Burger King really knows how to spice up its puns.
Size Matters
Do you know that the Whopper is much bigger than McDonald’s?
You might, or you might not. Some people don’t have an eye for detail.
So Burger King cleared the air once and for all with its “Whopper of a Secret” campaign.
A Whopper of a Secret
The tongue-in-cheek campaign showed people that the Big Mac was hidden behind every Whopper in all of their advertisements. But because the Big Mac is so tiny compared to the Whopper, you could not see it.
One Roasted Kanye Meal Please
Kanye West’s association with alt-right trolls such as Candace Owens, and his pro Trump positions have often landed him in several controversies. He even nominated himself for this year’s presidential election. Talking about whacky ideas!
As described aptly in this article in the Fast company, he had veered from being a “revered creative who often makes controversial statements” to “toxic alt right fartcloud.”
So when his tweet saying “McDonald’s is my favorite restaurant,” was picked up by the Burger King social listening algorithm, they latched onto the opportunity to quickly turn the tables. They tweeted with the caption “Explains a Lot” over the Kanye West’s tweet.
The tweet instantly grabbed the eyeballs of thousands and became the most liked branded tweet of all time.
Burger King’s response to Kanye West’s tweet
An Offer They Can’t Refuse
The recent friendly gesture of Burger King is not something totally out of the blue. Back in 2015, Burger King had come up with another such campaign called the “peace offering” or the “McWhopper” campaign.
The idea behind the campaign was to create awareness of the International Peace Day which is celebrated on 21 September every year. Burger King proposed that Mcdonalds should set aside their differences, and they both should offer a joint burger called the McWhopper. The proceeds from the sales would go to a non profit Peace One Day.
For it’s sheer brilliance, the McWhopper was named the king of all media at the Cannes International Festival for Creativity and walked away with the coveted Grand Prix award.
The McWhopper Campaign
Burger King took the first step and even created a website with kick-ass content for the new burger. But McDonalds did not find the campaign amusing and politely declined the proposal for which it faced severe backlash.
The genius of the campaign was that Burger King would have gained social mileage no matter what the response of McDonalds would have been.
McDonalds had to choose from the lesser of the two evils. If it had accepted the offer, Burger King still would have had the upper hand of being the one to come up with the offer. And if McDonalds would have rejected — which it did — it would face a backlash, which it did.
The headline of this article in Forbes sums up what people felt about McDonalds after the refusal.
“McDonalds Chooses Pride Over Peace With Burger King’s McWhoppers offer.”
King of Hearts
Burger King has mastered the art of fine topical marketing. Be it the IT campaign or the Kanye roast, Burger King frequently creates a lasting impact by finding contexts that would help further it’s messages. It rides the wave with perfection.
And now, when the virus has sucked out the life of economies world over, leaving thousands without work, pushing millions back into poverty, Burger King is spreading the message of how important it is to help each other. By setting an example, it is nudging people to help others in this time of chaos. It’s bringing empathy back in vogue.
Maybe it is the future of marketing. Or rather, it should be the future of marketing. The ROI of campaigns should not only be measured in terms of impressions or increase in footfalls but also in terms of the social change the campaign stirred.
Brands change lifestyle, they create habits. They are the millennial religions that billions follow to know what’s moral and what’s not. They help us make sense of the chaotic world that surrounds us.
So, along with the awareness and interest that brands generate for their products, they should also work frequently towards creating a better society.
As Ann Tran, a brand consultant and Tedx speaker says,
|
https://medium.com/swlh/why-is-burger-king-asking-you-to-eat-at-mcdonalds-589d2dbf01f6
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['Mehboob Khan']
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2020-11-11 05:59:09.158000+00:00
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['Marketing', 'Creativity', 'McDonalds', 'Burger King', 'Advertising']
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How does the inflection point of quadratic equations relate to the quadratic formula?
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The quadratic formula is one of the most useful formulas that are taught since high school, and for good reason. This formula allows to find the values of x for which a quadratic equation equals 0.
The quadratic formula
However, where does this formula come from and how does it relate to the inflection point of a quadratic equation? To determine such questions there are two important things to keep in mind for quadratic equations:
Every quadratic equation has one and only one inflection point Every quadratic equation is symmetric around that inflection point
What is the inflection point of a quadratic equation?
The inflection point of a quadratic equation is the point x in which the quadratic equations reaches either its maximum or minimum value y.
Since the inflection point is the point in which a quadratic equation is symmetric, it is possible to obtain its value from two points of x that are equidistant around the inflection point, and then adding them and divide them by 2 to get the middle value, which is the inflection point. For example, by equating a quadratic equation to c:
Equation I
Of course, the above is solved for x, for which x₁ = 0 and x₂ = -b / a are the solutions:
x₁ = 0
Equation I.I
x₂ =-b / a
Equation I.II
Now the the inflection point, is simply obtained as follows:
Quadratic equation with its inflection point marked as a dash line. Graphed in Desmos.
How does the inflection point relates to the quadratic formula?
The quadratic formula gives the values of x for which the quadratic equation equals 0. Such values are equidistant around the inflection point x = -b / 2a, so it is possible to add or subtract some value ρ to the inflection point that results in the values of x for which the quadratic equation equals 0:
Equation II
But what is the value of ρ? To answer that question we have to examine the elements of a quadratic equation, usually defined by:
The above can be rearranged as:
Such that:
With the quadratic equation in this form, the values of x, when the equation is equal to 0, are easily found:
With this new information, it is now possible to express the equation II in the following terms:
Equation III
By multiplying both expressions in equation III:
Equation IV
Solving the above for ρ:
Equation V
Finally, retaking the equation II
it is possible to solve the values of x by replacing ρ with the expression obtained in equation V:
|
https://tacahs12.medium.com/where-does-the-quadratic-formula-come-from-4630efd376f
|
['Carlos Hurtado']
|
2020-12-18 20:03:12.062000+00:00
|
['Algebra', 'Quadratic Formula', 'Mathematics']
|
Why It Makes Sense to Switch to Organic Tea
|
I’m of Ukrainian descent, and like in most Eastern European countries, tea has always played a central role at the kitchen table. While tea has been a mainstay in many other countries such as Japan, China, India, Turkey, Morocco, and the UK for centuries, it’s prominence in America has been a recent boom with the specialty tea market quadrupling from 1993–2008. In the U.S., tea can be found in 80% of all households with Americans consuming over 84 billion servings of tea in 2017 alone!
Whether most of us choose tea for its energetic boost, or its calming side effects at night, or just for its delicious, multi-faceted flavor tea-drinkers can agree that in the end, we are looking to get some benefits from consuming this beverage.
What we are not looking to get is pesticides. But folks, that’s may be exactly what you’re getting depending on the brand of tea that you buy.
Back in 2014, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) released the results of tests conducted on Canada’s 8 most popular tea brands (2 were from the same company):
Tetley Lipton Twinnings No Name Uncle Lee’s Legends of China King Cole Signal Red Rose
Of the eight brands tested, the top 7 in the above list contained pesticides- only Red Rose was found to be clean. One of the pesticides found on the teas tested was endosulfan, which has been shown to cause tremors and seizures in humans and animals when exposed to high levels. Also, they found traces of DDT.
While you may not end up accumulating enough of these pesticides through drinking tea, its truly a no joke when it comes to being in constant contact. Just last year in Kerala, India 5,000 victims of endosulfan spraying got compensated for their tragic development of mental and physical disabilities on cashew, cotton, and TEA farms.
Also in 2013, an independent analytic testing company, Eurofins, tested a handful of Celestial Seasonings teas.
Green Tea Peach Blossom Green Tea Raspberry Gardens Authentic Green Tea Antioxidant Max Dragon Fruit Green Tea Honey Lemon Ginger Antioxidant Max Blackberry Pomegranate Antioxidant Max Blood Orange Sleepytime Kids Goodnight Grape Sleepytime Herb Teas English Breakfast Black K-Cup Rooibos Safari Spice
Of the entire selection, EVERY SINGLE tea product, except for Rooibos Safari Spice, contained pesticides that surpassed the U.S. federal limit.
Other companies such as Teavana have also been exposed of high levels of pesticide residue in their tea. And pesticides leach, especially if you are the type to leave your tea bag in your mug for hours…I know I’m guilty!
But, I don’t know. Maybe some readers just aren’t ready to let go of popular tea brands.
Well, if that’s the case then let me continue my argument in support of organic tea and say that not only do you have to be wary of the types of unwashed tea leaves that are used to make your tiny, dainty triangle bags but (if you can picture where I’m going here), these increasingly popular plastic teabags are made of GMO corn-based polylactic acid plastic which can degrade similarly to BPA. Dr. Mercola comments on the potential dangers of these new bags:
“So while these plastics are generally considered among the safest in terms of leaching potential, the molecules in these plastic tea bags may still in fact break down and leach out when steeped in boiling water — which is the recommended way to brew a good cup of tea”
But what about the paper tea bags?
Those could contain a dangerous chemical called epichlorohydrin which is used to prevent the breaking down of the paper bags in boiling water so that the tea can be steeped. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) looked at epichlorohydrin and showed that it causes a number of health issues in mice models with a number of government organizations labeling it as a possible carcinogen to humans.
Organic Tea to the Rescue
Luckily, in today’s day and age, we have the option to invest our money in companies that value wellbeing for all of those involved in tea production and tea consumption. By choosing companies that provide pesticide-free, plastic-free, and chemical-free teas you’re not only doing yourself a huge favor but advocating for the removal of harmful pesticide spraying that’s negatively impacting tea farmers’ lives. Furthermore, you’re also advocating for the planet as pesticides are well known for leaking into waterway systems and destroying local ecosystems.
While I personally love loose leaf tea more than tea bags, as the flavors are usually much more potent and you can adjust the strength of your brew much easier, I can see the benefit of using teabags primarily with travel- it’s a lot less messy, easier to find on the shelf, and easier to transport (particularly if you have teas for every occasion). Below I’ve picked a few brands that I personally love because they provide a great product while also minimizing their impact on the environment.
Check them out and enjoy!
Organic India
Numi Tea
Traditional Medicine
Yogi Organic Tea
|
https://medium.com/@breathe.ground/why-it-makes-sense-to-switch-to-organic-tea-71f43b730904
|
['Julia Klyus']
|
2020-03-05 17:08:41.221000+00:00
|
['Health Foods', 'Health', 'Organic', 'Tea', 'Healthy Lifestyle']
|
Cryptomas Presents from Bybit
|
Today concludes the end of our cryptomas campaign, we were very happy to see the positive response we got from all of you for our 7 days crypto and winter themed posters. A big thank you for all those that participated, liked us, and retweeted us; we will not forget you.
If you followed the rules and left us your UID, you should now receive your cryptomas gift! So don’t hesitate, head to www.bybit.com and spin the wheel once more!
Where to Find Us:
Website: www.bybit.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Bybit_Official
Reddit: www.reddit.com/r/Bybit/
Youtube: bit.ly/2Cmuibg
Steemit: steemit.com/@bybit-official
Facebook: bit.ly/2S1cyrf
Linkedin: bit.ly/2CxHGcz
Instagram: www.instagram.com/bybit_official/
Telegram: t.me/BybitTradingChat
|
https://medium.com/bybit/cryptomas-presents-from-bybit-1948bd5fe580
|
[]
|
2018-12-26 10:25:44.317000+00:00
|
['Bybit Events', 'Bybit', 'Bitcoin', 'Cryptomas']
|
The Application of Natural Language Processing in OpenSearch
|
Catch the replay of the Apsara Conference 2020 at this link!
By ELK Geek, with special guest, Xie Pengjun (Chengchen), Senior Algorithm Expert of Alibaba Cloud AI
Introduction: When building search engines, effect optimization issues will emerge, many of which are related to Natural Language Processing (NLP). This article interprets and analyzes these issues by combining the technical points of NLP in OpenSearch.
Natural Language Processing
Research on NLP aims to achieve effective communication between humans and computers through languages. It is a science that integrates linguistics, psychology, computer science, mathematics, and statistics. It involves many topics, such as analysis, extraction, understanding, conversion, and the generation of natural languages and symbolic languages.
The Stages of AI
Computing Intelligence: It refers to the ability to outperform humans in some areas by relying on computing power and the ability to store massive data. A representative example is “Alphago” from Google. With the strong computing power of Google TPU and the combination of algorithms, like Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) and reinforcement learning, Alphago can make good decisions by processing massive information about the Go game. Thus, it can outperform humans in terms of computational ability.
It refers to the ability to outperform humans in some areas by relying on computing power and the ability to store massive data. A representative example is “Alphago” from Google. With the strong computing power of Google TPU and the combination of algorithms, like Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) and reinforcement learning, Alphago can make good decisions by processing massive information about the Go game. Thus, it can outperform humans in terms of computational ability. Intellisense: It refers to the ability to identify important elements from unstructured data. For example, it can analyze a query to identify information, such as people’s names, places, and institutions.
It refers to the ability to identify important elements from unstructured data. For example, it can analyze a query to identify information, such as people’s names, places, and institutions. Cognitive Intelligence: Based on intellisense, cognitive intelligence can understand the meaning of elements and make some inferences. For example, in Chinese, sentences like “谢霆锋是谁的儿子” and “谁是谢霆锋的儿子” both contain the same characters, but the semantics of them are different. This is what cognitive intelligence aims to solve.
Based on intellisense, cognitive intelligence can understand the meaning of elements and make some inferences. For example, in Chinese, sentences like “谢霆锋是谁的儿子” and “谁是谢霆锋的儿子” both contain the same characters, but the semantics of them are different. This is what cognitive intelligence aims to solve. Creative Intelligence: It refers to computers’ ability to create sentences that conform to common sense, semantics, and logic, based on understandings of semantics. For example, computers can automatically write novels, create music, and chat with people naturally.
The research on NLP covers all of the subjects above. NLP is necessary to realize comprehensive AI.
The Development Trend of NLP
The breakthrough in in-depth language models will lead to the progress of important natural language technologies. NLP services on public clouds will evolve to customized services from general functions. Natural language technologies will be gradually and closely integrated with industries and scenarios to create greater value.
The Capabilities of Alibaba Group’s NLP Platform
From bottom to top, the capabilities of the NLP platform are divided into NLP data, NLP basic capabilities, NLP application technologies, and high-level applications.
NLP data is the basis for many algorithms, including language dictionaries, substantive knowledge dictionaries, syntactic dictionaries, and sentiment analysis dictionaries. Basic NLP technologies include lexical analysis, syntactic analysis, text analysis, and in-depth models. On top of basic NLP technologies, there are vertical technologies of NLP, including Q&A and conversation technologies, anti-spam technology, and address resolution. The combination of these technologies supports many applications. Among them, OpenSearch is an application with intensive NLP capabilities.
Applications and Typical NLP Technologies in OpenSearch
The infrastructure of OpenSearch includes Alibaba Cloud’s basic products and exclusive search systems based on the search scenarios of Alibaba Cloud’s ecosystem, such as HA3, RTP, and Dii.
The basic management platform ensures the collection, management, and training of offline data.
The algorithm module is divided into two parts. One is related to query parsing, including multi-grained word segmentation (MWS), entity recognition, error correction, and rewriting. Another is related to correlation and sorting, including text correlation, prediction of Click Through Rate (CTR) and Conversion Rate (CVR), and Learning to Rank (LTR).
Parts with orange backgrounds are related to NLP
The goal of OpenSearch is to create all-in-one and out-of-the-box intelligent search services. Alibaba Cloud will open these algorithms to users in the form of industry templates, scenarios, and peripheral services.
The Analyzing Procedure of NLP in OpenSearch
A search starts with a keyword. For example, when a user searches “aj1北卡兰新款球鞋” in Chinese, the analyzing procedure works like this:
Cross-Domain Word Segmentation
Alibaba Cloud has provided a series of open models for cross-domain word segmentation in OpenSearch.
Word Segmentation Challenges
The effect of word segmentation is greatly reduced by additional unrecognized words or so-called “new words” in various fields. The costs to customize word segmentation models for new users of the process from data labeling to data training are expensive.
Solution
A model for forming terms can be built by combining statistical characteristics, such as mutual information, and left-skewed and right-skewed log transformations. By doing so, a domain dictionary can be quickly built based on user data. By combining word segmentation models from a source domain with dictionaries from a target domain, a tokenizer can be quickly built in a target domain based on remote supervision technology.
The figure above shows the automatic cross-domain word segmentation framework.
Users need to provide some corpus data from their business, and Alibaba Cloud can automatically build a customized word segmentation model. This method greatly improves efficiency and meets the needs of customers quickly.
This technology offers better results compared to the open-source general models of word segmentation in various domains.
Named Entity Recognition (NER)
NER can recognize important elements. For example, NER can recognize and extract people’s names, places, and times in queries.
Challenges and Difficulties
There is a lot of research and challenges for NER in NLP. NER faces difficulties, such as boundary ambiguity, semantic ambiguity, and nesting ambiguity, especially in Chinese, due to the lack of native word separators.
Solution
The architecture of the NER model in OpenSearch is shown in the upper-right corner of the following figure.
In OpenSearch, many users have accumulated a large number of dictionary object libraries. To make full use of these libraries, Alibaba Cloud builds a GraphNER framework that organically integrates knowledge based on the BERT model. As shown on the table in the lower-right corner, the best effect of NER can be achieved in Chinese.
Spelling Correction
The error correction steps of OpenSearch include mining, training, evaluation, and online prediction.
The main model of spelling correction is based on the statistical translation model and the neural network translation model. Also, the model has a complete set of methods in performance, display style, and intervention.
Semantic Matching
The emergence of in-depth language models has greatly improved many NLP tasks, especially for semantic matching.
Alibaba DAMO Academy has also proposed many innovations based on BERT and developed the exclusive StructBERT model. The main innovation of StructBERT is that in the training of in-depth language models, it adds more objective functions of words and term orders. More diverse objective functions for sentence structure prediction are also added to carry out multi-task learning. However, the universal StructBERT model cannot be provided to different customers in different domains. Alibaba Cloud needs to adapt StructBERT to different domains. Therefore, a three-stage paradigm for semantic matching has been proposed to create a semantic matching model that is used to quickly produce customized semantic models for customers.
Process details are shown in the figure below:
Services Based on NLP Algorithms
The systematic architecture of services based on algorithms includes offline computing, online engines, and product consoles.
As shown in the figure, the light blue area shows the algorithm-related features provided by NLP in OpenSearch. Users can experience and use these features directly in the console.
Original Source:
Gain Access to Expert View — Subscribe to DDI Intel
|
https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/the-application-of-natural-language-processing-in-opensearch-7b91a899d9bb
|
['Alibaba Cloud']
|
2020-12-08 15:36:51.284000+00:00
|
['Naturallanguageprocessing', 'Big Data', 'Alibabacloud', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Algorithms']
|
TTL — Tech Team Leading. Team leading everything — A Low level…
|
FTP — Free The Player
Neo: What are you trying to tell me, that I can dodge bullets? Morpheus: No, Neo. I’m trying to tell you that when you’re ready, you won’t have to.
GPL — Games, PLural!
The reason I’m not on my A game is that I never really imagined it as a game. Moreover it’s not just a game — there are multiple games being played at the same time. I have to identify the current game and play my best move. Jump to the next game and play the best move again, repeatedly, all the time. You can imagine it as a playground with several floors: You play ping-pong at the first floor, go up the next floor to find yourself in an ongoing soccer game, go up another one just to find a chess board waiting for you.
WEP — What? Explain Please
Picture a typical day. You’re on your way to the office, sipping your latte, planning your day — your in a dreamy mood. You arrive at the office just in time for a “go/nogo” status meeting — need to focus quickly, keeping sharp and cold. Next you’re sitting with one of your team members discussing his unique situation and ways to improve — sensitive yet firm. Moving on to a group meeting, your manager presents a new agenda he wants to promote — holding the big picture while observing your team’s reactions. Games, games, games.
VPN — Very productive Ninja
OK, so I’m playing a lot of games: The short-term game, the very short term, the long term, my team, peers, managers and hopefully a vision I wish to realize. How do I stay sharp in every game, all the time? Well as the cliche says — the answers lies within the question:
It’s a game — play it don’t work at it. Enjoy it don’t survive it.
It’s a game — you can jump in and out into the “real” world as you please.
It has a lot of dimensions — mini games if you wish, each with different players and rules you have to master.
It’s kind of an imaginative mind flip. I keep doing the same things but I’m actually playing a game. Which surprisingly makes me do the same things better.
The required change is perceptual. Understanding that you’re playing a (multidimensional) game is the key.
SSH — Some Small Howto’s
Finally — since we are after all, engineers — How do I implement this change in my daily practice? Well, I think that the practical path is very individual. I can only share what works for me:
|
https://medium.com/@lavian-alon/ttl-tech-team-leading-bb244bb8ad28
|
['Alon Lavian']
|
2019-10-18 09:46:08.440000+00:00
|
['Imagination', 'Management', 'Playfulness', 'Technology', 'Team Leader']
|
Not able to let it go…
|
He was a man in a small and a unique city, involves a lot of empathy for other religions, embraces every culture. With scarce resources, everything late for this city and you are still expected to become a rich, wealthy man with lot of kids.
He was grown up and saw the lady in high school can speak foreign language, French and parents are promising on her education which is uncommon at those years, 1940s.
He wanted her and got married. They had six babies, was actually seven but the woman decided abort it. Meanwhile, living in a small house man became a businessman like his brothers. He was very intelligent, dedicated and loving his wife.
One night, enemies targeted the guns to their home. This triggered the immigration to a bigger city. They lived in their bigger city home for 40 years. One night the woman started to feel chest discomfort and shortness of breath. She was death next morning. Children missed her, could not prevent her death. Husband was suffering but did not show up others. He was an old man, who knew to suffer in silence. A year later, an anxiety of existence knocked the door at the same time his wife anniversary. Doctors could not find the reason of this restlessness. He was scared but continued to suffer.
The virus came in to world in 2019. He started to cough three months ago. Then became febrile. His chest was hurting. It was the beginning of the end of a life more than 90 years in this earth.
He closed his eyes, unconscious, sure in peace. One woman was with him all the time, no matter how sick he was.
Only my prays can reach him…
He was born in Valentine`s. Will remember him with the love of woman.
|
https://medium.com/@irem-eldem/not-able-to-let-it-go-814aa8549fcc
|
['İrem Eldem']
|
2020-10-11 19:53:05.835000+00:00
|
['Valentines Day', 'Not Let It Go']
|
An Angelic Heat
|
I walk to the beach with
My white top, my swimming trunks,
Pink above the knee, my sunglasses,
Brown as my tanned skin, my hat,
Made from a collection of
Straws, I got the short end of
The stick when I had to lay
Down by shards of dune,
This is what happens when you
Don’t come to the beach early
The bright sun turned the sand white,
A winter wonderland, at least that’s
How my body is responding with its
Cold sweat, as my heart beat in heat waves
A parade of rain showers the terrain and
Complainers
My burnt skin screams in rejoice with every
Wet embrace, a rainbow blooms like
A flower between the cracks, between
The cracks of the clouds, and covering
In front of the lightning.
|
https://medium.com/weeds-wildflowers/an-angelic-heat-c722ae9b29f9
|
['Enne Baker']
|
2020-12-30 02:27:18.574000+00:00
|
['Beach', 'Heat', 'Summer', 'Weather', 'Poetry']
|
Evalcat — a library for the aggregation of search metrics
|
Evaluating search systems
Building search systems have been made simple with the availability of open-source search engines like Elasticsearch and Solr. However, comparing the effectiveness of search systems when trying to make improvements can often be a laborious task. It usually consists of multiple steps of offline and online evaluations, including relevance assessments, log analysis and A/B testing.
There is often a step in search evaluation that precedes the aforementioned, and that is to examine the search results of a set of queries. This can be done by comparing the aggregated metrics of two search systems, typically the current system and an improved one. While this has no impact on any relevance judgements, it can be useful as a sanity check to monitor the changes between systems.
Introduction
Over the past year I interned at a Tokyo-based startup called Libora, where I worked on their identically-titled product, a search engine for online courses. After the completion of the search engine, the next step was to improve on the search effectiveness. As I made changes to the search algorithm, I realized that I was constantly reusing code to compare and evaluate the previous and new search results. As such, we decided to extract the functions and package them in a library evalcat .
Evalcat
We aim to provide a library where the search results can be aggregated and compared across systems and queries. Search results are aggregated by field values. For example, if the search results contain a price field, we can compute the mean and percentile values for the results. Comparisons can be performed across systems or queries and the aggregated metrics are returned in a pandas DataFrame. Utility functions like ranked-biased overlap can be used to compare search systems across queries.
Evalcat was created when we wanted to understand the changes in search results when experimenting with different search algorithms. We originally started from tabulating and visualizing Elasticsearch aggregations, but later extended it to be able to compute custom metrics.
Using evalcat
Let’s take a look at an example.
The search results of two systems are given in the following format, where the query orange is mapped to a ranked list of search items each containing the fields id and price .
search_results = { “system A”: {
“orange”: [{“id”:1, “price”:1.3}, {“id”:2, “price”:2.5}],
}, “system B”: {
“orange”: [{“id”:1, “price”:1.3}, {“id”:3, “price”:0.9}],
}, }
To retrieve metrics for the price field, we instantiate a NumericalField object indicating that price is a continuous variable. This class provides methods to compute the percentiles and mean values for that field.
>>> price_field = NumericalField(“price”)
The main class of evalcat is ResultList . By passing the search results and the field as arguments, we can view the computed metrics for the query “orange” using the get_system_metric_df() method.
>>> result_list = ResultList(search_results, [price_field]) >>> result_list.get_system_metric_df(‘price’, ‘orange’) +----------+---------------+---------------+-------+-------+
| | 25-percentile | 50-percentile | total | mean |
+----------+---------------+---------------+-------+-------+
| system A | 1.6 | 1.6 | 3.8 | 1.9 |
| system B | 1.0 | 1.1 | 2.2 | 1.1 |
+----------+---------------+---------------+-------+-------+
While this may be a simple example, the point is that search systems can be compared easily over defined metrics. The Field class is intended to be extended to provide custom definitions of metric computations.
Future additions
Evalcat is very new and currently lacks some functionality and refinement, but the plan is to continually add new functionality over time. At the time of writing, the next step is to implement a connection with Elasticsearch to allow for a pipeline from search algorithm to the calculated metrics.
We encourage anyone using this to file for bugs or feature requests.
|
https://medium.com/@masaki.1996/introducing-evalcat-d57a04247305
|
[]
|
2020-05-18 04:56:20.664000+00:00
|
['Search', 'Evaluation']
|
Why you shouldn’t use Guerrillamail for automated E2E testing
|
First of all, a little bit of context:
At Koa Health, we create digital health apps, and this means they are required to complete critical quality standards to certify they are ready for the market. This implies lots of manual testing, exploratory testing and documentation. We manage all this inside our Quality Management System, but this will be part of a future post. However, prior to that, our main goal is to optimize the process of development as much as we can, which is why we have a testing automation strategy built on top of a continuous development ecosystem. As a summary of this, we work with Flutter to develop multi-platform mobile applications and node(js) for the backend + frontendish stuff.
From the quality team, we encourage developers to take care of the testing as much as they can, because we believe that quality is not just the last step of the chain but a critical part of each step. The culture we build around this small Quality Engineering team (QE), compared to a big development team, is that everyone is responsible for their tests, while QE provides the tools, the guidance and the support to maintain everything in shape. Then, of course, there is a final layer of End to End tests that are completely owned by the QE team. This post is about these E2E tests that are basically reproducing a real user scenario from the login page to the creation of another user, as the last safety net before something gets deployed. When we first built the E2E tests we were using an external service (Guerrillamail) to create random email accounts with a public API and use them to successfully log in and create new users in our dashboard application (the control panel for users management). Life was good (before pandemic kind of good) and the grass was always green as well as the CI pipelines. But then, this happened:
Well, you get what you pay for! But, although this was probably something unfair, you really don’t want external affairs affecting your E2E tests (and getting all your developers crazy for more than 4 days with the service down). This is why you want to have a service that can provide you some reliability. After the incident, we decided to investigate some alternatives to Guerrillamail that can provide an API for creating random email accounts and reading emails. Easy-peasy. But lesson learned, now that we were actively thinking about it, we wanted to make sure we would get the right capabilities:
Non-total public exposure (guerrilla is just a take and go available to everyone, everywhere). We want some level of privacy for this type of service so not everyone has access to our random uncontrolled emails.
Good API, good documentation, plug-and-play if possible! We don’t want to spend a lot of time on configurations or whatever. Because, you know, we are testers, not developers.
Good price! We don’t want to pay too much for something as easy as one-time-use email accounts. But at least we want some support service if things go wrong at some point.
After some research and asking the marvelous community of ministry of testing, we’ve got some options:
Mailinator
Some level of privacy
Decent API
Support looks reliable enough
The free version doesn’t support API calls (and the emails are totally public). At some point, this can be helpful for other purposes but the main pain point here for the starters subscription is the price. After the free version, the next price is 160$ per month, so it’s out of our scope. It seems to have some nice extra features, but not for our use case.
Gmail API
That was our first option, as we already have the accounts for our company. Everything was looking fine until we reached the authentication point. First, trying to use Oauth2 there is always a step where the UI is required to authenticate, which was not the best option for our tests. We also tried to use API keys but they are only allowed for some specific services, not including Gmail. Either way, it seemed too complex for supporting E2E test cases. Maybe in the future, we will give it another try, but it feels overwhelming at the moment for having to set up the Google API development console, Oauth, client services, etc. This option is really focused on web applications, not on testing. But maybe is exactly what you are looking for. Who knows?
MessageBird
A service that offers a lot of capabilities but it’s not useful for only testing emails. However, it would be good to check for other use cases, as they describe it: Customer service software and automation to talk to your customers on channels like Live Chat, WhatsApp, Voice and more.
MailSlurp
The winner, for our requirements. A private service that can handle our workload for the E2E tests with the basic subscription (20$). Impressive documentation, thanks to swaggerUI, that helps you understand what is the scope of the tool and how you can use it. Also, the official SDK for different languages and usages was just plug-and-play (with already built-in functions to wait for messages for example). A breeze to use, and with typescript support. What we need to test now is the reliability and the service, to see how support responds to any inquiry, but for now, we will give it a try.
Mailosaur
Well, this arrived after we’ve done the POC and decided about MailSlurp, but it looks pretty impressive. Good pricing for starters (10$), SDK with good documentation and very similar to what we bought with MailSlurp. Absolutely recommended to give it a try, but you know, we are in a rush here so it’s all in your hands 🤷♂
Mailgun
Mailgun was on the table also, with similar pricing and capabilities as MailSurp. But, they don’t have an official node SDK, so during the POC, we’ve just moved into Mailslurp as it was fitting more into what we needed: documentation, SDK to go! Also, it’s a little bit more expensive than MailSlurp but it seemed focused on more than just testing and receiving emails. The API capabilities are pretty impressive, maybe too impressive for what we are looking for. Also really powerful sending functionalities. In any case, a good contender if at some point we are not happy with MailSlurp service.
Conclusion
We’ve tried different services, each of them with different capabilities and we’ve decided on the easiest, less expensive and good enough of all of them. Some are too complex or have a bigger scope (Gmail, MessageBird), others were discarded because the entry point was too high (Mailinator price), and some others were sexy enough but we didn’t have the need to get in deep (Mailgun, Mailosaur), due to an instant feeling with MailSlurp. Also worth noting, we are very biased towards node/typescript, so MailSlurp just offered something really juicy for us and that might not be your case. But I hope this is a useful first filter for you if looking for different options.
The only thing I would take for granted in this whole proof of concept is the following: don’t put your E2E tests on a dependency of an external service that is free, totally public whose only answers come from a Twitter account. Lesson learned.
|
https://medium.com/koahealth/why-you-shouldnt-use-guerrillamail-for-automated-e2e-testing-use-mailslurp-instead-a73f16240444
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[]
|
2021-03-24 07:30:32.303000+00:00
|
['Programming', 'Test Automation', 'Testing', 'Email', 'Development']
|
Finding Success Out in the Community
|
What does it take to find success after incarceration?
For Mac, it was all about having a plan to change his life, sticking to it, and never coming back to prison.
It all started for Mac in 2005 when he began working with dogs as part of the Purebred Rescue Organization of Ohio. This program was taking place in the heart of Warren Correctional Institution and saw incarcerated men caring for, training, and grooming dogs.
Over the next five years, he dedicated his time to learning the in and outs of dog grooming and training.
“When I was working with dogs at Warren [Correctional] and London [Correctional], I knew this was something I enjoyed and would be good at,” Mac shared.
And he was right.
Today, he owns and operates Mac’s Pet Salon in Springfield, Ohio. His business offers grooming, training, styling, trims and more. Years after he made a vow to create his own business, Mac is finding that success just as he promised.
“Mac has done a fantastic job as a small business owner,” shared his Parole Officer, Michael Beatty. “I believe that some of the lessons he learned in prison made him determined to make it off parole and to become the successful small business owner that he is today.”
That desire to be successful didn’t happen the day Mac was released from prison, it was something he had been working on for years in preparation for his return to society.
“My release was actually kind of easy,” Mac reminisced. “For 10 or 15 years, I had worked so hard to prepare myself for that moment that I knew exactly what I wanted to do and how to do it.”
So, for Mac, it was about staying focused and achieving his goals one task at a time. And that plan, he says, still drives him today.
“Set your goals high,” Mac recommends. “Set your goals high and chase them.”
|
https://medium.com/drc-insider/finding-success-out-in-the-community-f55ed1ccbae3
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[]
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2018-06-18 19:01:40.038000+00:00
|
['Ohio', 'Reentry', 'Dogs', 'Prison Reform']
|
Book Review: The Power Worshipers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism
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Book Review: The Power Worshipers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism
In her insightful book, Katherine Stewart explores the ways in which religious nationalists are hijacking America’s systems of government and education.
This book had been sitting on my shelf for a while. I’m not sure why I took so long to pick it up and start reading it. Perhaps because, on some level, I was afraid of what I’d read. I tend to get a bit stressed out when I read these kinds of books, because they remind me of how organized the religious right is, and how dangerous they are to me and other queer people.
However, now that I’ve finished it, I have to say that The Power Worshipers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, is one of the most important books published on religion and political life in American in the past 10 years. It’s exhaustively detailed and researched, and yet it was one of those books that I simply couldn’t put down. It’s absolutely necessary reading for anyone interested in learning about the ways in which Christian nationalists — those who wish to see the United States become, in essence, a theocracy governed by biblical literalism — have become increasingly powerful over the last twenty years and why they stand poised to achieve even more success in the years ahead.
Stewart has a key journalistic eye, and she provides exactly the kind of detail that we need to understand how this came to pass. She shows us how the religious right has been enormously successful in energizing their base to “vote their values.” More than that, they have also succeeded in infiltrating almost every level of government, from state houses to the White House. Their goal isn’t, as they commonly like to assert, to guarantee religious freedom. Instead, they want to ensure that their particular religious vision is the one that is imposed on everyone else. It’s precisely this element of their nationalistic agenda that is most troubling, because it makes clear that they are opposed to the possibility of coexisting with those who do not share their faith or their vision of the world.
It certainly helps that the movement is supported by a truly staggering apparatus. Though it is somewhat disjoined in its organization, for the most part there are some key movers and shakers that wield substantial influence. What’s more, they have been very successful building an infrastructure that supports their efforts, ranging from publishers to museums, historians to think tanks. Financially, they are supported by a generous network of wealthy donors who have helped to forge strong connections between religious nationalism and free market economics, a marriage that has, so far, worked out very well indeed for both parties.
Most troubling, I think, are the successful efforts by Christian nationalists to bend the public school system to their whims. The issue of charter schools has largely fallen off of the public radar, but the efforts like those of the current Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and members of her family — as well as a number of other individuals — have born fruit. Slowly but surely, they have been able to siphon funds from public schools and poured them into charter schools, most of which are explicitly religious in orientation and instruction. Religious nationalists, predominantly Catholics, have also done an extraordinary job seizing control of significant chunks of the nation’s hospital systems. While in theory this doesn’t seem that sinister, in practice it is often disastrous for the physical health and emotional well-being of both women and queer people, many of whom face severe, sometimes life-threatening, discrimination at these institutions.
And, as Stewart aptly documents, these efforts are not restricted to the United States. Instead, they are part of a worldwide network of religious nationalists who aspire to turn most of the west, and indeed the world, into a patchwork of ethno-religio-nationalist states. The religious right’s admiration of and courting of Putin is not really a secret at this point, but I was genuinely surprised to learn that they have also made in-roads in such countries as the UK, where they’ve been able to exploit the Anglican Church’s decline (particularly among young people) to fill their own pews. Their success in doing so reveals that there is a lot of uncertainty in western liberal democracies, and the religious nationalists are determined to exploit that to the fullest.
Reading this book, one can’t help but admire the efficiency and effectiveness of these groups. It’s been well-documented how essential evangelical Christians were to the success of Donald Trump’s bid for the White House, but so many other of their efforts have largely flown under the radar. I consider myself fairly well-informed about the workings of politics in America, but even I found myself rather taken aback at just how successful they have been. We on the left tend to think that we won the culture war and that demographic shifts mean that the future is ours for the taking, but The Power Worshipers makes it pretty clear that that’s a simplistic, and dangerous, frame of mind. Progressives, moderates, and even some conservatives would do well to read this book and take its lessons to heart.
The Power Worshipers is a timely reminder, given that we are now entering a presidential election year. The religious right doesn’t really care whether or not they are a majority of the country. They long ago realized that all that matters is that they have power and can use it to bludgeon others into doing what they want. Though they rarely say so explicitly, they are also driven by a deep racial bias. It’s no accident that their efforts were in part jumpstarted by the desegregation of schools. Those of us who care deeply about racial justice — as well as justice for women and queer people — would do well to remember that another Trump term will give religious nationalists even more power to enact their agenda. The past four years have been terrible enough. Imagine what they could do with four more.
For all of our sakes, I hope we don’t have to find out.
|
https://tjwest3.medium.com/book-review-the-power-worshipers-inside-the-dangerous-rise-of-religious-nationalism-c65fcbf4330f
|
['Dr. Thomas J. West Iii']
|
2020-08-21 14:45:41.523000+00:00
|
['Books', 'Politics', 'Religion', 'Christianity', 'Election 2020']
|
Your Voice Platform: The Brazilian experience at the World Water Forum
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THE 8th WORLD WATER FORUM
The World Water Forum is the largest water-related event on the planet and is one of the most important opportunities for international debate. Since 1997, the event has been organized every three years by the World Water Council along with a host city. The event contributes to the dialogue on decision making processes concerning global water issues, aiming for its rational and sustainable use.
The previous editions of the World Water Forum established the basis for global collaboration on water issues. The Forums’ outcome documents show a growing concern with the integrated and sustainable management of water resources and their implications for water, energy and food security, in order to cope with climate change, natural and anthropic disasters, and with the challenge of meeting sustainable development demands.
The Forum seeks to: increase the importance of the water theme on the political agenda; support deeper discussions about water-related problems; formulate concrete proposals and mobilise global attention around water; and generate political commitment relating to the Forum’s agreed upon terms.
In 2012, Brazil presented its candidacy to host the 8th World Water Forum in 2018 (through the Federal Government, the Government of the Federal District, the Brazil Section of the World Water Council and the National Water Agency) and suggested Brasilia as the host city for the event. The proposal was presented during the 6th World Water Forum in Marseille, France and was approved in February of 2014, initiating the planning phase for the event. The Forum would be held in the Southern Hemisphere for the first time in its history.
The 8th World Water Forum was held in Brasilia, on March 17–23, and was the largest Forum to date, with more than 120,000 participants, about 10,600 registrants, and approximately 109,600 visitors to the public spaces.
The eighth edition of the Forum had “Sharing Water” as its theme and was the first Forum held after the 2030 Agenda was established and the negotiation of the universal and legally binding global agreement on climate change. Together these events show unprecedented potential for impacting national and international policies on water resources, and for elevating the importance of their integration and transversality within a sustainable development context.
THE IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL PARTICIPATION
The Brazilian proposal to host the Forum presented the initiative of expanding social and citizen participation as one of its biggest innovations. Historically, the Forum originated from a meeting between experts and technicians with the goal of making the technical water agenda reach and influence political decisions. The World Water Forum aims to increase the importance of water in the political agenda and to promote deeper discussions, exchange of experiences, and the elaboration of concrete proposals for tackling water-related challenges.
Traditionally, the Forum included the main specialists, managers and organizations involved in water-related issues. According to the Brazilian organizers, the previous Forums involved the main institutions and researchers connected to the water theme, but there was no space for people to inform themselves of the discussion.
Inserting social participation in the Forum’s thematic structure was one of the priorities for the eighth edition. The Brazilian Government was assisted by UNDP in creating the Your Voice platform, a global on-line tool conceived as an integrated solution to support open discussion and the prioritization of issues by social participation for the 8th World Water Forum.
Through the Your Voice platform, the Steering Committee aimed to bring contributions from the entire society to the event, including voices not usually heard in these spaces. The Brazilian proposal was to better understand what were society’s concerns and increase participation in the discussions held at the Forum. The Your Voice platform was used to promote a wide debate on the Forum’s central themes. It has facilitated the transition of very technical discussions into issues that populate the daily lives of citizens around the world.
The planning for the event was carried out with the aim of breaking down barriers and broadening social participation. The Citizen Village, another innovation of the Brazilian application, was a public space that enabled the participation of the host city’s residents. However, there was still the geographic barrier and the associated travel costs for other Brazilian citizens. It was through the Your Voice platform that geographic barriers were removed and multiple voices were engaged into the debate.
THE YOUR VOICE PLATFORM
The Your Voice platform was an online open consultation space for people all over the world to contribute and influence the discussions of the 8th World Water Forum. The Your Voice platform organized discussions on relevant themes into six debate rooms, according to the Forum’s thematic dossier. The themes were:
In order to contribute to the discussion, volunteer moderators from different parts of the world and representing different sectors (public sector, civil society, etc.) followed the debates and organized the suggestions.
The presence of different languages, which might have been perceived as a barrier to participation, has not prevented the interaction between people from different parts of the planet, since one of the features of the platform was automatic translation to more than 97 languages, facilitating the exchange of ideas and experiences between people from different countries.
ROUNDS OF DISCUSSION
The online consultation was launched on 2017 and divided into three discussion phases.
The first round of discussions was held between February 13th and April 23rd of 2017. This round had 916 registrants, 555 public comments and more than 20,000 accesses, specially from Brazil, the United States, France, Mexico and India. The top 10 water-related issues were identified, and a vote was held for prioritization. About 36,200 votes were received from 116 countries. This allowed for the identification of the issues that society would have a greater interest in discussing at the 8th World Water Forum. The themes were referred for consideration at the Second Consultation of Interested Parties Meeting and served as a basis for defining the 8th World Water Forum’s thematic sessions.
The second round of discussions of the Your Voice platform, addressed the following cross-cutting water-related themes: Capacity-building, Sharing, Governance, and Sustainability. This phase was carried out from June 12th to August 13th of 2017. It had 1,409 registrants, nearly 22,000 accesses, and 137 public comments, especially from Brazil, the United States, Mexico, Colombia and India. The Brazilian cities that stood out in participation for this round were: Brasília, São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro.
The third round was held from December 4th of 2017 to March 12th 2018 and focused on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The discussions addressed the challenges and opportunities for the sustainable development of water. This round aimed for a wider dissemination of the SDGs agenda. There were more than 180,000 accesses and 760 public comments were posted. The 10 countries with greater participation at this round were Brazil, the United States, France, Japan, India, the Netherlands, Portugal, Indonesia, and the United Kingdom of Spain.
PROFILE OF THE PARTICIPANTS
The Your Voice platform participants had distinct and varied profiles and participated in different ways. There were users who indicated concerns regarding the right and access to safe drinking water and the need for preservation of the springs, but also scholars who made technical contributions.
The platform allowed for interaction between people from different parts of the world who are interested in and have concerns related to water. Over 240 countries were represented.
In regard to the age groups, 61% of the users were adults from 30–59. The second largest participation was from young people from 16–29, with 27.89%. The participation of the elderly, with over 60 years of age, represented approximately 9.28% of the users.
When it comes to gender identification, there was a slightly superior percentage of men participating (56.88%) if compared to women (42.91%). Approximately 0.21% of the participants identified themselves as others.
Given this diversity, it was possible to identify local aspects, diverse opinions, and observe the relationship between the issues presented by the users and the discussions proposed by the Forum.
MODERATORS
Each thematic room had a group of moderators, at least one of them was Brazilian. The moderators posed questions, helped guiding the discussions and gathered results that contributed to the planning phase of the Forum.
In the VIII International Steering Committee of the World Water Forum (ISC) in Marseille (November 2016) it was decided that a call would be launched for expression of interest in being a moderator at the 6 public discussion rooms. The call was sent by the Executive Secretary of the 8th Forum by e-mail to its database of contacts, and by the National Water Agency, to the Brazil Session of the World Water Council.
Therefore, the selection process involved a public consultation on the interest to act as a moderator. The following criteria was adopted for moderator selection:
a) Regional representation (on both global and national levels)
b) Balanced backgrounds (academia, NGOs, civil society, professional associations, private companies, governments, etc.)
c) Curricular evaluation (academic training and professional experience, experience with consultation/moderation)
d) Specialty areas related to the planning phase of the 8th Forum (for discussion)
e) Limit of one moderator per room
The platform included the participation of 30 moderators from 11 different countries and with diverse backgrounds.
Before each round of discussion, a webinar was held or individualized support was offered to the moderators for discussing guidelines, the dynamics of the round, and expected results. The Platform also offered a private space known as “Moderator Space” where the ANA and UNDP teams had direct contact with the moderators for guidance and suggestions.
RESULTS OF THE ROUNDS
THE FIRST ROUND OF DISCUSSIONS
After the end of the first round, the main moderator consolidated the submissions received and prepared a report, which was used as input in the voting process. From that input, the ANA team drew up a list with the 10 main issues discussed in each room, that is, 10 points each for: Climate, People, Urban, Ecosystems, Finance and the cross-cutting themes: Sharing, Governance, and Capacity Building.
The issues identified were part of a voting process for prioritization. 36,200 votes were cast from 1,180 participants in 116 countries. The vote helped identifying the matters that society would have a greater interest in discussing at the 8th World Water Forum. The themes were referred for consideration at the Second Consultation of Interested Parties Meeting and served as a basis for the definition of the thematic sessions at the Forum.
THE SECOND ROUND OF DISCUSSIONS
The second round had a dynamic that was a little different from the previous one, and addressed the following cross-cutting water-related themes: Capacity building, Sharing, Governance, and Sustainability.
Each one of the themes was the object of discussion for the period of two weeks and the topics of discussion were similar in each of the rooms, according to the transversal theme debated.
For each of the stages, motivating texts and a list of main issues to be discussed were prepared. The word cloud at the side displays the items that were most discussed in the rooms for the second round.
Even with different themes, we can observe that some issues related to management, education and capacity building have been addressed in several rooms. The consolidated discussions of this round were referred as reference material to the Forum’s session coordinators so that they could prepare their presentations.
THIRD ROUND OF DISCUSSIONS
The goal of the third round was to disseminate the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The debates were centered around the challenges and opportunities for the sustainable development of water. This round had as a goal the dissemination of the 2030 agenda.
The third round represented the greatest number of accesses in the entire process, and succeeded in increasing the population’s knowledge about the 2030 agenda.
OVERVIEW OF THE THREE ROUNDS OF DISCUSSION
CLIMATE
Adaptation, integrated to social vulnerability, appeared as the biggest concern for this round. Then, came the necessity of greater dissemination of scientific knowledge, the need for empowering communities to assist in the elaboration of public policies for tackling climate change and, finally, the importance of expanding monitoring networks.
PEOPLE
Social control through monitoring, capacity building, environmental education and broadening of the water management social base, focusing on the capacity building of less educated communities and in sectors of society other than the technical sector, so that these sectors can contribute to the elaboration of water management plans, were all among the contributions.
DEVELOPMENT
The integration of planning tools, sectorial and municipal policies, and greater access to technology tools were among the themes discussed in the room. One of the proposals was the adoption of strategic environmental assessment as a tool for water management.
URBAN
The suggestions for the urban theme were related to the reuse and collection of rain water, integration of the basic sanitation system to the management of water resources, and reduction of losses. The relationship between the urban and the rural environments, and the regulation of services according to ethical standards were also among the main concerns.
ECOSYSTEMS
The concerns were related to the conservation and recovery of the basins, the elaboration of financial instruments to encourage conservation and especially recovery, the mapping of springs and the replenishing of watershed areas. The definition of water resource protection areas, the integration of environmental licensing with water resource management, and one proposal to consider water ecosystems as water users was also mentioned.
FUNDING
In the Finances room, the tariff, the misuse of water, the creation of funding lines for the system, and the discussion and support to public-private partnerships were among the themes discussed. Support to sustainable enterprises in order to promote sustainable development, a greater destination of public resources to water management and the necessity of finding alternatives to the current development model were also discussed.
IMPACT OF THE ROUNDS
The Second Consultation of Interested Parties Meeting held on April 26th of 2017 at the Ulysses Guimarães Convention Center in Brasilia, allowed for the Thematic Commission to assess the content produced since 2016 and establish the next steps in preparing the 8th World Water Forum sessions.
Group discussions were held at the meeting with the specific purpose of collecting contributions from the participants. Over 3,000 people from all over the world participated in the event, which also aimed to align the Thematic Process among members with specific roles, Thematic Commission members, and Coordinators of Themes and Topics. The titles of the sessions and their objectives were proposed in the meetings and were later discussed in the coordination groups.
The results of the Your Voice Platform vote were brought to this meeting and distributed to the Theme coordinators who discussed them with the participants, so that the sessions would consider this data in its initial design. 95 thematic sessions were proposed for the Forum (as a result of this meeting and of later stages) out of which 51 had a direct relationship to the themes identified in the Your Voice Platform, and 32 were indirectly influenced by them. Therefore, about 88% of the thematic sessions of the Forum were related to what was discussed in the Platform. It is important to note that the issues approached in the platform are reflected in different sessions, not always on the same theme.
For the purposes of this survey “direct impact” represented sessions that had a virtually equal title and “indirect impact” sessions that had a title with a partial connection to the session’s objectives.
It was verified that 41% (37) of the themes directly pertained to the issues voted on, and that 29% (26) of the themes indirectly pertained to them. As for the sessions influenced, 55% (51) out of the total sessions of the thematic dossier were directly influenced by the platform and 32% (32) were indirectly influenced by the platform. It is worth highlighting the “People” theme, where 89 percent of the sessions were being directly influenced by the Platform’s discussion, followed by Climate (75%), Finance (78%), and Urban and Governance (67%). It was observed that the online discussions had more influence on Themes where the moderator also had a role within the thematic process, facilitating the flow of information between the formal elaboration process and the online discussion. A breakdown of this information is presented in the table below.
As for the cross-cutting themes, issues related to inclusion and social participation had the most impact, appearing in several sessions but relating more to the Forum’s Citizen Process.
According to the Brazilian managers the Forum’s discussions had a great degree of adhesion to what was discussed in the Platform. The Civil Society responded, participated, took ownership and contributed on how they would like each issue to be addressed. The platform allowed for the discussions to be more comprehensive. It was not a model in which society was informed of expert discussions, on the contrary, it created a channel in which the experts were informed on the population’s interests. Some themes emerged, such as water in the conflict zone, which up to that moment had not been tackled by the experts.
RESULTS ACHIEVED
The results of the Your Voice platform discussions were presented during the 8th World Water Forum in a session entitled “Contributions of the Your Voice platform: identifying the challenges and opportunities for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS) in the promotion of water management”, which included a summary of contributions and its implications on the water-related SDG themes.
According to the Brazilian managers the Forum’s discussions had a great degree of adhesion to what was discussed in the Platform. The Civil Society responded, participated, took ownership and contributed on how they would like each issue to be addressed. The platform allowed for the discussions to be more comprehensive. It was not a model in which society was informed of expert discussions, on the contrary, it created a channel in which the experts were informed on the population’s interests. Some themes emerged, such as water in the conflict zone, which up to that moment had not been tackled by the experts.
According to the platform moderators, the discussions were a great tool for exploring the issues subsequently discussed in the Forum. Climate change and how people were experiencing the problems generated by it were widely discussed subjects. The diversity of issues presented by people from different localities also contributes to qualify the event.
The relevance of the Your Voice platform experience was a consensus between the Brazilian moderators and managers. It was agreed that the process can be improved based on some of the lessons learned by Brazil, such as: formal hiring of the moderators, adoption of the thematic voting model for defining the Forum’s program, and greater dissemination of the platform and its goals. In spite of the suggestions for improvement, the use of the platform was considered a major breakthrough in ensuring greater social participation. It was agreed that it is no longer possible to hold an event of this magnitude without ensuring citizen participation.
At the end of the Forum, delegation representatives from over 100 countries approved the Ministerial Declaration entitled “Urgent call for decisive action on water resources”. In this document, the need for cooperation at all levels and between all sectors and interested parties was pointed out. It was also added that the sharing of knowledge, experiences, innovation, and, when appropriate, solutions, is fundamental for promoting the sustainable management of water and for exploring the synergies between the various water-related aspects of the 2030 Sustainable Development agenda.
Item 2.3. of the declaration also indicates the need to take advantage of the networks and partnerships formed during the 8th World Water Forum and its various processes, to promote the implementation of the Forum’s agreed upon terms.
The Your Voice platform was one of the greatest innovations implemented in the Forum and it has demonstrably led to the expansion of social debate. It has also proven to be a useful tool for strengthening networks and partnerships on water-related issues and on other themes.
|
https://medium.com/@pnud_brasil/your-voice-platform-the-brazilian-experience-at-the-world-water-forum-40e8f0f858e
|
['Pnud Brasil']
|
2020-07-02 13:40:25.658000+00:00
|
['Brazil', 'Undp', 'Sdgs', 'Water']
|
Why Artificial Stupidity Could Be Crucial To AI Self-Driving Cars
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Dr. Lance Eliot, AI Insider
[Ed. Note: For reader’s interested in Dr. Eliot’s ongoing business analyses about the advent of self-driving cars, see his online Forbes column: https://forbes.com/sites/lanceeliot/]
We all generally seem to know what it means to say that someone is intelligent.
In contrast, when you label someone as “stupid,” the question arises as to what exactly that means. For example, does stupidity imply the lack of intelligence in a zero-sum fashion, or does stupidity occupy its own space and sit adjacent to intelligence as a parallel equal?
Let’s do a thought experiment on this weighty matter.
Suppose we somehow had a bucket filled with intelligence. We are going to pretend that intelligence is akin to something tangible and that we can essentially pour it into and possibly out of a bucket that we happen to have handy. Upon pouring this bucket filled with intelligence onto say the floor, what do you have left?
One answer is that the bucket is now entirely empty and there is nothing left inside the bucket at all. The bucket has become vacuous and contains absolutely nothing. Another answer is that the bucket upon being emptied of intelligence has a leftover that consists of stupidity. In other words, once you’ve removed so-called intelligence, the thing that you have remaining is stupidity.
I realize this is a seemingly esoteric discussion but, in a moment, you’ll see that the point being made has a rather significant ramification for many important things, including and particularly for the development and rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Can intelligence exist without stupidity, or in a practical sense is there always some amount of stupidity that must exist if there is also the existence of stupidity?
Some assert that intelligence and stupidity are Zen-like yin and yang. In this perspective, you cannot grasp the nature of intelligence unless you also have a semblance of stupidity as a kind of measuring stick.
It is said that humans become increasingly intelligent over time, and thus are reducing their levels of stupidity. You might suggest that intelligence and stupidity are playing a zero-sum game, namely that as your intelligence rises you are simultaneously reducing your level of stupidity (similarly, if your stupidity rises, this implies that your intelligence lowers).
Can humans arrive at a 100% intelligence and a zero amount of stupidity, or are we fated to always have some amount of stupidity, no matter how hard we might try to become fully intelligent?
Returning to the bucket metaphor, some would claim that there will never be the case that you are completely and exclusively intelligent and have expunged stupidity. There will always be some amount of stupidity that’s sitting in that bucket.
If you are clever and try hard, you might be able to narrow down how much stupidity you have, though there is still some amount of stupidity in that bucket.
Does having stupidity help intelligence or is it harmful to intelligence?
You might be tempted to assume that any amount of stupidity is a bad thing and therefore we must always be striving to keep it caged or otherwise avoid its appearance. But we need to ask whether that simplistic view of tossing stupidity into the “bad” category and placing intelligence into the “good” category is potentially missing something more complex. You could argue that by being stupid, at times, in limited ways, doing so offers a means for intelligence to get even better.
When you were a child, suppose you stupidly tripped over your own feet, and after doing so, you came to the realization that you were not carefully lifting your feet. Henceforth, you became more mindful of how to walk and thus became intelligent at the act of walking. Maybe later in life, while walking on a thin curb, you managed to save yourself from falling off the edge of the curb, partially due to the earlier in life lesson that was sparked by stupidity and became part of your intelligence.
Of course, stupidity can also get us into trouble.
Despite having learned via stupidity to be careful as you walk, one day you decide to strut on the edge of the Grand Canyon. While doing so, oops, you fall off and plunge into the chasm.
Was it an intelligent act to perch yourself on the edge like that? Apparently not.
As such, we might want to note that stupidity can be a friend or a foe, and it is up to the intelligence portion to figure out which is which in any given circumstance and any given moment.
You might envision that there is an eternal struggle going on between the intelligence side and the stupidity side.
On the other hand, you might equally envision that the intelligence side and stupidity side are pals, each of which tugs at the other, and therefore it is not especially a fight as it is a delicate dance and form of tension about which should prevail (at times) and how they can each moderate or even aid the other.
This preamble provides a foundation to discuss something increasingly becoming worthy of attention, namely the role of Artificial Intelligence and (surprisingly) the role of Artificial Stupidity.
Thinking Seriously About Artificial Stupidity
We hear every day about how our lives are being changed via the advent of Artificial Intelligence.
AI is being infused into our smartphones, and into our refrigerators, and into our cars, and so on.
If we are intending to place AI into the things we use, it begs the question as to whether we need to consider the yang of the yin, specifically do we need to be cognizant of Artificial Stupidity?
Most people snicker upon hearing or seeing the phrase “Artificial Stupidly,” and they assume it must be some kind of insider joke to refer to such a thing.
Admittedly, the conjoining of the words artificial and stupidity seems, well, perhaps stupid in of itself.
But, by going back to the earlier discussion about the role of intelligence and the role of stupidity as it exists in humans, you can recast your viewpoint and likely see that whenever you carry on a discussion about intelligence, one way or another you inevitably need to also be considering the role of stupidity.
Some suggest that we ought to use another way of expressing Artificial Stupidity to lessen the amount of snickering that happens. Floated phrases include Artificial Unintelligence, Artificial Humanity, Artificial Dumbness, and others, none of which have caught hold as yet.
Please bear with me and accept the phrasing of Artificial Stupidity and also go along with the belief that it isn’t stupid to be discussing Artificial Stupidity.
Indeed, you could make the case that the act of not discussing Artificial Stupidity is the stupid approach since you are unwilling or unaccepting of the realization that stupidity exists in the real world and therefore in the artificial world of computer systems that are we attempting to recreate intelligence, you would be ignoring or blind to what is essentially the other half of the overall equation.
In short, some say that true Artificial Intelligence requires a combination of the “smart” or good AI that we think of today and the inclusion of Artificial Stupidity (warts and all), though the inclusion must be done in a smart way.
Indeed, let’s deal with the immediate knee jerk reaction that many have of this notion by dispelling the argument that by including Artificial Stupidity into Artificial Intelligence you are inherently and irrevocably introducing stupidity and presumably, therefore, aiming to make AI stupid.
Sure, if you stupidly add stupidity, you have a solid chance of undermining the AI and rendering it stupid.
On the other hand, in recognition of how humans operate, the inclusion of stupidity, when done thoughtfully, could ultimately aid the AI (think about the story of tripping over your own feet as a child).
Here’s something that might really get your goat.
Perhaps the only means to achieve true and full AI, which is not anywhere near to human intelligence levels to-date, consists of infusing Artificial Stupidity into AI; thus, as long as we keep Artificial Stupidity at arm’s length or as a pariah, we trap ourselves into never reaching the nirvana of utter and complete AI that is able to seemingly be as intelligent as humans are.
Ouch, by excluding Artificial Stupidity from our thinking, we might be damming ourselves to not arriving at the pinnacle of AI.
That’s a punch to the gut and so counterintuitive that it often stops people in their tracks.
There are emerging signs that the significance of revealing and harnessing artificial stupidity (or whatever it ought to be called), can be quite useful.
One such area, I assert, involves the inclusion of artificial stupidity into the advent of true self-driving driverless autonomous cars.
Shocking?
Maybe so.
Let’s unpack the matter.
Exploiting Artificial Stupidity For Gain
When referring to true self-driving cars, I’m focusing on Level 4 and Level 5 of the standard scale used to gauge autonomous cars. These are self-driving cars that have an AI system doing the driving and there is no need and typically no provision for a human driver.
The AI does all the driving and any and all occupants are considered passengers.
On the topic of Artificial Stupidity, it is worthwhile to quickly review the history of how the terminology came about.
In the 1950s, the famous mathematician and pioneering computer scientist Alan Turing proposed what has become known as the Turing test for AI.
Simply stated, if you were presented with a situation whereby you could interact with a computer system imbued with AI, and at the same time separately interact with a human too, and you weren’t told beforehand which was which (let’s assume they are both hidden from view), upon your making inquiries of each, you are tasked with deciding which one is the AI and which one is the human.
We could then declare the AI a winner as exhibiting intelligence if you could not distinguish between the two contestants. In that sense, the AI is indistinguishable from the human contestant and must ergo be considered equal in intelligent interaction.
There is a twist to the original Turing test that many don’t know about.
One qualm expressed was that you might be smarmy and ask the two contestants to calculate say pi to the thousandth digit.
Presumably, the AI would do so wonderfully and readily tell you the answer in the blink of an eye, doing so precisely and abundantly correctly. Meanwhile, the human would struggle to do so, taking quite a while to answer if using paper and pencil to make the laborious calculation, and ultimately would be likely to introduce errors into the answer.
Turing realized this aspect and acknowledged that the AI could be essentially unmasked by asking such arithmetic questions.
He then took the added step, one that some believe opened a Pandora’s box, and suggested that the AI ought to avoid giving the right answers to arithmetic problems.
In short, the AI could try to fool the inquirer by appearing to answer as a human might, including incorporating errors into the answers given and perhaps taking the same length of time that doing the calculations by hand would take.
Starting in the early 1990s, a competition was launched that is akin to the Turing test, offering a modest cash prize and has become known as the Loebner Prize, and in this competition, the AI systems are typically infused with human-like errors to aid in fooling the inquirers into believing the AI is the human. There is controversy underlying this, but I won’t go into that herein. A now-classic article appeared in 1991 in The Economist about the competition.
Notice that once again we have a bit of irony that the introduction of stupidity is being done to essentially portray that something is intelligent.
This brief history lesson provides a handy launching pad for the next elements of this discussion.
Let’s boil down the topic of Artificial Stupidity into two main facets or definitions:
1) Artificial Stupidity is the purposeful incorporation of human-like stupidity into an AI system, doing so to make the AI seem more human-like, and being done not to improve the AI per se but instead to shape the perception of humans about the AI as being seemingly intelligent.
2) Artificial Stupidity is an acknowledgment of the myriad of human foibles and the potential inclusion of such “stupidity” into or alongside the AI in a conjoined manner that can potentially improve the AI when properly managed.
One common misnomer that I’d like to dispel about the first part of the definition involves a somewhat false assumption that the computer potentially is going to purposefully miscalculate something.
There are some that shriek in horror and disdain that there might be a suggestion that the computer would intentionally seek to incorrectly do a calculation, such as figuring out pi but doing so in a manner that is inaccurate.
That’s not what the definition necessarily implies.
It could be that the computer might correctly calculate pi to the thousandth digit, and then opt to tweak some of the digits, which it would say keep track of, and do this in a blink of the eye, and then wait to display the result after an equivalent of the human-by-hand amount of time.
In that manner, the computer has the correct answer internally and has only displayed something that seems to have errors.
Now, that certainly could be bad for the humans that are relying upon what the computer has reported but note that this is decidedly not the same as though the computer has in fact miscalculated the number.+
There’s more than can be said about such nuances, but for now, let’s continue forward.
Both of those variants of Artificial Stupidity can be applied to true self-driving cars.
Doing so carries a certain amount of angst and will be worthwhile to consider.
Artificial Stupidity And True Self-Driving Cars
Today’s self-driving cars that are being tried out on our public roadways have already gotten a reputation for their driving prowess. Overall, driverless cars to-date are akin to a novice teenage driver that is timid and somewhat hesitant about the driving task.
When you encounter a self-driving car, it will often try to create a large buffer zone between it and the car ahead, attempting to abide by the car lengths rule-of-thumb that you were taught when first learning to drive.
Human drivers generally don’t care about the car lengths safety zone and edge up on other cars, doing so to their own endangerment.
Here’s another example of driving practices.
Upon reaching a stop sign, a driverless car will usually come to a full and complete stop. It will wait to see that the coast is clear, and then cautiously proceed. I don’t know about you, but I can say that where I drive, nobody makes complete stops anymore at stop signs. A rolling stop is a norm nowadays.
You could assert that humans are driving in a reckless and somewhat stupid manner. By not having enough car lengths between your car and the car ahead, you are increasing your chances of a rear-end crash. By not fully stopping at a stop sign, you are increasing your risks of colliding with another car or a pedestrian.
In a Turing test manner, you could stand on the sidewalk and watch cars going past you, and by their driving behavior alone you could likely ascertain which are the self-driving cars and which are the human-driven cars.
Does that sound familiar?
It should, since this is roughly the same as the arithmetic precision issue earlier raised.
How to solve this?
One approach would be to introduce Artificial Stupidity as defined above.
First, you could have the on-board AI purposely shorten the car’s length buffer to appear as though it is driving in the same manner as humans. Likewise, the AI could be modified to roll through stop signs. This is all rather easily arranged.
Humans watching a driverless car and a human-driven car would no longer be able to discern one such car from the other since they both would be driving in the same error-laden way.
That seems to solve one problem as it relates to the perception that we humans might have about whether the AI of self-driving cars is intelligent or not.
But, wait for a second, aren’t we then making the AI into a riskier driver?
Do we want to replicate and promulgate this car-crash causing risky human driving behaviors?
Sensibly, no.
Thus, we ought to move to the second definitional portion of Artificial Stupidity, namely by incorporating these “stupid” ways of driving into the AI system in a substantive way that allows the AI to leverage those aspects when applicable and yet also be aware enough to avoid them or mitigate them when needed.
Rather than having the AI drive in human error-laden ways and do so blindly, the AI should be developed so that it is well-equipped enough to cope with human driving foibles, detecting those foibles and being a proper defensive driver, along with leveraging those foibles when the circumstances make sense to do so (for more on this, see my posting here).
Conclusion
One of the most unspoken secrets about today’s AI is that it does not have any semblance of common-sense reasoning and in no manner whatsoever has the capabilities of overall human reasoning (many refer to such AI as Artificial General Intelligence or AGI).
As such, some would suggest that today’s AI is closer to the Artificial Stupidity side of things than it is to the true Artificial Intelligence side of things.
If there is a duality of intelligence and stupidity in humans, presumably you will need a similar duality in an AI system if it is to be able to exhibit human intelligence (though, some say that AI might not have to be so duplicative).
On our roads today, we are unleashing so-called AI self-driving cars, yet the AI is not sentient and not anywhere close to being sentient.
Will self-driving cars only be successful if they can climb further up the intelligence ladder?
No one yet knows, and it’s certainly not a stupid question to be asked.
For free podcast of this story, visit: http://ai-selfdriving-cars.libsyn.com/website
The podcasts are also available on Spotify, iTunes, iHeartRadio, etc.
More info about AI self-driving cars, see: www.ai-selfdriving-cars.guru
To follow Lance Eliot on Twitter: https://twitter.com/@LanceEliot
For his Forbes.com blog, see: https://forbes.com/sites/lanceeliot/
For his AI Trends blog, see: www.aitrends.com/ai-insider/
For his Medium blog, see: https://medium.com/@lance.eliot
For Dr. Eliot’s books, see: https://www.amazon.com/author/lanceeliot
Copyright © 2020 Dr. Lance B. Eliot
|
https://lance-eliot.medium.com/why-artificial-stupidity-could-be-crucial-to-ai-self-driving-cars-2b4955f92321
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['Lance Eliot']
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2020-05-22 17:28:14.173000+00:00
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['Autonomous Vehicles', 'Driverless Cars', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Autonomous Cars', 'Self Driving Cars']
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Knights of Columbus hosted its 11th annual golf tournament
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Knights of Columbus hosted its 11th annual golf tournament
More than $42,000 was raised for Medford’s Society of St. Vincent de Paul, the Interfaith Hospitality Network of Burlington County and 1st Way of Burlington County.
Former major leaguer and current Phillies announcer John Kruk (center left) is pictured with Scott Kanz, Adam Elliot, Brian Bouchard, Randy Thompson, Anthony Lombardo, Eric Dodson and Jason Gareau.
St. Mary of the Lakes Knights of Columbus Council 6520 hosted its 11th annual charity golf tournament at Medford Lakes Country Club, raising more than $42,000 for Medford’s Society of St. Vincent de Paul, the Interfaith Hospitality Network of Burlington County and 1st Way of Burlington County.
“Knights of Columbus Council 6520 is grateful to our golfers, sponsors, local businesses and volunteers who ‘chipped in for charity’ to support vital organizations that treat every man, woman and child with respect, dignity and compassion,” said Council 6520 Golf Committee Chairman Don Bouchard, who has chaired the tournament for the last two years. “We were thrilled to have the maximum number of golfers as well as 86 additional people for the awards presentation and a wonderful dinner.”
The event had more than 25 sponsors and 40 boosters, including:
— David Karbasian Law (Event Sponsor)
— ShopRite of Medford (Platinum Sponsor)
— Clyde Lattimer and Son Construction (Gold Sponsor)
— Holman Cadillac (Gold Sponsor)
— Procacci Brothers Sales Corporation (Gold Sponsor)
“I was fortunate and blessed to be able to sponsor this wonderful event,” Karbasian said. “I was honored and proud to work alongside so many dedicated and compassionate people in the form of our sponsors, our committees, my brother Knights and all the wonderful women who volunteered to help make a difference in the lives of those who in need.”
Walt Johnson, Phil Knudsen, Joe Roeder and John Swenda won the tournament featuring 144 golfers who enjoyed golf, lunch, a cocktail hour with appetizers, dinner, guest speakers, a live auction, raffles and more than 50 tombola gift baskets.
“We also are grateful to the seven silver sponsors, 13 bronze sponsors and the more than 100 merchants who donated items for the auction, raffles and tombola prizes. Their support was critical to the tournaments success,” added Bouchard.
The Knights of Columbus is the world’s largest Catholic lay organization. It provides members and their families with volunteer opportunities in service to the Catholic Church and the community.
The Society of St. Vincent de Paul is a Catholic lay organization that allows women and men to join together to grow spiritually by offering person to person service to those who are needy and suffering. Over the past year, the St. Mary of the Lakes Conference of Society of St. Vincent de Paul has helped more than 14,000 men, women and children with food, clothing, financial help for rent and mortgage, auto insurance, utilities, health care and other expenses valued at more than $500,000.
Interfaith Hospitality Network of Burlington County is a non-profit interfaith organization committed to a united outreach by the religious community in Burlington County providing shelter, meals and assistance to homeless families. The program provides help, hope and a safe haven for guests while they seek affordable housing. Since 1998 IHNBC hosted over 400 families totaling more than 1,300 individuals, including nearly 800 children.
1st Way of Burlington County helps any woman or girl with an unplanned pregnancy find medical, legal, or psychological help as well as shelter, education, or adoption guidance. 1st Way believes in the sanctity of life, all life, the life of the mother as well as the life of the baby. 1st Way provides free resources, which support life-affirming choices. This is accomplished through a loving, non-judgment approach with peer counseling, education and practical services.
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https://medium.com/the-medford-sun/knights-of-columbus-hosted-its-11th-annual-golf-tournament-42a99eb14c8d
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['Melissa Riker']
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2018-06-28 18:17:44.750000+00:00
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['Donations', 'Charity', 'Golf']
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Laptops: picking made simpler… and more difficult.
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Laptops: picking made simpler… and more difficult.
Photo by Michał Kubalczyk on Unsplash
This is a complicated topic so let’s douse it in the simplest way possible.
Laptops have several different key components which give them their overall computing power, software included. These components have to meet certain specifications to operate certain software.
In general the more powerful and modern a laptop’s software and hardware is, the more powerful programs it can run, and the faster it can run them. Let’s get started.
Operating system. This is the software that runs your computer.
Most people have some version of Windows, a paid OS which is the worlds most common, most compatible, and by default, the least secure.
Some people have Mac OS in one version or another. This software is paid for as well, tends to be very secure, is somewhat less compatible than Windows by volume, and because Apple desires it to be that way. This has improved a lot in recent years. Software for Apple computers tends to cost more than equivalent programs for Windows or Linux.
Linux is the worlds primary FREE operating system. Many Linux programs are also free, if not most of them. The downside to Linux is that it’s an advanced users operating system. This has improved a lot on late versions, but sometimes Linux has issues Mac or Windows users don’t. Linux primary advantages are security, system stability and customization compatibility. So much so, that some of the worlds leading security experts and programmers prefer it above all others. As you can see, I’m biased, and I run Linux Mint Ulyana XFCE. Actually, I have Linux and Windows on “Dual boot”… But let’s digress.
It is best to keep in mind that certain programs only run on one operating system or another. Many programs and games these days have cross compatibility with one or more OS. Also, some software has more than one version, so you can select the version designed to run on your OS of choice.
Also, each program has an earliest or latest version it will run on. For new software this will be an earliest hardware version, but older software might not run past a certain version. This is called a program’s “OS requirements”.
Here are the core pieces of hardware that affect computing power.
Storage
Processor
Graphics
RAM
Each of these parts must meet minimum specifications to operate certain software effectively.
It is best to check the most powerful software you desire to run, and similar software you may decide to run, and see what the hardware requirements are. These will be in a “requirements” list for the given program, game, or operating system. (if an operating system comes installed on a computer, you do not have to worry about whether it will run correctly.) When you do this, write down the highest hardware specs needed for each piece of software, and use this as your minimum requirements list. Then go laptop shopping.
Storage There are 3 types. Hard Disc Drive (HDD) Solid State Drive (SSD) and Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVME)
HDD is the slowest, least expensive per Gigabyte of storage, and actually the longest lived.
SSD does not last as many cycles of writing and deleting data, BUT, it’s plenty long lived, and it does read, write and transfer data much faster than HDD. SSD is also more compact, so a lot more storage will go in the same area. In general I recommend SSD for almost everything.
NVME is the most expensive of all 3, lasts as long as SSD, and is MUCH faster and more compact.
NVME is replacing SSD, even while SSD is still replacing HDD for most tasks. NVME uses a different hardware slot, but if it comes pre-installed you have nothing to worry about.
Let me sum up. For cheap, bulk storage and maximum shelf life go HDD, for shock resistant usage, higher performance, and good all around use, go SSD, and for maximum performance go NVME.
Processors are a bit of a funk. You see, there is no universal standard for measuring processing power. Lots of people will tell you it’s measured in Gigahertz, but this isn’t entirely true. There is also bus width, data packets, thread count, bus width of thread count, digital process routing boosters, and actual turbo boost. Assuming I got all that correct! (don’t rely on it) FORGET THAT! What you need to know, is that processors are listed as minimum requirements on software. So check software and get a processor listed as at least that powerful, preferably more so, to ensure near future compatibility with updates and upgrades, or a change of software. This is called “future proofing”. Just don’t go overboard with that, because it gets very expensive to do so. The heaviest digital lifting your laptop is likely to do, involves professional video editing, and second to that, gaming, audio editing, or multiple small programs simultaneously. I believe running certain complex simulations can actually max out a lot of modern computers, but if you are a scientist you probably know more about computers than I do.
Graphics cards, or “graphics processors” (same thing), are similar to regular processors. The only difference is, graphics handle graphics, while processors handle everything else. In fact, most processors have a graphics card of sorts built in. The thing is, if you plan do to heavy gaming, or run video editing software, you likely need an additional graphics card that plugs into it’s own slot internally. These tend to be pre-installed in many more expensive computers, especially gaming computers.
Any software should list minimum specs, and you can reference those, or consult gaming/editing communities if you get confused.
I would like to add (at my brother’s recommendation) it’s worth paying close attention and a second look at processing power. Perhaps familiarize yourself on YouTube. Why? Salesman, Websites, and advertisements will often try to sell you a better sounding processer that’s actually WORSE but cost more $$. With the really modern Intel processors for instance, some of the quad core I5s are actually superior to some of the same generation dual core Intel I7s! This is a great way to get fooled into paying more for an inferior I7 model. Also, a retailer may attempt to charge more for an older I7 than a newer I5. The newer I5 is likely superior. There are multiple gen and model I5s and I7s as you can see. In any case, the modern AMD processors tend to offer you more for your dollar than Intel, who’s business practices, offerings, and technology have been lagging lately. (That’s being polite)
RAM is like a mother trying to remember everything on her grocery list while shopping, and also keep track of the kids and car keys. Random Access Memory is the temporary memory for stuff only tracked while programs are running, or the data is relevant. Once you close programs or turn off the computer, RAM pretty much wipes itself. This means more powerful programs which have a lot of stuff going on, like that mother, are going to need a really good memory. Fact is, people used to worry about tabs, and a couple small programs. These days most comps are so good that RAM can handle pretty much all the tabs you want to. It’s video games, photo/video editing, and multiple medium to larger programs you have to worry about. Even my beloved and ancient Lenovo T430 has been upgraded to 16 gigabytes of RAM, and handles tabs like a champ.
At the end of the day, you can run “benchmark” tests on your laptop on or offline, to get an idea what your current device is capable off, or look through it’s specs. And you can do the same with laptops you are looking at online. Of course you have to look up the benchmark tests for them, but plenty of people run those, including well known websites. Finally, you can pull up YouTube and familiarize yourself with any aspect of a laptop that confuses you, or glean understanding of a given models performance. I highly recommend Linus Tech Tips, with whom I am not currently affiliated in any way.
Connection ports are critical to operating any laptop, and I feel like these are among the most underrated aspects of a laptop. Most laptops do not have enough ports for my liking, and the vast majority no longer have CD players, or even blue Ray. Still, with streaming services, flash drives, and externally plugged storage drives or USB CD players, it seems manageable. All the more reason to have lots of modern USB ports. HDMI seems to be the new standard in throwing video to a screen. I think the old VGA was primarily for projectors, and they have all the modern trimmings of a Flintstones car. In any case, if you require any special or unusual ports, you might want to double check those, and their compatibility before buying. You could also see if USB ports can be accessorized with converting devices to allow a given function from something older or specialized.
There are different standards of Bluetooth in much the same way USB ports have upgraded standards over the years, so keep this in mind when looking at new computer gear. It would be disappointing to have relied on transferring now outdated accessories over. I believe 5.0 is the current new Bluetooth standard, but many prior gen accessories should be compatible with the newer computers, and USB conversion dongles are available as well.
A holdout for me, is my 3.5 mm audio jack. It’s stupendous how much cheaper corded audio accessories are, for a given audio quality. I love my Bluetooth earbuds, but I’ll be darned If I can’t drop $15 and get perfectly good full earmuffs, and no need to pay $25 to $75 for the same thing in Bluetooth. That’s a no brainer, and I feel like new laptops, phones, and MP3 players that do NOT allow 3.5 mm audio jacks are deliberately ripping people off in cahoots with Bluetooth device manufacturers. (In Samsung and Apple’s case, they are pushing their own highly over-priced devices, and thus not including the audio jacks in their new phones) Just remember to check every single port on your potential purchase to verify which types of ports you will have, how many of each, and which exact version each port is. This can affect device compatibility and transfer speed. The main issues I usually encounter are insufficient high speed USB ports to operate everything simultaneously. In fact some laptops have only 0 through 2! I think 6 sounds great! But hey, my T430 is running a decent 4 USB total.
Battery life is pretty self explanatory. Key points. More $$ equals more battery life for a given processor, screen size, brightness setting, and usage level. More powerful processors, larger screens, brighter settings, and heavier usage equals shorter battery life. So max battery life is low usage, weak hardware, small screen, and large battery. Lowest battery life usually comes from gaming laptops with powerful processors, massive RAM, and huge fans for adequate cooling while gaming. This is because to support all this for several hours would require massive batteries, and that is usually dropped in favor of massive chargers. Gamers like to be settled into their spots anyway, and like to have drinks, snacks, power sources, desks, and free time to hand. This usually works out well. Whereas the downside is, if you simply desire a powerful office computer on the fly, you will need extra batteries.
Screens are usually quite adequate on most models, and I pay little attention to them. My primary concerns would be brightness and size. If you require unusually high quality color, resolution, extreme viewing angles, or brightness, you may need to seek a laptop more carefully.
Frames are my pet peeve. I dislike plastic, and it’s basically all there is inside of a few thousand dollars. 2 or 3 grand will usually net you a metal or carbon fiber frame, but still often fails to eliminate the external plastic look and feel. At least solid frames (shout out to my T430 magnesium alloy!) eliminate a lot of flex, and add durability.
Keyboards are a point of contention among avid fans. I love thicker, old style keyboards that have more surface texture and shape, and depress further with a distinct plunger feel to them. Modern chiclet island keys bother me, and I type much slower on them. It seems far too easy to accidentally press keys that way, and to hit the wrong keys as well. Laptops invariably ship with shallow chiclet keyboards now, and have no ability to swap up, so any preference otherwise, and you will have to pursue a high end gaming laptop, or plug in an external. You see, Gamers can be very partial about their equipment, and for this aspect, I have a bit of respect. Humans have come to except bland as the norm, and ill designed as the acceptable. I feel that is suicide to individuality and quality.
Touchpads are surprisingly good these days. If anyone misses the ancient Dell Latitudes for their funky self actuating, and glitchy touchpads, they would be very much alone. Still, have a look! They come in various sizes, textures, and sensitivities to movement (largely dictated by their size) but also adjustable in settings. You may just find one you like.
I didn’t cover motherboards, despite their central importance as the part to which all others connect, or were designed around. I ignored them for one reason. Motherboards are designed to work with all supplied components, and unless you are a geek like me, who tends to self upgrade a variety of things, then motherboards will be of little interest or consequence to you. The only thing this really affects (assuming the laptop was well designed) is the number, type, size, and series of parts you can connect into the internals for the sake of upgrades. Most recent manufacture laptops are not designed to be upgrade-able, unlike tower computers, so you will gain little here.
A few last notes. I would like to describe some preferences, and point some helpful things out.
Some laptops are easier to work on than others. Notably many Lenovos, but I’m sure the YouTube geeks would be up on that data. If you keep and repair your laptop for a long time, then ease of self repair will be important to you, and could also impact costs down the road if you pay for laptop repairs. Certain parts are more common, less expensive, or just way easier to access than on some brands or models.
I prefer thicker laptops. Why? Rigid laptops are less prone to damage, more prone to stay put while typing, and usually have side venting instead of bottom venting. This is great if you plan to set laptops on your LAP. Can’t believe manufacturers don’t understand this.
You can Dual Boot laptops if you have 2 storage modules. If you require different Operating Systems, or prefer say, Linux at home, but require Mac OS at work, you could dual boot. What is dual boot? It’s having 2 different storage modules (say SSD) in your laptop, and having one operating system on one, and another on the other. A geek has to set this up so on startup a menu shows up, and you select which operating system to use. Not all processors can be dual booted, neither do all laptops have dual storage options. 1 form of storage can be partitioned creating a digital division into 2 hard drives, but at least have a professional or qualified geek do this, that way you don’t mess up your existing storage.
Don’t buy Chromebooks! Why not? They suck! There is basically nothing but a browser on Chromebooks. There is almost no storage, little computing power, and nothing practical that can be done offline. Chromebooks and their ilk are a massive waste of dollars better spent on a refurbished laptop than a minimalist’s idea of “cloud only” computing. A cellphone with Bluetooth keyboard, internet, and a micro-SD card has more to offer.
Do consider professionally refurbished modern laptops. Often this is a way to vastly increase your computing power per dollar. To my knowledge Amazon and Best Buy online are great places to do this, but there are others.
DO back up everything on your old and new laptops. Nothing is forever despite my best and most fervent wishes.
Do plan extra $$ for any accessories you may need, including mice, keyboards, speakers, headphones, thumb drives, external drives, laptop bags, cleaning spray, spare charger or battery, and laptop insurance (if you feel like you’ll need that).
Finally DO consider modern professional Linux installs as a valid option if work does not require you to use Windows or Mac. Linux is a smaller, lighter program, and runs using less resources, including processing power, RAM, and storage. This allows Linux to operate faster on a given computer. Windows is known to invade privacy, plague you with regular and extended updates, is more vulnerable to viruses, and has no inherent benefits outside of slightly better ease of use, and greatly increased game and program compatibility. In other words if you don’t game or use Windows/Mac exclusive programs, you may save money, and avoid privacy invasion with Linux OS. At least have a look.
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https://medium.com/@elementsoffire/laptops-picking-made-simpler-and-more-difficult-9fcd1cc077e3
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['Aaron Wells']
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2020-12-21 19:47:36.094000+00:00
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['Laptop', 'Computers', 'Office', 'Notebook', 'Electronics']
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Miracles of Math That Will Open Your Mind
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Miracles of Math That Will Open Your Mind
Chaos Theory, fractals, flying cars, and what it means to live a “well-lopsided” life.
“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.” — Albert Einstein
Dear Reader,
Happy Monday, y’all! Today we wrap up our math series that we started last week! Enjoy!
(And for a full list of the Five Miracles of Mathematics, go here.)
Chaos Theory and Ralph Abraham
“Chaos theory is a branch of mathematics focused on the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions. ‘Chaos’ is an interdisciplinary theory stating that within the apparent randomness of chaotic complex systems, there are underlying patterns…The butterfly effect describes how a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state, e.g. a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can cause a tornado in Texas.” — Wikipedia
Basically, Chaos Theory says that you’ll never have enough understanding of the exact present to be able to predict the exact future.
“Chaos theory… says that you can never predict the weather more than a few days away. All the money that has been spent on long-range forecasting — about half a billion dollars in the last few decades — is money wasted. It’s a fool’s errand. It’s as pointless as trying to turn lead into gold. We look back at the alchemists and laugh at what they were trying to do, but future generations will laugh at us the same way.” — Michael Crichton
Ralph Abraham is a professor, mathematician, and chaos theorist whose work has focused on the intersection of mathematics and psychedelics since the 1960s.
“My specific goal is to revolutionize the future of the species. Mathematics is just another way of predicting the future.” — Ralph Abraham
His paper Mathematics and Mysticism is an engaging look into what math might mean. From the abstract:
“Is there a world of mathematics above and beyond ordinary reality, as Plato proposed? Or is mathematics a cultural construct? In this short article, we speculate on the place of mathematical reality from the perspective of the mystical cosmologies of the ancient traditions of meditation, psychedelics, and divination.”
But what does this all mean for you?
If life seems chaotic, remember that on a small scale, you can create ‘algorithms’ for success that can connect your current present with your ideal future. But… keep in mind that these algorithms will only extend so far into the future and will need constant updating based on the present conditions.
How Fractals and the Genius of Mandelbrot Can Relieve Your Anxiety
A fractal is a curve or geometric figure, with each part having the same statistical character as the whole.
These fractal sets were named after Benoit Mandelbrot, whose pioneering work in developing what is now known as “fractal geometry” paved the way for many more mathematicians to study and expound on his ideas.
“Because of his access to IBM’s computers, Mandelbrot was one of the first to use computer graphics to create and display fractal geometric images, leading to his discovering the Mandelbrot set in 1979. He showed how visual complexity can be created from simple rules. He said that things typically considered to be ‘rough’, a ‘mess’, or ‘chaotic’, like clouds or shorelines, actually had a ‘degree of order.’” — Wikipedia
The visual representations of Mandelbrot sets are stunning.
The next time you think your life is too chaotic, too messy, just keep persisting. Mathematics has shown there’s an implicit order in everything around us.
If the golden ratio is present in the layout of our faces…
If the Pareto principle can be found throughout nature and society…
If the seemingly chaotic and unpredictable behavior of cellular automata can be reduced to rules so simple a child could understand them…
… then there is also an underlying (though often unseen) order and structure present in our lives. It’s okay to drop certain anxieties and trust what mathematics shows us — there is an underlying order.
“If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us it’s that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, uh… well, there it is.” — Dr. Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park (1993)
The miracles of mathematics are all around us, and there are countless gateways to find them.
“The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.” — JBS Haldane
Whether you use these gateways to bring more meaning to your life, balance your budget, or revel in the mystery… they can open new possibilities and options you never before knew existed.
|
https://medium.com/the-mission/miracles-of-math-that-will-open-your-mind-f276701e0ab3
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[]
|
2019-08-12 17:30:42.327000+00:00
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['Math', 'Storytelling', 'Science', 'History', 'News']
|
A letter from your body.
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Why can’t I have what I want?
You have the ability to give me everything I need and want, and yet you give me smoothies and dry toast. If I see dry toast one more time, I’ll lose my shit. You’re so careful to care for everyone in your life; you want to give them everything, but what’s left for me? Why can’t I have what I want?
When I have something amazing, delicious, satisfying, you reject my longing, my hope, my digestion. I don’t get the amazing delicious satisfaction; instead I run on empty, showing you how much I can take, how strong I am, how I can make it through this.
Photo by Ivan Stern on Unsplash
But I’m afraid I can’t go on forever like this. We need fat and sugar and carbs and if I don’t get it when I ask nicely, I’m going to make you lose control. I will show you what it means to under-nourish me. I will show you the direct consequences and we will eat everything, even the things I don’t really like, but are here. I will wake you in the middle of the night to raid the kitchen and leave nothing uneaten. If you try to control me, I will control you.
I am hungry and if you gave me what I need, what I crave, you will find out there is nothing to fear. I will not control you; we can be free together. We can run through fields of pizza and cake and I will be with you, in the joy of a field made of pizza and cake–without temptation because we are allowed to eat all of it, or none of it. You are not alone; I’m here for you, for us, but you must stop fighting me, pushing me against the wall to starve myself when we can’t achieve on starvation.
I remember when you were little and we climbed trees together. We’d go all the way to the top and look down at this big world and feel like we were on top of it. We were fearless. I got scraped, you got tired, but we didn’t care because we were living. I remember when we were powerful and loud and expressive together. I remember so trust me. Trust that we can be powerful together again. But we cannot be powerful when you refuse to satisfy what I need. We cannot achieve anything when you think I’m the problem. I am your biggest supporter, your best friend, your confidante, but how can I show you all the love I have for you when you treat me this way, when you don’t trust my cravings?
I know you’ve been through some shit. I know both strangers & humans you love have hurt us, have picked us apart, have made our appearance our only value, but you don’t have to. Your value spreads deeper and wider than me, but you need to see it first. You aren’t just me, but I can help you get where you need to go. We can accomplish anything, but you need to know we’ll accomplish nothing while we’re fighting.
Photo by Alexander Krivitskiy on Unsplash
I know it won’t be easy. We’ve been fighting for years and have gone down a dark, internal path together. I know you’re scared to let go, to let me be in charge of what I’m good at, but I’ll catch you. I will hold you and nurture you.
You learned a lot over the years about what is best to feed me and what will make me healthy and attractive. I know you spent a lot of time on learning those rules, but please believe me when I say, those rules are stupid af! How could some marketing pros know what we need? They know what their company needs to gain customers, but when it comes to us, me, you, they have no freaking clue what we need. I know. Trust me, I promise I know. I may eat too much some days, but sometimes I need more. I may crave processed food. Give it to me, let’s enjoy and then let it go. The food we eat, what we look like, how we dress is only our business.
Let’s make boundaries with those that tell us we’re wrong, that shame us when we eat fast food, that tell us our clothes are inappropriate. Because honestly, I can’t take this anymore. Let’s fix our relationship before we can’t. Let’s take this journey together. I’ve got you.
|
https://medium.com/@HappyToBeHeard/a-letter-from-your-body-812cf2fa3d03
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[]
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2020-02-20 20:40:10.604000+00:00
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['Body Image', 'Diet', 'Body', 'Self Love', 'Eating Disorders']
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Introducing the Props Film Series, “Props to You”
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Props
[props] noun
slang for giving proper or due respect or recognition; credit.
Watch all of the episodes by visiting the official “Props to You” page.
Since our founding in 2017, the Props Project team has been working to provide a better, more innovative way for companies to offer loyalty program rewards that create a truly synergetic incentive system. Over the years, we have been able to show that blockchain will transform customer loyalty programs in a revolutionary way.
We offer a bridge for Web 2.0 companies to experience Web 3.0 blockchain capabilities, and ensure that consumer apps have the most seamless way to provide users access to a global ownership economy. During this journey, we have been surrounded by an exceptional community of supporters from investors to power users, Props employees to forward-thinking app partners.
Without their support we wouldn’t be where we are today. As we move forward into the next phase of Props development, we look to members of the Props ecosystem to communicate the vision and our simple yet innovative loyalty token solution.
We invite you to join us for our film series, “Props to You” twice a week starting on Thursday, November 12th to learn more about the people who believe in, work for, and see a future for Props Project. Stay tuned for each episode, featuring the following community members:
Jake Brukhman, Founder & CEO of CoinFund, investor in Props Project
Zarifa Sabah, Power User of eCommerce app partner Listia
Phil Yang, Director of Business Development of Props Project
Uosof Ahmadi, Props Project Power Supporter & Investor
Peter Watts, Chief Technology Officer of Props Project
Tyler White, Power User of Partner App YouNow & Investor
Rory Geoghegan, Head of Product at YouNow, Props’ first Partner App
Emma McGann, Power User and Influencer of partner app YouNow
With more to come each week!
Along with each episode, you can learn more about each person by reading their extended interview on our blog, as well as see all additional “Props to You” updates and features on the website. We also welcome you, as our community member and supporter, to sign up here to be interviewed and featured in our new episodes.
Props to You for being a part of our journey!
|
https://blog.propsproject.com/introducing-our-film-series-props-to-you-242382fb228
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['Props Project']
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2020-11-19 14:48:22.882000+00:00
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['Blockchain', 'Customer Success', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Blockchain Startup', 'Loyalty Program']
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Are You Really in Charge of Your Choices?
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Are You Really in Charge of Your Choices?
A few things marketers don’t want you to know
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
Throughout the most part of 2020, COVID-19 confined shoppers to their homes and left high street retailers struggling. But it hasn’t held back some of the online retailers from thriving. Amazon Prime Day, for example, saw the revenue of third-party sellers jump by nearly 60% from the previous year. And Alibaba’s Singles Day sales marked record growth too, bringing in a staggering $75 billion.
Clearly, the pandemic hasn’t dampened the enthusiasm of holiday shoppers, particularly the impulsive ones. In fact, impulse shopping has grown by 18%, according to a 2020 poll.
But why are perfectly rational individuals making incredibly irrational choices when it comes to purchasing decisions? It’s often because your ability to make choices is influenced and manipulated all the time.
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https://medium.com/better-marketing/are-you-really-in-charge-of-your-choices-2745b4ca1468
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['Sherry S']
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2020-11-23 15:01:10.458000+00:00
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['Branding', 'Marketing', 'Consumerism', 'Lifestyle', 'Customer Behavior']
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Watch — Your Honor :: [1x2] Season 1 Episode 2 [Online]
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New Episode — Your Honor Season 1 Episode 2 (Full Episode) Top Show
Official Partners Showtime TV Shows & Movies Full Series Online
NEW EPISODE PREPARED ►► https://tinyurl.com/y5rwrgwd
🌀 All Episodes of “Your Honor” 01x02 : Part Two Happy Watching 🌀
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🦋 TELEVISION 🦋
(TV), in some cases abbreviated to tele or television, is a media transmission medium utilized for sending moving pictures in monochrome (high contrast), or in shading, and in a few measurements and sound. The term can allude to a TV, a TV program, or the vehicle of TV transmission. TV is a mass mode for promoting, amusement, news, and sports.
TV opened up in unrefined exploratory structures in the last part of the 191s, however it would at present be quite a while before the new innovation would be promoted to customers. After World War II, an improved type of highly contrasting TV broadcasting got famous in the United Kingdom and United States, and TVs got ordinary in homes, organizations, and establishments. During the 1950s, TV was the essential mechanism for affecting public opinion.[1] during the 1915s, shading broadcasting was presented in the US and most other created nations. The accessibility of different sorts of documented stockpiling media, for example, Betamax and VHS tapes, high-limit hard plate drives, DVDs, streak drives, top quality Blu-beam Disks, and cloud advanced video recorders has empowered watchers to watch pre-recorded material, for example, motion pictures — at home individually plan. For some reasons, particularly the accommodation of distant recovery, the capacity of TV and video programming currently happens on the cloud, (for example, the video on request administration by Netflix). Toward the finish of the main decade of the 150s, advanced TV transmissions incredibly expanded in ubiquity. Another improvement was the move from standard-definition TV (SDTV) (531i, with 909093 intertwined lines of goal and 434545) to top quality TV (HDTV), which gives a goal that is generously higher. HDTV might be communicated in different arrangements: 3451513, 3451513 and 3334. Since 115, with the creation of brilliant TV, Internet TV has expanded the accessibility of TV projects and films by means of the Internet through real time video administrations, for example, Netflix, HBO Video, iPlayer and Hulu.
In 113, 39% of the world’s family units possessed a TV set.[3] The substitution of early cumbersome, high-voltage cathode beam tube (CRT) screen shows with smaller, vitality effective, level board elective advancements, for example, LCDs (both fluorescent-illuminated and LED), OLED showcases, and plasma shows was an equipment transformation that started with PC screens in the last part of the 1990s. Most TV sets sold during the 150s were level board, primarily LEDs. Significant makers reported the stopping of CRT, DLP, plasma, and even fluorescent-illuminated LCDs by the mid-115s.[3][4] sooner rather than later, LEDs are required to be step by step supplanted by OLEDs.[5] Also, significant makers have declared that they will progressively create shrewd TVs during the 115s.[1][3][8] Smart TVs with incorporated Internet and Web 3.0 capacities turned into the prevailing type of TV by the late 115s.[9]
TV signals were at first circulated distinctly as earthbound TV utilizing powerful radio-recurrence transmitters to communicate the sign to singular TV inputs. Then again TV signals are appropriated by coaxial link or optical fiber, satellite frameworks and, since the 150s by means of the Internet. Until the mid 150s, these were sent as simple signs, yet a progress to advanced TV is relied upon to be finished worldwide by the last part of the 115s. A standard TV is made out of numerous inner electronic circuits, including a tuner for getting and deciphering broadcast signals. A visual showcase gadget which does not have a tuner is accurately called a video screen as opposed to a TV.
🦋 OVERVIEW 🦋
A subgenre that joins the sentiment type with parody, zeroing in on at least two people since they find and endeavor to deal with their sentimental love, attractions to each other. The cliché plot line follows the “kid gets-young lady”, “kid loses-young lady”, “kid gets young lady back once more” grouping. Normally, there are multitudinous variations to this plot (and new curves, for example, switching the sex parts in the story), and far of the by and large happy parody lies in the social cooperations and sexual strain between your characters, who every now and again either won’t concede they are pulled in to each other or must deal with others’ interfering inside their issues.
Regularly carefully thought as an artistic sort or structure, however utilized it is additionally found in the realistic and performing expressions. In parody, human or individual indecencies, indiscretions, misuses, or deficiencies are composed to rebuff by methods for scorn, disparagement, vaudeville, incongruity, or different strategies, preferably with the plan to impact an aftereffect of progress. Parody is by and large intended to be interesting, yet its motivation isn’t generally humor as an assault on something the essayist objects to, utilizing mind. A typical, nearly characterizing highlight of parody is its solid vein of incongruity or mockery, yet spoof, vaudeville, distortion, juxtaposition, correlation, similarity, and risqué statement all regularly show up in ironical discourse and composing. The key point, is that “in parody, incongruity is aggressor.” This “assailant incongruity” (or mockery) frequently claims to favor (or if nothing else acknowledge as common) the very things the humorist really wishes to assault.
In the wake of calling Zed and his Blackblood confidants to spare Your Honor, Talon winds up sold out by her own sort and battles to accommodate her human companions and her Blackblood legacy. With the satanic Lu Qiri giving the muscle to uphold Zed’s ground breaking strategy, Your Honor’s human occupants are subjugated as excavators looking for a baffling substance to illuminate a dull conundrum. As Talon finds more about her lost family from Yavalla, she should sort out the certainties from the falsehoods, and explain the riddle of her legacy and an overlooked force, before the world becomes subjugated to another force that could devour each living being.
Claw is the solitary overcomer of a race called Blackbloods. A long time after her whole town is annihilated by a pack of merciless hired soldiers, Talon goes to an untamed post on the edge of the enlightened world, as she tracks the huggers of her family. On her excursion to this station, Talon finds she has a strange heavenly force that she should figure out how to control so as to spare herself, and guard the world against an over the top strict tyrant.
|
https://medium.com/@watch-your-honor-1x2-2020/your-honor-series-1-eps-2-hdtv-online-62f236fd3623
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['Watch Your Honor']
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2020-12-12 04:45:28.143000+00:00
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['TV Series', 'Drama', 'Crime', 'Thriller', 'Startup']
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How Your Volunteer Work Can Compliment Your Professional Work
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How Your Volunteer Work Can Compliment Your Professional Work
Photo by Aditya Vyas on Unsplash
Up until 2017, I had written many reports for school and work, however, I did not consider this a qualification to call myself a writer. Fortunately, I embraced the process of developing my skills and had been complimented on my writing several times. Evidence of my ability to write effectively came from my spouse and the fact that throughout my graduate studies I had received some awards for my work that included research awards presented at conferences. Upon finishing my studies I had the distinction of receiving a distinguished dissertation nomination from my department for my efforts. Those writing endeavors were other aspects of my life though and I was not considering myself multi-dimensional enough to think of writing as an occupation. The writing that I was working on was a means to accomplish other undertakings and not a means of its own.
Focusing on other types of writing
This changed when I received my first freelancing gig to cover a health and fitness challenge. The process was simple in that I had to write an entertaining article, with a length of approximately 1250 words, and I would be paid a set amount for the article. Much of the leg work that was required to research and write the article I had already done on my own. This made the project even better. After submitting the first article I was asked to write again and the process continued relatively smoothly. In addition to picking up a paid freelancing writing opportunity, I was also asked to contribute, as a volunteer, to a club’s monthly newsletter. After a few months, I was able to settle into a nice routine that allowed me to continue writing a variety of articles for both outlets.
Increasing the breadth and depth of my writing coverage allowed me to sharpen my skills, and expect better quality from myself
A funny thing happened along the way. Both writing obligations became less of an obligation and more of an anticipated occurrence. With this attitude adjustment, I was able to shift the direction of the topics I covered to fit my interests and the necessities of the fitness magazine and club newsletter. The best part is that participating in these monthly writing activities increased my expectations of myself, provided me with more ideas, and sharpened my ability to write for the appropriate audience. Writing these shorter articles made me consider how this related to the writing I had done both academically and professionally and other ways that I could expand my writing.
One area-specific goal related to writing that I was determined to pursue was writing a book. To write a book that was valuable to readers, I needed to decide what topics I would cover. I came up with a list of things that I was interested in writing about and then determined suitable topics within my areas of interest that seemed suitable for a book. Instead of jumping right into writing a book, I decided a good way to gain experience would be to contribute to a book first.
An opportunity to collaborate on a book project
As luck would have it the universe provided me with the opportunity to gain experience writing a book. I had written several articles on health and fitness and a local organization was looking for help writing two guidebooks. Two articles that I had already written were related to each of the guidebooks. Participating in the first project provided me with the opportunity to expand one of my articles into a chapter within a trail guidebook. The chapter I was contributing to was about a long hiking trail that spanned the entire county. In addition to contributing to the guidebook, this project allowed me to research a topic I was interested in and allowed me to connect with a retired professor who was brimming with stories and experience.
The confidence I gained from participating in the writing of the first guidebook allowed me to dive head-on into the second book project. My involvement in this project was more substantial than the first. Specifically much more research was required because I was contributing to both the initial writing of some chapters and the revision of others that needed updating. One main objective of this project was to include details about trail accessibility for different nature preserves which required knowledge of trail measurement techniques. Due to COVID-19, I had little interaction with other people on the project, and visits to the preserve sites were delayed substantially. In late August the state deemed it safe (enough) to participate in small group activities. Although I was juggling several other important projects, including a full-time job, I felt this project was important in propelling my writing forward.
From paid freelancer to professional writer via a simple introduction at a meet and greet
In our first small group meeting to learn about the trail measurement techniques, we were introduced to each other by the project’s main lead. I was introduced as a professional writer who had been working on the drafts outlining each chapter of the guidebook. I had been paid for my writings in the past but now I had officially earned my Professional Writer badge through my hard work as a volunteer. On this project, I was wearing several hats including public health professional and researcher, and writer. While I was building my writing experience I was not expecting to be recognized as a professional writer for this project. It was an important lesson learned about your internal perception of yourself.
Wrapping things up with a short summary
Building your writing skills and diversifying your ability to learn new information will open up opportunities. Having confidence in those skills and abilities is important when pursuing projects outside your comfort zone. Considering yourself as a multi-dimensional person will allow you to honor different commitments, juggle your time accordingly, and continue to build your portfolio.
|
https://writingcooperative.com/how-your-volunteer-work-can-compliment-your-professional-work-524b270253c0
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["Thomas O'Grady"]
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2020-12-26 12:02:10.044000+00:00
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['Writers On Writing', 'Self Improvement', 'Writing Tips', 'Writer', 'Writing']
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How do you write an art history paper? Visual analysis, Step II: The principles of design
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How do you write an art history paper? Visual analysis, Step II: The principles of design Debra Thimmesch Jul 6·4 min read
You’re eager to begin writing your art history visual analysis paper but there are some critical first steps you must take first. As I emphasized in my last entry, Step I, you must understand how to look at a work of art before you can write about that process and draw any conclusions.
You’ve learned how to identify the formal elements of an artwork, which we will consider the individual building blocks of the object, whatever it is. The next step is to analyze how those blocks are arranged and you do that by discussing the principles of design, which are the choices an artist (or architect or artisan/craftsperson) makes when they are making decisions about the formal elements of the work.
Before we begin, let’s first define a very important term: composition. In the visual arts, composition is the arrangement of all of the formal elements within (and, in some cases, around) the artwork. The formal elements and design principles are distinct from the subject of the artwork in that they work together to produce meaning. This may seem confusing now, but it will make sense to you very soon!
In order to take a closer look at the principles of design, we’ll refer to a work of art by the French Post-Impressionist artist, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Specifically, we will look at his well-known color lithograph titled, Moulin Rouge, La Goulue.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Moulin Rouge, La Goulue, 1891, color lithograph
The Principles of Design
The three important components of design, which are applied differently from artist to artist and work to work, are balance, emphasis, and movement.
balance is the distribution of the visual weight of objects, colors, textures, and space. The artist decides how best to distribute the formal elements throughout a composition in order to provide visual stability to the overall design. Of course, it probably goes without saying that stability is a relative concept and depends on many things, not least of which is the artist’s aims for the artwork.
symmetrical balance describes the equal distribution around the composition of the most important formal elements of a work of art. That doesn’t mean that, for instance, one side of the work is exactly like the other but it does suggest that right and left, and/or top and bottom (or all of the above) are evenly weighted visually.
asymmetrical balance implies imbalance but, if you will, purposeful imbalance. Asymmetry can lend a work a sense of movement because the important formal elements are unbalanced or unequally distributed and therefore the viewer’s eye does not rest and contemplate stability or stasis; instead, it moves around the composition from one area of interest to another.
emphasis is the part of the composition that captures and potentially holds the viewer’s attention. In such instances, the artist will make certain areas stand out by contrasting them with other areas. This could be accomplished in a variety of ways such as making forms different in size, color, texture, shape, and so forth. For instance, one technique artists of the Renaissance period used was to place the most important element of a painting — the focal point — in the center like a bullseye in the middle of the target.
movement is the path the viewer’s eye takes through the work of art, often to focal points or areas. Movement (of the eye) within the artwork can be directed in any number of ways such as along lines, to edges, from shape to shape, from similar color to similar color, and so forth.
Sample analysis of the design principles: balance emphasis, and movement: Toulouse-Lautrec’s color lithograph of the famous Parisian cancan dancer known as La Goulue and the silhouettes of her top-hatted partner, the audience, and the intruding musical instruments to the left, adamantly eschews symmetry. Instead, the artist distributes forms here and there throughout the composition to create a liveliness and sense of rapid movement that mimics that of the frenetic energy and activity of the cabaret and the two performers. Rather than centering La Goulue to emphasize her importance, Toulouse-Lautrec places her in the middle ground but off to the left. While she’s well in front of her dance partner, between him and the audience, we get the impression she is kicking him in the head! Meanwhile, the bright yellow forms of the brass instruments push inward from the left side and create a counterweight to the black triangular form created by the clump of male audience members in their top hats on the upper right. Emphatically asymmetrical, this composition conveys great movement and energy.
The artist also creates a sense of movement through his use of line and color. The sinuous contour lines of the figures flow downward alongside the lines of the wooden floorboards of the stage. The latter lines give the composition a radically tilted feeling as though the people and objects will come sliding forward and out of the front of the picture plane straight at us, the viewers. What an ingenious way of drawing in your audience! Meanwhile, the eye jumps from one bright field of red or yellow to the next, halts on brown and black, and then gets moving again through a composition that is anything but static.
In my next article, Step III, I will explain how to organize the different parts of your visual analysis.
For more information and for one-on-one tutoring and writing instruction, contact me at [email protected].
|
https://medium.com/@wordtune-org/how-do-you-write-an-art-history-paper-visual-analysis-step-ii-the-principles-of-design-e0e43a7a2b95
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['Debra Thimmesch']
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2021-07-06 19:01:23.044000+00:00
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['Visual Analysis', 'Art History', 'Art History Pedagogy', 'Principles Of Design', 'Art History Paper']
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Conversations with the Dead
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Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
There are moments when something I am reading will trigger emotions of my past or will trigger thoughts about something happening currently. When that happens, I will use what I’ve read as inspiration for my next piece.
A good way to write a piece inspired by another piece is as a conversation. Another good way is as a response poem. Emanuel Xavier has a very strong example of a response in his poem, “Urban Affection”, which he cites as a poem “for Walt Whitman.”
While Xavier’s poem does not specifically mention a certain poem, “Urban Affection” does allude to several poetic themes used by Walt Whitman. The power of Xavier’s poem is that he adeptly references the differences and commonalities between Whitman’s time and Xavier’s own.
In my response poem, “The Tyger, Interrupted”, I incorporate my poem within the poem “The Tyger”. This is one of my favorite styles, as I am often inspired by other things I’m reading. When I write a poem this way, I feel like I’m sharing my inspiration with the reader.
Poetry Prompt: Find a poet or poem from the past and write a poem that talks to the poet or interacts with the poem. Try to write a poem that compares or contrasts itself with the past.
Katerina Canyon is a writer currently living in Seattle, Washington. She served as Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga, California from 2000 to 2003. She has a MALD from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a BA in English, Creative Writing, and International Studies from Saint Louis University. She has been published in the New York Times and Huffington Post. Her most recent poetry was published in From Whispers to Roars. Her latest collection Changing the Lines is currently available on Amazon and Elliott Bay Book Company. You can learn more about Katerina at PoeticKat.com.
References: Poetry Foundation, Poetry in Voice
|
https://medium.com/poetickat/conversations-with-the-dead-41417e6959f3
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['Katerina Canyon']
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2018-11-13 21:49:31.674000+00:00
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['Poetry', 'Writing Prompts', 'Poem', 'Poetry Prompt', 'Writing Tips']
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Building a 200TB Chia Farming Rig
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A complete review from component selection to software configuration for a Chia cryptocurrency farming (mining) system.
Introduction
Chia is a new cryptocurrency that aims at achieving decentralized consensus with lower energy consumption per transaction than its peers. This is achieved via a proof of space algorithm instead of proof of work.
While proof of work relies on continuously computing a math problem (usually hashes such as SHA256) in an attempt to find results that match a desired pattern, Chia instead relies on checking for the existence of certain properties in unique pre-generated files called plots.
This is done in a two step process called farming consisting of:
Plotting where large unique files (usually 101.6GB) are created. And harvesting where the previously created files are checked for a chance to win that block’s reward (currently 2 Chia).
The more plots (greater storage used) a node has, the higher the chance of winning that block’s reward. There are 4608 chances to win daily and the probability of winning that block’s reward is based primarily on the number of plots one owns in proportion to the total network size. An earnings calculator is provided here.
Therefore, to maximize rewards we want to have the largest amount of storage possible and enough computing resources to fill up said storage with plots.
Choosing Equipment
As with most design problems, there are an infinity of valid solutions to the combination of devices that can be used to farm Chia. To help narrow the options I started by deciding on some constraints and priorities:
The cost in $/TB should be minimized despite additional complexity (within reason). Due to my limited time available to dedicate to this project, the system should be mostly composed of off the shelf parts (no custom PCBs, custom chassis, etc).
Plotting — Processing
Depending on the hardware setup, a single plot can take between 4 to 20 hours to create. Therefore, choosing the right plotting hardware can be the difference between filling up your entire farm in days versus months.
It is important to consider not only the speed at which each plot is made but also the number of concurrent plots that can be created. For instance, a setup that creates 10 concurrent plots at 12 hours each will produce 20 plots (~2TB/day) whereas a setup that plots 1 concurrent plot every 4 hours will only produce 6 plots per day (0.6TB/day).
To minimize cost, I decided to search for decommissioned servers. These servers have some interesting properties that could make them powerful plotters, including:
Large number of cores can allow for several plots in parallel. Phase 1 (around half the plot time) is multithreaded (usually configured to be between 2 and 4 threads), but remaining phases are single threaded. Available RAM is usually in excess of that required to plot (~4GB/concurrent plot). Designed to operate at high load for extended periods of time.
After going over dozens of options and possible configurations, I settled for an HP ProLiant DL380p Gen8 with 2x Intel E5–2670 and 192GB of DDR3 RAM. With hyper-threading enabled, this server could hypothetically support simultaneously plotting up to 16 plots in phase 1 for under $400.
Plotting — Temporary Storage
Due to the high write load during the plot creation (around 1.6TB written for a k=32 plot), the choice of temporary storage medium can have a significant impact on the plotting time and cost. A few points to consider:
The faster the storage, the faster plots can be created. This thread discusses 4 hour plot times using RAMDISK (mount a folder to RAM). Given the large write volume, it is important to consider the endurance of the medium. A consumer grade 1TB NVMe SSD usually has around 600 TBW (terabytes written) endurance before it is expected to fail which would mean it could make around 375 plots.
I ended up opting to buy a 12-bay HP StorageWorks D2600 with 15K 450GB SAS drives. With this setup, I can simultaneously plot to each drive without risking IO contention at the drive level. The JBOD + drives was significantly cheaper than an equivalent setup with NVMe drives (without even factoring the replacement cost after TBW has been reached).
Farm — Long Term Storage
Unlike the plotting storage, the harvesting storage does not require high throughput or IOPs. For this reason, minimizing cost was the highest priority.
There are several possible setups some of which are discussed here. However, after searching on eBay for second-hand options, a few things became clear:
The larger 3.5" hard drives tend to have the lowest cost. This makes sense since most devices nowadays have moved to the smaller 2.5" or 1.8" sizes. SAS hard drives (not SSDs) seemed to have the lowest cost per TB with some lots as low as $10/TB (as of May 2021). These SAS drives are not compatible with SATA (consumer) boards and are usually sold on eBay after being decommissioned from a company’s data center.
Once I narrowed in on using 3.5" SAS hard drives, I needed to find a way to actually connect them to my harvester/plotter. Sticking with the constraint of not building the enclosure/backplane I started looking for used enclosures that could house these drives while maintaining the lowest cost per bay.
I came across several options on eBay and ended up purchasing a few different models including a 24-bay HP 3PAR and two 12-bay IBM DS3512.
Full List
The final list of components is shown below. It includes the main components discussed above but also ancillary parts that are required to put the system together.
A worthy mention is the HBA card. It is the PCIe card that exposes the SAS external connectors to which the cables from the JBODs will connect. When buying it, ensure you are getting an initiator target (IT) mode card so that the drives appear directly to the OS as opposed to an IR mode card. As a nice to have, you may want to get a card flashed with a newer OS (version 20).
Setting Up — Hardware
The setup is mostly intuitive. Cables connect to the holes in which they fit. However, the SAS cabling that connects the JBODs and the plotting/harvesting machine are daisy chain-able.
In my case, I have two cables leaving the server (one on each port from the HBA). One of the cables connects to the input of the temporary storage array (HP D2600) and the output of that array connects to the HP 3PAR array. The other cable connects to the first IBM array and the output of that connects to the second IBM array. The JBODs usually have an input (primary) port and an output port (usually labeled with an outward arrow).
Setting Up — Software
I installed Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on the server since its a widely used Linux distribution which means it would be easier to find troubleshooting forums if any troubles arose. The steps below outline the remaining configuration.
Step 1: Ensure All Drives are Available
The first step is to check which drives are being detected by the OS. This can be accomplished by running the lsscsi command. The output of which is shown below.
Note that the above command does not provide information on the file system or size of the drives. For that, run the lsblk command.
Important: Note that not all drives appear under both commands! The drives that appear under lsscsi but not lsblk may have some incompatibility that is causing the OS to not make them available for mounting, etc. An example of this is /dev/sdaw .
In my case, this issue was caused due to the sector size being 520 which is not supported by my installed Linux kernel (discussion on this topic can be found here and here). You can determine if this is your case by looking over the dmesg command’s log for an error message like [sdaw] Unsupported sector size 520 .
To solve this I reformatted the drives using a block size of 512 with the command sg_format -v --format --size=512 /dev/sdX . This command can take a significant amount of time to run (several hours) and the output is shown below.
Upon completion, the drive should show up in the lsblk output.
Step 2: Create File System on Drives
To format the drives with the ext4 file system, I ran the following command: sudo mkfs -t ext4 — verbose /dev/sda .
Step 3: Mount Drives
Now that we can access the drives and they have been formatted with the desired file system, we can mount these drives.
Create the folders where we will be mounting the drives. For example: /mnt/farm/00 to /mnt/farm/23 for the drives that will store the final plots, and /mnt/plot-tmp/00 to /mnt/plot-tmp/11 for the temporary plotting locations. Run sudo blkid to get the unique IDs of your drives (or partitions). It will output several lines such as /dev/sdae: UUID=”29494f44–2f75–4c01-a766–18755eb583d7" TYPE=”ext4" . Edit the fstab file with sudo vim /etc/fstab and associate each of the drives with their corresponding /mnt/... folder. Be careful not to edit the first lines of the file since those are required to mount the OS root drive. My final file is shown below. Run sudo mount -a to mount all drives specified in the fstab file. It will only mount drives not already mounted so it is safe to run multiple times. Ensure users have access to the drives and its files by running sudo chmod -R 777 /mnt/farm/00 .
Step 4: Run Chia Blockchain Software
Follow the official instructions specified here to install the Chia blockchain (I did not install the GUI). Run chia start farmer to start the daemons for the wallet, harvester, etc.
Step 5: Setup Plotman (Optional)
Plotman is a plotting manager that will take over the creation of new plotting jobs. It is a convenience tool (not required).
Install Plotman following the instructions here. Edit plotman.yaml to your plotter’s specifications. My final file is shown below.
user_interface:
use_stty_size: True
directories:
log: /home/plotter/plotman-logs
tmp:
- /mnt/plot-tmp/f00
- /mnt/plot-tmp/f01
- /mnt/plot-tmp/f02
- /mnt/plot-tmp/f03
- /mnt/plot-tmp/f04
- /mnt/plot-tmp/f05
- /mnt/plot-tmp/f06
- /mnt/plot-tmp/f07
- /mnt/plot-tmp/f08
- /mnt/plot-tmp/f09
- /mnt/plot-tmp/f10
- /mnt/plot-tmp/f11
dst:
#- /mnt/farm/00 FULL
#- /mnt/farm/01 FULL
#- /mnt/farm/02 FULL
#- /mnt/farm/03 FULL
#- /mnt/farm/04 FULL
#- /mnt/farm/05 FULL
#- /mnt/farm/06 FULL
#- /mnt/farm/07 FULL
#- /mnt/farm/08 FULL
#- /mnt/farm/09 FULL
#- /mnt/farm/10 FULL
#- /mnt/farm/11 FULL
- /mnt/farm/12
- /mnt/farm/13
- /mnt/farm/14
- /mnt/farm/15
- /mnt/farm/16
- /mnt/farm/17
- /mnt/farm/18
- /mnt/farm/19
- /mnt/farm/20
- /mnt/farm/21
- /mnt/farm/22
- /mnt/farm/23
scheduling:
tmpdir_stagger_phase_major: 2
tmpdir_stagger_phase_minor: 1
tmpdir_stagger_phase_limit: 1
tmpdir_max_jobs: 1
global_max_jobs: 20
global_stagger_m: 40
polling_time_s: 30
plotting:
k: 32
e: False # Use -e plotting option
n_threads: 2 # Threads per job
n_buckets: 128 # Number of buckets to split data into
job_buffer: 8096 # Per job memory
Some points worth mentioning:
Plotman does not stop scheduling to farm drives (as of the time of this writing) when the drive is full. Therefore, you need to remove them (or comment them out as above). Plotman will automatically add farm drives to the chia harvester. I use tmpdir_max_jobs equal to 1 since I am plotting to hard disks which do not have a good seek performance compared to SSDs.
Step 6: Run the Plotter
At this point, all that is needed to start plotting is to run plotman interactive .
Note: The very long running job plotting to /dev/farm/usb2 is a debug run that is not meant to run to completion.
Final Words
Hope this can was helpful in giving you an idea of what is required to farm Chia!
As of now, my farm is 1/3 of the way full and I plan on posting updates as it fills up and when I start re-plotting for pools.
Special thanks to Katie Gandomi for help with development.
Happy farming!
|
https://levelup.gitconnected.com/building-a-200tb-chia-farming-rig-c9478ed7b92f
|
['Paulo Carvalho']
|
2021-06-16 16:40:32.404000+00:00
|
['Cryptocurrency Mining', 'Chia', 'Servers', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Crypto']
|
Así fue el Behance Reviews Buenos Aires
|
in In Fitness And In Health
|
https://medium.com/visualmente/as%C3%AD-fue-el-behance-reviews-buenos-aires-b44842015345
|
[]
|
2018-01-29 18:18:57.169000+00:00
|
['Grolsch', 'Alejandra Leston', 'Posca', 'Estudio Visualmente', 'Espacio Cabrera']
|
Getting Started With Clojure and Visual Studio Code
|
Clojure is a dynamic, functional programming language that is a joy to write. I’ve been writing it professionally for the last year-and-a-half and wanted to share something I wish existed when I first got started.
This guide is not a primer on Clojure itself. I will not be going over the basics of the language, there are plenty of great guides out there that are a web search away.
This guide, therefore, is aimed at:
Programmers coming from a different language who have decided to try Clojure;
Programmers that are writing Clojure for the first time professionally.
The motivation might be a quick way to get a reliable environment up and running, freeing up more time to focus on learning the language itself.
(Hopefully) after reading this post, you can quickly start to form a workflow for tinkering away at Clojure code in little time.
To keep the scope of this guide relatively focused, I will assume that you are using an up to date version of macOS and understand how to use Homebrew.
While Homebrew works on Linux, I’ve not personally used it, therefore I cannot vouch if the commands have parity.
Dependencies
You will need Java, Clojure, Leiningen, and Visual Studio Code installed.
brew install adoptopenjdk clojure leiningen
brew cask install visual-studio-code
Calva
The only Visual Studio Code extension you will need to be productive with Clojure codebases is Calva. Make sure to have it installed.
I will be using terminology that is specific to Visual Studio Code and its UI elements.
To reduce confusion, make sure to read this document to familiarise yourself with elements of the User Interface.
Let’s tinker
In this next part, we’re going to:
Create a new Clojure project using Leiningen.
Connect to the REPL using Visual Studio Code and Calva.
Evaluate Clojure expressions directly in your editor.
Evaluate and run tests directly in your editor.
Create a new Clojure project
Inside the directory you want to create your Clojure project, run
lein new clojure-sandbox
Open the newly created clojure-sandbox directory inside Visual Studio Code.
Jacking-In
A large part of building software with Clojure is the REPL. Programmers are familiar with the concept of a REPL from other programming languages (e.g. irb for Ruby, python3 for Python).
In Clojure, things are taken one step further. A REPL instance created with Leiningen has a network port that allows incoming connections.
Since the aforementioned port is opened over a socket, a valid client — a terminal session or an editor, for example — can connect to it.
The simplest way to open a REPL instance is to run the command lein run in the clojure-sandbox directory.
We can take things a step further, however, by connecting to a REPL instance from Visual Studio Code using Calva.
Calva takes care of all this for us by providing a command called Jack In .
In Visual Studio Code
Open src/clojure_sandbox/core.clj Bring up Visual Studio Code’s command palette. Type in Jack-In and select the option Calva: Start a Project REPL and Connect (aka Jack-In) Select the Leiningen project type
You should be connected to a REPL instance and ready to evaluate code.
Evaluating Clojure Forms
A quick screencast to help with visualising evaluating forms in Clojure.
By default, Calva opens a REPL window on the right hand side after Jack-In. I will refer to the window as the Calva REPL.
You can start to evaluate Clojure forms in the Calva REPL just like any other REPL. Type in an expression, press the return key and observe the feedback — e.g. typing (+ 2 2) followed by the return key will return 4 .
Since you have jacked into a REPL connection, you can tinker around with Clojure code in your editor and evaluate the code you write. This workflow is known in the Clojure community as “REPL driven development” and is a powerful paradigm.
Type (+ 2 2) anywhere in core.clj and then, with your cursor anywhere on that line, you can evaluate the result of this form by pressing Ctrl + Command + C and E or selecting Calva: Evaluate Current Form in Visual Studio Code’s command palette. This will output 4 to the output window.
Calva: Evaluate Current Form in REPL Window in Visual Studio Code’s command palette will evaluate output the evaluation to the REPL window instead of the output window.
I prefer using the output window on my laptop as I can close the REPL window and use the output window for my feedback loop, saving me precious screen real-estate.
The choice of the output window or REPL is a standard evaluation pattern in Calva. There are other options to output which you should play around with. I will focus on outputting the result to the output window, as that is my personal preference (but feel free to use the output type you prefer).
Once you start to write more complex Clojure, evaluating the result of a form might not do what you expect, e.g.
(let [name "Muyiwa"]
(str "Hello " name))
If your cursor is on "Hello " and you try to evaluate the form, you will get a syntax error because we are trying to evaluate and incomplete form. If your cursor is on name then it will evaluate to a function symbol.
For use-cases like this, you want Calva to evaluate the top-level form. If you start typing Top Level in the Visual Studio Code command palette, you can see your options. The shortcut to evaluate the top level form to the output window is Ctrl + Command + C``Space .
This is the command with the heaviest use when writing Clojure in my day-to-day as the top-level form will work even for the simple examples that we tried earlier like (+ 2 2) . It's a handy shortcut to know.
Running Clojure Tests
To run Clojure tests in Visual Studio Code, open a test file (e.g. test/clojure_sandbox/core_test.clj and start typing calva test into the Visual Studio Code command palette.
The four options:
Run Tests
Run Current Test
Run Failing Tests again
Run Tests for Current Namespace
Should be enough for you to fit into your testing workflow. See if you can make the test pass.
Conclusion
If this is the beginning of your journey with Clojure and REPL driven development, I recommend the following next steps:
Read the Calva documentation and refer to it when you need it.
Memorise the Calva shortcuts for Jack-In and Evaluate top level form .
and . Follow all the exercises under the Learn Clojure official guide, using the sandbox project and REPL driven development for the exercises.
Read the Leiningen documentation.
I hope this has been a useful primer to help you get going and focus on playing around with a delightful language.
|
https://medium.com/@muyiwa/getting-started-with-clojure-and-visual-studio-code-15ef6283c496
|
['Muyiwa Olu']
|
2020-12-13 17:42:43.804000+00:00
|
['Clojure', 'Visual Studio Code', 'Guides And Tutorials']
|
How To Organize A Successful Strongman Competition
|
Introduction
Over the last 4 years I have competed in Strongman, locally in Alberta, Canada. The experiences I’ve gained from the competitions I’ve competed in have taught me countless lessons on how to run successful strongman shows. I have run 3 successful charity strongman competitions over the last 3 years, raising a total of (just over) $5000.00. This upcoming year I’ll be heading into my 4th consecutive year with 97 competitors enrolled.
Throughout this article I will be (attempting) to teach you how to run a successful strongman show.
What You’ll Need
The bolded points are my musts, the rest are just bonus’.
The Venue — typically your best option is to use a gym that already has some or all of the equipment you’ll be using. Make sure to see if the venue has insurance on competitions, chances are you’ll need to find that too to keep you protected. This can mean in an outdoor setting, or indoor. It can be in a gym, warehouse, or park; it all comes down to where you want the most outreach. Alberta Provincials 2019 was ran at a rodeo near a beer garden. Google Account — I use Google for my signup form (Google Forms), with that I also have a means to export the signup form into a Google Sheets document so I can see all the information on one screen. A Bank Account — To collect registration fee’s An E-Mail Address — Maybe don’t use your personal email, since I suggested a Google Account, you can create an account and name it after your competition. (You’ll get lots of people asking questions about your competition, as well as a great means to communicate with sponsors). Equipment — This is self explanatory Social Media — Creating a Facebook Page/Event or an Instagram account named after your competition is a great way to reach your audience and get information out fast. Affiliation with a Federation — Yes you can host your show privately, but you won’t get near the amount of competitors without one. People want to compete with a reason; typically federations give your competition a means to qualify athletes to larger, regional show (Provincials/State Championships, etc.).
Picking your events
Typical strongman competitions have 5 events. You’ll need to pick them for your competition. Don’t follow everyone else, make your event special. Just because 2 of the competitions this year have a Sandbag throw, doesn’t mean you need to do the same. Keep the athletes on edge; Strongman is about who is the strongest, not who’s the most trained in the specific event.
There a few types of events you can choose from: Distance for Time, AMRAP (As Many Reps as Possible) for Time, Call-Out Attempts (let the athletes pick their weights and have a set number of attempts), Last Man Standing (Every athlete does a particular weight and it keeps going up, until there is 1 person left).
Typically federations require a particular group of events: A pull event (Deadlift, truck pull), a press event (Log Press, Block Press, etc.), a moving event (Yoke, Farmers carry, sandbag carry, etc.), and a grip event. The last event is typically Atlas Stones, but it’s up to you to choose.
It is also in your best interest to have a “Count Back Event”. In the event there is a tie on the last event, and the second last event. In my federation, if there is a tie on the 5th event, you base the final score off of who did better in the 4th event. There was one year we had a tie on both the 4th and 5th event and I had to make up a 6th event on the fly to settle the score.
A great idea I’ve seen used (but never executed) is the 5th event is a qualifier. The event promoter will have a preselected number of individuals that will qualify to compete in the last event based off of the final scores by the end of event 4.
Registration
Head over to Google Drive and create a new Google Form (Or use registration software of your choice). For all of my competitions here is the information I’ve collected:
Personal Info: Name, Date of Birth (Most federations require a minimum age as well as sometimes have weight classes for the 40+ competitors), Address (For Marketing Reasons), Phone Number, Emergency Contact Name and Phone number Competition Info: Desired Weight Class (See image below), Shirt Size Waiver — Have a legal representative conduct a waiver to keep you protected that all athletes will need to sign.
Weight Classes for in accordance with CAASA’s Federation (This is a live view of my 2021 Competition, we have some full weight classes so they’ve been brought down to another bullet point so people can still be on the waiting list).
Volunteers
In the past people have reached out to me to volunteer. Here is the categories you need: (The bolded points are a must, the rest are just bonus’.)
Loaders/Spotters — These people will load weights on the implements/equipment during the event. I’ve found great success in merging these two categories together Judges/Officials — Typically federations have a regional representative. I use that person as the main judge, and then reach out to pro’s or retired strongman in the area to come judge. You’ll need as many judges as lanes of competition. In the past I’ve ran 4 lanes. This is all dependent on the amount of equipment you have accessible. Score Table — It’s in your best interest to get someone who understands the sport to run this Lead Loader/Spotter — Let this person be in charge of all the Loaders and Spotters. This person should have experience in Strongman or have at least loaded/spotted for a competition in the past. This person will give direction on where to be and what to do Score Keepers — Someone who will be partnered with a judge/official to count reps and write down scores to then take to the score table MC — If you’re going to have an audience, keeping them engaged with what’s going on will help keep the energy high in the competition. Typically this person has a strong understanding of the events and has decent relationships with the competitors. It’s far easier knowing who you’re talking about when you don’t have to keep looking down to your roster for the name of the person who’s out on “stage”. Videographer/Photographer — Since my competitions have always been charity I’ve asked local photographers to volunteer their time. If your competition is for profit, I’m sure you’ll be able to spend some money to get a professional out to capture the big day
Sponsorships
If you’ve competed in the past I’m sure you have a competition shirt. Take a look at the back of it and contact every company on the back of the shirt. If they’ve sponsored in the past, chances are they’ll sponsor again in the future. Reach out to them and explain what you have going on.
Many competitions structure sponsorship packages with different tiers. For example the Gold tier gets you more perks during the competition then the Bronze tier would; for instance a bigger logo on the back of the shirts, or more verbal announcements during the show from the MC, or the ability to set up a booth at the competition with their product without additional charge.
I find that figuring out what’s best for each company is hard. If it’s your first time organizing a strongman competition I’d suggest setting up a particular value. For me, I set that at $150.00 or more. If a company donates that amount or more, or supplies that value in product for prizes, they qualify as an official sponsor.
Keep blasting off emails to business’. Local, national, international. Let competitors know that if they have any companies they can refer you to, to let you know. The more the better!
1 Month Out…
At this point your registration should be closing down and the last few sponsors should be sending over their sponsorship fee’s. The light is at the end of the tunnel.
At this point there is a couple more decisions you need to make:
Volunteer Sticker
Black Judges Shirt
Shirts — Who’s getting them. In the past the priority I’ve given them was Competitors first, Judges Second, Volunteers Third. If you choose all three You’ll want them to be color coated. Typically Judges get Black, but the other two are up to you. I tend to stick to neutral colors so that it’s not just a “Gym Shirt”. People will be more inclined to wear a dark grey in public, rather then a bright orange. (Which also benefits your sponsors). A good alternative to bringing in shirts for the volunteers is custom name tag stickers with the title “VOLUNTEER” and the competition logo on it. That way they’re still able to be identified as a volunteer, but at far less of a cost then an entire t-shirt. Prizes — Did your sponsors donate enough to at least have a first place prize? You may need to go out to local shops and get small gifts. This could include Supplement Store gift cards etc. Medals/Trophies —This is up to you to decide. Your best bet is to get a simple 1st, 2nd and 3rd place medal for each weight class. Kits — An emergency first aid kit would be a good idea to get a hold of. Most business’ are regulated to have these on site as per local occupational laws, verify with your venue that they have one. Another good kit to have would be a cleaning kit. Some gloves, and cleaning supplies. Nose bleeds and other bodily fluids are pretty common in competitions. MAKE SURE EVERYTHING IS PAID — The last thing you need is the venue to pull out on you because you haven’t paid them. Double check your finances to make sure everyone has paid their registration fee’s and make sure your sponsors have fully committed (Prizes/Money) before sending off your shirt production.
SHOW DAY!!!
All that hard work over the last few months has finally paid off. It’s THE day. Chances are you haven’t slept much cause of how excited you are or from the anxiety the day brings to you.
Your job as a show promotor is to be the promotor now. You oversee the day. Your job is not to be a judge. Your job is not to be a loader. Your job is not to be a score keeper or at the score table. Your job is to chat with your sponsors, chat with audience members (to check if everything sounds good from their perspective), and coordinate the Main Judge and Lead Loader/Spotter. Let those two individuals know to come to you with any questions. You can help out here and there, but don’t commit yourself to a particular role.
Keep the flow of the show going. When one event is coming to a close, get your Lead Loader/Spotter to pull some of the spotters to get the next event prepped so you can flow immediately to the next event without any down time.
Lessons I’ve learned
Don’t private cater your food — My first competition I ran I went to Costco for hot dog stand supplies. Bought over 400 hotdogs. Sold 3 at the show. Avoid break’s in the show — Competitors don’t want to be sitting around. If you have more then 30 competitors, they’ll have enough time sitting around waiting to be called up for the next event Don’t be the hero — I’ve seen other promotors lose their mind, going crazy, because they want to be superman. Let the show run itself. If you got key volunteers that are switched on everything will pan out Clean Up — At the end of the show, before awards and prizes, have everyone help clean up the venue. This will be much less work on you and your volunteers. Follow your federations rules — The last thing you want to do is burn bridges with your national coordinators. Respond Fast — Don’t let messages stand on unread. Get back to everyone as fast as possible Set up Auto Deposit — If you bank allows it, it’s way easier then typing out or guessing passwords for everyone competing. FOLLOW LOCAL GUIDELINES (Especially this year with a world wide Pandemic)
Conclusion
If you have a dream to one day run a competition, take that leap. Do it! My first show had 12 competitors, and I was begging people come and compete. My following 2 years I had over 50 competitors, and this year coming up I have 97 people signed up. 97!!! I must be doing something right.
To get more details on particulars pertaining to your competition visit your federations website.
|
https://medium.com/@nathanialsworld/how-to-organize-a-successful-strongman-competition-ad0b356fbfe4
|
['Nathanial Blais']
|
2020-12-19 22:23:05.372000+00:00
|
['Strength', 'Strongman', 'Competition', 'Promotion', 'Events']
|
I hope that P.O.S., who is responsible for the abuse, murder & torture of children and animals receives some prison justice.
|
I hope that P.O.S., who is responsible for the abuse, murder & torture of children and animals receives some prison justice.
|
https://medium.com/@jjbishop/i-hope-that-p-o-s-2977ae91c604
|
['J. J. Bishop']
|
2020-12-27 22:57:31.503000+00:00
|
['Burn Victim', 'Child Killer', 'Justice', 'Child Abuse', 'Murder']
|
Ray Tracing with CUDA on Windows 10
|
I recently read and followed Peter Shirley’s Ray Tracing In One Weekend (http://in1weekend.blogspot.com/2016/01/ray-tracing-in-one-weekend.html). As I moved along with the book, the images were taking longer and longer to render. Eventually the following image, with 488 spheres and 10 samples per pixel took about 45 minutes to render on my PC. Having to wait so long for a still pretty noisy image bothers me. Luckily, there is a post by Roger Allen (https://devblogs.nvidia.com/accelerated-ray-tracing-cuda/) that discusses how to use CUDA in the same Ray Tracing project. I did my code modification mostly according to the repository posted in the linked post by Roger Allen. So the following blog post will mostly be about specific problems I encountered when making and running the project on Windows.
Regarding some tech specs, I’m using Visual Studio 15.9.5 and CUDA 10, and a GeForce 960m GPU.
Set up Project in Visual Studio 2017
Initially, I wanted to create a CUDA runtime application with Visual Studio because I wrote the non-CUDA version ray-tracer with VS. There was compatibility issues with VS 2017 and latest version of CUDA before; but this project builds and runs fine with the tech specs I mentioned in the beginning, with some small issues I will mention below.
The set up was rather straight-forward. I’ll skip the CUDA installation here. With CUDA 10 installed, we can just create a new CUDA runtime project.
You can find my code here: https://github.com/joycevk/SvampTracerCuda. However, there are a couple of issues. First, the compatibility issue between Visual Studio and CUDA 10 probably still persists. The following kernel launch code (and all kernel launch code) always shows an annoying expected an expression error. Just ignore it (if you can :P) and hit F5.
render_init <<<blocks, threads>>>(nx, ny, d_rand_state);
The second issue with VS is that the execution time is somehow significantly more than if I run the same code directly from command line. For the image that takes 23~ seconds to render, Visual Studio would probably take 2 to 3 minutes. If you know the reasons behind it, please comment and let me know 🙂
Not Using Visual Studio
For the reasons mentioned above, I actually recommend not using Visual Studio. Just use whatever editor you prefer and run the following commands to compile and run.
nvcc main.cu -o raytracer.exe
After this you will probably see some warnings like the following
ptxas warning : Stack size for entry function '_Z12create_worldPP7hitableS1_PP6cameraiiP17curandStateXORWOW' cannot be statically determined
Don’t worry about it. This is because there is recursion in our code, which we do and so the stack size cannot be determined at compile time. Just run the executable and we would get results similar to the following:
raytracer.exeRendering a 1200x800 image with 10 samples per pixel in 8x8 blocks. took 23.064 seconds.
Disable or extend WDDM TDR
If you don’t have a dedicated GPU, like I don’t, we have to extend or disable WDDM. For further information regarding what this is and what to do with it, I found this post to be useful: https://docs.nvidia.com/gameworks/content/developertools/desktop/timeout_detection_recovery.htm
We can do this through Nsignt Monitor. You probably need to run as administrator.
It’s NOT recommended to disable WDDM TDR completely. In this case I wasn’t sure how much time I need so I disable it just to run CUDA. I would also experiment with different delay time if you want to be safe.
Conclusion
The performance gain is such a relief. I have the following comparison:
============= 488 spheres 10 samples per pixel ================
Without CUDA : about 45 min
With CUDA : about 23 sec ============= 488 spheres 100 samples per pixel ================
Without CUDA : didn't have the patience to wait
With CUDA : about 130 sec
Granted, though, it might not be a fair comparison for the CPU because my Visual Studio runs on single CPU core. There are probably ways to increase the number of cores used with Visual Studio, which I didn’t have time to explore. So from my looking around online, the runtime without CUDA ranges from couple minutes to more than half an hour for different people. Regardless, I think the improvement can make us happy.
The process was not as smooth as I’d expected, mostly due to platform issues, but the result is so worth it. I’m excited to explore more with CUDA in the near future 😀
|
https://medium.com/@joycechenvk/ray-tracing-with-cuda-on-windows-10-4a699747b12d
|
['Joyce Chen']
|
2019-01-20 06:38:50.144000+00:00
|
['Cuda', 'Ray Tra', 'Computer Graphic', 'Computer', 'Cplusplus']
|
Write For Us
|
Write For Us
Photo by Sergey Zolkin on Unsplash
We are always looking for great content to help programmers learn and improve in what they are doing everyday, and we hope you are here for the same. Before you start writing for ReThink Programming, please go through this post and follow the guidelines.
Topics
You can write articles on anything related to programming, like:
Tutorials on how to code something interesting, in any programming language.
Advice for programmers for coding and career or job related aspects.
Articles on working of code behind the scenes, for example, rendering of CSS, how JavaScript works, etc.
Style Guide
Please read the above style guide before moving on.
Your Medium account should have your name, a bio and a picture of you.
of you. Your article must have a title and a subtitle .
and a . Please remove all personal CTAs in your post such as “sign up for my newsletter” or “follow me on Twitter.”
in your post such as “sign up for my newsletter” or “follow me on Twitter.” If you include code snippets longer than 5 lines, use GitHub gists . Paste the URL of the gist into your post and press enter.
Paste the URL of the gist into your post and press enter. Please add a nice cover image that you have the rights to use or are Creative Commons. We recommend sites like Unsplash. Please give the photographer credit. See the top of this post for an example.
or are Creative Commons. We recommend sites like Unsplash. Please give the photographer credit. See the top of this post for an example. Try to make the article read time is longer than at least three minutes. On average, 7 minute long stories have highest read ratio while 3 minute long get most views.
Submitting a Story
After your draft is ready, click on the … menu in the top right corner of the screen. Then, click on “Add to publication” from the dropdown, and select ReThink Programming. We’ll get notified and respond within 24 hours.
We’re looking forward to your submissions!👍
|
https://medium.com/rethink-programming/write-for-us-f401f11ecbe3
|
['Shounak Das']
|
2020-12-31 06:21:13.058000+00:00
|
['Programming', 'Publication', 'Coding', 'Guidelines', 'Rethink Programming']
|
Is the Mens Bathroom Choir at fault?
|
Students all across Pinellas County Florida have to look into whether rape alligations for the Mens Bathroom Choir is indeed the truth. The Mens Bathroom Choir is a group of students who attend Gibbs High School, who go into the school bathroom and perform choir-like singing primarily posting their videos on TikTok, a video making app. The leader, Cayleb Belvins is currently being accused of raping multiple females, and having sexual conversations with underage girls.
Gibbs student Maddie Cooper started to tell her story on her personal experience with rape from the group. Cooper’s videos reached up to more than 50 thousand likes, and gained attention from the group itself. The Choir responded to Cooper saying that she was making these accusations up and that they were indeed false. After Cooper coming forward about her experience, multiple other girls started to say their experiences, which were similar to hers.
“…the whole group, they’re just a bunch of rape apologists…,” Cooper said.
“The women that are accusing me I was in a relationship with when I was about
13 or 14 years old. Over 3 years ago…,” Belvins said in response to Cooper’s video.
The Mens Bathroom Choir stands in the bathroom on January 30th, 2020 at Gibbs High School.
Junior Jonathan Dameron is a student at Gibbs.
“…I do know friends who have been harassed by Cayleb. I know for a fact he did rape someone, and he would also touch, massage, and rub weirdly another student withor their consent…,” Dameron said.
Most people who had supported the Mens Bathroom Choir are now saying that nobody should support the group nor the people in the group. Gibbs has yet to do anything about these allegations, but the attention to what has been happening has risen dramatically.
|
https://medium.com/@7struths/is-the-mens-bathroom-choir-at-fault-b2cc2067b56a
|
[]
|
2020-12-19 14:49:56.867000+00:00
|
['Metoo', 'Sexual Harassment', 'Schools', 'Sexual Assault', 'Rape']
|
The Magical Number of Humans Earth Can Support
|
The Magical Number of Humans Earth Can Support
Why we need to talk about carrying capacity — now.
Photo by Cem Ersozlu on Unsplash
“The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.” ― Mahatma Gandhi
Overpopulation. The topic that’s least likely to be discussed at your post-COVID dinner party. I know it doesn't entice Medium readers like sex, relationships, soulmates, and productivity topics do — but it should.
Because it’s literally a matter of life or death.
My heart is heavy even broaching the subject. And, yet, we must understand how science explores this pressing topic. *Quick note, I’m not a scientist, so those of you who are, please join this discussion and tell me what I am missing or where I may be misinformed.
My Middle School Science Class
Now, back to me, not being a scientist. Although that’s true, let’s not disregard the science classes I took throughout my school years. I’m embarrassed that I don’t remember much except the egg drop experiment — that confirmed why I shouldn’t jump off the roof of a building. Oh, and the volcano explosion experiment — that made me not want to ingest vinegar and baking soda at the same time.
But one concept has stuck with me for 20+ years. For some unknown reason, the idea of carrying capacity has stood out in my childhood memory bank.
I distinctly recall my middle school science teacher saying that the Earth had a limited number of resources able to support a limited number of animals. (By the way, that includes humans since we’re animals too. Except maybe some of those mega-billionaires, that’s still debatable).
I consulted Professor Google to check my memory and see if I’m correctly recalling this 20-year-old fact of mine. Wikipedia helped explain:
“The carrying capacity of an environment is the maximum population size of a biological species that can be sustained in that specific environment, given the food, habitat, water, and other resources available.”
The Magical Number of Humans Earth Can Support
You probably know where I’m going with this, hence my heavy heart. When I first heard about Earth’s carrying capacity, I learned that our planet could support only a specific number of humans. Anything over that number and we entered fatal territory for our species. I couldn’t remember the exact number, but my gut said it was somewhere around 7 to 8 billion — which is where our global human population currently resides.
A quick fact check on myself revealed some interesting news. There is plenty of healthy debate in the scientific community surrounding this magical number of humans the Earth can support. The Australian Academy of Science has a great summary of the number of studies conducted to determine Earth’s carrying capacity and each numeric prediction. Suffice to say, it’s all over the board, from 2 billion to 1,024 billion humans. The uncomfortable truth, however, is that most of the studies show the magical number is 8 billion.
8 billion humans is a consistent estimate from multiple scientific studies for Earth’s carrying capacity.
Please recognize the current global estimate for the human population is 7,856,055,811 at the time of this writing. This is an estimate based on an educated guess that 200,000 humans are born every day. That number is alarming, even as an estimate. Primarily because — it’s so close to 8 billion.
Scientists predict that humans could reach a population of 8 billion by 2023.
That’s only 3 years away.
I’m not doing this to doomsday people. I’m doing this to educate. To shake us out of our slumber and recognize that exponential growth of any kind (human life, economic, housing development, etc.) and Earth don’t mix. That’s not how planet Earth operates. Our planet is giving and abundant. Also tolerant and resilient. But — like all of us — even the Earth has limits to how much it can give. And, we need to respect those limits, or else.
But there is a small beacon of hope beyond education and awareness of the issue: the advent of technology — as long as we properly use it.
18th Century Carrying Capacity Meets 21st Century Technology
The Englishman Thomas Malthus is credited as being the first to speak about carrying capacity. He made a prediction in 1798 about the capacity for Earth’s resources to support an ever-expanding human population. His prediction: it couldn’t do that. Primarily because the number of humans would outpace the amount of food produced — thus causing massive famines, starvation, and ultimately death. He’s right, on one hand. The only thing he was missing with his 18th-century prediction?
Facebook, Amazon, and iPhones — oh, and farm tractors.
Of course! Malthus couldn’t have predicted humans' amazing ability to create technology. He was living in a time of horse-drawn carriages.
This brings us to some good news. Humans can use technology to produce more food in smaller and more creative spaces, to generate clean energy, and to help conserve water. We also have a brain capable of mindful awareness to help us consume fewer resources per person.
The bad news? We’re not doing it. At least not at the massive scale needed. Unfortunately, the way we’re currently exploiting resources and utilizing technology is preventing us from expanding Earth’s carrying capacity. For example:
“Ideally, we would’ve switched en masse to technologies like solar power and electric cars long ago. Instead, we’ve used technology to simply extract and use more fossil fuels. So instead of technology allowing us to live better on less, we’re living better on more.”
Also, instead of distributing resources more universally across the globe, developed countries tend to hoard them. The alarming statistic is that about 3/4 of the world’s population is barely living on what they need on a day-to-day basis, while the other 1/4 of the population (usually in more developed countries) is living rather extravagantly, by comparison.
If this is true, then carrying capacity isn’t merely a resource issue. It’s also a redistribution of resources issue. (Hence the reason I wonder if those billionaires are like us, or they’re something else?)
So What Do We Do?
By some measures, we’re already seeing the effects of reaching Earth’s carrying capacity: rampant disease, malnutrition, and destruction of the habitat, which is supposed to provide for us.
Besides educating yourself, believing in climate change, and making as many adjustments to your levels of consumption as possible, the most important thing you can do is vote! Vote with your dollar when possible — buy from companies who support ethical, sustainable practices.
And vote for government officials who value the planet and understand the gravity of our Earthly situation. Petition the government and corporations to do the right thing: use technology for the health of the planet, not against it.
And, you can have conversations with others about overpopulation.
Don’t Shy Away from Discussions on Overpopulation
Perhaps we shouldn’t be so afraid to broach the subject of overpopulation. We skirt around the issue because we think we have to talk about it in terms of death. But we don’t.
We must talk about overpopulation in a different way. Rather than talking about it as if the only resolution is that millions or billions of innocent humans must die to bring back Earthly balance, let’s talk about it for its real truth.
Because my takeaway from science is that overpopulation isn’t an issue that exists in a vacuum.
Photo by Antoine GIRET on Unsplash
Resource distribution and wasteful consumption are two huge contributing problems that compound the overpopulation issue. Too few people hold too many of the resources. And, those who own the resources aren’t wisely using them. Instead, it’s trendy for a small percentage of the human population to be massively, mindlessly wasteful of Earth’s precious gifts.
The problem is that some people own multiple homes, while others barely have a roof over their heads.
The problem is that some people throw out 30–40% of their food production while other people barely eat 1 meal per day.
The way I see it, we can talk about overpopulation and the Earth’s carrying capacity in two ways.
One: as if it’s inevitable that some people will have to be killed off the planet (but not us, of course) to bring about balance.
Or two: we can address it from the standpoint of overconsumption and redistribution of resources like the amazing, mindful, conscious humans I know that we can be. (Even you, billionaires!)
I choose the latter.
Which do you choose?
|
https://medium.com/climate-conscious/the-magical-number-of-humans-earth-can-support-40c4e1c0411e
|
['Kristy Lynn']
|
2020-10-27 12:02:38.384000+00:00
|
['World', 'Science', 'Climate Change', 'Humanity', 'Environment']
|
Stressing the holidays
|
Stressing the holidays
Today I want to talk about stressing the holidays. I know many people are really starting to stress the upcoming days, maybe you have too much to do and not enough time.
Some of you are stressing about seeing relatives you can't stand, the ones who are judgmental, negative or just plain mean.
Maybe you're spending the holidays with a person you no longer love or want to be with, your dreading putting on that "happy" face for the world.
This year especially many people will be alone due to the pandemic, and it is a sad time for everyone.
Yes, all of this can make you want to scream. You're losing sleep over it, your hair is falling out, you can't eat or you're eating too much and you feel nauseous every time you think about it. Yes, this is real for so many people and I know first hand what this feels like, stress sucks! It's amazing what power your mind has over your body, how something that small controls it all.
Think about it, you think of something like the holidays and all of a sudden your body is having physical reactions to just a thought, now that is powerful.
You can literally make yourself sick just by your thoughts, so if your mind is that powerful, imagine the good it can also do, you can use it to heal yourself.
Think about it, Louise Hayes wrote a book about it years ago, as did many others. Why can't we use our minds to overcome things? To let go, to heal ourselves? Think about how powerful our minds are. One thing that comes to mind when I think about this is athletes, who day after day push themselves beyond their limits.
One story I always remember is about two runners that were doing a marathon, after many hours of running they were almost to the finish line. When one of them fell down out of exhaustion, causing the women behind her, to fall over her.
They both couldn't get up, try as they might, their legs felt and looked like Jell-O.
They kept getting up and falling back down. But they weren't giving up, in their minds they were going to finish this race and nothing was going to stop them.
They ended up crawling to the finish line, where the first one helped pull the other over the finish line. That is determination. That is your mind saying to your body you will not quit, you are going to do it, you are going to finish. That is how strong the mind is, that it overtakes the body to make it go on.
So if this is the case, why can't we just say to ourselves, we're going to have a great time this holiday season, we're not going to let stress make us sick, or ruin our day, we're going to overcome this. I learned no matter how much you stress about something it doesn't change a thing. Think about it, if you stress all week about something but does it change the outcome? Hell no, it makes you sick, you will lose sleep, it physically affects your mind and body yet the outcome is still the same, so why do we do it? Really? Why?
I let go of stress years ago when I ended up in the hospital, which then cost me thousands of dollars, which stressed me out even more! After that I realized that it won't change anything so I quit doing it. I no longer stress anything or anyone. Whatever is going to be is going to be. I can't change it, I can only change my reaction to it. I am in control of my mind, my feelings, my reactions and... here is that word again "choose" I choose to not worry or stress.
Even though this pandemic where I went from 100 to zero clients, where I had no money coming in. When my daughters were depressed and almost suicidal, I didn't stress, I prayed and let it go. I can't make the pandemic go away
I can only choose how I am going to allow it to affect me.
So today my friends, remember you can choose your thoughts, you can choose not to stress and you can choose to ignore your miserable mother in law's comments, it's your choice. Make it a healthy one, don't let other people affect your health, don't let things stress you out, if they don't get done, the world will not end trust me.
Relax and let go...Pray and let God worry....sing the Frozen theme song...let it go...let it go...let it go...stop stressing the holidays and have fun.
** I know this is a touch of year so I will be putting this number out there for all that needs it...I been there and I know how dark it may seem especially during the Christmas season, there is help, it will get better...I am living proof of
"This too shall pass"**
Please get help, call today:
National Suicide Hotline: 24/7
1-800-273-8255
Be the change you want to see"
"And just when the caterpillar thought his life over...he turned into a beautiful butterfly"
**Now released my latest book**
The Blessing in Disguise.... revealed
https://www.amazon.com/Blessing-Disguise-Revealed-story-faith/dp/1074340493/ref=sr_1_19?keywords=the+blessing+in+disguise&qid=1561392004&s=books&sr=1-19
***Now available***
My 1st book The blessing in Disguise
Selling on my website
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Http://www.treadmilltreats.com
And on Amazon.com
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http://www.am6azon.com/gp/aw/d/0692437398/ref=mp_s_a_1_12?qid=1434452632&sr=8-12&pi=AC_SX110_SY165_QL70&keywords=the+Blessing+in+Disguise
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|
https://medium.com/@treadmilltreats/stressing-the-holidays-1608ce3a7aac
|
['Treadmill Treats']
|
2020-12-23 01:48:39.860000+00:00
|
['Hoildays', 'Christmas', 'Self Improvement', 'Treadmill Treats', 'Stress']
|
How To Become Wealthy In 10 Easy Ways
|
# 5. Awareness and Education
“Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.” -Sir Albert Einstein
In your spare time, keep yourself aware and educated of what’s going on around you. Educate yourself with the available resources to be up-to-date with the current trends. It will help you to make an informed decision on how to invest and where to.
# 6. Investment
“Never depend on a single income. Make investment to create a second source.” -Warren Buffet
The principle behind the investment is to make money more than you spend. It is imperative to do the homework before you take this ride.
Connect to your friends, relative, and family who have experience in investing, and based on their historical data and comparison between different options available, you can make an informed decision. Investing in Real Estate is good but expensive; however, with some long term benefits. You can also look for stock or mutual fund and might choose a risk-free option.
|
https://medium.com/wealthy-mind/how-to-become-wealthy-in-10-easy-ways-64e59157a762
|
['Dr. Manishi Pallavi']
|
2020-12-22 04:18:33.070000+00:00
|
['Innovation', 'Wealth', 'Life', 'Inspiration', 'Motivation']
|
AidCoin showcases the first-ever entirely blockchain-based charitable campaign in Africa!
|
Why choosing a charity in Africa?
It’s no surprise that for our first showcase of a completely fiat-free charitable campaign we chose Alice for Children.
As we mentioned before in our post, the seemingly under-developed Kenya is quite advanced in terms of digital payment adoption. While the “normal” banking system does a poor job in slums, applications such as M-Pesa, which doesn’t even require internet connection for sending money, or BitPesa, which works in a similar way but also allows using Bitcoins, help the locals out. This sets the stage for a faster AidCoin adoption (and crypto adoption in general) by local businesses and individuals.
That’s why even with AIDChain’s requirement of paying to charity’s partners in crypto as is Alice for Children didn’t have a hard time: a service provider who’d accept crypto payments was soon found and the campaign got up and running!
About the campaign: Alice Italian Food Academy
The main goal of this specific fundraising campaign was to buy a power generator that would ensure uninterruptible energy supply for the facilities used at Alice for Children’s Italian Food Academy in Nairobi, Kenya.
|
https://medium.com/aidcoin/aidcoin-to-showcase-the-first-ever-entirely-blockchain-based-charitable-campaign-in-africa-2e4af8c80419
|
[]
|
2018-10-18 08:46:15.247000+00:00
|
['Fundraising', 'Nonprofit', 'Blockchain', 'Charity', 'Bitcoin']
|
Django : Adding initial data to a PostgreSQL database from external CSV files
|
Photo from enterprisedb.com
The Django Web Framework has a default Object Relational Mapper (ORM) that helps us to do database operations easier with various relational databases such as MySQL,SQLite and PostgreSQL.
Here, we are going to add our data to our PostgreSQL database from a .CSV file.The .CSV file I have used is available here.Let’s get going..
STEP 1: CONFIGURING THE PROJECT
We are going to use django-extensions in this project.You can have it using pip
pip install django-extensions
Then, we are creating a django project named myproject and inside it, an app named myapp.Along with the folders ‘myproject’ and ‘myapp’ (in the base myproject folder), create a folder named ‘scripts’ with two .py files inside it.
__init__.py (keep this file empty,it is required to make Python treat directories containing the file as packages) load.py (this contains our code to write the data to the database)
(Refer below…)
django-admin startproject myproject cd myproject python manage.py startapp myapp mkdir scripts
Project Structure
Using pgAdmin ,create a new database named ‘sales’.
Then add our app, django-extensions to myproject/settings.py file.
Since we are using PostgreSQL database here, we have to change the default database setting from SQLite to PostgreSQL.
Paste the ‘100 Sales Records.csv’ file in the scripts folder and rename it to ‘100_Sales_Records.csv’ (to avoid file name conflicts).
STEP 2 : MODELS AND MIGRATIONS
Our ‘100_Sales_Records.csv’ file has 11 columns.We take the first 4 columns and create our Model which helps in creating the table.
In the myapp/models.py, we add the below code.
Creating the model
After adding the above,we now need to make migrations ,which in turn creates our table(as myapp_records) in the ‘sales’ database.(Django automatically adds unique ‘id’ value for each row in the table).
Making the migrations
STEP 3: load.py AND runscript
Add the following code in the ‘scripts/load.py’ file.
However, you can use pandas too, for the csv operations.(if you copy your csv file directory and paste it, make sure to change it from ‘\’ to ‘/’)
Records.objects.all().delete() deletes the previous values present in the table.
Now,run the following command
python manage.py runscript load
(runscript command from the ‘django_extensions’ is used to execute the load.py).You can see the rows being written to the table.
Now, we can see the values from our csv file in the database table.
SUMMARY
Now we can use the written values to build data to the app that you build.In my case, I am gonna use it to build a REST API using the pretty-friendly Django Rest Framework and its Serializer classes.
Thanks for reading !.
Reference : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8y_6S2Fc5s
|
https://medium.com/@abiraj.rajendran/django-adding-initial-data-to-a-postgresql-database-from-external-csv-files-6f8c7c2346a6
|
['Abiraj Rajendran']
|
2020-08-13 06:43:42.295000+00:00
|
['Postgresql', 'Django', 'Django Web Framework', 'Django Framework', 'Django Database']
|
HowTo: Migrate data from an Elasticsearch Cluster to another Elasticsearch Cluster with Spark
|
First, read data as RDD from a elasticsearch cluster with spark,
and then, write RDD loaded from the source elasticsearch to the target elasticsearch cluster with the change of elasticsearch configurations in Spark Context.
It is simple and similar way like loading data from HDFS/S3 to S3/HDFS with Spark mentioned in my last blog: https://medium.com/@mykidong/howto-load-s3-files-to-hdfs-using-dynamic-hadoop-configuration-in-the-same-spark-context-dece48a31a2e
Let’s see some codes.
Create SparkSession with the source Elasticsearch configurations like this:
// spark conf.
SparkConf sparkConf = new SparkConf();
sparkConf.setAppName("MyAPP");
... // elasticsearch specific configuration.
sparkConf.set("es.nodes", "es-source-host")
.set("es.port", "9200")
.set("es.index.read.missing.as.empty", "true")
.set("es.modes.wan.only", "true"); // spark session.
SparkSession spark = SparkSession
.builder()
.config(sparkConf)
.getOrCreate();
And, read rdd from the source elasticsearch with this spark session:
// source index.
String fromIndex = "source-index"; // source index type.
String type = "source-index-type"; // rdd read from the source elasticsearch cluster.
JavaPairRDD<String, Map<String, Object>> rdd = JavaEsSpark.esRDD(new JavaSparkContext(spark.sparkContext()), fromIndex + "/" + type).persist(StorageLevel.DISK_ONLY());
Now, it is time to write the loaded RDD from the source elasticsearch to another cluster.
Let’s change elasticsearch configurations to the target elasticsearch cluster in spark context like this:
// set the target elasticsearch configurations.
Map<String, String> esSparkConf = new HashMap<>();
esSparkConf.put("es.nodes", "target-elasticsarch-host");
esSparkConf.put("es.port", "9200");
Before you write RDD to the target elasticsearch cluster, you should create an elasticsearch template to manage indices, aliases, etc in the target elasticsearch cluster. If you are not familiar with Elasticsearch Template, see this link: https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/indices-templates.html
Now, write RDD loaded from source elasticsearch to the target elasticsearch cluster:
// target index.
String toIndex = "target-index-name"; // write rdd loaded from the source elasticsearch to the target elasticsearch with the changed elasticsearch configuration.
JavaEsSpark.saveToEsWithMeta(rdd, toIndex + "/" + type, esSparkConf);
|
https://medium.com/@mykidong/howto-migrate-data-from-an-elasticsearch-cluster-to-another-elasticsearch-cluster-with-spark-adf550e3a7ec
|
['Kidong Lee']
|
2019-05-06 05:25:50.349000+00:00
|
['Elasticsearch', 'Spark']
|
The Regressive Cynicism of the Victoria’s Secret Collective
|
By: Fran Dunaway, Co-Founder and CEO of TomboyX
The saying goes: you can’t put lipstick on a pig. But what happens when you try to put lingerie on one?
Last month, the world found out. The proverbial pig is corporate giant Victoria’s Secret, the company that has made billions helping the world see women as pieces of meat. The lipstick and lingerie? A recently announced rebrand that says goodbye to its Angels and hello to a new arsenal of ambassadors, a Who’s Who of forward-thinking, feminist-leaning athletes, actresses, and activists. With incredible talent like Megan Rapinoe, transgender model Valentina Sampaio, and South Sudanese refugee Adut Akech, the ‘who’ is undoubtedly impressive, but the ‘why’ behind the brand’s shift is a big issue.
The company claims it’s at last ready to embrace the changing times, to “stop being about what men want and to be about what women want,” as stated by Martin Waters, Victoria’s Secret’s chief executive.
That’s in stark contrast with the brand’s patriarchal past. For decades, the lingerie titan has clubbed society over the head with images, messaging, and products that depict and define bombshell beauty standards. Yes, change is possible, but I’m willing to bet their blood still runs pink. Are we really supposed to believe the same company that dangled the carrot of impossible airbrushed aesthetics for decades is now on the forefront of feminism?
My own journey with Victoria’s Secret started young. Not quite yet comfortable in my own skin, and before coming out of the closet, I ventured into one of their stores in search of not only underwear that fit my body, but also to find out whether or not my body fit society’s beauty standards.
It didn’t. I remember the discomfort of all that lace and frill, but mostly I remember being in Victoria’s Secret stores and in Victoria’s Secret products acutely aware that I didn’t belong. That realization cut deep. Instead of being upset at the ridiculous, bedazzled slice of fabric I held in my hands, I turned that anger and sadness inward at my own body. Why didn’t I fit the fantasy they were selling? Why didn’t my measurements measure up?
I know I wasn’t alone in that shame. But thankfully, a lot has changed since my days in those storied dressing rooms. The world has woken up some. And I have accepted my size and identity, and transformed my insecurity into strength. My wife and I are the proud co-founders of TomboyX, a line of comfort-first, gender-neutral underwear created to encourage people to unapologetically embrace who they were born to be. Inclusion, diversity, positivity, and radical self love have been the foundation of our organization since the beginning.
It hasn’t been an easy journey. As female entrepreneurs, we knew the stats were stacked against us — a scant 2% of venture capital funds go to women-founded startups. So when we sat around tables full of potential funders, most of them male, and pitched the notion of a more inclusive kind of underwear, we were frequently asked a question: “But, what’s wrong with Victoria’s Secret?”
I think they have their answer now.
Victoria’s Secret has long been a nefarious character in our lives and culture: a misogynist in a flashy suit who sees women not for who we are, but as assets to be evaluated. It reminds us in every editorial spread, every store window, that we have little value unless we fit the fantasy.
For generations of young women, Victoria’s Secret was responsible for the constant voice that sometimes whispered, sometimes screamed: You are not beautiful enough. You are not sexy enough. You are not enough. The company reinforced insecurity, shame, and warped ideas of sexualization until that became the status quo. It’s the brand equivalent of The Game, the 2005 Neil Strauss exposé on seduction and dating culture that relied on insulting women in order to gain power, influence, and favor over them. Victoria’s Secret has made billions doing the same — sowing the seeds of self-loathing and then reaping the benefits by claiming their products are just the thing to pick women back up and make them feel valued.
Now that the primordial corporation is finally sloughing off its vestigial misogynistic tail and proclaiming itself an advocate for all women, will we see beyond the hype? To me, the rebrand reeks of performative allyship. They can hire a trans model, but that doesn’t mean they care about the community. They can say they are for women, but their baked-in male-gaze culture communicates otherwise. They can amass all the shining ambassador stars in the progressive galaxy, but that doesn’t detract from the truth: the VS Collective is not a reckoning. It’s a repositioning. It’s not a movement or a mission. It’s marketing, plain and simple.
I’m not here to knock true evolution. As the co-founder of TomboyX, I applaud any effort that furthers inclusion, body positivity, helps the LGBTQIA+ and BIPoC communities, and creates space for the full beauty spectrum. It is, in its own way, heartening to see such a caveman of a company lurch into the 21st century and (at least feign to) adopt its ethos, especially because it’s so clear what’s behind the desperate shift: the people.
And the people have surely spoken: by averting their eyes (the televised signature VS Fashion Show was cancelled in 2019 after suffering a huge ratings drop) and diverting their money (in 2020, Victoria’s Secret posted a year-over-year revenue decline of 15.2%, a total of $2.10 billion). Customers have long been demanding alternatives, and after years of being ignored by the G-string kingpin, they’re giving their dollars to mission-driven companies instead. Considering the state of the world and the height of the stakes, there’s never been a more critical time in history than now to shop with our values in mind, at heart, and yes, even under our clothes.
Every time I open my inbox I am reminded of the power that authenticity can have. Our customers often reach out to us in tears. They’re different from the tears that spilled in the Victoria’s Secret dressing room of my youth. But they are connected: they’re the counterpoint. Instead of the constant burden of being told how to look or who to be, our customers cry from relief, free to be themselves. At TomboyX, we are proud to offer that contrasting narrative. We say simply: We see you. You are, and have always been, enough.
But will this new move be enough for Victoria’s Secret? Or has society evolved too far and too fast? My prediction: the VS Collective isn’t the next great thing. It’s simply the last gasp of relevancy for a company grasping to regain market share. The secret’s out, Vicky. Now it’s time for the world to move on.
|
https://medium.com/@tomboyx/the-regressive-cynicism-of-the-victorias-secret-collective-97b11bf45551
|
[]
|
2021-07-01 19:26:45.148000+00:00
|
['Gender Equality', 'Feminism', 'Victorias Secret', 'Self Love', 'Misogyny']
|
Attestation Services in Dubai
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In today’s world, identity theft is a major problem. If you have your identity stolen, it can take years to get it back. In order to avoid this, many people have started getting attestation services in Dubai.
These services are a type of authentication process in which the higher authorities validates a person’s identity. It can be used for a variety of things, including getting a driver’s license, opening a bank account, or for anything else where you need to prove your identity.
The attestation process starts with a person going to the embassy of the country they want to attest their identity. The embassy will then make a copy of the person’s passport and other documents.
Need of Attestation services in Dubai
Attestation services in Dubai are needed for a variety of purposes, such as obtaining a new passport, getting a residence visa, getting a new driver’s license, or opening a bank account.
They are also used for a variety of purposes, such as notarizing a document, witnessing a signature, authenticating a document, and more.
It is important to attest the authenticity of any document. This includes certificates, diplomas, transcripts, degrees, passports, visas, marriage certificates, birth certificates, wills, deeds, powers of attorney, or any other documents.
Why Genius Attestation Services?
There are many reasons to have documents attested. For example, you may need to have a birth certificate certified so that you can get a passport. You may need to have a diploma certified so that you can get a job.
You may need to have a will certified so that you can get a death certificate. There are many reasons to have documents attested.
At Genius Attestation Services, we can attest your documents quickly and easily. Attestation services in Dubai are a cost-effective and secure way to verify a person’s qualifications. The process is quick and affordable, and the attestation services in Dubai are trustworthy.
|
https://medium.com/@shamsu_14218/attestation-services-in-dubai-55e9260b20bf
|
[]
|
2021-12-20 11:59:49.365000+00:00
|
['Attestation', 'Uae', 'Services', 'Dubai']
|
Start Defending the Victims
|
The statement “innocent until proven guilty” is a statement that is clearly implemented in the linguistic logic behind rape cases. In all sexual assault, and especially rape cases, I believe the perpetrator should always be guilty until proven innocent because the word of the victim should always be valued first. The court of law is constantly trying to dismiss the words of the victims and trying to find a way to discredit the event that occurred so it will not put the perpetrator behind bars — especially if it was a male perpetrator. The current culture that the United States law emphasizes shows that this is a man’s world, and women can try to change it, but they will ultimately lose.
Using the word “respondent” instead of “perpetrator” is one of the main ways that the law shows that it favors males. They use such words like “respondent” to undermine the credibility of the victim instead of having the defendant take responsibility for their actions. As Sharon Marcus states in “Fighting Bodies, Fighting Words: A Theory and Politics of Rape Prevention,” “one of feminism’s most powerful contentions about rape — that rape is a question of language, interpretation, and subjectivity.” The current language that is present in California law states that to prove a case of sexual battery, “the defendant touched the victim’s intimate parts while the victim was restrained by the defendant or another person.” This statement alone shows that when a woman is raped, there are implications that she will be physically dominated, and in any case where she is not, then the case will be dismissed. There are many loopholes in the system’s words where it makes it easy for the male perpetrator to be set free and have the capability to claim another victim. Rape follows a script — it is a script — ultimately showing the same story with the same inexcusable results.
The language that is used in rape cases to defend the criminal shows the true effort that the law has to protect women. There is never a time in court where the court does not try to dismiss the account of the victim and try to find any minor detail to make it seem like they are lying about what happened to them. Marcus states, “‘the standards of evidence, criteria of relevance, paradigms of explanation and norms of truth’ which, she holds, one can and must use to determine the truth value of rape accounts” — while this should be true, it is far from the truth. There could be an abundance of evidence that proves the assailant to be guilty, but if the account of the survivor does not match the words that make it a true “case of sexual battery” — like “restrained” and phrases like “against victim’s will” or “touching for the purpose of sexual gratification” –then the court will happily grant them their freedom. The culture the law promotes is one that the man is never wrong; the language that is implemented in the laws of rape show that there is always something faulty in women’s words and because of that, there is a motive to have the law lean towards the defense of a man. Such language reflects how today’s culture wants there to be a “difficult, uncomfortable, and confusing” interpretation of sexual assault, instead of trying to make it easier for the victim to receive some form of justice.
Because of the language that is currently implicated, the victim receives the full brunt of the blame for the event even occurring. There is never a time where people do not claim, “she asked for it because she was barely wearing any clothes” or “because of her sexual past, she probably led him on.” The victim should never be to blame, but the culture that we have allows for this to happen because the perpetrator is always initially innocent. By this culture always finding fault in the victim, it leads the victim to blame themselves for the event that happened, but “victims of sexual assault should not have to fight so hard for their birthright as human beings, a birthright of freedom, equality and respect.” Victim blaming is a large issue that is rarely a subject that wants to prompt change, because there would then have to be change in the whole system — something that the law obviously does not want to do. Anything that will demise the word of a male, especially in the court system, will never face any real change, therefore, “we have to boldly challenge the beliefs and cultural norms that perpetuate a mindset of sexual assault, including anything that objectifies or devalues the life of a woman.” Rape is a battle itself to overcome, but with the added torment of victim blaming, these victims would rather stay in the dark — prompting for an even greater urgency to change the language and finally put some blame on the rapists, because it will “make us see the men behind the rapes and takes the burden of attention away from the victim.”
Blaming the victim instead of the perpetrator, allowing the court to change the word perpetrator to respondent when describing the defendant, and having language that indicates the leniency of protecting males, makes it easy to see why police can dismiss rape cases without any questions. Across the United States, there are high percentages of rape cases that are dismissed by law enforcement — the highest being in Oxnard, California with 54%. There are many disturbing excuses officials make to be able to dismiss such cases, one being that “they believed the women did not fight back hard enough.” Rape is underreported already, and by having this sort of misconduct, where some “detectives often don’t investigate them at all — even when the man had been arrested for rape before,” it gives an even greater incentive to victims to continue to hide and not report the heinous crime. The idea that “if there is no word for an act, you cannot name it, which means you cannot report it or legislate it” is the main problem associated with the language the system establishes. To prompt change when it comes to rape culture, police need to start showing insistence and care for the victims, instead of dropping the cases.
Having embedded language that clearly defends a criminal rather than the victim, shows clear favoritism towards men and therefore showing how the laws need to be rewritten so the language that comes across does otherwise. Women should receive justice for the traumatic experience they go through, but until there is change in the way that the court handles rape cases, the ones receiving justification for their actions are the perpetrators. Having a system where the perpetrator is set free is not a culture that should be permitted. There needs to be clear language established in our culture that does not allow for men to escape their responsibilities through loopholes but allows for the victims to no longer be blamed for being sexually assaulted and receive the validation that they are not at fault through the courts ruling.
|
https://medium.com/gendered-violence/start-defending-the-victims-537955afc5bf
|
['Emily Arreola Prado']
|
2018-03-28 00:21:36.112000+00:00
|
['Language', 'Sexual Assault', 'Culture', 'Victim Blaming', 'Law']
|
One December Night
|
Photo by Matthias Kinsella on Unsplash
Johnny Goodman sat up in his bed and stared at the darkness seeping through the crack formed by his bedroom door and the frame casing. In its blackness, he imagined a murky abyss full of fearsome and deadly things. He had been pulled from his dream by an unusual sound, and he was struggling to remember it clearly. He could hear shuffling on the other side of his door, noises incongruent with those normally present at this hour of the morning. Without taking his eyes from the door, he reached for the pistol on the nightstand.
“Go away!”
A whispered voice slithered though the crack into his ears. “Johnnyeee… Let me in. You do not have to be afraid, there is no one out here but me. It’s Nanna Jean. I came over here to talk to your mother, and I thought maybe I would see if you were still awake. Can I come in?”
“How do I know you’re Nanna Jean?”
“My oh my, aren’t you being the careful little dickens! Let’s see, do you remember last year when we had so much fun?”
Johnny thought of the cold October night a year ago when he had first heard that voice. A year later, the memory still made him shiver, causing him to drop his Roy Rogers cap gun into the folds of his bedspread. He felt around for his little gun, grabbed it, and pulled the covers over his head.
“You’re not real. Not now, not then. Go away. You can’t come in.”
Johnny closed his eyes. He listened, afraid to breathe. He heard a faint sound, like something was rubbing against the walls as it proceeded down the hallway. Then, there was total silence. He listened for several moments, relaxed, and slowly poked his head above the covers. He got up and crept to the front of his bedroom, listened for a moment, opened the door, and looked down the hallway. Nothing was there. The only sound he could hear was the tick-tock of the Starburst wall clock his mother had found at Uptown Hardware, and insisted his father buy. He dragged his small study desk over and pushed it against the door. He tried to go back to sleep, but he kept thinking about what had happened last year, the night his mom attempted suicide.
It had been a cold night that December in 1955 when, after several days of autumnal temperatures, the weather had taken a turn for the worse. A sudden storm had covered the Goodman’s front lawn in a soft blanket of snow. As the snowy blanket was covering the neighborhood and instituting a curfew of silence, Johnny’s mother had locked herself in the bathroom. His father had come back into the house to beg his wife to forgive him. He had found Johnny standing at the bathroom door.
Johnny remembered how helpless he had felt because his mother would not answer his worried questions; and she continued her silence, oblivious to the world around her, only her soft and sorrowful cries seeping out from behind the bathroom door providing evidence of her struggle to die. He had pounded his small fists on the heavy wooden door until they became bloody. He could hear her crying, and then she stopped.
“Mom, please open the door. I didn’t mean to make you mad. Please,” Johnny begged.
His Dad’s big hand encircled Johnny’s arm, “Let me see, Johnny.” He jiggled the doorknob.
“Betty?”
Bernard banged on the door, but there was no response. “Honey, I’m sorry. Are you ok? Betty?”
The impact of Bernard’s repeated blows upon the bathroom door reverberated into the house, causing Johnny to stumbled back. He sidled up to the hallway wall furthest from the door and stood there, trembling. He had wet himself, and a small, warm puddle had formed at his feet.
Then, Bernard busted down the door and rushed into the bathroom. Johnny leaned forward and scooted sideways to see if his mom was ok. He could see glimpses of his mother’s legs and arms sticking out from behind his father’s broad back. His father was mumbling something.
Bernard covered her with a towel, scooped her up into his arms, and ran through the broken door. He stumbled and fell. “Oh God, Betty,” he cried. He rose to his feet, raced through the house and onto the front lawn where he fell again.
Johnny could hear him start the big Buick and back out of the driveway. He was still standing in the hallway with blood spots on his pajamas. The uneasy quiet that filled the house froze him in place. Johnny stared at the shattered door and the empty bloodstained tub in numbed horror. There were scarlet streaks on the tub enamel.
Johnny could hear his father gun the engine and race away to the hospital. He stood in the hall, alone, still shaken. He did not know what to do. He stood in the darkness, his little hands shaking, his fingers tapping on his legs.
He kept seeing his mom’s limp body in his father’s arms. Was mom alive? Was she dead? She looked so pale and lifeless. He looked at the blood on the tub and on the floor. He could see the trail of dripping blood that flowed from his mother’s wrists when his dad carried her out of the house. He could still smell it. It was a mean smell, something metallic, an unpleasant order like that of dirty wet pennies. He gagged and threw up.
After he recovered, he scooted back against the wall. He brought his knees up to his chin and wrapped his arms around his legs. He was afraid, and he had no idea when his father would return. He heard a soft zipping noise by the bathroom and turned. Nothing. He could hear the faucet dripping in the bathroom. He shivered and felt a cold wave run down his back.
“Hey, Johnny Boy.”
Johnny jumped at the sound of the whispered voice.
“Kind of sad, huh? Your mom didn’t look so good.”
“Shut up,” said Johnny, his voice a whisper,
“She is dying.”
“Leave me alone.”
“Are you going to miss her?”
“Yes.”
“Aren’t you going to ask?”
“What?”
“Who I am.”
“No.”
“Come on, Johnny. You’re hurting my feelings.”
“Go away.”
“Why are you not afraid, little boy?”
“You’re not real.”
“Reeeaally?”
Johnny put his head on his knees and started crying.
“Oh, c’mon now, it’s not as bad as all that.”
Johnny sobbed even more.
“What if I told you I could make her recover?”
Johnny stopped crying and looked up. “What?”
“I could save her.”
“You’re not real.”
“Real as rain, buddy.”
“Go away!”
“If I could save her, would you want me to?”
“I guess.”
“You have to do better than that Johnny boy.”
“If I save her will you do something for me?”
“No. I dunno. You’re not real.”
Johnny waited for a response but there was nothing. He knew he was imagining the voice. He was glad it was gone. He closed his eyes and cried.
What if dad doesn’t come back? He wouldn’t do that! What if mom dies? Oh, God. I am so scared. Please God; I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to be alone. Not now.
Johnny heard a low, soft hum and raised his head. He thought he heard someone close the front door.
“Dad?”
“Johnny, honey. My sweet little boy. Can you hear me baby?”
Johnny could hear the soft southern drawl in his grandma’s voice. Big Nanna Jean was always his favorite. He looked up and could see a large dark form in the hallway.
“Nanna Jean?”
“It’s me, honey. I want you to know that everything is going to be alright.”
“I’m scared. Someone else was here.”
“Now, don’t you worry about that, none. Nanna Jean is going to stay right here with you until your daddy gets back.”
“He took my mother to the hospital. He left me here alone, I’m afraid, and I don’t feel well.”
“It’s ok, honey. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
The dark form in the hallway moved closer, but Johnny still could not make out its features.
“What about my mother? Do you think she will be ok? I saw some blood.”
“That’s alright, honey. I can fix her. I can make her better if you help me.”
“Help you?”
“I need to be sure you are serious. I will need your help and prayers to help her.”
“Ok.”
“I need your support, to make me strong. All you have to do is give me permission to use your life force or psyche.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“Oh, dear boy. Let me see. All you have to do is to let me inside. So, I can go save your Momma with some real-live gramma magic! One little piece of your tiny soul to help ol’ Nanna Jean is all I need. Then, I can become Big Nanna Jean the super hero and go save Betty. I mean your mom.”
“Can’t you take what you need and go? Maybe even take me with you?
“Well, sure. We will go in there together, you and me. Alright, Johnny? Can you say, ‘I give you my soul to keep’. You know like in the prayer. Come on, now, be a good boy.”
Johnny thought of his mom. He was afraid she was dying. He thought of all that blood in the bathroom.
“Ok. Can we leave?”
“Certainly. Say that thing I told you and we can go.”
“Why?”
“To make me strong, honey. Strong enough to save your mother.”
“How would that make you stronger?”
“It’s like magic, baby. You know all that spirit magic stuff. It’s just a little over your head, hon.”
Johnny thought for a moment and shrugged. “No! Only God gets my soul. Mom told me. You go away! You’re scaring me.”
A high-pitched, short, buzzing sound filtered in from the hallway.
“Nanna Jean?”
Johnny scooted up the wall and stood up. He looked down the hall, but no one was there. No one at all. He could smell something foul, an odor hovering in the air. It made him think of the dead fish that had washed up the beach when he and his dad had gone razor clam digging on Kalaloch Beach. Johnny curled into a ball of wrinkled night clothes and tousled hair. He began to hum he had heard on , hoping that somehow, he could be brave like Davy. He was humming this jaunty melody as he drifted into a fitful sleep.
Nanna Jean sat motionless in her favorite chair watching the television. The harsh light shining into the dark room was accentuating the cracks and furrows in her face, making her look much older. She wore a sad-clown face, and was sitting perfectly still. Her fat cat stood up, stared for a moment, sniffed the air, then turned and walked out through the pet door. Chester the cat would never come back.
His father was gone for a very long time; and, the truth is, he never came back home. What returned that night was not the Bernard Goodman that was once his father. He returned much later that evening. Johnny had collapsed where he stood in the hallway and had fallen asleep. He had drawn his Lone Ranger robe about him for warmth, and he had pulled his hands back up into his sleeves.
Johnny awoke when his father picked him up to carry him into his room. Johnny could not remember where he was but felt comforted by his father’s warm chest. and he grabbed the inside of his coat to hold on.
“I’m sorry, Johnny,” said Bernard. “I’m so sorry.” Johnny nestled against his big chest.
“I should have taken you with me,” he said. “I was so concerned for your mother.”
“It’s alright, dad,” said Johnny sleepily. “Is mom here now?”
“No, son,” said Bernard as he put Johnny into his bed. “She will have to stay in the hospital for a while.”
“I want to see her!” Johnny exclaimed.
His father looked down at him. Johnny could see the sadness and fear in his father’s eyes. There were small droplets of tears spilling out and rolling down his ruddy cheeks. “I will tell her you miss her, too. I will make sure she, we…,” he stammered.
“Don’t you worry Johnny,” he said. “I will make this right.”
“Now you go to sleep and we’ll talk in the morning.”
Johnny awoke the next morning to the strong smell of bleach. This was a clean smell, and he took some comfort; but soon, underneath the bleach, he caught a vague metallic smell. Immediately, Johnny found himself standing in front of the bathroom door again. He could see his mom laying naked in the tub, her head pressing on the tub rim, distorting her face. Her left arm had fallen to the floor, and dried rivulets of blood had traced irregular patterns against her alabaster skin. Then, as if she could feel his presence, she raised her head and smiled. It was a crooked smile. Johnny felt a bolt of fear shoot through his chest.
“Johnny!” said a distant voice, “What’s wrong?” Someone was shaking him hard, but he could not move.
He cried out and pulled away.
“Are you alright?” said the voice. He looked up and saw his father’s broad face above him. “Oh, Johnny. Don’t be afraid.”
“Mom smiled at me.”
“No, son, you were only dreaming. I should never have left you here. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
They went into the kitchen and his dad sat him down at the table. Johnny looked at the bright yellow-checkered tablecloth beneath his hands. He could smell the dead flowers from his mom’s birthday. He was starting to get dizzy.
Bernard grabbed a box of Cheerios from the cupboard, some milk from the fridge, and Johnny’s Huckleberry Hound bowl. Bernard’s hands were shaking a little as he placed the bowl on the table and added the milk and cereal. “You should eat something.”
“I’m not hungry,” said Johnny rubbing his eyes. “What happened to mom?”
Bernard slumped in the chair beside Johnny and buried his head in his hands. He took a long deep breath and said, “Johnny, your mom has been sick. She got very confused last night and accidentally hurt herself. I had to rush her to the hospital so the doctor could make her better.”
“Did she hurt herself on purpose?”
“Yes, I suppose she… no, that’s not right. It was an accident.”
Johnny jabbed his spoon into his Cheerios and stirred them around. “Why was she crying?”
His father looked away and Johnny could see him sobbing. He gathered himself and said, “We were arguing and I said something I shouldn’t have. Something I did not mean. Something I wish I could take back.”
“How can you take something you said back?”
“You can’t Johnny. Not really.”
“What I saw scared me, dad. I was alone and I didn’t know what to do. I thought you weren’t coming back and I thought mom might be dead.” Johnny began to cry. “Then, I heard a voice.”
Bernard sat up straight. “Who’s voice?”
“Nanna Jean. At first, her voice sounded funny, and I didn’t know who was speaking. Then, when I thought of her and wished she would hug me, I heard the front door open and she was there in the hallway. She said she would take me to the hospital and that she was going to make mom get better.”
“Make her better, how?”
“You know, because she has gramma magic.”
“Ok… Go on.”
“She needed me to say the right phrase so she could get strong and go save mom.”
“Did you tell her what she wanted?”
“Nope. I wouldn’t say what she wanted me too. “
“Then what happened?”
Johnny raised his arms and turned both his hands upside down. “I turned to talk to her and she was gone.”
Bernard put his hand to his mouth and rubbed his chin. He looked down at Johnny. Nanna Jean lives in Seattle. She could not have been here. I talked to her yesterday and she had no travel plans. Oh, God. What is wrong with Johnny? Maybe all this has messed him up, somehow.”
Bernard took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Well, Johnny. Let’s not talk about that now. Everything is going to fine. I’ll make sure of it.”
“Please don’t leave me alone again. I was so scared and it seemed like you were gone forever. If Nanna Jean had not come to help, I don’t I don’t know what…”
“Oh, son.” said his dad. He got up and took Johnny into his arms. “I will never leave you. Not in a million years.”
Bernard hugged Johnny tightly to his chest. Johnny could smell Aqua Velva aftershave intermingled with his father’s strong natural scent.
Johnny looked up and said, “Mom too?”
Bernard sat down and put Johnny in his lap. He rubbed his big, calloused hand against Johnny’s cheek. “Sometimes adults get lost. We lose our way. We get so involved with things beyond our ability to understand or control that we just start making mistakes. Then we sometimes misunderstand each other. We do or say things we shouldn’t do.”
“Mom misunderstood. And that made her cry?”
Bernard smiled crookedly and sniffed a little. He was afraid to cry. “Yes, I suppose. Your mother is not strong like most people. She tries so hard, but she sometimes gets confused. She thought I was going to leave, maybe not come back. Leave you and her alone.”
“Leave? You mean go live without us?”
“No, son, that won’t happen. Your mom just believed something that was not true. She believed something told to her.
“You’ll stay?” asked Johnny. He put his thin arms around his father. “You won’t leave me?”
His dad began to cry, first a little, barely holding it back, then in big sobs.
Johnny held him tighter. “I love you, dad. I don’t want you to ever leave.”
“I won’t,” he said, rocking back and forth in the chair. “I won’t ever. Not ever.”
|
https://medium.com/@rikkerman/one-december-night-3fab0cf4ee4e
|
['Nelson Vessey']
|
2020-12-18 06:26:40.943000+00:00
|
['Suspense', 'Fear', 'Christmas', 'Horror', 'Suicide']
|
Top 10 Free WordPress Themes for Restaurants
|
For restaurants in general, an appealing space and a menu of tasty, eye-catching food is the key importance. This is also true when talking about a WordPress website for your restaurant or food station. To help you create a beautiful, convenient WordPress website that allures every eye and is full of features like booking, menu, etc. Let’s check out our suggestion of free WordPress themes for restaurants in the article below.
Di Restaurant
The first candidate on the list here is Di Restaurant — a free WordPress theme with a beautiful, creative and modern design. You can use this theme for restaurants, hotels, cafes, or even food websites. Notably, what steals people’s souls right at first sight is an appealing hero image with a smooth parallax effect. Combining other factors like aesthetic typography and harmonizing color blend, Di Restaurant gives us the impression of a 5-star luxury restaurant where you can enjoy some fantastic foods and relax with family and friends to get away from the stressing.
Di Restaurant is compatible with WooCommerce plugin, so it is also suitable for restaurant/food station owners who want to make their services available online. Besides, this free WordPress theme provides you up to 5 demos and also supports one-click demo import. This advantage will help you save tons of time and effort while building your website.
I also have a detailed review of this Di Restaurant free WordPress theme, so remember to check it out!
Highlight features
Parallax effect
WooCommerce compatible
Up to 5 available demos
One-click demo import
GloriaFood Restaurant
The next WordPress theme to be mentioned here is GloriaFood Restaurant. With a minimal design, GloriaFood Restaurant is especially suitable for those who love swiftness. Besides, this free WordPress theme is exclusively designed for food selling sites or restaurants. This theme helps you to minimize the ordering time and focus on customer needs online. By placing the Menu and Table Reservation buttons right on the hero, the author somehow shows how the idea is applied.
GloriaFood Restaurant is perfectly compatible with the GloriaFood plugin. Combine them, and you will have an ideal combo that helps you build and manage websites for restaurants easily, quickly with some professional features like recipes, online orders, website statistics tracking, etc.
Highlight features
GloriaFood plugin compatible
Support online order
Easy to customize and configure
One-click demo import
Restaurant Recipe
Modern, stylish, and prestigious — these words are to describe Restaurant Recipe. This free multipurpose WordPress theme can be used for restaurants, cafes, hotels, homestay, etc. With a creative design, an eye-catching slider, smooth parallax effect, and also amazing animations that highlight the appearance of dishes, Restaurant Recipe will easily get the impression of any visitor crossing by your website.
About features, Restaurant Recipe is compatible with page builders, helps you have more choice while building your website. Besides, it has built-in integration with Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin,… and this will be easy for visitors to learn more about your brand and restaurant on social networks.
Highlight features
Responsive design
Live customizer
Page builders compatible
Social media integration
Translation-ready
Rosa Lite
Rosa Lite is an awesome free WordPress theme that can be used for restaurants, hotels, and cafes. Into the world inside Rosa Lite, visitors will immediately be tempted by a nice hero image with a smooth parallax effect. After, its delicate, eye-catching design will make them stay and get lost in a world of out-of-this-world dishes.
You can freely customize Rosa Lite with various font styles and vibrant colors. You can also edit the logo and menu flexibly. Besides, this free WordPress theme can display nicely on any device, making sure that your restaurant will always be perfect in visitors’ eyes.
Highlight features
Parallax effect
RTL language support
Translation-ready
Responsive design
Restaurant menu support.
Flash
Flash is a flexible, multipurpose theme for websites in any field, including F&B websites. The theme impresses visitors with a spectacular fullscreen slider. Its design is clean, elegant, brings a bright, fresh, and energetic color palette. Besides, the author creatively modified the typography in the header and the footer with delicate white and brown color.
Flash supports WooCommerce plugin, and this gives you a lot of useful features when building an online store. Besides, this free WordPress theme is also compatible with Flash Toolkit and SiteOrigin Page Builder, so you will have more choice to freely customize your restaurant website as you wish.
Tính năng nổi bật
WooCommerce support
One-click import demo
Responsive design
Flash Toolkit and SiteOrigin Page Builder compatible
Pub Store
Pub Store is a free WordPress theme for restaurants, bars/pubs, cafes, food stations, or even bakeries. With a clean but minimal design, this theme will be the favorite of those who love the elegant sense from Europe. Animations are another plus point that helps your website attract visitors. Personally, I like the footer because of the design that looks like a real chilling cocktail bar.
With Pub Store, you can add some parallax effects for pictures, making your website more attractive and addictive. More to say, this free WordPress theme provides various colors and Google font styles for you to choose from and build your website as you wish. Besides, you can make your websites more dynamic and attractive with icons from Font Awesome.
Highlight features
Font Awesome icon compatible
Parallax effects
Translation-ready
Responsive design
Various colors and Google fonts to choose from
Foodoholic
Foodoholic is a free WordPress theme specified for restaurants. With a bright color tone in design, the theme will surely bring your website a vibrant, clean, and modern appearance. Foodoholic follows minimalism; it tends to get rid of sophisticated patterns or complex animations, so it will be a true muse in the eyes of those who love this style.
Diners often trust the words of previous customers more than advertisements in newspapers or leaflets. Given that, Foodoholic allows you to display the Testimonial section on your website. Besides, this free WordPress theme also supports translation-ready to help you create multiple website versions in different languages, and so you can have a better approach with foreigners.
Highlight features
Testimonial
Portfolio
Featured post
RTL language support
Translation-ready
Auberge
Auberge is a free WordPress theme that suits restaurant, cafe, or cooking blog websites. With a mixture of modernity, elegance, and a bit of vintage in design, Auberge can be the men’s favorite and also a choice of restaurant owners who are in love with the European aesthetic. Besides, the News section has quite an amazing visual effect that will easily excite visitors while reading posts about foods and recipes.
Auberge supports many plugins like Beaver Builder, Webman Amplifier, or Jetpack. They will back you up with many helpful features while creating recipes, grid menus, speed up your website’s speed or make it easier to customize the appearance. Last but not least, the theme is responsive in design and supports Retina display, so your website will be vibrant, eye-catching, and clearly displayed on any kind of device.
Highlight features
Retina resolution
Responsive design
Translation-ready
RTL language support
Support Beaver Builder, WebMan Amplifier, and Jetpack plugin
Food Restro
Food Restro, a free WordPress theme that owns a clean, bright, and spacious design, is made for restaurant websites. The author put into Food Restro a harmonizing color blend of white, red, and orange. With that color tone, visitors should feel warm, close, and familiar. Using many blank spaces makes the sections on the theme easy to read for visitors. Besides, the How Good We Are section helps you to show off what are the most appealing of your restaurants, such as accepting card payment or dishes qualified for 3-star Michelin.
Food Restro allows you to customize many sections, including Menu, Header, Logo, Background, etc. Besides, the Testimonials section is designed meticulously to highlight positive feedback from customers and specialists.
You can learn more about Food Restro free WordPress theme here.
Highlight features
Breadcrumb support
Responsive design
Testimonial
Translation-ready
Live Customizer
Catch Foodmania
The last one is Catch Foodmania — a free WordPress theme for restaurants. Catch Foodmania is clean, minimal, and bright in design, polished with a black-and-white color palette that makes the theme more elegant and modern. Catch Foodmania leads visitors to a world of colorful dishes, all presented on a brilliant white tablecloth.
This free WordPress theme for restaurants allows you to customize numerous elements: header, logo, favicon, menu, background, layout, etc. The Hero Content section helps you display featured posts on Homepage or all through the website; this would be an effective way to advertise your restaurant.
Highlight features
Responsive design
Translation-ready
Testimonial
Code optimized
Hero Content
Verdict
A perfect food should be both nicely presented and heavenly tasted, and your website also needs to be feature-rich and well designed like that way. We have just presented a menu of the top 10 themes that are well-done in design and features, and we believe that none of them will let you down.
We hope that you can pick your favorite free WordPress theme from our list to turn your website into a true masterpiece. To look for better WordPress themes with more features or high-end designs, don’t hesitate to click here.
— — —
The publication at GretaThemes.
|
https://medium.com/gretathemes/top-10-free-wordpress-themes-for-restaurants-6e09bf0355ba
|
['Janessa Tran']
|
2021-02-26 01:01:23.116000+00:00
|
['WordPress', 'Free Theme', 'Restaurant']
|
In Tension
|
In Tension
Photo by Robert Zunikoff on Unsplash
Let me be the lover
of your skin
We’ll put your heart
in a bowl
we both drink from
The amur maples are finished
the elms are dead
or sleeping
The park is a monument
to dead black hands
The still-Autumn moon
winks away
half-startled in the daylight
Let me be the lover
of your skin
I’ll put the rest of these
thoughts
in a package for you
|
https://medium.com/artrock-sexual-manifestations-queer-madness/in-tension-5c8c7642597e
|
['J.D. Harms']
|
2020-12-08 14:53:59.138000+00:00
|
['Musing', 'Love', 'Image', 'Poetry', 'Touch']
|
How AI induced Autonomous Cars Are Evolving for Tomorrow
|
Autonomous cars have been hitting the headlines and dominating the tech-talk in recent years. They seem to be a post-Uber era for personal and public commute and for transportation of goods. However, users are still hesitant to bring this technology to use. To embrace this change, we should understand what self-driving cars are and how it works.
The term autonomous cars don’t completely refer to driver-less cars. The level of autonomy varies with the dependability of humans. A self-driving vehicle refers to a system that uses sensory data gathered from the surroundings to navigate towards the destination without (complete or partial) human interference.
Elements of Autonomous Cars
The technology has been in the development phase for quite some time but now is in its emerging phase across the global market. Many tech giants and automotive companies are investing heavily in autonomous vehicle technology research and development.
One of the biggest investors in the research & development of autonomous vehicle technology is Waymo, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc.
Tesla is another popular name who’s work in the development of autonomous cars is remarkable. Waymo and Tesla have made the most noteworthy achievements in this field.
The components of autonomous vehicle technology include driver assistance systems, GPS and automotive radars, LiDAR system sensors, cameras, cloud services, and ADAS ultrasonic wave components, where AI is a major accompaniment. These data contribute to producing control signals that are vital to operating the vehicle.
Before we get into further details about the impact of artificial intelligence, let us understand the meaning of autonomous at different levels.
Levels of Driving Automation
SAE International has released terminologies for autonomous vehicles driving system, that includes different levels of autonomy in vehicles. This standard terminology for driving automation serves as a baseline for automated vehicles. The following is the explanation of those levels.
Autonomous driving level 0: No automation
This level is considered a “0” level because it doesn’t include any automation in driving. Interestingly, most of the vehicles lie at this level at the moment. The driver (human) handles steering, throttle, and brakes, monitors the surrounding, take turns, navigate, change lanes, and take complete responsibility. However, there may be some warnings and signs to avoid accidents.
Autonomous driving level 1: Automation for driver assistance
This is the beginning level for autonomous cars where the driving system assists the driver(human) but does not take complete control of the vehicle. This level requires the driver to be totally aware of how the car is functioning and be ready to intervene if required.
Autonomous driving level 2: Partially Automated Driving
At this level, autonomous driving becomes more influential. The driving system takes partial control, but the driver takes responsibility for the driving process.
Autonomous driving level 3: Highly Automated Driving
At level 3, the driver can rely on the system to drive the car autonomously, including handling steering, throttle, and barking system. However, depending on the surroundings, the driver must be ready to take control as soon as the system requests it. This enables users to depend on self-driving cars for a longer duration, especially on highways or freeways.
In the first three levels (excluding level 0), the driver is primarily responsible for the operation of the vehicle. Moving on to level 4, the driver is either partially or not responsible.
Autonomous driving level 4: Fully automated driving
At level 4, the system is capable of driving the vehicle without human interference. However, human presence may still be needed. Fully Automated Driving vehicles are expected to reach large-scale market commercialization by 2022. In addition to this, autonomous vehicle sales are projected to generate about 42 billion US dollars in revenue by 2030.
Autonomous driving level 5: Completely Automated Car
At level 5 of automation, the car itself can drive to any destination by making decisions on its own throughout the way. All you need to do is to add the starting and the ending point, and the vehicle can navigate without taking assistance from the driver.
The definition of autonomy varies with the change in its levels. The preliminary automated assistance for drivers has reached commercial uses, and other levels are still in the testing phases before they get fully functional. Consumer interest is another important factor that contributes to the early implementation of this technology as a personal gadget.
Consumers’ Behavior about this Big Move
This is no secret that consumer interest in self-driving vehicles is increasing across the globe. However, it’s still not preceded the ratio of 50% of the US residents. A study found that 47 percent of US respondents were hesitant to adopt Driverless vehicles; the ratio was 74 percent a year earlier. Despite multiple advantages and conveniences, potential users still apprehend towards adopting autonomous cars. Many of them are probably unsure if they should share the streets with autonomous cars.
The Impact of Artificial Intelligence in Driverless Cars
The impact of AI on automated driving is quite overwhelming. AI is fully equipped to bring a fully autonomous driving experience onto the roads.
As long as regulations and social acceptance are concerned, the emergence of driverless cars will not only disrupt the public transport system but have an impact on other industries as well.
When talking about autonomous cars, it is almost impossible not to discuss artificial intelligence. AI is used to enable the cars to navigate through the traffic and handle complex situations. Artificial intelligence is capable of responding to real-time data accumulated from several different sensors installed in the vehicle. Also, AI, combined with other IoT sensors, ensures safe travel
Safety for Autonomous Car
Before AI completely takes control of the driver’s seat, it is being used as a driver assistant to winning the trust of the users, manufacturers, and investors. Meanwhile, it learns user behaviors and surrounding information over time. By analyzing the data accumulated from surroundings, AI can be beneficial in situations where humans are likely to make errors.
AI contributes to the following areas:
Emergency control of the vehicle
Traffic signals Sensors
Cross-traffic Detection
Taking Brakes in emergency
Blind spots Monitoring
However, the processing power required to drive and navigate a vehicle is overwhelming. Without having control over the external environment, there are several variables. For this reason, AI might need a lot of time for learning. There are numerous companies testing AI’s applicability in driving before they become fully functional for personal use.
Maintenance Prediction for Car Owners
AI can be used to gauge the physical condition of the vehicle accurately. Data gathered from the usage can be processed for predictive maintenance.
The experts of Circle Auto Shield said, “Drivers will have an easier time finding a car warranty plan that is cost-effective and meets their particular needs, and that also reflects the car’s current condition.”
Monitoring User Behavior and Predict Preferences
AI is not only responsible for sensing security and navigation, but it would be used for major controls and entertainment features. AI can help users enjoy customized entertainment during the driver-less journey. It can predict preferences based on accumulated data on user behavior over time. AI could possibly help adjust preferences in the following elements:
AC regulation
Seat adjustment
Mirror adjustment
Audio and video selection
Accurate Information for Insurance Regulators
AI integration in these cars would help in ease of claim. Data from the vehicle can be used for faster processing of claims in case of accidents.
Data retrieved from automated cars could be used to evaluate traffic violations and insurance claims. AI can be of help to accurately gauge the driver’s behavior and risk assessment. Using this information, insurance coverage can be offered.
Mobile Apps Integration in Driverless Cars
Today, there’s an app for everything. If you are a tech-explorer-type person, you must agree with what I just mentioned. As soon as autonomous cars begin to hit the streets, new opportunities for mobile app developers will emerge. Developers who want to create new experiences within the cars will offer exciting tools via a mobile app. features like selecting destinations and stops, car speed, and audio and video streaming could be accessed using an app.
More to this, a mobile app would enable car owners to start, lock, and unlock their self-driving cars remotely. With a mobile app, it wouldn’t take more than a few seconds for them to find their car in a crowded parking lot.
Final Thoughts
All of this seems like a plethora of fairytales if we date back to some years. But the world is changing fast, very fast. AI and machine learning technology are getting smarter every day. The progress is faster than our imagination. We might be excited to witness the driver-less era, but fully autonomous driving would probably take a long road before it becomes fully functional.
Read More: https://bit.ly/3nILb4I
|
https://medium.com/@andrewcole2124/how-ai-induced-autonomous-cars-are-evolving-for-tomorrow-7b9c14be3e9a
|
[]
|
2020-12-23 12:00:29.842000+00:00
|
['Self Driving Cars', 'Autonomous Vehicle Market', 'Driverless Cars', 'Autonomous Cars']
|
Is Wix permanent solution for your rental website?
|
Today many rental businesses are running their own website in Wix.com. But how much is the success rate?
I am not going to discourage you from using the Wix solution in running a rental business. That’s your interest, you can go with that.
Wix is the cloud-based web development platform that helps people to create own website with better performance in page speed, easy to crawl on search engine and it’s free to end number of users.
Think about this circumstance: If your customers are increasing day to day, they may face issues like immediate booking process, inquiry, availability and payment options.
For a clear understanding, Let’s have a look at the
Pros:
Free to use for everyone Short term pricing Easy to configure the site. Speed and security Faster in loading, extremely flexible for making minor changes easily.
Cons:
Not perfect for large websites (more than 30 pages). Wix’s paid plans start at $4.08/month, but even the starter plan doesn’t remove Wix ads from your site. Can’t switch templates after your website goes live. And the amount of customizable options can be overwhelming. There are some technical SEO issues Lack of total control and advanced features due to the extreme convenience of usage provided.
By considering these issues, we have created our RentALL that helps to solve all the problems that the rental business owners are facing.
This blog can help you with why RentALLscript is better for starting and managing rental website smoothly?
RentALL Script (Airbnb clone)
RentALL can be easily customizable for ’N’ number of rental businesses and it helps you to provide complete rental booking solution. This script can easily help you to manage all the reservations, listings, payment and incorporated with necessary features like seasonal pricing calendar, iCal integration, stripe connect, multi-language, and multi-currency.
Why RentALL (Airbnb clone)?
100% customizable : The script is 100% customizable based on your interest. One Time Payment : Pay once for the complete the setup from end to end technical support. Scalable : You can scale your platform and extend the capabilities and further develop it Modern Technologies : The script is built with modern technologies like ReactJS, GraphQL, ReactJS, ExpressJS, Redux and React Apollo. Better User Experience : Your website is user-friendly with high-class performance. Launch Worldwide: Support multi-language and currency. Your website is easily accessible across the globe.
RentALLScript Solution:
RentALLScript can provide you with a complete rental booking solution for Vacation rental, Car rental, Event venue sharing, Boat rental, Food sharing, Equipment rental, and other solutions.
RentALLScript top features:
iCal Integration — Export & Import : Easy to sync their calendar to other external calendar and import it. Seasonal Pricing Calendar : Host can increase and decrease the price at seasonal time. Stripe Connect: Supports stripe which operates quick payment and supported by 34 countries worldwide. Advanced Search Filters: Help users for discovering the appropriate listing of their needs and fast processing of the search results. Dynamic SiteMap for SEO : Automatically generate the XML file for easy crawling by google bots. It boosts search engine visibility. Popular Locations Management : Admin can manage the popular location and destination based on the occurs.
To know more information about RentALL, the top Airbnb clone script provider in the market.
Visit : RentALL
I hope this blog post may help you get some ideas about the rental script.
Our main goal is to help rental owners to build powerful sharing economy website without spending more time and money.
For more insights, visit: https://www.radicalstart.com/blog/
P.S. I am part of RadicalStart team who developed and maintaining RentALL script. I use RentALL every day. Feel free to let me know if you have any questions and I will be happy to answer them.
|
https://medium.com/@thapreel/is-wix-permanent-solution-for-your-rental-website-1bef1e042de2
|
['Thapreel Alam']
|
2021-01-27 07:23:56.015000+00:00
|
['Web Development', 'Website Development', 'App Development', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Business']
|
Extending the Anthropause
|
Directing Human activities in a way that Nature can thrive
– By Aditi Kale
The Covid-19 Lock-downs exposed humans to less familiar but melodious sounds too — those of the biodiversity like birds, animals, and insects around us. Cities near mountains saw picturesque back-drops and even snow-clad mountains. And some cities at least saw the horizon due to less pollution. The lesson is common — Nature will revive if we let it!
The reason for the lock-down was a really sad and enormous setback for humanity. A marine ecologist at an American University was stressed as he had to abandon his study, on the effects of tourism and fishing on humpback whales in Antarctica. But on returning home the pandemic offered an unprecedented opportunity for similar studies of whales at Monterey Bay, USA near him. Reason: Lockdowns dramatically reduced noisy boat traffic, which stresses marine life, and thus the movement was the whales’ response to the human hiatus.
This phenomenon of drastically reduced human activity and the response of wildlife to it has a name… Anthropause (where Anthro means related to humans) and it was seen all around the world. Ever wondered why it was so obvious during the lock-downs — It is because we have pushed all ‘Non-Anthro’ biodiversity aka other species on pause or even stop on a massive scale at other times. The intense human activities like travelling, traffic, tourism, industries don’t just cause a one-time disturbance when they are built but also a continuos one due to all the movement involved.
Dhauladhar Range seen from Jalandhar (Source: Hindustan Times on Getty Images)
However, can we take steps to ensure that we experience the same connection with nature… Always! Without an emergency? It is possible, yet, to address these issues if we make the right sort of efforts. But we must ACT NOW!
The invisible and yet important effect of the Anthropause was a reduction in carbon emissions (causing Climate Change) and also pollution levels in some regions. However, this effect was temporary. And we are nowhere on track to achieve reduced emissions and pollution levels, which is critical for human and environmental well-being.
Respecting the Connection between Biodiversity and Climate Change
It is now widely recognized that Biodiversity and Climate Change are interconnected. Climate change has mostly negative consequences on biodiversity and human well-being due to change in local conditions and extreme events like floods, storms, sea-level rise, etc. Biodiversity and native ecosystems, on the other hand; through the ecosystem services like preventing soil erosion, retaining soil moisture, resisting damages due to extreme events, river basin networks, groundwater recharge, etc.; are important for both reducing carbon emissions and improving the capacity of any region to face natural disasters and climate change.
The Covid-19 was an immediate existential threat, however, we are simultaneously facing two more scattered and deep crises- Climate and Ecological Crisis. We are having an impact on Environment like never before! The following figure shows just one way we are hugely impacting other species in the world.
Within 10K years, Humans and our livestock have reversed the ratio by weight with wild animals (Source: Google)
The most effective and efficient carbon removal from the atmosphere occurs if we have patches of restored local ecosystem or wilderness rather than manicured patches of plantation or garden. Hence, restoring ecological habitats and maintaining stringent pollution and emission standards become very important for all people, institutions, industries and government. We are at a phase where every Environmental Action or Inaction will have a long-standing impact.
Why Plants?
Land and Water plants take in carbon dioxide for photosynthesis and thus act as natural sinks by removing this main greenhouse gas from the atmosphere. Trees and plants, however, do not exist in isolation; but have a symbiotic relationship with other organisms for pollination, seed dispersal, etc. They need their native/original ecosystems to thrive on their own; without human interventions (like plantations) which require intensive energy and water use. This entails conserving native ecosystems like the patches of forests, all water-bodies and wetlands, migration corridors; and protecting traditional conservation practices, like Sacred Groves in India, that already exist.
In addition, forest destruction adds to more carbon emissions as the carbon stored in the plant bodies gets released into the atmosphere. 11% of all global carbon emissions caused by humans are caused by deforestation —this is comparable to the emissions from all of the cars and trucks on the planet.
Restoring forests and water bodies play an important role in improving ecosystem services and environmental health. Intact ecosystems and all biodiversity are necessary for building better resilience to disasters. Consequently; restoring, conserving and sustainably managing biodiversity is critical to addressing climate change. The ecological crisis has reached such alarming extents, that Dr Robert Watson, Chair of the UN-Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Report 2019, said that — “The time for action (on Ecological Crisis) was yesterday or the day before”.
We don’t actually have to stop all our activities, but we do need to drastically slow down the rate at which we are destructing and interfering with the environment. Set our pace with Nature and thrive together. To give an analogy — does one chose a friend who manages his own finances well OR the one who doesn’t do so and constantly borrows from friends, every day, reducing their wealth? Right now, humanity is acting like that annoying friend who is hugely borrowing/exploiting earth resources. We need to reduce our demands and become better at our efficiency and management to live within our finite planet resources. Because we have Only One Planet as our home!
The good news is that ways to thrive without damaging Nature too much — are available, the bad news is that we are far behind in adopting them. And, thus, environmental degradation and its impacts are rising at alarming rates. If we don’t change our behaviour and actions soon, we may reach a point where our lives and livelihoods may receive pauses and setbacks, like COVID Lock-downs and even worser ones, due to environmental degradation.
(Source: AZ Quotes)
PS — Pune International Centre organized an Online National Conference on 22–23 January 2021! It was a first of its kind initiative to open up a discussion on Climate Economics in India and promote the effort to synergize Economy and Environment. Visit our Website to know more.
|
https://medium.com/@climatecollectivepune/extending-the-anthropause-679b7f7b23b8
|
['Climate Collective Pune']
|
2021-01-27 12:11:02.277000+00:00
|
['Nature', 'Climate Change', 'Covid 19', 'Responsibility', 'Biodiversity']
|
Quality Assurance Control Improvement
|
QUALITY ASSURANCE, QUALITY CONTROL AND QUALITY IMPROVEMENT
While dealing with quality of a product or service, we often come across terms like Quality Assurance (QA), Quality Control (QC), Quality Improvement (QI). We are keen to know what exactly these terms mean and in what way they differ from each other. Most of us have a fair idea that they all have something to do with “making a quality product” or “delivering a quality service”; and each one of them constitutes a quality related function, department or group in a manufacturing or service set up.
In this article, I will be elaborating the distinct functions/ activities performed by QA, QC and QI groups (typical of most organisations). This will be helpful in bringing out the role clarity for QA,QC,QI functions and the differences among them. In the last paragraph, I will also discuss how these functions are placed in an organisation.
Quality Assurance:
Quality Assurance is the collection of activities directed towards assuring the top management and customers that all quality requirements related to the product/process/service are being fulfilled. In other words, QA assures customers as well as company management that “All is well with quality”.
QA is a broad function that requires close interaction (from quality viewpoint) with various departments viz. commercial, materials management, design, production, quality control, testing, packaging, after sales service etc.
The main activities of QA are:
(i) Preparation and issuance of QA plans (also called quality plans)
(ii) Getting QA plan approved by customer wherever it’s a contractual requirement
(iii) Preparation and issuance of quality systems and procedures
(iv) Preparation and issuance of quality manual
(v) Coordination for QMS (quality management systems) audits e.g. ISO 9001 audits — external and internal
(vi) Organising periodical quality review meetings
(vii) Analysis and presentation of quality data e.g. trend of customer complaints, quantum of rejection/rework on shopfloor, number of non-conformities observed during audits, quality costs etc.
(viii) Organising training on quality related subjects and training for quality systems auditors
Quality Control:
Quality Control is the collection of activities directed towards (i) ensuring conformance to specification (ii) defect prevention, on shopfoor or actual workplace.
The main activities of QC are:
(i) Inspection of purchased materials on receipt or at source
(ii) Stage inspection during manufacture
(iii) Final inspection including product testing
(iv) Resolution on non-conformities as per procedure
(v) Calibration of measuring instruments and gauges
(vi) Implementing defect prevention measures e.g. control charts, run charts etc.
Quality Improvement:
Quality improvement is the collection of activities directed towards improvement in the quality of product. Improvement in quality means one or more of the following:
(i) Reduction in errors/non conformities
(ii) Reduction in rejection/rework
(iii) Reduction in customer complaints
(iv) Reduction in cost of poor quality
(v) Reducing “variation” i.e. piece-to-piece variation in similar products/components
(vi) Improving quality index (if the company has developed a quality index system to “measure” quality)
(vii) Adding new product features that appeal to the customers
Some of the tools, techniques and methods used for quality improvement are: 7 tools of quality, SQC(statistical quality control) techniques, RCA (root cause analysis), operator self control, poka yoke; and training and motivation for quality.
QA, QC Vs QI
QI ( quality improvement) is rarely a separate department or group. Both QA and QC participate in quality improvement activities. Additionally, quality improvement is also done project-by-project by multidisciplinary teams/task forces under varied names.
Out of QA, QC and QI, quality improvement is probably the most difficult but highly rewarding function. Unfortunately, it also happens to be the most neglected one.
It was Juran (regarded as the father of quality management) who first developed the concept of quality trilogy consisting of quality planning, quality control, quality improvement; and emphasised the need for quality improvement as a distinct function. Now it is widely recognised that a strong QI setup is a must if the company wants to attain quality leadership.
As regards organisation of QA and QC functions in a company, it varies greatly from company to company. In some companies, QA and QC exist as separate departments while in others, one may be reporting to the other. In still others, particularly in small companies/establishments, only one of the two (QA or QC) exists and the same group performs both QA and QC functions. It’s all OK, as long as roles of QA and QC are well understood and performed that way.
|
https://medium.com/@srikrishnasharma80/quality-assurance-quality-control-and-quality-improvement-bb46f5a3ac98
|
['Sri Krishna Sharma']
|
2021-03-11 11:20:29.968000+00:00
|
['Qc', 'QA', 'Quality Control', 'Quality Improvement', 'Quality Assurance']
|
Disney/Pixar’s Soul Leaves Your Soul Feeling Sore: An Anti-Black Train Wreck from Start to End
|
Written by Lennox Orion
When something reveals itself , listen. At the 14 minute mark of this movie a group of on screen characters start chanting “ hell” and I realized as the credits began to roll that it was a fourth wall break — they were trying to warn me just like Lakeith Stanfield’s titular character in Get Out: these characters were trying to warn me, this movie is hell.
Why is this movie so unwatchable that it deserves its comparison to an eternal punishment caused by evil deeds, I’ll explain.
Plot Summary:
Joe is a struggling artist who longs to be a Jazz musician but currently is a teacher to middle school band. One day his former student reaches out with an offer for a gig ( a sign that he is an incredible teacher but whatever all teachers secretly want to be “real artist”) he auditions and is phenomenal. He gets the gig of his dreams and then immediately falls into a manhole placing him in a coma.
When he “ wakes up” he discovers he is dead and begins to try and get back to earth. In a blatant rip off of the first episode of The Good Place Eleanor Shellstrop I mean Joe pretends he is someone he is not and must teach a rambunctious soul to find her “ spark.
The Eleanor copy soul is named “22”. She has been mentored to find her spark by a random mix of notable names throughout history and now Chidi I mean Joe has to help her. Joe wants this badge souls get once they find their spark that allows them to enter earth. Joe’s original plan was to steal her earth badge and leave her ass go play his show and enjoy the rest of his Black ass life. But for a reason unbeknownst to me he confides in her and they hatch a plan together. She then is a nuisance and fucks it up somehow landing her soul in his body. To be clear Tina Fey enters the physical body of Joe, Black ass Joe, and Joe enters the body of a fucking cat.
Typical human being is new at being human and actual human is an animal, and new at being an animal nonsense ensues. The soul 22, makes things difficult along the way resulting in her stealing Joe’s body away from him. Let’s reiterate not only is Fey in the body of a Black man she also steals it for her own purposes. When they meet again Joe fairly reads her for filth and goes about his life. For some reason again UNBEKNOWNST TO MY BLACK ASS he goes back to the other world for her and literally dies for this bitch.
All the Horrible Details:
That’s how this Get Out but you don’t actually leave went. Here are most hellish details.
First let us say the obvious. It joins a long list of films that turn a BIPOC character into a non-human form for a majority of its run time. I’m not determined enough but for someone who is: calculate the exact amount of time our main character Joe is an actual human body, and scream into the void.
Second is just the words Tina Fey has the Midas touch except for white supremacy because everything she touches turns into white savior propaganda written over and over again. Fey adds nothing to the film but takes everything a masterclass performance in whiteness. Fey’s character at many points choses the whitest course of action: in the beginning we learn this to be literal when we see her choose to sound like a white suburban woman because it is the most annoying voice she could pick & when she steals Joe’s body for her own purposes.
Third is each moment of anti Blackness that I noticed listed with its time stamp. Yes, I was determined enough for this because of the lack of math involved in this tedious task because I hate all forms of math and counting. Why yes, that was a tangent but this film doesn’t deserve my complete focus even in criticism.
Fey’s character enters the soul of a Black man: 35:18–36:39
Fey’s character as a Black body performing Blackness at the barber shop and being a better person than Joe ( it’s literally stated how he is being so considerate today): 51:55–55:24
This random ass villain comes out the cut and goes to earth to snatch Joe back who escaped. ( I’ll let you make the brain connection there). And thinking he has Joe he momentarily kills the wrong Black man . After putting his soul back in his body he jokes sorry but you’re fine. There is also a pretty weird ``stop eating processed foods or you will actually die “joke thrown in to season the anti Black & anti poor & fatphobic tropes of the film. The camera pulls out to a traumatized looking man holding his knees. : 56:12–57:01
. After putting his soul back in his body he jokes sorry but you’re fine. There is also a pretty weird ``stop eating processed foods or you will actually die “joke thrown in to season the anti Black & anti poor & fatphobic tropes of the film. The camera pulls out to a traumatized looking man holding his knees. : 56:12–57:01 Fey’s character steals the body of Joe to go find her passion in life: 1:07:14–1:09:13
Joe saves his white savior: 1:23:02–1:26:02
Joe dies for Fey’s character: 1:26:52-End Credits
And probably many more. But these are the moments I loudly gasped. My mouth opened stunned by the action on screen.
I recognize I am being harsh on Soul but I wish I could be harsher. I wish to pull and break apart this movie until it understands why I’m upset. Why I’m writing this review. Why I’m hurt. I want this movie to know that I was excited, foolishly optimistic that a Black story would shine through.
I expected some concessions to white supremacy of course, it surrounds us, touches everything we make and do, the ever present force acting upon us like gravity. But I did not expect this love letter to whiteness. To us once again being portrayed as happy to give our lives for whiteness to be the sacrificial negro. So as I look at the beautiful animation I remember how robbed I feel of a Disney movie in which I’m human. In which I don’t have to hurt. Is it too much to ask for, to be looked at as human. To tell stories that don’t hurt.
|
https://medium.com/@orionlennox/disney-pixars-soul-leaves-yours-feeling-sore-an-anti-black-train-wreck-from-start-to-end-338d5dfd4ef8
|
['Lennox Orion']
|
2020-12-26 14:47:42.063000+00:00
|
['Anti Blackness', 'Pixar', 'Disney', 'Movie Review']
|
Surprised That Big Tech Failed Us? Here Is How We Could Have Known.
|
Surprised That Big Tech Failed Us? Here Is How We Could Have Known.
While the recent headlines about Facebook, Google, and other tech giants seem to cause outrage, their ethical failings were predictable from their business models. Long time ago.
Show me your business model, and I tell you about your ethics. It is often literally that simple. According to Milton Friedman and his school of economics, a firm’s purpose is to use its resources to increase its profits. With the kind addition, that it does so without deception and while staying within the boundaries of the law.
That is what companies do — and what we usually expect of them. No one would assume Exxon to be after anything else than higher profits. Yet, for some reason, technology companies in the more recent decades have been seen in a different light. There seemed to be something revolutionary about these geeks starting companies in Silicon Valley. They seemed to be more innocent; they appeared to be following values.
Photo by Mitchell Luo on Unsplash
From Google’s “Don’t Be Evil” to Facebook’s “Bring The World Closer Together,” these companies seemed to build around purpose. They wanted to sort the world’s information and make it accessible. They wanted to connect people. Those were higher dreams than money, and people believed the techies who peddled them.
Yet beneath the surface, there were always more ambitions lurking — not necessarily money per se, but a desire to shape the world. Latest since Steve Jobs wanted to “put a dent in the universe,” tech folks were high on their Kool-Aid, thinking they could cure the world. The kind of Silicon Valley libertarianism expressed publicly by its prophets, is way more dogmatic and absolutist than anyone should be comfortable with.
While many of the founders of these companies earnestly believe that they live in the future and that they can help bring that future to the world as a good deed, they are also entirely trapped in their bubble. Within their friend circle, investor circle, and companies, there is little diversity to speak of. The people whom they claim to want to be helping are mostly not represented at all. Other than in purpose statements.
And then comes Wall Street
While those idealistic founders can sustain their loss-making endeavors through the support of equally idealistic Venture Capitalists for a long time, at some point, that becomes unsustainable. Ever-larger rounds of money are needed, early VCs are pushing for exits, and early employees want to see returns as well. So eventually, they do an IPO.
And when they start to consider going public, the rules of the game change. They are advised to speak to Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley about helping them with the listing and start to hear about what investors want to see. And that is a sustainable business model, stellar revenue growth, and ideally profitability.
Hence,1–2 years before the IPO, many revenue mechanisms have been tried, and the strongest ones are doubled down on and ramped up. The game demands it.
At that point, even the most idealistic founders are confronted with Friedman’s logic (or face the choice of being replaced). So, they compromise — in the name of the mission, they must monetize as much as possible. And so, the same geniuses who created the core product to change the world, now put their brains to work to make the most money possible. Of course, in the name of making the world a better place.
Photo by Aditya Vyas on Unsplash
Hence the revenue model before IPO, which they start doubling down on, becomes the fate of the company. It becomes what everyone optimizes around. And this to the extent, as Friedman described, that the law permits. Which, in the very underregulated digital world, is quite a sizeable gray area. A gray area that has been really exploited.
The Insidious Attention Economy
A lot has been talked about, that when the product is free, the user is the product. In the context of Facebook or Google, who monetize through advertising, this is often read as the user trading their data for services. These companies are hoarding data, collecting it on their sites and across the web, and getting rich off of that.
Yet that is not true. They are not getting rich off of the data itself. The user’s data is not being sold. That would be the least of their interests. They are hoarding the data only to make the actual product more valuable — which is the user’s attention itself.
The time people spent on the services, where they get exposed to targeted advertising based on that data, that is the product, which is much more insidious.
If they were selling off the user’s data, it would be enough to collect a good quantity of it through various interactions. According to one study, with 300 likes, Facebook knows you better than your spouse. So, they could make just the data collection a key part of their activity, and not care about the time you spent on the service. At some point, the amount of data also has diminishing returns, and won’t improve the price.
Your attention, though, does not have diminishing returns. They can sell as much of that as there is a demand for — which is enormous. And the better information they have on you, the higher they can sell your attention. Hence the service is not optimized for data collection per se, but human engagement. Spend as much time as possible.
Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash
Therefore, key algorithms that are now being criticized, such as the algorithm curating the news feed, are fundamental revenue mechanisms. As such, it is very predictable what their fitness function is, hence what they are being optimized for and what the likely outcome is. Engagement at all (human) cost. All it takes is thinking through the business model, to understand to what lengths, within the boundaries of the law, Facebook would go.
Look At The Income Streams
If you would be concerned about which products to use, because of all the headlines — have a look at the companies’ business models.
When a business is over 80% dependent on advertising revenue — your attention is the product, and your data makes it valuable. That is most likely not a trustworthy technology provider to deal with.
When a business sells products or services at considerable premiums, and that is their primary income stream, they would be hell-bent on earning and retaining customer trust.
Especially when free or low-cost alternatives, who monetize differently, are available, premium players are in the trust and security game. Those are better bets.
The recent branding emphasis of Apple, going all-in on Security and Privacy, is hence both honest and brilliant. In the age of surveillance capitalism, in which everyone is after your data and attention to sell you more stuff, the company selling their products in a classy environment and at a premium, has a niche to claim in being different.
Photo by Johny vino on Unsplash
Similarly, Microsoft has relevant messages around security and privacy, which resonate with many businesses. With their diversified income streams, which are dependent on them selling software and hardware, they are in a position to play that game well. Additionally, their focus is selling to enterprise customers primarily, who are highly concerned about security at all levels, and have no problems paying a premium for technology. Hence the business model can fully unfold around those needs and requirements.
It is, to my mind, no surprise, that we are ending the last decade with Apple and Microsoft as trillion-dollar companies, while the rest of tech is trailing behind. I see their positioning as being highly relevant for the decade to come and foresee substantial challenges for Facebook and Google. While there are antitrust and regulatory probes into them, Apple and Microsoft seem to be out of the line of fire for now. For a good reason.
In Summary
While technology companies have been seen in a different light for a long time, as founders claimed higher motives and groomed their image well, it has become clear that they are slaves to the profit motive as well. Just like any other corporation, especially in the lead up to and after a public listing, they are subject to the forces of Wall Street.
These forces are looking for them to monetize to the highest degree possible — stellar revenue growth and profitability. Hence, they put their smartest teams to work on doubling down on the revenue streams they have figured out up until then. And they will exploit them as much as possible, within the confines of the law. Within a legal and regulatory environment, which for much of new technology is still to be defined. There are whole host of gray areas being exploited to the maximum.
Therefore, we can predict how a company will act not by the prophetic words of the founders, but by its business model.
In the case of advertising, this model is selling the user’s attention and making that more valuable through collecting tons of data to better target. Hence, they will go to the limits on gathering information about people across the web and optimizing their services for time spent, not value created.
If we want to see technology companies act more ethically, we therefore either need to tighten up regulations, which has to happen, or as consumers need to be prepared to pay for services currently free to us. We all have the choice to leave companies’ services, which turn our attention to the product being sold.
We need to start choosing.
|
https://medium.com/swlh/surprised-that-big-tech-failed-us-here-is-how-we-could-have-known-86ddfb2fdd3
|
['Sebastian Mueller']
|
2020-03-08 12:17:26.959000+00:00
|
['Society', 'Economy', 'Business', 'Ethics', 'Technology']
|
United Analytics
|
United analytics
After you connected the united-analytics to you repository lets add the code to united-analytics (in the united-analytics repo). My suggestion is to use this kind of structure:
src
- analytics
- events
- page
- eventType
- enentName
- interface
Now you are asking yourself, Why you need interface? The answer to it is that we are solving the alignment of event names and actions, so every platform can use its own analytics solution with existing infrastructure.
Interface can look like that:
interface IAnalyticsProvider {
logAnalytics(eventType: string, eventName: string, props: any)
}
And we will need one more class that controlling it all, I will call it AnalyticsController :
import IAnalyticsProvider from "./Interface/IAnalyticsProvider";
let instance = null;
export default class AnalyticsController{
_analyticsProvider: IAnalyticsProvider = null static get instance() {
if (!instance) {
instance = new AnalyticsController();
}
return instance;
} init(analyticsProvider: IAnalyticsProvider){
this._analyticsProvider = analyticsProvider
} get analyticsProvider(): IAnalyticsProvider{
return this._analyticsProvider;
} static log(props){
if(!!props) {
if(!!AnalyticsController.instance.analyticsProvider) {
AnalyticsController.instance.analyticsProvider
.logAnalytics(
props.eventType,
props.event,
props.innerProps)
}else{
throw "analyticsProvider not initialized";
}
} else {
throw "missing mandatory props";
}
}
}
In this way you could use your own logger and just implement the interface to it and initiate AnalyticsController with your own existing analytics class.
... implements IAnalyticsProvider
init in your app start
AnalyticsController.instance.init(HBAnalyticsController)
Now after we have everything setup we can start and build the events. As we are using props it is objects tat is represented in key/value structure, so we can build our report in this way, for example report can look like that:
{
pageName: "my_page",
eventType: "click",
event: "my_button_action"
...
}
In order to achieve it we will build it in aggregation way, its meaning that for every property we will build a function that will return the key and the value of the property, and if we would like to add new property it will be as simple as adding new function in the relevant file that represent the related key.
lest’s look in the example of “pageName” property file, so as I mention in the structure, this file will be located at src\analytics\events\page\page.ts :
function processPage(props, name){
if(props === undefined){
props = {}
}
let innerProps = {}
innerProps.page = name
props.innerProps = {...props.innerProps, ...innerProps}
return props
}
export function myPage(props){
return processPage(props, "my_page")
}
and same for other properties accordingly, for eventType property it will be src\analytics\events\eventType\eventType.ts:
|
https://medium.com/swlh/united-analytics-54fd141d9d4a
|
['Leonid Olevsky']
|
2020-12-12 13:37:56.456000+00:00
|
['Analytics', 'JavaScript', 'Typescript', 'Firebase', 'Cross Platform']
|
Implementing Automatic Codable
|
Decoding/Encoding on easy street
Implementing Automatic Codable, Modularly
Developing a Reusable Networking Class Part II
Let’s Turn Data into Objects and Objects into Data
Here’s part 1 in case you missed it:
If you followed part 1: Developing A Reusable Networking Class, then you probably understand how this is working to download medium.com and doing error/response handling even though it doesn’t look like it.
Let’s switch gears entirely. We’ll still be networking, we’ll still be using the same class but we’re going to ditch downloading html and displaying it in the console in favor of creating some objects, encoding them to JSON, and decoding them from JSON.
Let’s set everything up
First, we’ll need to create a simple struct and add a couple properties. When we’re using the Codable protocol initially, we’ll need to keep some things in mind:
Until we learn how we can do otherwise, we can only decode types that are already implemented for Codable.
These types include standard library types like String, Int, and Double; and Foundation types like Date, Data, and URL.¹
2. Any properties of types that aren’t included in the default Codable implementation will need to conform to Codable
With that in mind, I’m going to create a SecretAgent. Feel free to create whatever your heart desires. You’ll be able to decode it just the same as long as you’ve kept the above in mind.
In order to encode or decode this now into/from JSON, we just need to create a JSONEncoder/JSONDecoder and use the encode/decode methods respectively.
Both methods have a large potential to fail, and can take some time, so they’re both throwing methods. As such, they’ll require a do/try/catch block. In the do block, we try a method that throws, and in the catch we handle errors (this is where execution goes when the method fails). The catch block comes with a “free” Error named error.
The decode method requires a type by passed in. The type is whatever the type of the thing is you’re trying to decode.
.self is how we reference the type
Conversely, the encoder needs an instance of an encodable type to be encoded into data.
If you’re following along, maybe you mocked some data (example below, and in Part I). If so, you should see something like this in a playground:
It’s not a lot of code for each call, but it’s a lot of do/try/catch if you’re doing it in multiple places. Let’s see if we can reduce some overhead here and make our lives just a little more convenient.
Let’s implement a reusable decoding method
In order to do this, we’re going to need to use generics. Generics are really cool, allowing us to put any type in a parameter (even a return value!). Unlike Any though, we can constrain generics so they’ll take any type with constraints on exactly what types are allowed. The syntax is likely different from what you’re used to — but if you were around in the early days of Swift, this is how we declared dictionaries… and you can still declare them using generic syntax now…
|
https://medium.com/swlh/implementing-automatic-codable-1e212b54848
|
['Kenny Dubroff']
|
2020-07-01 23:06:44.616000+00:00
|
['Swift', 'Codable', 'Json Api', 'Asynchronous', 'Modularity']
|
Carcinoid Syndrome Diarrhea Treatment Market 2021: Explore Top Factors that Will Boost the Global Market by 2026
|
Carcinoid Syndrome Diarrhea Treatment Market 2021: Explore Top Factors that Will Boost the Global Market by 2026 shubham k Dec 30, 2021·4 min read
Carcinoid Syndrome Diarrhea Treatment Market 2021–2026
Straits Research has recently added a new report to its vast depository titled Global Carcinoid Syndrome Diarrhea Treatment Market. The report studies vital factors about the Global Carcinoid Syndrome Diarrhea Treatment Market that are essential to be understood by existing as well as new market players. The report highlights the essential elements such as market share, profitability, production, sales, manufacturing, advertising, technological advancements, key market players, regional segmentation, and many more crucial aspects related to the Global Carcinoid Syndrome Diarrhea Treatment Market.
Carcinoid Syndrome Diarrhea Treatment Market
The Major Players Covered in this Report:
Lexicon Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Novartis International AG (Sandoz) (Switzerland), Pharmascience Inc. (Canada), Omega Laboratories Ltd. (Canada), Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (Israel), Mylan N.V. (U.S.), Ipsen Biopharmaceuticals, Inc. (U.S.), Sirtex Medical Limited (Australia), BTG International Ltd. (U.K.), and Wockhardt Ltd.
Get a Sample PDF Report: Carcinoid Syndrome Diarrhea Treatment Market
Segmentation is as follows: -
By Treatment Type, Chemotherapy, Oral Therapy, Somatostatin Analog (SSA) TherapyBy Distribution Channel, Hospital Pharmacies, Retail Pharmacies, Online PharmaciesBy End User, Hospitals, Clinics, Cancer Research Institutes
The report specifically highlights the Carcinoid Syndrome Diarrhea Treatment market share, company profiles, regional outlook, product portfolio, a record of the recent developments, strategic analysis, key players in the market, sales, distribution chain, manufacturing, production, new market entrants as well as existing market players, advertising, brand value, popular products, demand and supply, and other important factors related to the Carcinoid Syndrome Diarrhea Treatment market to help the new entrants understand the market scenario better.
Important factors like strategic developments, government regulations, Carcinoid Syndrome Diarrhea Treatment market analysis, end-users, target audience, distribution network, branding, product portfolio, market share, threats and barriers, growth drivers, latest trends in the industry are also mentioned.
Regional Analysis For Carcinoid Syndrome Diarrhea Treatment Market:
North America (United States, Canada, and Mexico)
Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia, and Italy)
Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India, and Southeast Asia)
South America (Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, etc.)
Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria, and South Africa)
In this study, the years considered to estimate the market size of the Carcinoid Syndrome Diarrhea Treatment are as follows:
• History Year: 2014–2019
• Base Year: 2019
• Estimated Year: 2020
• Forecast Year 2021 to 2026
The main steps in the investigation process are:
1) The first step in market research is to obtain raw market information from industry experts and direct research analysts using primary and secondary sources.
2) Extracts raw data from these sources to extract valuable insights and analyze them for research purposes.
3) Classify the knowledge gained by qualitative and quantitative data and place it accordingly to make final conclusions.
Key Questions Answered in the Report:
• What is the current scenario of the Global Carcinoid Syndrome Diarrhea Treatment Market? How is the market going to prosper throughout the next 6 years?
• What is the impact of COVID-19 on the market? What are the major steps undertaken by the leading players to mitigate the damage caused by COVID-19?
• What are the emerging technologies that are going to profit the market?
• What are the historical and the current sizes of the Global Carcinoid Syndrome Diarrhea Treatment Market?
• Which segments are the fastest growing and the largest in the market? What is their market potential?
• What are the driving factors contributing to the market growth during the short, medium, and long term? What are the major challenges and shortcomings that the market is likely to face? How can the market solve the challenges?
• What are the lucrative opportunities for the key players in the Carcinoid Syndrome Diarrhea Treatment market?
• Which are the key geographies from the investment perspective?
• What are the major strategies adopted by the leading players to expand their market shares?
• Who are the distributors, traders, and dealers of the Global Carcinoid Syndrome Diarrhea Treatment market?
• What are sales, revenue, and price analysis by types and applications of the market?
For More Details On this Report: Carcinoid Syndrome Diarrhea Treatment Market
About Us:
Regardless of whether you’re looking at business sectors in the next town or crosswise over continents, we understand the significance of being acquainted with what customers purchase. We overcome the issues of our customers by recognizing and deciphering just the target group, while simultaneously generating leads with the highest precision. We seek to collaborate with our customers to deliver a broad spectrum of results through a blend of market and business research approaches. This approach of using various research and analysis strategies enables us to determine greater insights by eliminating the research costs. Moreover, we’re continually developing, not only with regards to where we measure, or who we measure but in how our visions can enable you to drive cost-effective growth.
Contact Us:
Company Name: Straits Research
Email: [email protected]
Phone:
+1 646 480 7505 (U.S.)
+91 8087085354 (India)
+44 208 068 9665 (U.K.)
Carcinoid Syndrome Diarrhea Treatment Market Growth, Carcinoid Syndrome Diarrhea Treatment Forecast, Carcinoid Syndrome Diarrhea Treatment Industry Trends, Carcinoid Syndrome Diarrhea Treatment Market Share, Carcinoid Syndrome Diarrhea Treatment Industry Size, Carcinoid Syndrome Diarrhea Treatment Market Data Analysis, Carcinoid Syndrome Diarrhea Treatment Market Overview”
|
https://medium.com/@shubhamk.straitsresearch/carcinoid-syndrome-diarrhea-treatment-market-2021-explore-top-factors-that-will-boost-the-global-d733fd0ab4ff
|
['Shubham K']
|
2021-12-30 07:23:40.474000+00:00
|
['Diarrhea', 'Market Research Reports', 'Pharmaceutical', 'Healthcare', 'Diarrhea Treatment']
|
Paying More On Your Mortgage Saves You Money In The Long Run
|
It’s the American dream to own your own home and dreamers will go to any lengths to accomplish this even if it means borrowing thousands of dollars to be paid back over a 30 year period.
It’s quite an obligation to make 360 payments month after month with the bulk of the money going toward interest, at least in the beginning.
The interest on an average home over a 30 year period can account for twice the cost of the home.
Interest is working against you 24/7/365. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could pay off your debt years sooner and save thousands of dollars?
You Can
It just takes discipline and perhaps a little budget adjusting. It’s no secret that paying the mortgage twice a month instead of only once will save you thousands and pay off your debt years sooner.
Some call it the bi-weekly mortgage plan.
For example: Let’s say you paid $80,000 for your home and got a 7% loan for 30 years.
If you divide the payment in half and pay it every two weeks, you should save $25,000 in interest payments and reduce the term by 8 years.
Not bad for a little extra work. Of course, the higher the loan and interest, the more you save.
You’re paying less interest and more on the principal. The extra payments bring down the principal and interest faster.
Can Just Setting Up A Shorter Mortgage Term In The Beginning Accomplish The Same Thing?
Essentially yes. But many people cannot qualify for a shorter-term mortgage because of the higher payment.
With the bi-weekly plan, you can take control of yourself and enjoy the flexibility.
There are many companies who will set this up for you for a fee ranging from $100 to $400.
Or, some will do it free but charge a transaction fee each time you make a payment.
Can You Do It Yourself?
Yes, but talk to your lender and read the fine print in your contract. You may have a pre-payment penalty for paying off the loan ahead of time.
Some lenders also tack on a service fee each time you make the extra payment.
Banks can also provide you with a bi-weekly calculator to let you determine how much you would save and how soon you would actually own your home.
You’ll also save on private mortgage insurance (PMI) by paying off the loan early.
Pay Bi-Weekly
By paying bi-weekly, you’re actually paying one extra payment a year and that makes the difference.
You can accomplish the same thing by making an extra payment whenever you can of any amount.
When you do this, write a separate check with a note that states the money should be applied to the principal and not the interest.
Final Thoughts
Most financial institutions are happy to help you with saving money on your mortgage but it’s up to you to get the financial ball rolling.
For about the cost of dinner and a movie for you and your family each month you can be debt free years sooner and save thousands of dollars.
Related Articles
Pros And Cons Of Refinancing Your Mortgage
Know What You’re Getting Into With A Mortgage
5 Ways To Avoid Getting Burned When You Buy Real Estate
|
https://medium.com/the-capital/paying-more-on-your-mortgage-saves-you-money-in-the-long-run-b9412ab3260
|
['Forge Financial Freedom']
|
2021-01-02 12:51:09.971000+00:00
|
['Life', 'Money', 'Life Lessons', 'Finance', 'Real Estate']
|
Every 2 hours
|
Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash
If I fly from Bucharest airport to any available airport in the UK, it takes about 4 hours. Every 4 hours, 2 new mutations are born among Sars-cov-2. If I go to the UK and come back to Bucharest, we have 4 new mutations born amond Sars-cov-2. There have already been 4,000 mutations of Sars-cov-2, but these are detected in spike glycoprotein alone. Including all the parts of the virus’s gene, there must be astronomic numbers of mutations already.
VUI–202012/01 is the latest strain prevailing in the UK. Humans have barely made a wikipedia page but the virus is way ahead of us. According to the UK government, it’s 70% more infectious than other variants of the virus. Reportedly this variant from the UK has made a significant update in the spike glycoprotein’s receptor-binding domain (RBD), which binds to the human and murine ACE2 receptor. The RBD works like an arm to catch a human’s ACE2 receptor. These are the parts to make the virus look like a crown. The more flexible the arms get evolved to be, the more easily they catch a human’s ACE2 receptor. This new variant was discovered in September, but humans have not done anything against it until last night. Yesterday some European countries including Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Austria decided to halt the flights from the UK. However the new variant has already been detected in the continent. I majored in business, but in business, when two types of technical standards compete to become the dominant standard in the market, such as Blu-ray and HD DVD or internet browsers, the first one which gained more than 3% market share is destined to be the dominant type. Now this is about the virus but probably VUI–202012/01 will be the next dominant type.
From BBC to Reuters, the media protocol when to cover this new strain is to comment that there is no evidence that this new strain has more severity than other variants, and also probably the currently tested vaccines would still work on this variant. Media also adds that Sars-cov-2 is mutating slower than the flu. However this means Covid-19 would take longer than the flu to be adapted to humans and become milder, so this is not necessarily good news.
Humans thought they finally obtained the weapon to the virus called vaccines, but it looks like the virus was just ahead of the curve. The UK and the US started testing Pfizer’s vaccine on medical workers last Monday. As a result, at least 3,150 medical workers had adverse reactions by Friday, which is defined to be unable to perform normal daily activities, unable to work, required care from doctors and medical professionals. This is about 2.8% frequency including 6 anaphylaxis cases. The rate rose up to 4% by Saturday but I’m waiting for the solid source. Now every country is suffering the shortage of medical workers, but for some reason we started testing the unconfirmed vaccines on them and losing more workers. In the meantime, at least 84 mutations were born among Sars-cov-2. The day before CDC announced 3,150 medical workers had adverse reactions from Pfizer’s vaccine, CNBC reported that Pfizer and Moderna completely immunised themselves against a lawsuit related to the severe vaccine side effects in the US. The US government has also compensated for only 29 side effects claims over the last decade. Either way, because this is only for emergency use of the vaccine, American citizens cannot sue FDA (the Food and Drug Administration). These vaccine makers acted as swiftly as the virus. Already in February, these companies had the law to empower HHS (Health and Human Services Secretary) to provide legal protection making distributing critical medical supplies, such as vaccines and treatments, unless there’s “willful misconduct” by the company. The protection lasts until 2024. By such a legal immunity, these companies cannot be sued for money damages in court over injuries for the next four years. By this week, the CEO of Pfizer hasn’t had the vaccine of his own company. The CEO comments that he can’t cut in line to be vaccinated. Actually, hospital pharmacists have to throw away at least one dosage amount in every vial because each one of them contains an extra amount for some reason.
A new mutation rises every 2 hours, however every one of them seems very vulnerable against the sunlight. Also, the transmission rate is significantly low in the open space. These facts prove the origin of the virus was bat or other nocturnal animals living in a dark closed place as a group. It has been over a year, but still we know little about the origin of the virus, which would help us fight the disease the most.
|
https://medium.com/@fukushimadiary-official/every-2-hours-668738ba4a3d
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[]
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2020-12-21 11:13:51.823000+00:00
|
['Coronavirus', 'Mutation', 'UK', 'Pandemic', 'Covid 19']
|
Queens of the Streets
|
Queens of the Streets
A Poem, In Honor of the World’s Oldest Activists, Guides, and Protectors Being Pushed Off Platforms Due to Censorship, Stigma, and Violence
Photo by Ｌａｒａ Ｓａｎｔｏｓ from Pexels
Author’s Note: Trigger Warning for depictions of sexual exploitation, stigma, and police brutality. Sex trafficking and sex work are not the same but it should be noted that sex workers are often champions of self-love and self-care and deserve their platforms, which serve survivors and beyond.
“If only I had looser morals,” she had told me
pushing back a strand of blonde,
“I’d make a fortune.”
She said this while she encouraged me
to embrace my ghosts of
begging men on my knees for some safety and peace
and begging men on my back for some mercy and freedom.
Looser morals.
Looser morals like tightening the straps of stilettos
trying to feed dependents at home?
with aching bodies the system demands we waste every day
for minimum wage
and sometimes less if we’re recognized as disabled,
but we don’t need to beg for sick leave
if we set our own appointments
and we don’t need to worry about eating
if we get paid well the day of
and some of us do this to control a situation
we had no control of before
to remember
we’re worth more than what was once stolen from us;
our touch is worth what we decide it’s worth.
For some of us, this is more than survival —
for some of us, it’s our only way to survive.
Looser morals, she said,
like the women who judge the womxn who do this
from the comfort of their suburban homes
whose unhappy marriages reflect in how they judge our hard-earned dollars
even though their husbands were selfish and unhappy before they looked us up.
Looser morals, she said,
like the system that protects the client
but arrests the worker
as if the bait isn’t our own abundance, joy, financial security,
as if we’re not the ones with our mouth on the barrel
to do what we do
and to protect each other while we’re treated as if
the cops don’t kill the strongest of us
just because they’re so ashamed of who they’re lusting after.
What can you tell me about looser morals, I had thought to myself,
as you sit from your position of privilege
complaining about how your boyfriend’s upset with you
for cheating as soon as he needed some time to himself?
|
https://medium.com/the-rebel-poets-society/queens-of-the-streets-dcb5b3db725f
|
[]
|
2020-12-27 15:12:54.412000+00:00
|
['Survivor', 'The Rebel Poets Society', 'Sex', 'Sex Work Is Real Work', 'Healing']
|
Work is Problem, Seek Solution.
|
Two ways to work. First, Work for personal benefits and satisfaction. Second, Work for the Benefit of others. We get excited to work whenever we are getting reward immediately. But, when the reward gets distributed among many like us, we begin to overthink.
On reading the first paragraph, most of us can easily find out where the problem is. There seems no problem in the first case. Whenever we begin interacting with people, we lose the excitement to work together. Why is that?
Happy Employee
Stressed Employee
We have so many built-up ideas regarding how we should work with others. To be accepted in any organization or firm or government, we have to follow a certain set of rules and guidelines developed over time. The rules are the problem and the solutions.
If we fit on the rules, we get the opportunity. What if, we can’t fit in. Noone fits in somebody else's work. I can’t do your work and you can’t handle my work. I can’t do the work like you doesn’t make you superior to me. Noone is superior. But, we want some kind of superiority over others for the work we do. The question remains unanswered.
Work can be accomplished perfectly when the team has the same mindset and work ethic working toward a common objective and goal. A slight change in goal will result in the breakdown of the project over time. That’s where examinations and interviews are required. These examinations and interviews act as the bridge for the candidate to become an employee.
The problem is we don’t fix the problem but get limited by the problem. The problem is there, as we don’t have a solution. Need a solution, seek somewhere else outside the problem. Solving a problem, in reality, is different than solving the examples of problems available in Book.
In short, Focusing on a topic won’t solve the problem. Desiring work won’t make us fit for work. Book won’t solve our problem. The only way to overcome the limitation imposed upon us is to create a new way of mindset and work that suits ourselves with deep research, analysis, and experimentations.
There is no work that is created, dedicated to anyone. Either, we have to learn the rules for the employee and fit in a small boundary offered by the workplace. Or, we have to create one for ourselves using the knowledge and skills.
Blaming governments or companies is not an acceptable solution. Solve the problem and Enjoy Life.
Errors may be present in the above articles. I am not perfect at writing. Provide suggestions and ideas, if you have any.
|
https://medium.com/@garihcr5/work-is-problem-seek-solution-d948d699bf0c
|
['Chirag Rijal']
|
2021-07-07 14:15:34.254000+00:00
|
['Jobs', 'Problem Solving', 'Work', 'Employment', 'Life']
|
4 Questions to Ask Yourself Before You Start Investing
|
This blog post is not to tell you what you should know about investments but instead, what you should consider before investing. It is to give you the awareness you need before you think of taking up any investment opportunity.
Investment is a step further from savings but again, this article is not about how you can save up for investment. If you are looking to double up on your savings plan in preparation for investment, read this article on digital saving.
Since investment is making your money work for you, you can only think of investment after you have saved up for the leap of faith you are about to take.
Whether you have enough savings or not, these are the four (4) questions to ask yourself before you start investing.
Do I have an emergency fund?
This is one of the important questions to ask and critically consider before you start investing. Never start investing without first having an emergency fund.
An emergency fund is just as the name implies. It serves emergency purposes. It is also that money you can always run to when you don’t have any other means of income.
Having an emergency fund keeps you away from unnecessary begging when your money has been locked down in investment.
Read more on what an emergency fund is and how you can calculate yours.
If you have your emergency fund ready and kept somewhere, it’s time to start saving for investments.
2. What is my risk appetite?
Risk appetite is the amount of risk you’re willing to incur in any form of investment.
In truth, all forms of investment are risky. They all come with some level of risk because nothing is ever certain or predictable.
If you have a low-risk appetite, it is advisable to start with investments that keep your capital even if the investment goes bad and your returns on investment cannot be guaranteed.
By doing this, even if you don’t make any returns on your investment, your original money is still safe. It can be traumatizing to lose money. But having an emergency fund that prevents you from putting all your life savings in an investment can be consoling.
Invest in only things you have the heart for. With time, I’m sure your risk appetite will increase and you can step into riskier investment waters.
Some people prefer short-term investments — that’s how far their risk appetite can go. And for some, they can take the long-term investment route. It all depends on you. You can also opt for both. Do only what works for you.
Investment is making your money work for you. That’s the simple definition of investment. How you make it work for you is dependent on you.
3. Do I know what I’m investing in?
Before you put your money into any form of investment, do your background checks and ask relevant questions so that you don’t get scammed.
There are a lot of people out there just looking for how to take people’s money but disguising themselves as investment platforms. A lot of people have lost their money this way because they didn’t do simple background checks and the returns were juicy.
You get to see a lot of investment offering high returns. Not all are lies but the main thing remains that you should ask questions and do your background checks.
4. Does this investment opportunity align with my values?
Invest in things that align with your values. That’s because we have a conscience. We will not want to put our money in a course we don’t support just because of the gain and not have peace of mind that we are supporting it at the end of the day.
If you’re investing in stocks, you sometimes have the opportunity to choose what kinds of stocks you want to put your money into. Invest in whatever gives you peace of mind. Invest in a cause or business you’re totally proud of. Invest in what makes you happy. This again boils down to asking the right questions while doing your background checks.
Summary
Asking the right questions can help you make the right decisions. Due to the risky nature of investments, it is important to have an emergency fund before you start investing, know your risk appetite, do background checks and invest in only what will make you happy when you think about your personal values.
If these have satisfactorily answered them and you’re looking for how to get started with investing, Investsika is helping young people invest in foreign stocks. You can also join the #SikaTribe.
|
https://medium.com/@maryabiodun/4-questions-to-ask-yourself-before-you-start-investing-f4c1a93a82fc
|
['Mary Abiodun']
|
2020-12-13 16:48:31.613000+00:00
|
['Investors', 'Risk', 'Questions', 'Investment', 'Investing']
|
What Kind of World Do You See?
|
When your brain activity ceases, life ends. The same is true for your thoughts. When your thoughts stop, you cease to exist.
Sure, we can capture thoughts through various means. We have many recorded thoughts through art, pictorial, audio, video, and written formats. They may influence many throughout history; however, your physical existence and the thoughts in your head that made you who you are will no longer exist.
Once the thoughts in your brain cease, the world existing in your mind disappears. One may, therefore, conclude thoughts determine your existence in human form. That is why James Allen published his book As a Man Thinketh, more than one hundred years ago. Allen’s realization that thoughts create your life came from a 3000-year-old scripture in the Bible:
“For as he thinks within himself, so he is.” Proverbs 23:7a NASB
It is well established today that our thoughts determine the course of our life. Our thoughts literally create the world in which we live.
Your thoughts create your world
Because thoughts create the world in which we live, changing our thoughts will change our world.
In what type of world are you living? What do your thoughts tell you about this world?
Are you living in a world where you see yourself as a victor or a victim? Are you free or oppressed? An adventurer or a hermit? Do you see yourself or self-identify as a businessperson, a writer, a spouse, a parent, a child, a worker-bee, a leader, a volunteer…? On and on the list can go.
“You are not a helpless victim of your own thoughts, but rather a master of your mind.” Louise Hay
You have created the world in which you live, and you are responsible for creating the person you have become and are becoming. This is because your thoughts create your world in your mind. While others may influence it, you are free to choose these thoughts and how you see the world.
The important thing is to understand how you see yourself. How you see yourself is who you are, and it is likely how others see you.
Many years ago, I had risen through the ranks to a high-level executive position, wondering what made me different from other people. I was in a grocery store when the thought initially hit me. There was a very distinguished-looking gentleman, bagging groceries. He had been working there for some time. I thought to myself, put him in a suit, and by his looks, he would fit into any executive team anywhere. Yet there he was, bagging groceries.
Before you get too judgmental of me, I was not in any way looking down on him. I did not know a thing about his life. I did not know if he was the owner working as some owners do, although he didn’t appear to be. My only thought was due to my curiosity about why some people work for minimum wage while others make hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
“If you realized just how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought.” Anonymous
It isn’t their looks. It could be their education, yet I had known exceptions to this. Maybe it was their upbringing, having both parents at home growing up, or any of numerous other things. Yet none of these rang true. My conclusion, which has borne out many times since, was it was in their head. It was in their thoughts. It was in the way they saw themselves and others in their mind.
There may be more to it than that, yet it starts in the mind.
The way you see yourself in the world determines the course of your life. When you mix in circumstances, natural abilities, intelligence, and all the other contributors, it still rests on how we see ourselves. We will rise to the highest vision of ourselves, but likely no higher.
“We are a product of our thoughts.” Scottie Waves
Final words
I leave you with some questions to reflect on:
· How do you see the world?
· How do you see yourself in the world?
· How are your thoughts defining the world?
· How are your thoughts defining you and your life?
“When you look at the world in a narrow way, how narrow it seems! When you look at it in a mean way, how mean it is! When you look at it selfishly, how selfish it is! But when you look at it in a broad, generous, friendly spirit, what wonderful people you find in it.” Horace Rutledge
You can change your thoughts if you wish. It may take some work and some time, but it is absolutely, positively possible to do. My life benefited from the work on myself, and I have known and seen numerous others do it as well. The only thing that can keep you from changing your thoughts is you.
|
https://medium.com/illumination/what-kind-of-world-do-you-see-8737b035d1b7
|
['Bill Abbate']
|
2020-12-15 02:21:08.202000+00:00
|
['Leadership', 'Life Lessons', 'Thoughts', 'Life', 'Self Improvement']
|
How USAID is Adapting Humanitarian Programs to Respond to the Global COVID-19 Threat
|
The United States is responding to COVID-19 pandemic here at home and also supporting partner countries in their response to the disease. USAID and the State Department have pledged more than $900 million to date to combat COVID-19 in more than 120 countries around the world. This assistance will be used to care for the affected, help frontline health workers slow the spread of the disease, and equip local communities with the tools needed to fight this dangerous pathogen.
The United States is helping more than 100 countries fight this pandemic. Map credit: USAID
In addition, USAID is adapting its existing lifesaving programs to help meet the growing global COVID-19 threat. For many countries, the disease is spreading in areas already hit hard by crises, such as conflict, drought, locust swarms, and flooding. USAID’s humanitarian programs are flexible and nimble, allowing us to meet critical needs while pivoting to address new challenges caused by COVID-19. Here’s a snapshot of how we and our partners are doing that in several countries around the world.
|
https://medium.com/usaid-2030/how-usaid-is-adapting-humanitarian-programs-to-respond-to-the-global-covid-19-threat-6836df25fdc7
|
['Usaid Saves Lives']
|
2020-05-06 17:24:32.561000+00:00
|
['Global Health', 'Covid 19', 'Disaster Response', 'Humanitarian', 'World']
|
The Post Office Didn’t Sell Envelopes.
|
The Post Office Didn’t Sell Envelopes.
A visit to Atenas, Costa Rica.
Photo Credit Unsplash User Anniespratt
The iguana ate the fallen yellow flowers covering the grass. Then it nodded its head up and down, up and down, an act I was taught was an act of aggression. I decided to walk away. This bus stop was big enough for the three of us.
My friend and I were going to town to buy weed, candles, booze, and perfume that would make men want to have sex with us. We wanted to bring in the new year right. We wanted cookies, chocolate, and lovemaking. There was a pandemic, so we probably couldn’t get everything we wanted, but we could go on Tinder and dream of negative covid tests and positive sexual experiences.
A man on the side of the road tried to sell us cake.
“He knows us thick bitches want something to eat,” my friend said. I laughed. Thick bitches was right. I hadn’t fit into a size small of anything since I starved myself and all my hair fell out. Then I ate and everything grew, and my hair was once again lush, my skin overly sensitive.
We made it to town. We paid a dollar for the bus. I paid for us to get there. My friend would pay for us to come back.
Her guy was named Stryker and he was selling something called Creepy. It was supposed to be of good quality. He wanted to smoke a little in his car so she could see if it was to her liking. First, we had to go to the post office. She had to mail a letter to the United States.
We were sweating through our masks. We got to Atenas right when the post office opened, but we couldn’t go inside. Only the elderly could use the post office before 10 a.m. Besides, my friend needed an envelope for her letter.
“They don’t sell the envelopes here?” She sighed, clearly exasperated.
“I guess not.”
I thought about it. It was, perhaps, a cultural difference. In the United States, everyone was anticipating the needs of others. But it didn’t seem to be out of genuine kindness.
Nobody wanted to be wrong, to be caught off guard, to be sued. No one wanted to be accused. And so everyone tried to accommodate everyone else. On the surface, it seemed nice, but that “customer is always right” attitude seemed more like coercion than true kindness.
After all, if you’re afraid of being fired, is your smile and friendliness truly a kindness, or are you being held hostage?
“They should sell envelopes.” We walked to a nearby store to look for some. I nodded. I understood where she was coming from. But, at the same time, the post office could turn right back around and say, “you should have brought your own. We are a postal service. Not a postal products vendor.”
Both were right. You can expect others to anticipate your needs, or you can anticipate your own, or both. But whose responsibility was it?
She mailed her package. We found Stryker in the park. He was wearing a hat covered in playing cards. Aces, of course. He bragged a bit about how he was so good at online poker. She got into his car and made the transaction. I watched out for her. Then we went to a local restaurant and bought rice and beans and pupusas made with cheese. We wondered if the people in the kitchen were wearing masks, and decided they probably weren’t.
We bought chocolate from a German man who had opened a store in Atenas, and then hit up the liquor store.
“I wonder if that man holding his dick is still there,” I said out loud. He hadn’t been literally holding his dick. The first time we went to the liquor store had been at night. A beautiful man had pulled up on a dirt bike. His girlfriend had hopped off and run inside. And he stared at us, undressing us with his eyes, completely unashamed, fully aware that he was beautiful. His girlfriend came back and they rode away, leaving us in a bit of a daze.
He was not there, but we had chocolate, weed, and booze. We were almost complete.
Then we took the bus home. She paid. We were even. When we returned, the iguana was gone, as were all the yellow flowers. The bus stop was clean, as though nothing had ever been there.
|
https://medium.com/are-you-okay/the-post-office-didnt-sell-envelopes-c5dd28e1942e
|
['Lisa Martens']
|
2020-12-29 20:16:41.416000+00:00
|
['Short Story', 'Creative Writing', 'Travel', 'Fiction', 'Culture']
|
Take care of our teachers
|
Take care of our dear teachers who are trying to fight for us students.
There are too many teachers on sick leave. Teachers are once again strongly overrepresented when it comes to sick leave, according to statistics from the Swedish Social Insurance Agency.
The teachers have too poor a working environment and salary.
There are too many substitutes in our schools.
In most cases, teachers are ill due to a poor work environment and a lot of stress.
The teachers get tired, they are also people we have to give them a better working environment.
Young people he has stopped wanting to become teachers therefore we must give teachers better opportunities and attract young people to the profession.
Poor health affects not only them but students as well. One day we ONLY had substitutes, 4 substitutes in one day!
It worsens our work environment at school because most substitutes do not get any planning, so we students do not get the opportunity for so-called “guaranteed lesson time” According to the National Agency for Education
So the teachers also have difficulties with grading.
Because the substitutes are unqualified and cannot grade the students in some cases, the substitutes do not know what the students’ names are.
As a result, teachers face difficulties
Some say that teachers should stop whining because the teaching profession is the only profession where you get to summer, autumn, and winter holidays
But still, teachers have to sit and think about planning even at home, they need a better work environment, they have too much pressure!
The National Agency for Education presents that by 2030, 69 million teachers will be needed.
We must give teachers the opportunity for a good working environment and pay.
Otherwise, we children have to pay for the municipality’s savings.
I hope that the municipality takes my opinion and makes a change seriously.
Written by: Saim Muhammad
|
https://medium.com/@aeskey123/take-care-of-our-teachers-69cea3671512
|
['Khalid Muhammad']
|
2020-12-17 16:12:42.339000+00:00
|
['Student Life', 'Student Voice', 'Storytelling', 'Students', 'Teachers']
|
You’ve Been Trained to Hate Yourself
|
Society trained me to value my intellect, ignore my soul, and judge myself as unworthy.
School trained me to compare myself to others and focus on my weaknesses. There was always something that I wasn’t naturally good at. Yep, gifted and talented but remedial PE. I started believing that I was somehow lacking and that I needed to fix myself. I suspected that everyone else was doing great but that I wasn’t OK. This became my shameful secret.
This training of generations has led to an epidemic of anxiety, depression, hostility, fear, and loneliness. If you feel somehow lacking or broken, I invite you to release your Self (yes big S Self) from this social conditioning.
Everything that you need to live a life of grace, ease, abundance, peace, joy and love is trapped inside of you waiting for you to re-connect with and free your Self.
|
https://caprice.medium.com/youve-been-trained-to-hate-your-self-2647e2f13d79
|
['Caprice Thorsen']
|
2019-03-19 18:23:25.363000+00:00
|
['Education', 'Spirituality', 'Love', 'Personal Development', 'Self Improvement']
|
How to empower an e-commerce website
|
How to empower an e-commerce website
Key elements that are vital when it comes to designing a website.
Photo Credits Pexels
E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. Electronic commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. E-commerce is in turn driven by the technological advances of the semiconductor industry, and is the largest sector of the electronics industry. Copied — Wikipedia
When it comes to designing a website, the number of challenges that we face are uncountable. As a designer, it’s a challenge to cherry-pick the options that come to our mind and evaluate the most suitable designing element that would look good on the website. Following a design process will help to understand the basics. At the end of the day, it’s all about the customer’s experience and the journey, that they will remember.
The two key elements that are vital when it comes to designing a website or any application design would be,
Know who will use your website.
will use your website. Know why they will use your website.
Know your target market segment
Getting to know about the audience is really important because it will make the designer understand user requirements and the best way to approach them. When your audience is specific it helps a lot in the market research to identify and determine who your audience really is. As designers, we should always design with your audience in mind.
How to do a User Research
There are an endless number of elements of design that determine our ability to sell to our audience. First from that lineup would be,
Balance
In symmetrical balance, the visual weight is distributed evenly and it’s very pleasing to the eye as well. A balanced design feels right, stable, and aesthetically pleasing. Balancing a formation comes with both positive elements and negative space usage. Handling positive and negative space equally makes the design balance perfectly.
|
https://medium.com/design-bootcamp/how-to-empower-an-e-commerce-website-a9c9afeb6321
|
['Shyamali De Silva']
|
2020-12-10 04:38:31.667000+00:00
|
['E Commerce Website Design', 'User Research', 'User Interface', 'User Experience', 'E Commerce Business']
|
Zvox SoundBase 440 review: A disappearing breed of TV sound reinforcement
|
Zvox pioneered the soundbase, an all-in-one speaker system that sits beneath a TV, as an alternative to the more common soundbar that sits in front of a TV (or mounted on the wall beneath a TV likewise installed). Today, the Zvox SoundBase 440 is one of the few speakers of its type still on the market.
Packaged in a plain black enclosure that lights up its hidden display only when you switch settings, the SB440 is a good representative of this tech-without-clutter species. Self-starting without any fuss when it detects an incoming audio signal, this amplified speaker system is far more capable of pumping up the dynamics and fidelity of TV sound than the speakers stashed inside the typical flat-panel television. And it does its handiwork in a tidier fashion than a soundbar with a discrete subwoofer cluttering up the floor.
This review is part of TechHive’s coverage of the best soundbars, where you’ll find reviews of competing products, plus a buyer’s guide to the features you should consider when shopping for this type of product.This thing plays loud and proud, doesn’t miss much, and articulates trebly details especially well. Zvox quotes a frequency response of 50Hz-20kHz (+/- who-knows-what dB), with 45 watts of Class D amplification apportioned amongst five front-firing full-range 2-inch drivers and a down-firing 5.25-inch subwoofer in a ported enclosure. The step-up and step-down bass and treble settings are subtle, not aggressive even at the extremes. But that independently amplified sub will kick decent butt with soundtrack kabooms and music that really thumps.
Jonathan Takiff / IDG The Zvox SoundBase 440 paired amiably with my 32-inch TV, but it can also can handle larger pedestal-mount sets weighing up to 70 pounds.
The SB440’s other audible allures might be even more compelling for some. An especially effective voice clarification process called AccuVoice is Zvox’s ace in the hole—it might even be reason to upgrade to this product instead of a competitive soundbar or a 5.1-channel home theater system. Switchable output leveling is helpful for taming loud commercials, too. A sense-tricking, quasi-surround process called PhaseCue sends signals flying across a much wider sound field than you’d expect from a box measuring 28 x 14.5 x 3.5 inches (WxDxH). Lastly, its $249 list price (on sale for $199 at press time) won’t burn a major hole in your wallet.
[ Further reading: The best surge protectors for your costly electronics ]From one of many, to one of a kindZvox’s sole surviving soundbase used to have five siblings: larger and smaller one-box variants. Zvox also inspired serious competitors at retail for a spell. TV manufacturers LG, Panasonic, Pioneer, Samsung, and Vizio played in this space, as did audio-centric concerns like Cambridge Audio, Canton, Denon, JBL, Q Acoustics, and Yamaha.
Jonathan Takiff / IDG The remote isn’t backlit, but it’s easy enough to learn the button layout (not losing it in the couch cushions is a whole other matter).
But industry trackers knew the soundbase party was pretty much over when Sonos stopped manufacturing its Playbase—one of the best-reviewed of the species—just three years after its debut. (You’ll still find them at some retailers and online from Amazon, but the model is no longer touted or sold on Sonos’ own website.) Beside this Zvox, the only soundbases we’re now spotting “in stock” are cheap knockoffs from the likes of Magnasonic, Pyle, Seiki, and TimoLabs.
Mentioned in this article Sonos Playbase Read TechHive's reviewMSRP $699.00Learn moreon Sonos Who popped the balloon? Blame set makers. Starting around 2014, TV manufacturers got it into their heads to rethink the flat-screen stand—replacing the weighty and pricey pedestal base in most models with lighter, much smaller, and far less expensive support feet. The little things remind me of bird talons, but they ruined things for most soundbases because—depending on the size of the TV—they were positioned farther apart than the width of the speaker, and the speaker was usually too tall to fit beneath the TV between the feet.
If you decide to buy an SB440, make sure your TV’s feet are 27 inches apart or less (or the TV’s pedestal is 27 inches wide or less).
Breezy setupWe’ve all heard questionable claims about products that can be “up and running in 10 minutes.” I think I got this thing going in five: Make an audio cable connection (analog or digital) from the TV to the Zvox box. Plug in the power line. Flip the rear-panel power switch. Tap a button on the credit-card sized remote. Done!
That said, there is some heavy lifting to be done. The SoundBase SB440 itself weighs a hefty 15.3 pounds, its enclosure being crafted from MDF to both reduce cabinet resonance and to support the weight of a 55-inch or smaller TV weighing up to 70 pounds (you’ll need to lift that, too, of course). I paired the speaker with a 32-inch Vizio plasma first, and then a 55-inch Panasonic plasma.
Jonathan Takiff / IDG The rear panel assumes you’ll be using your TV’s HDMI connections for switching video sources.
I used a Toslink optical cable in both cases, but a coaxial input is also available. You can use both to connect the speaker to independent sources, but one of those sources must be powered off for the other to function properly. You’ll also find two sets of analog stereo inputs (RCA), but that’s it—there’s no HDMI, headphone jack, or Bluetooth for wireless connections. But the jack pack is sufficient if your important A/V products are plugged directly into the TV’s HDMI inputs. And honestly, the core users of this rig probably have simple, straightforward needs—they just want to enjoy the dialogue, scoring, and sound effects better. They want a more theatrical movie experience, and this speaker will deliver.
The SB440 movie/TV experienceThe Zvox paired well with both of my TVs, but my experience with the bigger screen was best. Positioned halfway along the long wall in my 21 x 13-foot family room, Zvox’s PhaseCue virtual-surround processing directed the audio outwards, almost to both ends of the room, whilst also pushed the sonic commotion forward a bit into the living space during moments with serious surround effects on the soundtrack. Zvox does deploy licensed Dolby Digital processing with its PhaseCue. The latter works a timing/location number on the brain by blending opposite channel info, out-of-phase, into the left and right speaker presentations while also delivering blended left-plus-right channel info to the center speaker array. The trickery is best appreciated sitting dead center in the sweet spot.
For better and worse, some form of signal processing is always going on in this sound maker—either PhaseCue or AccuVoice. Product literature says the most basic surround mode (labeled “Sd 1” on the light-up front display) offers “low surround effect and strong vocals.” “Sd 2” brings “moderate virtual surround effect and moderate vocals.” And “Sd 3” lays on the “strongest virtual surround effect and moderate vocals for watching films and sporting events.”
Jonathan Takiff / IDG The front panel function display hides behind the metal grill, lighting up only when necessary.
I’ve mostly gravitated to level two for TV shows and music. But I switched to Sd 3 for season four of Netflix’s The Crown to bathe in its big-budget musical scoring (orchestral pomp and circumstance by Martin Phipps, plus Rock of the 80s) and serious sound effects: Flyovers of private planes, the rumblings of tony British automobiles, and rain drops tapping on British-tiled rooftops and hunting grounds.
Mentioned in this article Zvox AccuVoice AV157 Read TechHive's reviewSee it The curled-tongue royal accents on the show’s soundtrack (especially that of the Prince Philip character, played by Tobias Menzies) provided an apt test of Zvox’s AccuVoice processing as well. There are just two settings for that on this speaker—on or off—but I found the dialogue hard to fathom without it.
Listeners suffering from extreme hearing loss, however, will want to consider the Zvox AV157 soundbar I reviewed earlier, since that speaker’s AccuVoice implementation was fine-tuned by hearing-aid specialists and offers 12 levels of dialogue enhancement. Zvox tells me AccuVoice on the SB440 is on par with AccuVoice level one in some of its other speakers.
The SB440 music experienceWhile listening to music, I found myself wishing for some way to shut off all the SoundBase 440’s TV/film-centric sound processing. I brought in the tunes by Chromecasting from the Napster and Qobuz streaming services on my iPhone 12 Pro to a TiVo Stream 4K media dongle plugged into the TV. The audio signal then passed out of the telly to the optical Toslink port on the SB440.
Opting for a selection of all things UK music, too, I got reasonable satisfaction from rhythm-minded folk/pop superstar Ed Sheeran (showcasing well on “Castle on the Hill”), the jazz-tronica hipsters Go Go Penguin, and the eternal kings of the British Invasion—still hitting the mark with remastered renderings of “Come Together” and “Hey Jude.”
On the downside, I sometimes felt the urge to fuss with tone controls when shifting from artist to artist and even track-to-track, because the music kept getting thrown off balance, either by the phase shifting or the AccuVoice frequency emphasis. Sheeran’s Afro-beat “Photography” sounded liveliest with Sd 3, bass at plus-3, and treble at plus-1. But on a remastered take of the Beatles’ “In My Life,” those settings corroded the track’s lilting charm, it made the music too hard-edged and brittle. I had to downshift to Sd2, kick up the bass to plus-4, and drop the treble to minus-1 to make it better, better, better.
Bottom linePerhaps I protest too much. The clock is running out on the soundbase species, and Zvox isn’t about to overhaul its SoundBase 440. If its form factor fits your needs and its audio performance floats your boat, be grateful it’s still being made.
Corrected shortly after publication to correct an error introduced during editing related to the driver orientation.
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.
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https://medium.com/@evy78624908/zvox-soundbase-440-review-a-disappearing-breed-of-tv-sound-reinforcement-fd476060b4ab
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[]
|
2020-12-25 02:38:32.879000+00:00
|
['Services', 'Surveillance', 'Cord', 'Chromecast']
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FILM REVIEW: Robert Yapkowitz’s & Richard Peete’s Intimate Film Portrait of Karen Dalton
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Been a long time since this reviewer was mesmerized by a music documentary. Eyes, ears and gut — the latter the core of my being for processing the conscious and the unconscious — locked on to IN MY OWN TIME several minutes into the film. I was swept away in a time warp of a mind-body-soul experience subliminally recalling the good, the bad, the beautiful and the excess of the 60s via a compelling cinematic portrait of an extraordinary artiste.
I think it was because of her voice. I haven’t had a music-doc bring about a mind-body-soul experience in a long time.
IN MY OWN TIME is soulfully poignant. The filmmakers fuse selections of contemporary and archival interviews, footage, stills, and audio — as well as Jordon’s poems and personal journals — into a narrative that I imagine lots of sexagenarians, septuagenarians and octogenarians may think are best vividly attainable only through favorite hallucinogens. But the filmmakers’ contemporary interviews, such as that of Jordon’s daughter, are also compelling.
Audiences should be aware of the following. When I felt look-away-moments getting ready to sure, those bitter-sweet nostalgias about a soul or souls in pain, brought on by stellar filmmaking, I couldn’t look away. There are lots of moments to sigh in this film. The film experience was that moving.
“Karen Dalton is often championed as one of the most unique and influential folk musicians to come out of the 1960’s Greenwich Village scene.” I grew up in Chicago with blues, jazz, pop and some rock, and became introduced to folk, more rock and other genres when I was a student at Cornell University, there via a basketball scholarship. For example, that’s where Gregg Morris from the South Side of Chicago was introduced to Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and others — and hooked for life. I knew nothing about Karen Dalton until DOC NYC pitched an offer that I was inadvertently lucky not to refuse.
I’m on a deadline in play, so I curated from the filmmakers production material that corresponded to notes I took and what I wanted to write if I had more time.
IN MY OWN TIME explores Dalton’s early days in Oklahoma where she experienced the harsh realities of growing up during the Great Depression and follows her through more than two decades at the margins of popular music. With two ex-husbands and two children by the time she was eighteen, she rejected the life of a housewife and set off for New York City. What I really liked about this film is that it’s intensely melodic throughout, like one marvelous, intricate, intense music video.
That’s unbelievable good fortune for someone like this writer who was unaware that Karen Dalton had ever walked this earth. One can really learned the music of an artist — or at least get an introduction — by just watching a documentary of the artist.
Dalton, say the filmmakers, is often championed as one of the most unique and influential folk musicians to come out of the 1960’s Greenwich Village scene. The following captures the spirit of the glum shadow in bold face throughout the movie: The haunting, plaintive trill of Dalton’s voice did not bring her commercial success that the filmmakers say she was due. There are many references to her starving and being dirt-poor-broke. KD was a queen of starving artists on the vine.
“While she left a trail of myth and awe in her wake, she also struggled to come to terms with the demands of recording, performing and the responsibilities of motherhood, all of which drove her deeper into an existential tail spin from which she never recovered” — the filmmakaers.
“While her audience has widened, the fragments of her life have been vanishing just as quickly. In 2018 a fire tragically destroyed all that remained in Karen’s personal archive, including her personal journals, poetry and handwritten collection of songs. Beyond the powerful story we are telling, this film seeks to document these vanishing fragments.”
|
https://medium.com/@theword-hc/film-review-robert-yapkowitzs-richard-peete-s-intimate-film-portrait-of-karen-dalton-94c65e314752
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['Greggory W. Morris']
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2020-12-12 16:34:41.665000+00:00
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['Folk Music', 'Doc Nyc 2020', 'Karen Dalton', 'The 60s', 'Film Reviews']
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Development Update — May 17, 2018
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Although sometimes we seem a bit quiet, our awesome team is working hard to build and improve our products looking to make a solid release.
Take a look at the latest updates:
We finished the new design of our website, which now focuses on the company and the products we are building. The current one focus on the token sale. The implementation will start next week.
We redesigned the whole exchange credentials setup in the app. We also made some experiments trying to find out the best approach. Finally, we ended with a solution that will make the setup even easier and safer.
We are making slight changes to the mobile app design (typography, alignments, etc.) to make it more readable and accessible on all devices.
Since we are not a company of a single app, we decided to design a brand new logo for our Trading Assistant app. It’s really cool! You can check it on the linked post.
We hired two new developers to work full-time on our core products in addition to 1 part-time freelancer to help us in some adjacent systems. We are still interviewing a couple of candidates to fill the last position, which we expect to happen in a few days.
We built a new library/package which will help us connect with many exchanges in a standardized way. It’s now easier to integrate new exchanges into our product suite; Bittrex, Poloniex, and Binance integrations are already incorporated into this package, and more exchanges are coming. This will also be our first open source contribution. We are very excited to contribute with new stuff!
We started the refactoring of our candlestick constructor, which is an essential tool to generate signals.
We did some refactoring on our internal backtest tool. Now it’s easier to backtest the new strategies we are building.
Speaking of which, we now have a dedicated Technical Analyst working with us! His job is to create and validate new strategies to be implemented on our platform. We will soon introduce him to our community.
We are also refactoring some parts of the mobile app in order to improve the overall performance and error reporting. We’ve achieved good results so far.
We started the discussion about some improvements on our order monitor bot to better communicate with exchanges’ API limits. The new approach will drastically reduce the number of requests, which will also make our system work smoother.
We are also evolving with some other cool stuff that we expect to announce in a couple of weeks.
|
https://medium.com/smarttaylor/development-update-may-17-2018-3df8caf78b4c
|
['Thiago Régis']
|
2018-05-17 21:06:43.683000+00:00
|
['Crypto Trading', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Blockchain']
|
JavaScript ES6 Modules Explained With Examples
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JavaScript ES6 Modules Explained With Examples
Photo by Arnold Francisca on Unsplash
Introduction
Nowadays, we can’t imagine the web without JavaScript. Some websites are built almost entirely with this amazing language. In order to make JavaScript more modular, clean, and maintainable, ES6 introduced a way to easily share code among JavaScript files. This involves using modules to export parts of a file for use in one or more other files and import the parts you need, where you need them.
In this article, we will learn about ES6 modules in JavaScript with some practical examples. Let’s get right into it.
What are the ES6 modules?
Modules let us split our codebase into multiple files for more maintainability and this lets us avoid putting all of our code in one big file.
In order to take advantage of this functionality, you need to create a script in your HTML document with a type of module .
Here is an example:
<script type="module" src="filename.js"></script>
A script that uses this module type can now use the import and export features.
Use export to share a code block
Let’s say you have a block of code in a file called index.js for example and you want to use that specific block of code in several different files. You can achieve that by exporting that block of code, then importing it to other files.
Have a look at the example below where we exported the function multiply :
export const multiply = (x, y) => {
return x * y;
}
You can also achieve the same thing with the example below:
const multiply = (x, y) => {
return x * y;
}
export { multiply };
When you export a variable or function, you can import it into another file and use it without having to rewrite the code. You can export multiple things by repeating the first example for each thing you want to export, or by placing them all in the export statement of the second example, like this:
export { multiply, add };
Reuse JavaScript code using import
Let’s say you want to import the multiply function from the file index.js to another file called app.js in order to use it. You can achieve that by writing the code below in the file app.js :
import { multiply } from './index.js';
Now you can use and call the function multiply in the file app.js without writing the code for it.
Suppose you have a file and you wish to import all of its contents into the current file. This can be done with the import * as syntax.
Here is an example where all the content of the file index.js is imported into a file in the same directory:
import * as myMathModule from "./index.js";
The above statement will create an object called myMathModule . This is just a variable name, you can name it anything. So now you can access the functions inside the file as you would do with any other object property.
Here’s how you can use the multiply function inside the file by accessing myMathModule :
myMathModule.add(2,3);
Export default
You can use the export default only if one value or one function is being exported from a file.
Here is an example:
// named function
export default function multiply(x, y) {
return x * y;
}
// anonymous function
export default function(x, y) {
return x * y;
}
Import a default export
You can import a default export by simply using import syntax.
Here is an example of importing a default export from the file index.js :
import multiply from "./index.js";
As you can see above, multiply is not surrounded by curly braces {} . multiply here is simply a variable name for whatever the default export of the file index.js is. You can use any name here when importing a default export.
Conclusion
As you can see, ES6 modules in JavaScript allow you to export and import your JavaScript code in different files. This is useful to break up your code into smaller grained files which saves time and makes your code cleaner.
Thank you for reading this article, I hope you found it useful. If so, get more similar content by subscribing to our YouTube channel!
More Reading
|
https://javascript.plainenglish.io/javascript-es6-modules-explained-with-examples-3a85e693d56e
|
['Mehdi Aoussiad']
|
2020-12-22 20:58:22.002000+00:00
|
['Javascript Tips', 'Coding', 'JavaScript', 'Web Development', 'Programming']
|
Making a Money-Back Guarantee Your Cheap WordPress Hosting Comparisons
|
There are many hosting companies that offer cheap WordPress hosting comparison. These companies provide cheap WordPress hosting services where you can choose any of the available WordPress accounts that they have on their list. You might find that the host has been providing you cheap hosting services for a long time now and this is because they are well known in the market and their business is stable. Many people do not want to use the cheap hosting services because they think that they will get the worst performance from the company but that is not true at all.
You need to make sure that you have the best quality when it comes to hosting services. Your website will be responsible for bringing traffic to your site so you should ensure that you get cheap hosting plan with best quality. One of the things that you need to check out is the price rates that the hosting company is charging you. Most companies offer various price rates for their plans so you need to make sure that you have chosen the right one for your business. If you choose the wrong service provider, you might face some problems.
In the past, there were a lot of web hosting providers who were charging the regular price rates for their services but today the situation has changed. The price rates have decreased significantly because the competition in the web hosting industry has increased. The WordPress hosting is gaining more popularity because it has the most features and the most efficient website management tools. This means that if you want to attract more visitors to your website, you should definitely go for a WordPress account.
There are a lot of people who think that they should go for shared hosting services but in reality, these kinds of hosts are quite expensive. If you are planning to build a WordPress website, you should know that it will require quite a large amount of space from your server. If you have a limited amount of space and you do not want to take up a lot of space, you should choose dedicated hosting instead. A shared host may be inexpensive but the problem that you will face after using this kind of hosting is limited resources and slow loading.
Another important feature that you should look for in a hosting company is the control panel. Cheap WordPress hosts often offer a limited control panel with limited options. When you are choosing the control panel, you should always make sure that you are getting the highest quality of hosting plan. The best feature to look for in a control panel is IP address block. You should also check out the Bandwidth option which allows you to choose a limit on how much bandwidth you want to use during your website’s lifetime.
Although there are a lot of cheap WordPress hosting plans available in the market, only a few of them will provide you with excellent features at affordable prices. In fact, cheap WordPress hosting comes at a high price because you will be paying for a limited amount of bandwidth and other features. It will be better if you can find a hosting provider that offers you a good deal on bandwidth and then gives you lots of other features along with it at a low price. If you think that you are getting an affordable hosting plan, you should always look for money-back guarantees to make sure that you are not being scammed.
|
https://medium.com/@danishjdesai/making-a-money-back-guarantee-your-cheap-wordpress-hosting-comparisons-ce4b1176bb1f
|
['Danish Jainuddin Desai']
|
2020-12-18 04:28:34.502000+00:00
|
['Blogging', 'Cheap Hosting', 'Cheap', 'Hosting', 'WordPress']
|
Alibaba Cloud Launches the Cloud-Native DevOps Solution: Entering the Era of Cloud R&D
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By the Alibaba Apsara DevOps Team
On October 21, 2020, the Alibaba Cloud Apsara DevOps Team and the Cloud-Native Team held a cloud announcement conference to announce “the cloud-native DevOps solution.” This conference launched the cloud-native DevOps solution and its typical application scenarios based on Alibaba’s best R&D practices.
Challenges for Developers in the Cloud R&D Era
Zhang Yu, a Senior Solution Architect at Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, pointed out that we are in the era of cloud R&D, and summarized three “requirements” in the cloud R&D era. First, the IT infrastructure needs to be reliable, low-cost, and highly elastic. Second, the services provided to users need to be stable, secure, and high-performance. Third, software delivery must be continuous, fast, high-quality, and low-risk.
There is a Chinese saying, “ideas are very plump, but the reality is very bony.” Contrary to the preceding “ideal state,” software developers face many challenges in the cloud R&D era.
The first challenge is the increasing cost of the IT infrastructure. In the initial period of an enterprise, it may only take a few servers to meet its business requirements. However, as the business develops and the user scale expands, it may take several rows of cabinets or a data center to meet its requirements. Moreover, the growth rate of IT infrastructure cost is often greater than the growth rate of business scale, which makes developers feel that the cost of the infrastructure is getting higher.
The second challenge is that applications face the issues of “failed launches, frequent errors, and long duration.” The preceding figure shows the launch progress of Application A and Application B for six months. The vertical axis indicates the time for launching an application, and the horizontal axis indicates the launch date. Each green dot indicates a successful launch, and each red dot indicates a failed launch. We can see that Application A was launched 13 times in half a year, but seven times were HotFix launches with emergency bug fixes. Moreover, the launch duration varies significantly, from minutes to days. Application B was launched frequently, but the success rate was less than 30%. Each launch duration was longer than 24 hours, but in some cases, it was not launched for several days.
The third challenge is that less time is spent on the development of new functions. In the early stage of software development, almost all our manpower can be used for software development. However, with the richness of application functions, more manpower is used for the maintenance of existing functions, and there is little time for new function development.
The Cloud-Native Continuous Delivery Practices Are Necessary in the Cloud R&D Era
How should we approach the cloud R&D era? We need cloud-native continuous delivery practices, including cloud-native infrastructures, end-to-end continuous delivery pipelines, premium quality protection, and a low cost, efficient service governance system.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the adoption of standardized containers established a set of standardized transportation systems. This effectively reduces the cost of transporting goods, and ultimately promotes economic globalization. Traditional “containers” used in shipping and virtual “containers” used in cloud-native technologies have something in common. Zhang Yu said, “The cloud-native infrastructure has two characteristics: “immutability” and “standardization.” The “immutability” can be used to eliminate uncertainty caused by inconsistency and reduce the risk of inconsistency. This can reduce the maintenance costs. The “standardization” can be used to simplify deployment and lower environment maintenance, toolchain development, and learning costs.”
A standard end-to-end continuous delivery pipeline consists of requirements analysis, code submission, construction, integration verification, pre-launch, and online. It needs to be describable, observable, and automated.
With the “cloud-native infrastructure” and “end-to-end continuous delivery pipeline” in place, the “premium quality protection” is also needed to improve the quality of software launches. Quality protection is a matter for all people in the development, testing, and operation and maintenance fields. Everyone is in the same boat. Working together and helping one another ensures the high-quality delivery of software.
Finally, we need a low-cost and efficient service governance system. When a microservice is launched, the service platform provides a series of service governance systems, including gateways, service monitoring, and auto scaling. This allows developers to focus solely on code development without worrying too much about service governance.
The Launch of Alibaba Cloud’s Cloud-Native DevOps Solution
To help more enterprises and developers enjoy the R&D benefits of technology upgrading with high quality and low-cost, the Apsara DevOps Team worked with the Cloud-Native Team to build an all-in-one cloud-native DevOps solution. DevOps can easily cope with scenarios, such as general Kubernetes scenarios, Spring Cloud or Dubbo microservice scenarios, and lightweight Function Compute (FC) scenarios.
As shown in the preceding figure, the “Apsara DevOps kanban” is at the top left. Product managers can use it to manage requirements. After “requirements” are clarified and planned, they are split into “tasks” and allocated to a team or a developer for “execution.” During the development process, developers use the Apsara DevOps code management platform to create feature change branches. When the code is submitted, the feature branch listener will be triggered. During this period, Apsara DevOps automatically scans and reviews code and scans security. After the code is developed, developers can use the DevOps pipeline to perform operations, such as compilation, development verification, online review, production, and launch. The pipeline depends on multiple Alibaba Cloud services. For example, the pipeline relies on “mirror service” during compilation. In the development verification, production launch, and other links, it relies on Alibaba Cloud Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK) cluster services. After the application is officially launched, it depends on microservice governance services, including configuration center, service monitoring, and capacity adjustment. All of this information will eventually be fed back to developers through DingTalk and other means. When an issue occurs, it is reflected in the form of a “defect” in the Apsara DevOps kanban.
In summary, the DevOps cloud-native continuous delivery solution consists of four aspects: First, the cloud-native infrastructure supports ACK, Function Compute, and Serverless App Engine (SAE). Second, the end-to-end continuous delivery pipeline is realized through the kanban, code management platform, and pipeline of Apsara DevOps. Third, through the automatic scanning of its code management and the detection and verification of its pipeline, premium quality protection can be achieved. Fourth, the microservice governance of Alibaba Cloud has achieved a low-cost, high-quality service governance system.
Typical Scenarios of Apsara DevOps
The Apsara DevOps solution applies to three scenarios: the continuous delivery of Function Compute, continuous microservice delivery, and general-purpose cloud-native continuous delivery.
The continuous delivery of “Apsara DevOps + Function Compute” is more suitable for start-up teams with fewer developers. Since their businesses are often in the rapid verification and development stage, they hope their businesses can be launched and updated quickly, and they do not need to be concerned about their work outside the business.
This “continuous delivery scenario of Function Compute” has three advantages: First, developers can focus on business logic development. They do not need to pay attention to underlying details, resource conditions, service maintenance, and governance. Second, we need to pay for the resources that our services use. We need to reduce resource costs and bring our services online in a matter of minutes. Third, the entire R&D process is based on the Apsara DevOps platform, which provides automatic security guarding. The operating environment is stable, based on the infrastructure provided by Alibaba Cloud, and has undergone large-scale commercial practices. The function platform features high elasticity and can easily cope with sudden business traffic bursts.
For small and medium-sized developer teams that have adopted or are preparing to adopt microservice architectures, the continuous delivery method of “Apsara DevOps + SAE” is recommended. This kind of “continuous microservice delivery” has the following characteristics: First, SAE is deeply integrated with microservice frameworks, such as Spring Cloud and Dubbo, and the built-in micro service governance capability can effectively reduce the cost of using microservices. Second, the second-level elastic scaling capability enables fast service scaling and high elasticity. The service can cope with traffic bursts and ensure service stability. Third, the built-in microservice launch and O & M capabilities can effectively improve the efficiency of microservice testing, launch, and operation and maintenance.
Medium or large R&D teams, which have their own service governance systems and are expected to have sufficient R&D flexibility and enjoy the technical benefits of cloud-native and continuous delivery, can use the “general cloud-native continuous delivery” solution. What are the advantages of this delivery method? First, Apsara DevOps provides an all-in-one research and development process support from requirements to online operation and maintenance. Second, Apsara DevOps provides end-to-end security protection from the infrastructure to the DevOps toolchain. Third, it is deeply integrated with the Alibaba Cloud infrastructure and cloud services with the characteristics of no hosting and high performance. Meanwhile, the Alibaba Cloud infrastructure fully complies with the Kubernetes (k8s) open-source standards, so migration costs are saved.
Alibaba Cloud Apsara DevOps has served thousands of enterprises and millions of developers. It has helped many enterprises successfully complete the DevOps transformation, including ZhongAn Insurance, China Everbright Bank, Tianhong Asset Management, China Southern Airlines, SAIC-GM, Bank of Nanjing, Vanke, Cathay Insurance, Shanghai Boka, and Shijiazhuang Ai-mobile. With the launch of this cloud-native DevOps solution, Apsara DevOps hopes to help more enterprises move into the cloud R&D era through the DevOps transformation process.
Original Source:
|
https://medium.com/@alibaba-cloud/alibaba-cloud-launches-the-cloud-native-devops-solution-entering-the-era-of-cloud-r-d-8f9a97319df2
|
['Alibaba Cloud']
|
2020-12-24 07:09:50.663000+00:00
|
['Kubernetes', 'Alibabacloud', 'DevOps', 'Security', 'Microservices']
|
How Shopify Users Are Making Millions
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How Shopify Users Are Making Millions
They follow a series of three simple steps.
Photo by Roberto Cortese
In recent years, the use of e-commerce has skyrocketed. More people than ever before are choosing to forgo the mall and shop solely online for everything from clothes and shoes to tech gadgets and even groceries.
Some e-commerce websites have become household names, such as Amazon and eBay. Outside of them, there were few trusted platforms for online resale.
Then, in came Shopify.
What is Shopify?
It’s essentially a platform that allows people to create their own online businesses. People can sell whatever they’d like using the Shopify platform, and Shopify takes care of all the logistics behind the scenes, like processing payments and creating the storefront.
Here’s the catch
Having a store isn’t free. There is a monthly store fee, as well as a small processing fee for each purchase a customer makes.
However, in contrast to selling on sites such as eBay, Shopify does not charge any other selling fees. What that means is a lot more profit is going straight into your pocket when you make a sale.
Even better, your Shopify store can be made completely your own, as you can customize it in any way you’d like.
So, how are people making thousands, or even MILLIONS of dollars by selling through Shopify? By following a very simple series of steps — three to be exact.
1. They buy inventory
No matter what business venture you choose to take on, you have to find great products that will sell well. If you fill your store with products that are of low demand, then you won’t make very many sales. Selling on Shopify is no different.
So, what do the Shopify pros do? They research.
The successful Shopify owners who are bringing in thousands in sales each month are constantly researching new products to add to their stores.
They look for products that are trending and in high demand. They focus on finding unique products that many people want to buy, and they list those items in their store to attract a large number of customers.
Photo by Clark Street Mercantile
2. They advertise
Next, they do their own advertising to allow customers to find their stores and buy their products. Unlike sites like eBay, where there are already millions of customers who can easily search for and stumble upon any eBay seller’s listings, Shopify stores are all unique.
Thus, you have to advertise your website and attract customers yourself.
The successful Shopify store owners are doing this in a variety of ways. The most common way is by using social media platforms to advertise products, such as Facebook and Instagram.
No matter what platform you choose, the advertisements will only succeed when you target a specific audience.
For example, a Shopify store that sells a variety of t-shirts with dogs on them should include specific keywords and tags in their ads that allow dog enthusiasts to find their products.
Photo by William Iven
3. They re-invest
Finally, Shopify owners re-invest in their businesses. The only way to grow a store is by adding more inventory to it. Obviously, this requires more money invested. So, the fastest way to expand is by putting almost all the profit made back into the business.
Having a greater variety of items gives shop owners the ability to reach a wider audience, which leads to more potential customers and sales.
Now, this may seem risky, but if you are quickly turning a profit, then your store is probably already succeeding. Why not build upon that momentum?
Photo by Pepi Stojanovski
All in all, Shopify is changing the world of e-commerce.
People are quickly and easily starting their own online businesses with the click of a button.
There are already over one million users, some of which have experienced immediate success. If you are interested in entering the world of e-commerce, Shopify may be just the platform you need to get started.
|
https://medium.com/build-something-cool/how-shopify-users-are-making-millions-575de9eeb008
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['Alyssa Atkinson']
|
2020-06-08 12:00:07.756000+00:00
|
['Tech', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Startup', 'Money', 'Business']
|
VOSTFR-HD: Two by Two: Overboard! [2020] Streaming Vf en France
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Le jeune Nestrian Finny et sa meilleure compagne Leah, une Grymp, tombent accidentellement de l’Arche et sont sont séparés par une tempête… De nouvelles aventures périlleuses les attendent, mais aussi plein de rencontres extraordinaires… et inattendues!
Sortie: 2020–09–24
Durée: 81 minutes
Genre: Aventure, Animation, Comédie, Familial
Etoiles: Max Carolan, Dermot Magennis, Ava Connolly, Tara Flynn, Mary Murray
Directeur: Toby Genkel, Richie Conroy, Mark Hodkinson, Sean McCormack
Année de production 2020
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La Two by Two: Overboard! se déroule quatre ans après Train to Busan, alors que les personnages se battent pour fuir un pays en ruine à la suite d’un désastre sans précédent.
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Le film est une œuvre d’art sous la forme d’une série d’images en direct qui sont tournées pour produire une illusion d’images en mouvement qui sont présentées comme une forme de divertissement. L’illusion d’une série d’images produit un mouvement continu sous forme de vidéo. Le film est souvent appelé film ou image animée. Le film est une forme d’art moderne et populaire créée à des fins commerciales et de divertissement. Le cinéma est devenu une industrie populaire dans le monde entier, où les longs métrages sont toujours attendus par les cinémas.
Les films sont réalisés de film manières principales. La première consiste à utiliser des techniques de prise de vue et d’enregistrement à l’aide de caméras argentiques. Cette méthode se fait en photographiant des images ou des objets. Le second utilise des techniques d’animation traditionnelles. Cette méthode est effectuée grâce à des techniques d’animation graphique ou CGI. Les film peuvent également être combinés avec d’autres techniques et effets visuels. Le tournage prend généralement un temps relativement long. Cela nécessite également un pupitre de travail chacun, à partir du réalisateur, producteur, monteur, garde-robe, effets visuels et autres.
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On Friday, four days before the US presidential election, the United States recorded 100,000 new cases of Covid-19. This figure recorded the highest increase in cases of corona virus in a day worldwide.
In total, the United States has suffered 9 million cases of Covid-19 as of Friday, or nearly 3% of the population with nearly 229,000 deaths since the pandemic outbreak earlier this year, according to a Reuters report, October 31, 2020.
US health authorities on Friday confirmed that 100,233 people have tested positive for Covid-19 over the past 24 hours.
Friday’s tally set the highest daily Covid-19 record in the US for the fifth time in 10 days, surpassing the previous day’s highest daily spike of 91,248 new cases.
The report also represents the world’s highest national daily casualty toll during the pandemic, surpassing India’s record 24-hour spike in daily cases of 97,894 recorded in September.
On Friday dozens of states individually reported a record number of new daily cases.
Serious cases of Covid-19 are also on the rise, as hospitals in six states report having the most patients with the disease since the pandemic began. The number of Covid-19 patients hospitalized has increased by more than 50% in October to 46,000, the highest since mid-August.
Among the states hardest hit were the states most contested in the campaign between Republican President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden, namely Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
More than 1,000 people died from the virus on Thursday, the third time the daily death toll has exceeded that this month, and the death rate is expected to continue rising. Covid-19 claimed at least 926 more deaths as of Friday.
The University of Washington’s latest prediction model projects the death toll, which had held at a monthly pace of more than 22,000 for most of October, will start climbing next month towards a new record of more than 72,000 in January.
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation’s January projection would surpass the nearly 61,000 deaths in April when the pandemic first exploded in the United States and flooded New York City hospitals.
Joe Biden and his Democrats in Congress have criticized President Trump for handling his health crisis.
In the US House of Representatives, Democrats released a report on Friday condemning the Trump administration’s pandemic response as “one of the worst leadership failures in American history”.
“At least 6 million Americans have fallen into poverty and millions more are unemployed,” the report said.
The 71-page interim report by Democrat staff from the House Election Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis also said investigators identified more than 60 instances in which Trump administration officials rejected or overruled top scientist advice to advance the president’s political interests.
“The government’s response to this economic crisis has benefited large corporations and wealthy Americans, while leaving behind many disadvantaged communities and struggling small businesses,” the report said.
After being hospitalized for Covid-19 in early October, Trump continued a massive campaign that drew thousands of supporters who gathered and many were not wearing masks. The Trump campaign says rallies are safe and that masks and social distancing are respected.
A CNN investigation found that 14 of the 17 states surveyed showed an increase in the rate of Covid-19 cases only one month after hosting a Donald Trump campaign event.
|
https://medium.com/@wawamertu/vostfr-hd-two-by-two-overboard-2020-streaming-vf-en-france-bcf0e33e8a4b
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[]
|
2020-12-17 19:50:57.541000+00:00
|
['France', 'Canada', 'Germany', 'Online']
|
Gratitude as a Job Search Strategy
|
Picture this: you're sitting around a crowded table about to dig into a Thanksgiving feast and, as you go to take that first delicious bite — a relative asks everyone to go around the table and say what you are the most thankful for this year. This scene in 2020 was likely a bit less crowded than years past or perhaps occurred over Zoom entirely, and the gratitudes voiced, for those lucky enough for it to be true, likely centered on health and support, but the tradition remained. Unfortunately for many, this is the only time all year that they will speak their gratitude.
But what if vocalizing gratitude was more than a once-a-year coerced in exchange for turkey ritual, and rather a strategy, not just for a more fulfilling life, but to land the job you really want? Practicing gratitude consistently — and not just the fourth Thursday of November — is a winning way to gain clarity in your job search and re-establish connections that can both help you discover opportunities and provide a fresh perspective in your search.
As I wrote in 101 Interviews in 2020, my mindset was foundational to enabling my 7+ month job search during a global pandemic to be more productive and sustainable than scattered and hopeless. In addition to meditation and letting yourself actually feel emotions, I wrote about my version of a daily gratitude practice — simply writing down 5 things I’m thankful for as I eat breakfast with a conscious attempt to not repeat one from yesterday. Although this basic morning practice has transformed my mood and something I recommend to anyone that will listen— it’s not the type of gratitude practice that serves as a job search strategy.
Rather, gratitude as a job search strategy involves understanding the gap between your vision for your next role with what you’re grateful for and looking to those in your network that can help fill that gap.
Let’s break that down step-by-step because this is likely both a new way of practicing gratitude and a new way of thinking about your job search.
FIRST, MAP OUT THE QUALITIES OF YOUR IDEAL ROLE
To start, I encourage you to spend the time and energy establishing clarity in what you want in your next role. There are many ways to gain clarity on your vision for your next role depending on how you best generate ideas but, for me, writing is how I make sense of my thoughts. For those that also gain clarity with writing, I recommend setting a timer for no more than 20 minutes and picking a prompt to generate ideas for your ideal role — I’ve included a few of my favorites below:
What aspects of past roles did I find most fulfilling?
What aspects of past roles filled me with dread?
When has work not felt like work and why?
What do I value most in a job? What do I value most in a company?
Who do I most admire professionally and why?
After processing what you want most in your next role, the end product of this clarity work is what I call a Vision List complete with 5–10 items that summarize what you’re looking most for in your next role.
THEN — MAP OUT WHAT YOUR MOST GRATEFUL FOR IN RELATION TO YOUR IDEAL QUALITIES
For every item on your vision list, think of at least two things that you’re thankful for that relate to what you want. It’s difficult to describe this exercise in the written form without some consultation or live explanation but I’ll try my best: In my example on the left, my #1 item on my Vision List was to work at a mission-driven company. To connect gratitude to this idea, I asked myself questions like: why is that so important to me? Have I experienced that in my past? And most importantly, what am I thankful for that allows me to prioritize this idea as my most sought after quality in my next role? I very quickly came up with two distinct ideas:
I am thankful to have worked at a company in the past that gave me a real taste of what mission-driven means.
I am thankful to know of a few founders that made their mission core to growth and by following them, I see the value of being mission-driven.
CLOSE THE GAP BETWEEN YOUR GRATITUDE AND YOUR VISION LIST WITH OUTREACH TO A FEW HUMANS
You’ll find by reading my other articles that my job search strategies center on the power of human connection. So naturally, after you’re clear on what you want by creating your Vision List and what you’re grateful for that connects to that Vision List — the last step is to brainstorm and reach out to who you know — or know of — that can help close the gap by sharing with them both what you're grateful for, why you thought of them and what you’re looking for next. To build on my example, I reached out to the founder of a mission-driven company I had worked for previously and two early-stage founders, one I knew well and the other a more distant connection, that are both building companies that I believe have a strong mission and are making a real impact.
The way by which you reach out and the words you use shouldn’t be prescriptive so for this strategy, I won’t give you a template because templatizing outreach rooted in gratitude defeats the purpose. The words you use and the way you say or send them should be both authentic to your gratitude and connected to what you’re looking for in a role.
Sometimes you’ll get a timely response, likely from those closest to you that you’ve reached out to, but more often than not you won’t hear back. First, recognize that this silence likely has nothing to do with you or your message but rather the circumstance of the busy lives we all leave. After a few days, muster the courage to follow-up by respectfully reinforcing your message and ensuring that whatever you’re asking is crystal clear.
Don’t be mistaken — this is as much a job search strategy as a therapeutic exercise and even with no response, which happens, especially if the person you’re reaching out to is as busy or high profile as Whitney Wolfe Herde (if you’re reading this — let’s talk). This exercise of gaining clarity in what you want, being intentional of what you’re thankful for that connects to your vision and reaching out to people that can help close the gap to getting what you want in your next role serves you well, even without a perfect response rate. This exercise will open you up to new possibilities and inject a fresh perspective into what’s likely, in this current market, a tiresome and stale job search.
NEED MORE HELP?
I hope you take away something new that gives you success but also realize that just reading an article may not be enough. If you’d like access to templates & resources I’ve created for job seekers thus far, please subscribe to my mailing list. I’d love for you to let me know in the comments here what resonates with you and what you still have questions about. Last, if you can spare a few minutes, take this survey so I can further design how to help you beyond just the written word.
Deep breaths 🙏. — you’ve got this!
|
https://medium.com/@jessbrunelle/gratitude-as-a-job-search-strategy-470f2512c691
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['Jess Brunelle']
|
2020-12-06 21:59:43.305000+00:00
|
['Job Search', 'Interview', 'Covid 19', 'Gratitude', 'Jobs']
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Grief and the Real Girl
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We know that experiencing the death of a loved one is supposed to be hard. When considering the hypothetical death of a hypothetical person, we know that we will be sad. We expect sleep to elude us, to cry a lot, to neglect to eat or get out of bed. Until it actually happens, that is. Then we find out it is all of these things and much more.
When my father died, grief revealed itself to be an entirely shattering experience. It unmoors your life, setting you violently adrift.
Nobody ever explains to you what it feels like to be in shock, real shock. You cannot comprehend how you could wake up so happily one Sunday morning, not for a moment anticipating the horror of the day ahead. You wouldn't believe it had happened at all if it weren't for the fact you are in the office at 5am, manically arranging a handover and somehow wearing the wedding band that was on his finger for 27 years.
You’re not warned about what responses to expect from other people when you tell them what has happened. Some are wonderful, sincere and do brilliant, thoughtful things like bring you food or groceries. Others are well-meaning but have nothing to say that isn’t cliché. You have to bite your tongue when they wheel out the phrase ‘your father in a better place’ or talk about how good it is that he isn’t suffering anymore. There is no silver lining here.
You have a vague idea of the paperwork that comes after a death, but you don’t expect it to be this insurmountable or maddening. When the girl in the Coroner’s Office nervously tells you that oh gosh, she can’t seem to find any paperwork about your father, you lay into her viciously, relentlessly and with little regret. You accompany your mother to the bank, you write to your sister’s school, you visit the funeral director and make choices you didn’t think you’d have to at 22.
You’re never cautioned against visiting your father for the last time. Naively, you think that seeing him in a coffin can’t possibly be worse than watching him die, but you quickly realise that actually, it is. It gives you the first nightmare you've had in years.
Nobody warns you how breathtakingly terrifying it is to think that someone will only exist in photographs and memories now. You desperately seek signs of life. You read through your emails and texts voraciously, trying to commit the way he talked to memory. You pore over his beloved iTunes and look for meaning in his most played songs. You shamefully hack into his iCloud, trying to find out if he managed to do the last thing on the to-do list hidden in his wallet: ‘Write letter to the girls’. He didn't and you struggle to find peace with that.
|
https://medium.com/bereavement-and-mourning/grief-and-the-real-girl-68847c683f38
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['Leia Clancy']
|
2015-04-20 12:17:59.111000+00:00
|
['Childhood', 'This Happened To Me', 'Death']
|
Is BioBoost Keto Ultra BHB Result Oriented? ‘’New Way To Get Slim Body’’
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https://medium.com/@ketobioboost/bioboost-keto-ultra-bhb-is-a-ketogenic-helpful-case-that-is-100-bhb-or-beta-hydroxybutyrate-3941995169cd
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['Bioboost Keto Ultra Bhb']
|
2021-12-19 10:26:20.033000+00:00
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['Buy', 'Keto']
|
Tripp Lite AVR900U UPS review: This uninterruptible power supply has the wrong set of features
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The 12-outlet Tripp Lite AVR900U is the wrong intersection of perfectly fine separate features in an otherwise well-made model. Its reasonable battery size could support a tricked-out computer system with multiple displays and peripherals for a few to several minutes during a power outage. The line-interactive approach incorporated in its design provides fast power switch over (as quick as a few milliseconds) along with constant power conditioning to correct for minor fluctuations without wearing out the internal battery.
Mentioned in this article CyberPower PFC Sinewave CP1000PFCLCD (1000VA, 600W, 10 outlets) Read TechHive's reviewSee it On the other hand, the AVR900U relies on simulated power switching instead of a “pure” sine wave. That means it’s not the right choice for computers with active power factor correction (PFC). A simulated, or stepped, sine wave fed into an active PFC power supply can cause a high-pitched whine and prematurely wear its components or even cause it to fail.
This review is part of TechHive’s coverage of the best uninterruptible power supplies, where you’ll find reviews of competing products, plus a buyer’s guide to the features you should consider when shopping for this type of product.Active PFC power supplies are more efficient than previous designs, and also allow voltage adaptative for worldwide sales. But they’re finicky about the smoothness of the alternating current fed into them, and it’s not worth the price of repairing your computer rather than buying a better-suited UPS with a pure sinewave output that’s as smooth as utility power.
For about $40 more, you can purchase instead the CyberPower CP850PFCLCD, a line-interactive UPS that also has a pure sinewave output and similar power capacity. (We reviewed the slightly higher-capacity CyberPower CP1000PFCLCD, which is in same series of UPS models.)
Tripp Lite The Tripp Lite AVR900U has a generous number of outlets: Six that provide both battery backup and surge protection, and six that provide surge protection only.
The AVR900U might be right to power home-networking gear in the event of power outages, as its battery could support about a combined 20W of equipment power draw for up to two hours and 100W for up to 30 minutes. (Check your broadband modem, Wi-Fi gateway, and other solid-state communications gear power specs to figure total power required.) Its generous 12 outlets are split into one set of six backed by surge protection only and another six that are additionally shored up by line conditioning and the battery. Two outlets on either side are 1.75 inches apart from four grouped tightly in the center, the better to add DC-adapter “wall warts.”
[ Further reading: The best surge protectors for your costly electronics ]But for the AVR900U’s price, the line-interactive power conditioning that comes at a premium isn’t worth it. Instead, consider a UPS with a standby design, which is perfectly fine for networking gear that doesn’t have spinning drives or picky power supplies. A standby UPS might tap its battery more frequently if local power is routinely erratic, dipping below or above standard voltage. If you have those issues in your area and want to use a UPS to solve them while backing up network hardware, the price premium is worthwhile.
I don’t recommend the AVR900U in any use case, not because of any flaw in the product itself, but because it doesn’t scratch the right itch. Other products from Tripp Lite and other UPS makers have a better mix of features that intersect usefully. For instance, we like the Tripp Lite SmartPro SMC1000T, a 600W unit ideal for computer-system power conditioning and support.
The AVR900U has a variety of other minor flaws. It lacks a fairly standard multi-purpose electrical fault detector for grounds, shorts, and other issues that indicate an electrical wiring problem that should have you on the phone to an electrician immediately. It’s a good feature for installing a new UPS or noticing if there’s a problem over time.
It lacks programmable features via buttons. You must use downloadable software when connected to a computer by USB with an included cable. The software is mentioned in the manual, and you have to hunt the site to find it—only to discover the control software only works under Windows and requires Java. You can, however, use automatic restart, scheduled, and other built-in UPS features found in Windows and macOS without installing the software.
Tripp Lite The Tripp Lite AVR900U produces a simulated, or stepped, sine wave, which isn’t a good choice of backup power for sensitive electronics.
Tripp Lite doesn’t include warranty information in the box, but the packaging says a $100,000 and 3-year warranty is included. The manual has a link to product registration and generic warranty details; you apparently don’t get the specifics of the warranty for your unit until you register.
Only the original purchaser is covered, and claims must be filed with 30 days of an incident. Tripp Lite’s insurance notes that it could offer to repair up to $100,000 of damaged equipment, but it might replace it on a “pro rata” basis, which I interpret to mean its depreciated current value, instead of its actual replacement cost.
Bottom lineTripp Lite turned the dials on its product matrix incorrectly to come up with the AVR900U, but don’t let that discourage you from examining the company’s other products. The care of manufacture and quality of design aren’t at issue, only its suitability to purpose and cost per watt for potential appropriate uses.
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/@lindsey00967448/tripp-lite-avr900u-ups-review-this-uninterruptible-power-supply-has-the-wrong-set-of-features-5aceb60e911f
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[]
|
2020-12-23 22:44:43.217000+00:00
|
['Surveillance', 'Audio']
|
Loose Weight And Beat Stubborn Fat Within “60 DAYS”. (Most Effective Discovery) — Health
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Loose Weight And Beat Stubborn Fat Within “60 DAYS”. (Most Effective Discovery) — Health
I’m not a Doctor , I’m not a physician either, but my family has been through this and I’m only here to give help to anyone out there fighting to keep a perfect body.
After several experience and finessed successful trails, would briefly work you through on the journey towards burning fat faster and loosing weight equally. I doubt a discovery like this will ever come around again so pay close attention to every bit of information. This is massive.
That’s my sister, Raina on the photo above. She went from 250–280 pounds over the years. Growing up, i was very fond of my sister so we literally spent most of the time together. She would save up all her money to buy books and courses on dieting. She was never comfortable with the way she looked, she complains alot too and would most of the time isolate herself.
Recently when my sister started using Meticore, she thought it was all going to end up like the rest she has tried in the past so she wasn’t so prepared for some big changes. Not until her metabolism is boosted, all the stubborn fat all over her body decreased and her skin glowed and looked so fresh. Meticore didn’t just stop at breaking through her weight loss plateau, but gave her more energy and improved her sleeps too!.
It eventually made a huge difference in just 2 months all because she found the right source and had the real information. It worked and I’m giving out this information to you all on a platter of gold.
At that time up till now, Meticore has been taken by thousands of folks with no reported side effects. The only side effect is having to spend money on new tight-fitting sexy clothing, or cancel your gym membership!
When my sister started loosing weight so fast due to how effective and powerful Meticore is, she was advised to take it every second day rather than everyday. We consulted our family doctor as well and he confirmed how genuine the company was with the product.
Meticore is only available on their official page. That is exactly where we got ours. It is not available anywhere else. The only one place you can get Meticore is on this official website. >>CLICK HERE<< to grab yours Today.
I also discovered Meticore is currently on special discount the last time I checked. We didn’t experience such opportunity during our purchase so, i’m sure the offer will last for a short period of time.
Whoever that’s looking to loose weight and have been doing it the wrong way like my sister in the past. Go ahead and get the most effective tested discovery. You get a free discount and a 60 Days Money Back Guarantee! Equally
Trust me guys it works!
Patrick, LA
|
https://medium.com/@prinzpatriq/loose-weight-and-beat-stubborn-fat-within-60-days-most-effective-discovery-health-277512cdf504
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['Ferdnand Patrick']
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2020-12-26 11:15:55.738000+00:00
|
['Weight Loss', 'Burn Fat', 'Fitness', 'Loose Weight', 'Meticore Reviews 2020']
|
Most Misunderstood Song of All Time?
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Most Misunderstood Song of All Time?
It’s a strange time of year. A time when some people who probably ordinarily don’t listen to rock and roll music or blues music and definitely don’t dance in public to it, clamber onto stages, bars and flatbed trucks with certain songs blasting out of speakers. The intention of this bizarre ritual is to make other people dig them.
No song suffers this fate more than Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. The chorus of which leads the cursory listener to fail to realise that the song is about the return of Vietnam veterans to America and the negative treatment that they received upon their return.
The protagonist is an alienated figure who was most likely originally drafted to prevent a custodial sentence —
Got in a little hometown jam
So they put a rifle in my hand
Sent me off to a foreign land
To go and kill the yellow man
Upon his return, he discovers he cannot get his old job back —
Come back home to the refinery
Hiring man said “son if it was up to me”
Went down to see my V.A. man
He said “son, don’t you understand”
The V.A. man represents the Veterans Affairs Department which was responsible for providing federal benefits to veterans. Reading between the lines, the V.A. man is telling the main protagonist that veterans are been discriminated against in the workplace.
The main protagonist also lost his brother to the war —
I had a brother at Khe Sanh fighting off the Viet Cong
They’re still there, he’s all gone
He had a woman he loved in Saigon
I got a picture of him in her arms now
The protagonist is also lost —
Down in the shadow of the penitentiary
Out by the gas fires of the refinery
I’m ten years burning down the road
Nowhere to run ain’t got nowhere to go
But yet the chorus is what most people dig —
Born in the U.S.A
I was born in the U.S.A
I was born in the U.S.A
I was born in the U.S.A
— not thinking it is more likely a cry for lost identity or a sarcastic leer rather than a patriotic flag waving chant.
Speaking to Kurt Loder of Rolling Stone in 1984, Springsteen said about the song —
|
https://medium.com/the-riff/most-misunderstood-song-of-all-time-3d020ae4d914
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['Will Russell']
|
2020-10-12 22:40:18.577000+00:00
|
['Politics', 'Music', 'Life Lessons', 'Lyrics', 'Life']
|
Hello Berlin! Hello WeWork! Hello LiskHQ!
|
Berlin, the biggest startup hotspot in Europe, is the city where the Lisk headquarters is going to form. We have been planning this step carefully for a few weeks, and are now in the final steps.
View from WeWork onto the Berlin Reichstag.
Oliver emigrated 2 weeks ago from the United Kingdom to Berlin, and has settled himself quickly into the city’s pace. I moved here on the 5th with just my MacBook Air, my other stuff should arrive in Berlin within the next days.
On Friday, the 5th, we had a meeting with WeWork in order to check out their offices. They enable us to focus on working, instead of spending valuable time finding a suitable office. They offer different options for startups and individuals; either a public desk or a private office with internet, power, AC, drinks, coffee, furniture, a great location, and more. The most important factor for us, is that we can upgrade to bigger offices each month, as long as one is available.
|
https://medium.com/lisk-blog/hello-berlin-hello-wework-hello-liskhq-bd64037cf5c0
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[]
|
2017-09-04 13:17:39.529000+00:00
|
['Lisk', 'Bitcoin', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Team', 'Blockchain']
|
Learn How To Compile a C++ Program
|
Learn How To Compile a C++ Program
A series of articles exploring issues I’ve encountered using C++
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
One of the hardest things I found when first learning C++, outside of learning about pointers and memory management, was how to successfully compile code using third-party libraries.
As a game developer, you rely a lot on libraries for aspects of your game, such as rendering and physics, and it can be surprisingly tricky to successfully compile an empty project with these libraries included.
I struggled because I simply didn’t understand how C++ programs were built and distributed over the internet. I didn’t understand how my source code was turned into an executable or library, nor did I understand how to compile platform-independent code.
This meant that I simply did not know how to incorporate a library into my code, or I’d be banging my head against a wall trying to resolve errors that occurred when trying to compile. In reality, this shouldn’t be the difficult part of building your game.
This knowledge isn’t something that I have found to be taught. The focus is mostly on problem-solving and C++ syntax and yet, if you want to do any serious game programming in C++ without writing everything from scratch, this knowledge is required.
Therefore, I want to write a series of articles exploring many of the issues I have discussed. This first article will look at learning how to compile a C++ program.
|
https://medium.com/better-programming/learn-how-to-compile-a-c-program-382c4c690bdc
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['Drew Campbell']
|
2020-01-04 10:44:47.604000+00:00
|
['Software Engineering', 'Game Development', 'Programming', 'Software Development', 'Coding']
|
The New Apple MagSafe Battery Pack and Best Alternatives
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Photo by Steven Russell
Quite recently Apple introduced a new piece of device that was long missing for Apple users. As the title mentions that is the Apple MagSafe Battery Pack. This is one unique and quite helpful item that can save your day even in the most extreme situations. This Apple MagSafe Battery Pack is very similar to a portable power bank but there are quite noticeable differences among the two items. So first, let us see what this MagSafe Battery Pack is.
This Battery Pack is basically a normal wireless charger but with a battery. You can use this as a wireless charger and a portable power bank at the same time. This Apple MagSafe Battery Pack will work perfectly with every iPhone 12 series smartphone because only iPhone 12 series has the required magnetic parts to attach the battery pack. Even though it is especially designed for iPhone 12 series, it will work fine with any Qi wireless charging device including older iPhone models and AirPods. The main purpose of this Apple device to extend your battery life by charging it wirelessly in an emergency like situations (not exactly emergencies but in). All you have to do is stick this in the back of your phone and let it charge. This will charge your phone with a 5W power when not connected to a power adapter but when connected this will go high as 15W of power. The charging power is limited to 5W because of possible overheating concerns.
This also supports a reverse charging method. Which means that if you are charging your phone with the Battery Pack on the back, the Pack will be charged too. In this process, iPhone will be charged enough before it starts charging the Battery Pack. The current battery level can be easily viewed in the iPhone’s batteries widget. Please keep in mind that this cannot charge your iPhones from 0–100 (can barely charge iPhone 12 Mini fully). Apple has not disclosed any info about the battery capacity.
Photo by Steven Russell
I think you may now have your doubts about this. What is the difference between this and a power bank? Does this actually worth its cost? Actually, those are completely up for you to decide. These arguments can be taken in many points of view. They totally depend on people’s personal preferences. Overall, a Power Bank can charge an iPhone several times, but it requires a wired connection. In the other hand this does not need a wire but cannot fully charge an iPhone. Apple has also advised it is users about some overheating situations. Those are not exactly overheating as you would expect but if the phone will get considerably warm it is better to move it to a cooler place and to use recommended Apple devices.
Check the price
Apple recommends you have following items when you are about to buy an MagSafe Battery Pack.
USB-C to Lightening Cable (1 meter)
USB-C to Lightening Cable (2 meter)
20W USB Type-C Power Adapter
Alternatives for MagSafe Battery Pack
Thought this is the first time Apple did this, there are various types of alternatives in the market even before this that can replace this Battery Pack.
10000mAh Magnetic Wireless Charger
Even bigger than the previous item, this here is a Magnetic Charger with a massive battery power and also a charging power. This supports 5W/7.5W/10W and 15W charging and even 20W charging when it is connected to a charging adapter. Otherwise, this is very similar to other Magnetic Battery Packs and this also needs a USB Type-C cable to be charged. This is available in both Blue and Grey color. This is a great choice if you are looking for more battery power.
Check the price
Mag-Safe Wireless Portable Charger 15W
Do not get deceived by the name, it is only there to imply that this works with MagSafe cases and devices. Nevertheless, this is a quite good Battery Pack. Powered with a 5000mAh battery and 15W charging capability. It will charge iPhones at the 5W charging power which is as same as the Apple MagSafe Battery Pack. This may tend to get bit warm when charging with a wall adapter but that is just ok. Available in the market in Blue, Green and Luxury Grey colors.
Check the price
This article includes affiliate links
|
https://medium.com/macoclock/the-new-apple-magsafe-battery-pack-and-best-alternatives-ecb4aa36a205
|
['Best Case Ever']
|
2021-07-21 05:01:55.004000+00:00
|
['Magsafe', 'Wireless', 'Apple', 'Charger', 'Power Bank']
|
Learn how to compliment your team members at the end-year team meeting
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Learn how to compliment your team members at the end-year team meeting Linda Liu ·Dec 16, 2020
The big research team held a last team meeting before the end of Year 2020. The key topic of the last meeting was to celebrate each other. I was totally impressed by how team managers compliment each team member.
Here are several learnings I’ve got.
|
https://medium.com/@liuhlz/learn-how-to-compliment-your-team-members-at-the-end-year-team-meeting-82126806cc30
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['Linda Liu']
|
2020-12-16 04:29:21.095000+00:00
|
['English Learning', 'Team Building']
|
Soft Power Today: measuring the influences and effects
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Towards the end of 2016, in the still early days of the Brexit process, while I was still working at the Centre for Cultural Relations at the University of Edinburgh, I wrote the literature review for the report, published 2 weeks ago by the British Council called “Soft Power Today, Measuring the Influences and Effects”.
The literature review was a fairly traditional piece of work, which pulled together current thinking on the state of soft power in the world as it was at the end of last year. This blog post does not repeat what is in the report, but reflects on the process of writing it, makes a suggestion for clarifying what we talk about when we talk about soft power, and suggests that a global vision is needed to address the many challenges of today.
As with any literature review, it was possible to summarise what politicians, academics and practitioners thought was the significance of soft power, but it was not possible to go beyond that to make any claims as to what its (measurable) impact might be.
One immediate problem with assessing impact, is that the literature review (and the rest of the report) recognised that the term “soft power” is highly contested, and in many ways not very useful. Nevertheless, it remains the main term used in political and policy discourse, so the report used Joseph Nye’s view that it is the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than through coercion or payments.
Given these theoretical uncertainties, does soft power matter? The report found that it did — at least at the end of 2016. That already seems like a long time ago, an earlier age, given the constantly accelerating pace of events, the rise of populist nationalism, and growing challenge to multilateralism and “soft” policies that favour positive international engagement.
At that time, UK Ministers were lining up to stress the importance of the UK’s soft power to its global engagement post-Brexit. They were no doubt right to do so, but it is still not clear how this enthusiasm will manifest itself in practice, and how they plan to build an image of the post-EU UK as a good and reliable international partner.
The other perennial question in discussion of soft power, is, as mentioned already, definitional. What is soft power, exactly? What does it achieve? Is it better at achieving it than other methods? There are long-standing and fruitless debates about this. One answer though, is actually pretty simple (possibly simplistic) and is based on considering who does what, and who has agency.
States are responsible (and governments are accountable to Parliaments) for foreign policy, and for the choice of policies, institutions, contracted parties, and methods through which they choose to work. These include MFAs, diplomats, public diplomats, and cultural diplomats. This group includes both those to whom diplomatic law applies, and others acting in a foreign policy role of communicating with foreign publics. It also includes “arms-length” bodies which owe their existence and operational freedoms to states. Finally, it includes other non-state bodies that states and their institutions may contract with to carry out relevant functions from time to time. This is all in the domain of foreign policy (broadly defined to include economic relations, security, etc). “Soft power” in this sense is a domain of public policy and there is no prima facie reason why its success cannot be measured in the same way as that of any other area of foreign policy — did it achieve its objectives?
Then there is a far larger domain of international cultural relations which is enabled by policy, but not driven by it. The actors pursue their own goals, whether these are commercial, educational or cultural. These goals often require or demand international collaboration. That is certainly true in cultural industries, education and the arts. The institutions, organisations and even individuals involved have, and insist on, agency. There is a public policy dimension to this, in that these organisations act mainly within frameworks of domestic cultural or educational policy, or within commercial and regulatory frameworks. Without the necessary enabling and facilitating framework of domestic policy, it is hard for a country to be attractive to others, whatever is claimed on the international stage — words will not match deeds. “Success”, in this sense, can be measured in aggregate — eg how globally connected is country X,Y, or Z through its policy frameworks, institutions and practices?
If the above description is recognised as having some validity, there are two important questions: firstly, clarify what is the relationship between foreign policy and domestic policy, and secondly, what should the relationship be between those who are active in the international cultural relations space and those active in foreign policy? I am leaving (dodging) the first (enormous) question by postponing it to a future blog post.
The second, however, can be stated relatively easily, byy thinking about specific examples. How can, for example, a small arts organisation working in innovative ways across borders that policy finds it impossible to cross (because the policy is officially antagonistic) develop its activities in a way where the potential of culture to develop connections, reduce misunderstandings, and engage about values and ideas can actually be realised? Similar issues arise in the relations between states and commercial cultural actors. The impact in individual cases may be small, but the cumulative effect can be significant (almost a “nudge” approach).
Finally, there is the question of vision and leadership. In the world of today there are unprecedented challenges. There is a need for an updated vision of how the global conversation on the one hand, and transnational engagements can be understood and taken forward. It is hard to see how a “soft power” approach based as it is on a model of (very unequal) competition between states will prove any more effective in helping address global challenges than will traditional approaches. A new vision needs to be based on new ways of understanding how influence actually flows, an ability to make sense of both the digital and analogue worlds, and through leading the argument in favour of positive transnational engagement. That argument, to succeed, has to be strong, and based on evidence. There is a need for more and better analysis based on up to date techniques of big data analysis, developed for the common good rather than on the ened to promote national or commercial interests.
The rest of the report, led by Professor J.P. Singh, attempted to investigate the possibility of looking at the measurable impact of “soft power”, by proposing a “framework that measures the conditions under which a broad set of soft power influences translates into economic, political and cultural benefits”. To do this, Professor Singh conducted a “statistical study of soft power across political, cultural and economic dimensions”. It found that “many soft power assets or resources are statistically significant in explaining outcomes”. For example, the study found that “high levels of democracy and low levels of political rights restrictions attract international students and tourists, foreign direct investment and they moderate voting patterns at the United Nations”.
While this work is a step in the right direction, as noted above, further work is needed to build the evidence base, and develop the right analytical toolkits.
|
https://medium.com/digital-diplomacy/soft-power-today-measuring-the-influences-and-effects-5bba2daf19c4
|
['Stuart Macdonald']
|
2017-10-24 09:25:53.406000+00:00
|
['Cultural Relations', 'International Relations', 'Public Diplomacy', 'Politics', 'Diplomacy']
|
Bridging the Education Gap: Introducing Inspirational Organisations Leading the Way
|
Since launching in Australia earlier this year, a key focus for the team has been to ramp up our Inclusion & Diversity initiatives. This year, the Black Lives Matter and anti-racism movement more broadly highlighted the importance and need for employers to implement stronger inclusion programs in the workplace. At Slalom Australia, this is our key priority and we have created initiatives that show our alliance and support to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community.
We are proud of launching our Inclusion & Diversity (I&D) Council in April and a Working Group specifically to develop our ‘Reflect’ Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) and initiatives. The Working Group’s focus is on increasing awareness and education, and we are planning an ongoing series of cultural education sessions for our team to learn from elders and members of the Indigenous community.
At Slalom, we know that for real change to take place in our communities and workplaces, we must educate and support current and future leaders. So we launched several anti-racism initiatives and we recently hosted a virtual event for our team and clients with Indigitek and GO Foundation.
We are excited to share some learnings from our inspirational guest speakers, Liam Ridgeway (Indigitek and NGNY Co-founder) and Shirley Chowdhary (GO Foundation CEO), and showcase the incredible work they are doing. We are honoured to work with impactful Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations like Indigitek and GO Foundation.
Liam Ridgeway, Indigitek and NGNY Co-founder
Indigitek is a community of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are continuing a proud tradition of Indigenous innovation and entrepreneurship in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). While it is estimated that STEM professions will make up 75 per cent of the Australian workforce by 2025, only 43 per cent of Aboriginal children graduate High School with one STEM subject.
Indigitek is on a mission to change these statistics.
The organisation is working to build a realistic and viable pathway for more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to secure STEM learning and job opportunities. Through their relationships with technology partners, like Slalom, they have been able to provide internships and ongoing job opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, to who may not have considered this as an option.
Indigitek co-founder, Liam Ridgeway says: “I encourage everyone to look and learn the history of traditional owners of the land. As traditional owners, we have lots of experience and knowledge we want to share with the world.”
Some tips from Liam on where start:
· Remove judgement and preconceptions of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islanders people
· Learn the true history of Australia’s 60,000+ year history
· Learn the history of the traditional owners and inhabitants of the land that you are living and working on
· Make an effort to connect with Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander people — connect with your local Indigenous organisation(s)
· Support Indigenous led causes because the best way for the community to overcome the problems is to build their own sustainable solutions
Shirley Chowdhary, GO Foundation Founder
GO Foundation is an organisation focused on creating opportunities for Indigenous youth through the power of education. Founded by former AFL stars, Adam Goodes and Michael O’Loughlin, GO Foundation provides scholarships to Indigenous students from kindergarten through to university. Through a GO scholarship, students can access the tools and resources they need to ensure their journey through school is as rich and rewarding as possible; as well as provide them with the tools and opportunities that will empower them to further their education.
Recently, as schools across the country moved to online learning models due to COVID-19 restrictions, GO Foundation became conscious of the many Indigenous students who did not have laptops or Wi-Fi at home. Digital exclusion is already a barrier for so many Indigenous students, so GO, along with key Ecosystem partners, created Technology Scholarships. The scholarship awarded students with laptops (preloaded with Microsoft Office) and NBN Wi-Fi access — with the aim of awarding 250 Indigenous students who are empowered to engage with their own learning online.
GO Foundation founder, Shirley Chowdhary, says: “Life expectancy for Indigenous men and women is almost 10 years less for a non-indigenous person. If you are a young indigenous person between the age of 10 and 24, you are 24 times more likely to be incarcerated than finish year 12. This statistic gets me every time.”
“Our research shows that education is the silver bullet that can change so much for Indigenous people. Go Foundation exists to end the economic dis-empowerment faced by Indigenous and advocate against racism, we advocate for equality, we advocate for first nations people in this country to have an equal footing.”
We are excited to share more about our I&D journey working alongside these outstanding organisations. Together, we will work towards educating our team members and clients to make a significant impact in the education and futures of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community.
At Slalom, we are committed to justice, humanity, and equality. We do not tolerate racism. Anti-racism starts with listening and learning.
It is important that we continue these conversations and take meaningful and impactful action to create a better tomorrow without racism.
You can find out more about the great work our partners are doing via their social pages here: Indigitek and GO Foundation
|
https://medium.com/slalom-australia/bridging-the-education-gap-introducing-inspirational-organisations-leading-the-way-38dc1f847c6e
|
['Slalom Australia']
|
2020-10-13 06:19:24.549000+00:00
|
['Stem Education', 'Inclusion', 'Slalom', 'Diversity', 'Diversity In Tech']
|
Deploy a Multi App Windows 10 Kiosk with Intune
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Here is the quick and dirty:
Criteria: Show Only three apps. Intune, VMWare Horizon Client, and “Show Available Networks” in a tablet layout.
Final Product:
First things First. Get on your reference or technician machine.
Setup the start layout as desired, then run the following command to export your start layout with DesktopApplicationID:
Export-StartLayout -Path 'C:\StartLayout.xml' -UseDesktopApplicationID
Credit to Frank Trout on his response to this thread:
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Intune/Windows-10-Enterprise-Start-Menu-in-KIOSK-mode-show-the-expected/td-p/255135
Also, credit to this link on winaero on how to create a shortcut on the “Show Available Networks” screen.
The challenge with “Show Available Networks” is it’s a explorer.exe command.
C:\Windows\explorer.exe ms-availablenetworks:
The ask here is for the kiosk user to be limited to only what’s available on the start layout. A couple of apps and the ability to switch WiFi networks.
You want to follow the winaero link, create the Show Available Networks icon, then pin it to start. Finally you’ll export the Start Layout with the above command, with DesktopApplicationID switch.
You can crack open the start layout XML and copy out the ID later when needing to paste it into the KIOSK app rule.
The question is how do we get the .lnk file onto the machine? You could always place it on your image. I’ve chosen to deploy it as a PowerShell Script.
Here is the script:
$AppLocation = "C:\Windows\explorer.exe" $WshShell = New-Object -ComObject WScript.Shell #$Shortcut = $WshShell.CreateShortcut("$Home\Desktop\Available Networks.lnk") #$Shortcut = $WshShell.CreateShortcut("C:\Users\Public\Desktop\Available Networks.lnk") $Shortcut = $WshShell.CreateShortcut("C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Available Networks.lnk") $Shortcut.TargetPath = $AppLocation $Shortcut.Arguments ="ms-availablenetworks:" $Shortcut.IconLocation = "%SystemRoot%\System32\taskbarcpl.dll,3" $Shortcut.Description ="Show's Available wiFi Networks" $Shortcut.WorkingDirectory ="C:\Windows\" $Shortcut.Save()
Let’s now create the script in Intune, and Deploy it to the intended group.
Now Click Create.
Ensure you assign it to the intended group.
Next we will create the Intune Configuration Profile with Kiosk settings.
Configure as seen below. Click “Add Microsoft Edge”. Then click, “Add Store App, and Select the app you want to include. For this case, VMWare Horizon Client”.
Then to add the “Show Available Networks”, the following will need to be added.
DesktopApplicationID/AUMID for the Win32 app
Microsoft.AutoGenerated.{F0B8149C-2993-30B2-A6FF-111AED31518B}
Click OK.
Here are the rest of the Configuration Profile settings.
Here you will upload the prior Start Layout you created on the reference machine.
Click OK.
Now assign your newly created configuration profile to the intended group.
BONUS: Use this in conjunction with a self deploying autopilot profile (Only supported on TPM 2.0 and above), for a fully self deploying kiosk. Future post to come on that.
Until next time.
|
https://nathanblasac.com/deploy-a-multi-app-windows-10-kiosk-with-intune-e261cedf2a21
|
['Nathan Blasac']
|
2019-03-11 16:37:45.464000+00:00
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['Intune', 'Mdm', 'Kiosk', 'Windows 10']
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I Know Nothing, But Love
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Dear Spiritual Companions,
One more week has passed in this lifetime and I made it worthwhile by practicing to enjoying my own company, as discussed in my last letter.
Being in solitude, was a surreal experience. On the first day, I started to sit with myself for fifteen minutes pondering about my behavior on that day. I analyzed my Karma by detaching myself from my own deeds.
As a result, I was able to find faults in my Karma and I suggested I change certain traits. The next day, I became more vigilant and aware of my Karma. But I made mistakes.
Nevertheless, I kept on continuing “Me-Sessions” with myself for the whole week. As the fruits of my penance, I found that “ Love only matters and we are here in this world to Love”.
That feeling gave birth to this poem, “ I know nothing, but Love”.
This week I am going to practice Love. Whoever I meet and greet, I am going to do with love. No matter what the situation it is or the other person’s behavior towards me, I am going to respond with love.
“The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in”. -Morrie Schwartz
I’ll let you guys know about my experiments with love, in next week's newsletter.
“I love, not because you are worthy of it, but it is my worthiness to love without any inhibitions”.- Darshak Rana
See you all, my Spiritual companions, on the next Touching Tuesday.
Please keep loving and continue sharing your spiritual secrets with us.
Best wishes,
Darshak Rana
|
https://medium.com/spiritual-secrets/knowing-nothing-but-love-c7382448e76d
|
['Darshak Rana']
|
2020-09-22 15:36:05.678000+00:00
|
['Spirituality', 'Letters', 'Poetry', 'Love', 'Spiritual Secrets']
|
AI and Cybersecurity: Friend or Foe?
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Photo: Visual Generation / iStockPhoto
Imagine the damage an intelligent virus could inflict. It would arrive at the network perimeter. Or worse, it would penetrate your firewalls via a phishing attack. It would take stock of the system’s defenses, make real-time intelligent decisions, and start attacking. For example, it could conceivably turn its virus characteristics on and off when necessary to evade antivirus software. It would be almost like letting an unescorted human cybercriminal inside your datacenter.
Fortunately, truly intelligent malware, computers, and robots exist only in science fiction. See this article for an explanation of why we will almost certainly not see intelligent malware or intelligent computers of any type in our lifetimes. So, we do not have to worry about viruses that can think and reason like people.
AI as a Friend
We do need to worry about cyberattacks that execute conventionally programmed (non-AI) patterns of attack. Many vendors offer conventional software such as intrusion detection systems and anti-virus software that recognize the signatures (patterns) of these programs. These conventional software programs access threat intelligence databases of malicious signatures and do a great job identifying and stopping known cybersecurity threats.
Where conventional software falls short is in identifying newly released malware whose signatures are not yet available. Here, AI becomes a friend. Machine learning can be used to analyze network traffic patterns using port mirroring or netflow to determine what constitutes “normal” traffic. These network detection and response systems can then raise alerts when suspicious traffic is observed. They can be used to raise alerts for both north-south traffic (traffic coming in from the internet) and east-west traffic (behind the firewall).
Machine learning can also be used in other ways to identify security issues. For example, log data can be analyzed to determine normal patterns and raise alerts when anomalies are detecting. Similarly, machine learning can be used to analyze patterns of user behavior and flag suspicious behavior.
AI as a Foe
There are many ways machine learning can be used by attackers to design more effective malware:
Machine learning can be used to generate new strains of malware that are harder to detect. However, once their signatures make it into the security databases, they will be detectable by conventional anti-malware software.
An attacker could acquire commercially available threat detection systems and use AI to learn the types of traffic that will bypass the system defenses.
An attacker could use machine learning to monitor the behavior of the target network and create malware that resemble “normal” traffic.
AI can also be used to generate emails for spear phishing attacks and audio deepfakes can be used to send those same targeted individuals voice messages that sound like someone they know.
AI Applications Broaden the Attack Surface
Conventional software has many well-known vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malware such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting. AI software adds new types of vulnerabilities.
AI software can be analyzed to create adversarial examples that cause the software to respond incorrectly. For example, researchers showed that small alterations to lane markers that would not fool humans caused a self-driving car to drive in the wrong lane. Baidu researchers published a set of tools that can be used by other researchers to fool virtually any deep learning system. Their goal, of course, was not to encourage attackers, but rather to help researchers create defense mechanisms in their deep learning systems.
Also, because machine learning systems are trained on large datasets, the behavior of these systems can be altered by changing the training data. This happened to Microsoft when it released its Tay chatbot which learned to be a racist from user interactions.
Conclusion: Friend or Foe?
AI can be both a cybersecurity friend and a foe. The ability to use AI to defend against novel malware is essential to defenders. This is balanced against the ability for attackers to create novel malware using AI and the larger attack surface created by AI applications.
Cybersecurity has always been a cat-and-mouse game. AI adds to the toolkits of both the attackers and defenders but does not give either a winning advantage.
Please enter any comments below and visit AI Perspectives where you can find a free online AI 101 textbook with 15 chapters, 400 pages, 3000 references, and no advanced mathematics.
|
https://sshwartz.medium.com/ai-and-cybersecurity-friend-or-foe-fe26e4d0de3c
|
['Steve Shwartz']
|
2020-12-09 18:15:53.192000+00:00
|
['Cybersecurity', 'Artificial Intelligence']
|
About Me — Chandrika Bhattacharya
|
It is through written words that I have always been able to express myself as truly as possible, and somewhere all along, I knew that I wanted to create something with written words, at some point;
I just didn’t know how or when that would happen;
Until Medium showed me the way.
I think I found Medium at a time in my life when I had to push myself to grow beyond what was already known to me, About Me, and everything else simply followed.
I found (and still continue to find) strength in the words of many Writers on this platform, that helped me to grow into better and stronger versions of myself (and still helps me).
It was somewhere in between learning and growing from reading the works of other Writers out here, and having felt a purpose to share my learnings from my perspective, that I took up writing and publishing consistently since early this year;
I simply write to share thoughts on understanding the world in a way that enables us to live well, and to live simply (Yes, that’s my Short Bio on the Profile anyway);
But, most importantly, I write to share those thoughts to enable everyone who reads my work, to grow into better and stronger versions of themselves;
I hope to create an impact within my readers’ (Yes, you too!) souls, that encourages them to put into action the words I write, just the way I put my learnings to action from reading works that inspired me.
I do not know yet, where this journey will take me, but I intend to keep at it, because part of the fun is in not knowing exactly where it is headed.
|
https://medium.com/about-me-stories/about-me-chandrika-bhattacharya-28a54c3ac9dd
|
['Chandrika Bhattacharya']
|
2020-11-25 03:03:37.161000+00:00
|
['Writing', 'Introduction', 'Writer', 'About Me', 'Writers On Medium']
|
Every day, people on Medium came together to make sense of this unusual
|
What just happened?
It’s hard to say for sure. There are the obvious things. The ways our world, and our lives, changed — probably forever. Hundreds of moments watching our colleagues freeze up on video chat. Then, awkwardly trying to tell them, “You’re frozen.” That’s just the beginning.
People have always turned to Medium to better understand the world and each other, and this year was the ultimate testament to that. We came here to figure out exactly… what’s going on. To connect with writers who informed, enlightened, challenged, and moved us. To tell our stories. To feel less alone. Every day, people on Medium came together to make sense of this unusual time, and to learn from each other in the process.
To mark the end of a year that sometimes felt like one endless day (we’re actually writing this on Tuesday, March 263rd), we wanted to share a small portion of the Medium stories that helped us all process this moment in history. We hope you appreciate revisiting them as much as we did.
|
https://medium.com/@asimo-dak-792c/every-day-people-on-medium-came-together-to-make-sense-of-this-unusual-b0596570ea1
|
['Asimo Dak C']
|
2020-12-19 16:51:56.007000+00:00
|
['2020', 'Year In Review', 'History', 'Life', 'Ｍedium']
|
Whom do I call my Friend?
|
I have been updating my group of acquaintances. This I am doing well. Being an unstable person to forever be with, I move from one flock of people to another. Not because I prefer diversity to keep myself from getting bored, but because I do not want that group of people to be bored of me, and think me of a freak, as I sometimes judge myself to be.
The thing that depresses me most is that, throughout these past 9 + months, I have only been surrounded by the members of my family. Occasionally I visit my uncle’s house, but they possess the same genes. Right now I am the average of my family members as they are of me. It’s a loop and I am struggling to get out of it.
I was not from a computer background and it was hard for me to keep up with others in my field. After immersing myself for two years in my study, I got out of my comfort zone in this lockdown and started connecting with experts and beginners in my field. I took part in communities, tried to code for money, became more social. All this at the cost of my sanity. I am not sorry. I won’t lose my sanity for networking next time. A lesson learned.
I used to be a shy girl, having only a couple of close friends in my school days. Those friends varied from year to year as my school was big and comprised multiple sections. Though I had a good deal of hi, hello friends, there was never a person who stuck with me for over two years in the same class as a best friend. I sometimes meet my friends near my home; we exchange our how abouts and where abouts; we cry and exclaim at the pace of time; we meet twice or trice after that; we promise to always keep in touch and then boom! We meet after 2 3 years, repeat the same thing. This happens to me for almost all of my school friends.
I have some close acquaintances in my bachelor level. But I am not sure if they’ll stick with me post-graduation, except my boyfriend. If they stick with me, I do not think I vibe with many who’ll help me be my ultimate self.
|
https://medium.com/@sarayugautam1/whom-do-i-call-my-friend-59478bbe1a42
|
['Sarayu Gautam']
|
2020-12-25 10:24:52.356000+00:00
|
['Friends', 'Relationships', 'Monologue', 'Personalessay372', 'Frienship']
|
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