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Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) — AWS Glue | ETL using PySpark on AWS Glue
Now that we have an understanding of what are the different components of Glue we can now jump into how to author Glue Jobs in AWS and perform the actual extract, transform and load (ETL) operations.
Novel Corona Virus Dataset:
The dataset is obtained from Kaggle Datasets. The version I’m using was last updated on May 02, 2020. Main file in this dataset is covid_19_data.csv The detailed descriptions of the dataset are below.
Sno — Serial number
ObservationDate — Date of the observation in MM/DD/YYYY
Province/State — Province or state of the observation (Could be empty when missing)
Country/Region — Country of observation
Last Update — Time in UTC at which the row is updated for the given province or country. (Not standardized and so please clean before using it)
Confirmed — Cumulative number of confirmed cases till that date
Deaths — Cumulative number of of deaths till that date
Recovered — Cumulative number of recovered cases till that date
1) Setting up Our Data stores:
As a first step of developing our end to end ETL job we will first setup our data stores. Goto yout s3 console and create a bucket there. We’ll upload the dataset file in the bucket with the following partition scheme:
s3://bucket-name/dataset/year=<year>/month=<month>/day=<day>/hour=<hour>/
Right now we are dealing with a single file so you can create partitions and upload file manually but if working with a large number of files you can use my FTP file ingestion code that I explained in my last article to do this work for you. Partitioning data in this way helps in query optimization while working with AWS Athena.
2) Creating AWS Glue Role
Create a Glue role that will allow Glue to access different AWS resources e.g s3. Goto the IAM console and add a new role and attach the AWSGlueServiceRole policy to this role. This policy contains permissions to access Glue, CloudWatch, EC2, S3, and IAM. For more details about how to setup IAM role for Glue consider the following link.
3) Setting Up Crawler to Catalog Data
Perform the following steps to add a crawler:
On the left menu click on databases and add a database.
Now goto crawlers and and a new crawler
Select data store
Provide the s3 bucket path
Select the Glue role
Set frequency to Run on Demand
Select the database
Finally review and click finish
Now your crawler is created. Click on “Run Crawler” to catalog the dataset | https://towardsdatascience.com/extract-transform-load-etl-aws-glue-edd383218cfd | ['Furqan Butt'] | 2020-05-17 15:19:25.643000+00:00 | ['Aws Glue', 'Coronavirus', 'Spark', 'AWS', 'Etl'] |
The Paradox of Scale | The Paradox of Scale
Netflix couldn’t build Netflix
There are a bunch of heroes in the digital world that are held up as aspirational examples in conversations about digital business, technology and ways of working. Netflix, Spotify, Uber, Amazon and a host of our favourite characters, but these myths can become damaging fictions.
Admired and respected as towering giants of our digital world, our hero companies emanate an almost mythical quality. The scale, power and inspiration they command are the stuff of legend. Glib statements about “business” distort their stories into gaudy two-dimensional caricatures whilst organisations seeking Digital Transformation aspire to emulate what they see in this theatre. Paradoxically our heroes would be the first to point out they wouldn’t be able to build themselves as they stand today.
Photo by YIFEI CHEN
Gall’s law has been on my mind lately. So much so that my partner has quoted it back to me — and she doesn’t work in tech, she works in the woods. Hopefully it’s that I communicated it well, but more likely it’s that she’s a very smart woman. For me it’s a statement that goes to the heart of why so many institutional IT projects cost a fortune and deliver little, with alarming regularity:
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system. — John Gall (1975, p.71)
If you work with technology and your role includes the word “architect” (as mine sometimes does) your ears may well be burning.
The paradox of scale
I spend plenty of my time in conversations about microservices. API design, infrastructure, operations, architecture. If you’ve been there, you’ll have heard phrases like scheduling, circuit breakers, service discovery, distributed tracing, health checks, cenralised logging, mutual authentication, rolling deployments, traffic splitting, the list goes on.
When you consider that each of those can easily balloon into a couple of months of work, especially when they come “for free out-of-the-box”, a spot of arithmetic will tell you you could be looking at two years of peripheral work before you even think about the thing you’re actually trying to build.
Do you have a million users and a billion transactions? And do you have them today? Or are you just starting out with a new product? It’s easy to assume this stuff is critical to running production-quality systems and, you know what, it might be, but more likely it isn’t right now.
The question is not “whether”, but “when” these things are useful
Paradoxically, trying to build it all — to emulate our heroes on day one — is more likely to be disastrous. In Malcolm Gladwell’s re-examining of the story of David and Goliath, David refuses to put on the heavy battle armour of professional soldiers, preferring to fight with only a shepherd’s sling. David knew he couldn’t bear the weight of the armour and wouldn’t be at his best, potentially putting himself in even greater danger. As Malcolm Gladwell paraphrases it, "I've never worn armor before. You've got to be crazy."
The rise of the titans
Google is 20 years old, yet Google Cloud is only just starting to challenge AWS. Google boasts impressive infrastructure, tens of billions invested, including undersea cables and a global network estimated to carry 25% of the world’s Internet traffic. Only now are they offering this through Google Cloud. It’s been a long road. This is a far cry from the humble beginnings of 1998, when Google was an underdog search-engine beloved of 90s hipster-equivalents.
One does not simply build Google
20 years is a long time. Long enough to accumulate extraordinary experience, infrastructure and legacy. A long road with plenty of twists and turns along the way. I don’t know specifics, but I do know what life is like. Success is a messy business, exploratory, trying, failing, scratching your head, learning something new, trying to think different.
And so it’s been, I’ll bet, for all our heroes. They thought big, acted small, found a foothold and started journeying. For better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sunshine and in rain, wax on, wax off, they fixed the plumbing and built the roof, they put one foot in front of the other until today they stand towering in the world they helped to create. Where they stand now is (and continues to be) their journey, rather than their first port of call.
On becoming a hero
The thing no one ever tells us about standing on the shoulders of giants is that we first have to get up onto those shoulders. Looking at what our heroes do today and trying to copy it is a highly effective way to fail. First because it’s going to be expensive and take years, second because they are on their journeys and will keep moving in their own directions.
By the time we ever get there, they’ll be long gone
But if we shift our perspective and look, not at where they are today, but at how they got started and the way that they move, there’s a beautiful release. Now we don’t need to be dazzled by their scale, wondering how we could possibly be like that. Instead we can look at where we’re starting from, face the direction we want to go (which will be unique to each of us) and start putting one foot in front of the other. | https://medium.com/notbinary/the-paradox-of-scale-c0c6546c8c61 | ['David Carboni'] | 2019-06-28 16:58:16.340000+00:00 | ['Digital Transformation', 'Technology', 'Technology And Design', 'Scaleup'] |
2021 and beyond: Know what to wish for at 11:11 | Was quitting Corporate America worth it?
A little over two years ago, I quit a job that was making me completely miserable and turning me into someone I have no interest in being. I’d just bought a condo, gotten a raise and was finally coming to grips with the permanency of my grandfather’s death — but I just didn’t want to work there. I’ve had some odd jobs (airport security), some challenging jobs (adult education finance book editing) and some fun jobs (four of five newspapers and online news publication), but this was a job I flat-out hated. When I gave my two weeks’ notice, I had enough freelance clients to make about the same salary so I was extremely confident in my decision to walk.
But even before coronavirus hit Wuhan in December 2019 and made its way to America, I was already learning that freelancing full time is really hard to do. Long-term clients can end contracts at a moment’s notice. Short-term clients can decide to change the job altogether. Onetime clients can either go on to become long-term clients or disappear off the Earth without feedback. I’ve had at least three clients who ended up drowning in court costs (non-criminal reasons) or mental institutions — and one who breaks my heart because I don’t think she’s alive anymore (she was one of my favorites). In a rocky world where you’re riding the roller coaster of a creative space, being a full-time, freelance writer can easily make you throw in the towel and just say, “Forget it. I’ll go back to Corporate America.”
If you’ve managed to find a way to complain about black people on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, then there’s nothing anyone can do to make you give them a shot the other 363 days of the year.
But I really really really don’t like it there. My personality is not cut out for traditional office jobs with nonstop, pointless meetings; forced birthday and anniversary gifts for co-workers I don’t even like; and the kind of passive-aggressive racism that gets under my skin more than the time I almost got expelled from undergrad. My grandfather has lovingly told me I’m “too sagacious and too contumacious to have a boss.” I shrugged it off as him giving me a Word of the Day (something he was notorious for doing), but years later, I realized he was serious. I absolutely thrive while working from home and being able to do all the contract writing, editing and digital jobs I’ve always wanted to do from the comfort of my space and in full control.
Photo credit: SHOTS BY PRIIINCESSS
But bills must be paid, and 2020’s coronavirus yanked out my side money as a part-time dog caregiver. (Everyone is at home now. At one point, I was walking, boarding and sitting for dogs so much per day that I almost missed a couple of major writing deadlines.) In mid-December, I had a long conversation with my mother and finally admitted that maybe being a full-time freelancer just wasn’t for me. The money was dwindling at a rapid pace this year. Since I graduated from college (2003) and got my first full-time job in 2004, I was used to having steady money for bills or a random “want” purchase — without touching my 401(k) or savings. But from the end of 2018 until now, I have had to do some serious prioritizing.
Then I made an off-handed wish at 11:11 a.m. about figuring out my monetary situation. Although all of my wishes at 11:11 a.m. and p.m. have come true (I’m not exaggerating, but I also don’t make unrealistic wishes like “world peace”), this was one I mumbled aloud with a grain of salt. Within a 24-hour period, I was contacted and hired by four different, long-term clients on Upwork. And two more randomly invited me to jobs I hadn’t even applied for.
I accepted all the jobs and dove into the work. It took me a full 24 hours to realize that my 11:11 a.m. wish actually came true. I was so busy trying to cross off deadlines that it didn’t really hit me. Some things are coincidental. But many more times, I do believe that some things are meant to be. So in 2021, I will continue on my quest to be a full-time freelancer. And the next time I have a Toastmasters meeting, I’ll make sure to tell that member that I thought about what he said. | https://medium.com/we-need-to-talk/2021-and-beyond-know-what-to-wish-for-at-11-11-b904774cd6bf | ['Shamontiel L. Vaughn'] | 2021-01-02 00:00:00 | ['Toastmasters', 'Positive Thinking', 'Freelancing', 'New Years Resolutions', 'Upwork'] |
Undocumented for years, whilst trying to claim asylum | The fact that people seeking protection in Greece struggle to claim asylum due to systemic deficiencies in the asylum system is well-documented and has been known for many years. The situation is currently worse than ever.
Khora speak out about the delays faced by a person seeking asylum who had documented vulnerabilities and who waited three years to register his claim for asylum in Greece — detailed below.
Ignored by the authorities, unreasonable delays
Imagine arriving in Europe as a refugee and being unable to claim asylum. Imagine spending years, liable to detention and ineligible for any proper support, calling Skype to claim asylum but your call not being answered. Imagine, due to a lack of legal aid never understanding that with evidence of your ‘vulnerabilities’ you can bypass the Skype system. Imagine finally finding an organisation to assist you — they email the responsible authorities requesting an appointment to register your claim for asylum — you then wait almost a year and a half to receive an appointment at which you can claim asylum.
Imagine approaching the designated government offices directly and being given an appointment to claim asylum as far away as 2022.
A person seeking protection who arrived in Greece at the end of 2019 was recently provided with this piece of paper by the Greek Asylum Service, advising him he can register his claim for asylum in 2022.
In the years awaiting these appointments, people seeking protection are undocumented — left to live without legal papers to evidence their existence, or claim for asylum, in Greece.
Unable to meet basic human needs or access legal rights
Whilst unable to register their claim for asylum, people are not entitled to the limited financial support offered by UNHCR to asylum seekers. Nor are they able to access public healthcare, legally work or rent accommodation in Greece.
People waiting to claim asylum are also unable to apply for family reunification, to join close family members elsewhere in Europe. Families are separated for prolonged periods when they are legally entitled to be reunited, simply because they cannot lodge their claim for asylum and submit necessary documents.
The man in the photograph above, who was recently provided a registration appointment on 30/01/2022, has a wife and two children already with refugee status in Switzerland— despite his wife’s Swiss lawyer’s best efforts, no family reunification process can begin until he has first registered his claim for asylum in Greece.
Furthermore, the handwritten post-it notes that the asylum offices give people noting their registration appointment mean nothing to the Greek police, leaving refugees liable to arrest and detention at any moment.
Even minors are left undocumented, with the Greek Asylum Service advising that long wait times must be endured due to the high volume of requests. This is unacceptable — if the Greek Asylum Service cannot cope, urgent action must be taken so that people can claim asylum.
Response from the Greek Asylum Service regarding the registration of an unaccompanied child seeking asylum in Greece, who arrived via the land border in February 2020 and remains undocumented to this day
People seeking protection are left in limbo, unable to meet their basic human needs or access their legal rights.
Online self-registration still leaves people undocumented
In June 2020, the Greek Asylum Service launched their online self-registration platform. Designed to enable people to register their own claims for asylum — the system is both legally and practically flawed.
It is only possible to complete one’s self-registration for asylum online, if the person seeking protection has what is called a “willingness number”, which is found on papers issued by Greek police upon encountering an undocumented asylum seeker. The majority of people entering Greece via the land border do not have such willingness numbers since there is only one Reception and Identification Centre (RIC) on the Greek mainland — the infamous Fylakio RIC. Fylakio is near the Greek/Turkish border in Greece’s Evros region and has an official capacity of 240 persons, though it is often overcrowded with many more people.
Though there has never been state legal aid to assist people in Greece claiming asylum, registration interviews were previously undertaken by staff of the Asylum Service in a private environment. The online self-registration system allows for unqualified or unknown persons to assist people with their registration. Countless people I have met explain that they accepted assistance from strangers who submitted incomplete or inaccurate information. Answers cannot be changed on the online platform once submitted.
Once the online form has been completed, the person must await correspondence from the responsible asylum office. After waiting a few months, some people are emailed with an appointment to attend the Greek Asylum Service in person, in order to complete their registration and receive their International Protection Applicant Cards. Others wait indefinitely, unsure when they will receive correspondence and why they have not heard anything. Though the 65 questions have been answered online, people seeking protection remain undocumented.
The Greek Asylum Service’s online self-registration platform is only available to those who have a ‘pre-case number’, thus excluding the majority of people seeking protection that enter Greece via the land border
After claiming asylum, people face further delays
It is often impossible for people seeking protection to claim asylum in Greece. Why is this systemic deficiency in Greece’s asylum system still not being addressed?
Once people finally manage to claim asylum in Greece, they face further delays as asylum interviews are often scheduled years later. How is it that Northern European countries are still returning people seeking asylum to Greece, despite there being such fundamental flaws with the asylum system here? | https://medium.com/@the-crisis-isnt-over/undocumented-for-years-whilst-trying-to-claim-asylum-782d69755707 | ["The Crisis Isn'T Over"] | 2020-12-21 11:02:57.419000+00:00 | ['Refugees In Greece', 'Asylum Europe', 'Refugees', 'Asylum', 'Asylum Seekers'] |
Supports from the government — overcome Covid-19 damages | Slowing tourisms, cancellation of events, empty restaurants… COVID-19 has been damaging economy and business activities. Small enterprises are striving to survive this situation, and the Japanese Government is trying to help.
What does the Government offer with ¥1.6 trillion?
There are two major players to help SMEs according to the direction from the Japanese Government.
1. Japan Federation of Credit Guarantee Corporations (信用保証協会)
2. Japan Finance Corporation (日本政策金融公庫)
Japan Federation of Credit Guarantee Corporations (CGC)
helps becoming a guarantor of the loan borrowers. If the borrowers cannot repay the amount that they took out, Japan Federation of Credit Guarantee Corporations takes responsibility on behalf of the borrowers, and pay the loan back to each financial institutions.
Banks, credit unions, and financial institutions can easily offer loan programs to the borrowers because they have the insurance from Japan Federation of Credit Guarantee Corporation.
Japan Finance Corporation (JFC)
is a policy-based public financial institutions that helps SMEs. Most of the borrowers from Japan Finance Corporation are Small Enterprises. The average amount of loan is less than 30 million JPY (94% of all the borrowers).
Out of the 94% borrowers, 51% borrows 5 million JPY. It assists SMEs having hard time taking out a loan from banks.
¥1.6 trillion is used for finance management for SMEs with cash flow problems under COVID-19 pandemic.
What’s special about the COVID-19 related support?
Japan Federation of Credit Guarantee Corporations taking risks
Normally Japan Federation of Credit Guarantee Corporations (CGC) guarantee a part of the loan. Usually it covers 80% of the loan and leaves 20% to financial institutions (banks, credit unions, etc.) that actually make decision to offer the loan to the borrowers. Financial institutions still need to take a risk when the borrowers cannot pay back. Banks and Credit Unions may think reluctant to assist SMEs with cash flow problems.
This time, Japan Federation of Credit Guarantee Corporations covers 100% — no risk for financial institutions.
Japan Finance Corporation helps SMEs 7 days a week
Japan Finance Corporation (JFC) always has consultation desks for SMEs, and they offer the service 7 days a week now. It has various kinds of loan programs for sole-proprietors and SMEs, and the interest rate for all programs are relatively cheaper than what the other financial institutions offer.
Under this circumstance, the interest rate of loan programs that JFC offers reduced — 0.9% minus for all the programs. No guarantor, No collateral, and minus 0.9% interest rate for the next three years.
For example, the average SMEs are supposed to pay 1.11% interest on top of the amount that they borrowed, but it reduced to 0.21% (1.11–0.9).
Can I apply for it?
The target applicants of this special financial support are those experienced the decline of sales.
Sales in the last month reduced by more than 5% compared to the same month last year or 2 years ago
If the business is very young (operating 3+ months but less than 1.1 years), the measurement will be 5% sales decrease compared to
the average sales in the last three months
the sales in December 2019
the sales from October 2019 to December 2019
And more
Some industries such as tourism and restaurant are facing drastic decrease of sales, and the government is focusing its efforts on these industries by offering interest replenishment.
Out of the loan borrowers, the below can get interest replenishment.
Sole Proprietors (including freelancers)
Small Enterprise (legal entity) — sales reduced by 15%
Medium Enterprise — sales reduced by 20%
The difference between Small Enterprise and Medium Enterprise is the number of the employees. For manufacturers, construction industries, transporters, the number is less than 20 people.
For retailers or service industries, the number is less than 5 people.
Some plus points for subsidy programs
In addition to the loan programs, some subsidy programs assist SMEs with financial damage under COVID-19 outbreaks.
Monozukuri Subsidy (read the detail on SUBSIDY TIME!) accepts the applicants to cover expenses that they paid before they get accepted from the subsidy office.
The other programs are also offering the applicants with the damage to get higher points. | https://medium.com/@mihotanaka/supports-from-the-government-overcome-covid-19-damages-2bdb3e1ea2a2 | ['Miho Tanaka'] | 2020-03-15 06:31:30.761000+00:00 | ['Corona', 'Support', 'Government', 'Loans', 'Japan'] |
“I Am Not Smart Enough to Be a Programmer” | Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash.
Advantages of Learning to Code
The advantages are countless, and everyone can find something that draws them to coding. Here are some of my favorites.
You can become a professional software developer
It’s the most popular reason to start programming. It was also my reason.
Five years ago, I quit my job as a lawyer and looked for some other career path. Programming seemed like a perfect choice — I could learn it at home, at my own pace. And I didn’t need a degree to find a job. The market for programmers is as close to a meritocracy as possible.
In many countries, programmers can make a decent living. The market for developers is booming and the salaries are high, so becoming a programmer is an excellent motivation for learning to code.
It may help you in your current job
How much time do you spend doing repetitive and mindless things in your job? I bet it’s quite a lot. If you know how to code, you can automate many of those things.
I don’t mean only spreadsheet data manipulation. You can automate much more, from creating or renaming multiple files to getting the data from the web. To get some inspiration on the things you can do, read a classical book about Python: Python Automate the Boring Stuff with Python.
Even if you don’t have anything you can automate (and you probably do), you can benefit from learning to code. You can simplify or automate the work of others and get a promotion or even create a new job position — especially for yourself.
Programmers can create their tools, and it makes your possibilities endless.
It can provide additional income
Do you have an idea for an app? If you know how to code, you can make this idea a reality. It may not become the new Facebook or TikTok, but you can easily add it to the App Store and Google Play and start earning.
The chances are your idea isn’t all that great, but it doesn’t matter. Earning even a little bit of money by creating things is delightful. And who said you could only build one app? With a few of them, you can create a nice additional income stream that doesn’t require too much work to maintain.
It’s fun
Some people like to solve puzzles. Programming is excellent for them, as many problems are just that. Some people like building things. Programming is also perfect for them, as programmers create software daily. Some people like to help others. Being a programmer facilitates that. You can build an app someone needs and make a difference in the world.
Whatever your reasons, you can find fun in programming. The ability to create something out of nothing is exhilarating. Learning to code is also a reward in itself. You can almost feel your mind growing when you familiarize yourself with new concepts and tools. | https://medium.com/better-programming/i-am-not-smart-enough-to-be-a-programmer-9a342480b635 | ['Szymon Adamiak'] | 2020-10-05 15:05:59.342000+00:00 | ['Software Development', 'Programming', 'Learning To Code', 'Self Improvement', 'Education'] |
Understanding Recursion With Examples | Understanding Recursion With Examples
Read it again, and again, and again, and again…
Photo by Josip I. on Unsplash.
What is recursion?
Open a browser and type “recursion” on Google. Did you notice the “Did you mean: recursion” message?
Photo by author. Screenshot of Google.
Click on that message. It will appear again. Click again. There it is again. Click it… OK, enough.
You’re now beginning to understand what recursion is. If you scroll down on that very same Google page, you will see this:
“Recursion: the repeated application of a recursive procedure or definition.”
Even recursion’s own definition is recursive. | https://medium.com/better-programming/understanding-recursion-with-examples-f74606fd6be0 | ['Diana Bernardo'] | 2020-08-07 14:58:16.468000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Coding', 'Technology', 'Java', 'Programming'] |
My 10 Best Travel Tips After 9 Years Traveling The World | Travelling is really a passion for many individuals; be it to spectacular faraway countries, or even to places they’ve in no way seen of their own nation or state. I am fond of travelling, like to visit every corner of the world. Here, I wish to share my Travel Tips.
Whether you are interested in adventure in the wild, searching for the relaxing calmness of a house abroad or the blissful luxury of a local hotel using a restaurant and swimming pool, here are some travel tips that you could follow in order to save money on which could possibly be your greatest price on any holiday.
The 10 Best Travel Tips of All Time
Compare Your Accommodation Options
It’s likely you have remained dedicated to a particular hotel room. Nonetheless, it won’t hurt to use doing some analysis. From checking out the costs besides, be sure you have read what’s normally in small print — cancellation procedures and full transaction requirements when reservation. Low rates might not mean you are getting a great, less expensive deal.
Verify when the rates include morning meal and if you may need to cover your parking place. If you’re arranging your airfare online, there are a great number of internet websites offering support to find lodging. You may even check the hotels own website first as you may sometimes find additional offers or cancellation policies which are less restrictive.
When scheduling your place online, try creating a follow-up call towards the hotel office manager and check into any special discounts like a propane rebate card or perhaps a discount to yet another room. India is among the top countries based on the number of UNESCO world heritage sites in India.
Think Big
Don’t desire to feel limited in a little hotel room? Learn how you can lease someone’s home in that case. Aside from possessing more of the area that you will not find in the hotel room, you can cut costs on the foodstuffs you could get ready in your kitchen.
Also, thinking about is paramount to any prosperous take a trip and trip program actually? Usually do not wait till the final minute. Create a record earlier of what you would have to load up and all the journey essentials, such as for example, legitimate records you may want.
Making such lists will help you become more organized, preventing forgetting considerations such as for example passports, cellular phone chargers or other items which are necessary.
Work It
If you kids who are old sufficient and enthusiastic to greatly help out in a plantation, think of residing at a B&B on an operating farm where you can try farm chores or simply go out at the neighbourhood countryside.
Make sure to talk to each plantation if youngsters happen to be granted inside the recognized spot. We currently haven’t any organizations offering information regarding farm stays inside our country.
You might verify together with your talk about of choice’s plantation association and discover information on any farm keeps through their site.
What things to Eat
It is ideal for you to avoid chip, appetizers, and pieces of bread prior to the food gets there. Yes, it had been stated by me. You have to forget about bread, appetizers or chip, particularly prior to the main course of a meal.
If you need a single little bit of slices of bread or chips, own it together with your prior to the main course of a meal. It is perfect for you to inquire from the staff to consider the bakery or chip aside or simply to not bring it by any means.
Otherwise, you’ll fill up within the pre-meal meals and not ingest the energy (protein, excellent carbs and great fats) your system will be given from the nice main course of a meal choice you choose.
Present the trouble and Pleasure
Lessen your holiday accommodation and meal charges by appealing your family members or good friends with youngsters of exactly the same years as yours.
By permitting them to include you, child health care costs are propagated, and you obtain further adult-time by making it possible for each group of parent watch over-all the children.
Factor In the expense of Meals
Kids’ meals could be very costly because they accumulate, but it’s one price that may be easily sliced. When driving, save well on eating by taking loaded dishes and snack foods which are placed clean over a much cooler.
Some restaurants offer free meals for kids aged 12 and under. Choose a particular restaurant inside your vacation path online.
Think about your budget
Travel takes cash, and while various research the very best deals for essentials such as for example, airfare, hotel room and the car they don’t give much considered to the extra cash that’ll be wanted while there.
For a few, the destination issues more than extravagant restaurants, charges and searching for actions through the getaway, while others care and attention much less about where they’re and much more about having additional money to invest while there.
Considering that you prefer can help find the stability of the greatest travel spot but still having enough to invest while there. Have you any idea just how much you will be estimated for making use of your credit cards in another country?
It could also be worth telling your bank or charge card provider about your trip. With fraud increasing, some card providers/banks will minimize your card should they see unusual/unexpected spending. A call will remedy this example, but it’s yet another holiday ‘downer’ it is possible to avoid. Take adequate money for the trip plus some back-up funds.
Take a Digital Visit
During the setting up stage of one’s trip, go to the public webpage of one’s location and also the neighbourhood chamber of commerce. You might find attractive deals and discounts on lodging and local attractions. Be sure to perform some comprehensive analysis prior to going.
Vacations are designed for relaxation, and as you will strange places, you shall not know the region, activities, entertainment, nightlife, good food along with other necessary destinations.
Doing some study before going and arranging helps you to save hard work at the same time there in advance, and the irritability of having to consider them and help to make additional time for the specific activities and leisure.
Trading While Trading
You don’t desire to shell out a huge selection of dollars per night time on the closet-sized room. You will want a lush summer trip without the major hole on your own wallet in the expensive journey and accommodations.
So why certainly not get one of these accurate residence alternates? Check the web for websites that assist trades through the entire country and also the world. You have the benefits of packing light now since you need not bring plenty of stuff to you. HTOI the top-rated India tour operator unveils India’s beauty and heritage at its best.
Fitness on the run
The best thing about work out is certainly that you can perform it anyplace sufficient reason for no apparatus. You are able to do lunges and squats in-line at a leisure recreation area or around the seashore.
It is possible to lift up your son or daughter and over your mind and back off once again way up. They think it is a game but also for you its work. It is possible to walk quicker from level A to stage B and ensure it is a workout.
When you have usage of a gym after that benefit from it and full a full-body workout each time for those, who do not get to the fitness centre normally as you’ll want. Unless you have gym admittance then pack a fitness band within your luggage plus the exercise band will help you to complete a complete body workout.
Remind Yourself Why You’re Planning on Vacation. It is your main target to have fun. There isn’t any perfect vacation, and plans might not come out so well. What’s important is the fact that you find the very best deal to your requirements and that you love every wonderful minute of one’s vacation together with your family. | https://medium.com/@iamsurenrathore/my-best-travel-tips-after-9-years-traveling-the-world-94640d5ebd4a | ['Suren Rathore'] | 2020-03-18 06:57:48.043000+00:00 | ['Travel', 'Travel Tips', 'Travel Writing', 'Tourism', 'Suren Rathore'] |
nahmii: First Airdrop Date Announced | Today is an exciting day for hubii and for you, our loyal community of token holders. We are proud to announce the date for the first nahmii airdrop (known as the ‘airdriip’), 1st December 2018, with the qualifying period for the first airdriip starting from 1st November 2018.
In this post we’re going to take you through how to register for the airdriip, what nahmii is and how the tokens work. As explained previously, nahmii will be a tokenised protocol but there will be no token sale. Instead, we’re distributing the tokens over a period of ten years through 120 monthly airdrops.
Next week we will also publish a walkthrough of how ETH holders can register for the airdriip (HBT holders don’t need to do anything, they will be registered automatically) and a detailed FAQ.
The First Ethereum Scaling Solution
Let’s begin with a quick explanation of what nahmii is and who it is for. nahmii is a second layer scaling solution for the Ethereum blockchain, developed by hubii. Unlike the Ethereum mainchain, nahmii has predictable fees, low latency, instant transaction finality and highly scalable throughput. Using nahmii, companies can build commercial-scale blockchain applications for the first time. Companies can also leverage hubii’s wallet manager and decentralised exchange product, hubii core.
Interestingly, hubii did not set out to build a scaling solution. Following our ICO in 2017, we initially planned to build our content marketplace using one of the many scaling products in development at the time. Very quickly however, we realised that these projects were a long way from deployment and that we could build our own superior solution much faster. The result is nahmii, the first commercially-focused Ethereum scaling solution, complete with a suite of intuitive developer tools like the CLI and SDK. nahmii has been in testing since June and we have opened various Github repositories including for the CLI and SDK, you can access them here.
What are NII Tokens?
nahmii token
The nahmii protocol will be tokenised through NII tokens, however there will be no token sale. NII tokens play an important role in the security of nahmii (explained in more detail in the nahmii white paper) and token holders will receive all of the revenue from the protocol. NII tokens will be distributed through monthly airdrops, called airdriips to match nahmii and hubii’s branding, which will run for ten years. In total there will be 120 billion NII tokens, with 1 billion tokens per monthly airdriip. All airdriips will be made using nahmii; this will showcase the power of the protocol and avoid expensive on-chain fees.
Who is Eligible for the Airdriip?
Each monthly airdriip will follow the token split set out below:
50% proportionally to HBT token holders (the token from our original ICO in 2017)
20% proportionally to ETH holders that register or deposit into hubii core
20% to a strategic growth fund
10% to key partners in the project
The allocations for HBT and ETH holders will be determined using ‘balance-blocks’, a fair way of assessing token holdings which calculates the balance of tokens in a wallet over time. There will be a minimum balance-block requirement to be eligible for the airdriip. This point and the concept of balance-blocks are explained in more detail in a previous blog post here.
Information for HBT Token Holders
hubii recognises the continued importance of HBT token holders, who will receive 50% of all NII tokens during the airdriips. HBT token holders do not need to do anything to qualify for the airdriip, except hold their HBT in an Ethereum address that they control.
After the first accumulation period ends on 30th November 2018, qualifying HBT token holders will receive the airdriip tokens in their nahmii (i.e. off-chain) balance on 1st December 2018. The easiest way to access these tokens after this date is using hubii core: simply download the software, register your Ethereum address and you will see both your on-chain HBT and off-chain NII balances.
This will also be addressed in a FAQ document, which will be made available before the airdriip begins next week.
Information for ETH Token Holders
ETH token holders can also participate in the nahmii airdriip, with 20% of NII tokens going to ETH holders who register using hubii core. The registration system within hubii core will be deployed next week and we will explain how ETH holders can register in a separate blog post.
ETH holders are not limited to one Ethereum address and may register as many as they want within hubii core. Once an Ethereum address is registered in this way, it will remain registered and continue to receive airdriiped tokens.
After the first accumulation period ends on 30th November 2018, qualifying ETH token holders will receive the airdriip tokens in their nahmii (i.e. off-chain) balance on 1st December 2018. The easiest way to access these tokens after this date is using hubii core: simply download the software, register your Ethereum address and you will see both your on-chain ETH and off-chain NII balances.
This will also be addressed in a FAQ document, which will be made available before the airdriip begins next week.
Summary
We will publish a second blog post next week before the first qualifying period begins to explain more about the airdriip alongside a FAQ. For now, it was most important that we kept our promise to you; we told the community that they would have plenty of warning to move their tokens into the right addresses ahead of the first airdriip. You now have one week before the accumulation period begins on 1st November.
The first airdriip represents a huge milestone in the development of nahmii and hubii’s wider ecosystem of products. We anticipate that the monthly airdriips will drive development of the platform and grow the community exponentially. This is huge opportunity for everyone involved in nahmii; we have built the very first commercially focused Ethereum scaling platform and you will all share in the revenue and tokenised rewards. Get ready for some very exciting times ahead! | https://medium.com/hubii/nahmii-first-airdrop-date-announced-8ba48a310835 | [] | 2018-11-03 10:37:00.599000+00:00 | ['Scalability', 'Blockchain', 'Ethereum', 'Airdrop'] |
A Simple 5-Step Process for Conquering Procrastination | A Simple 5-Step Process for Conquering Procrastination
It takes more than motivation to conquer what holds you back.
Photo by Alora Griffiths on Unsplash
You’re not lazy. You’re not unproductive. You’re just a part-time procrastinator like all of us. You’re not shortsighted. You’re not unmotivated. Like all of us, you’re simply struggling to embrace short-term work for long-term benefits.
And therein lies the battle all of us face on the journey to becoming happier and more successful — we’re naturally inclined to put off our biggest goals, largely because it takes longer to reap their benefits.
High-achievers find a way to overcome the stumbling blocks that trip up those who are less motivated and thoughtful. Your blueprint begins first in your mind. The sooner you can subordinate your mental and emotional impulses to your goals and game plan, the quicker you’ll immerse yourself in ANY work that lies in front of you.
Here’s a great example of the importance of this: Elon Musk did not think Tesla would be a successful venture. Shocking, right? Then why in the world did he go forward with it? I leave that up to the man, himself, to explain:
“If something’s important enough you should try. Even if you think the probable outcome is failure.” — Elon Musk
We should all look to progress toward work that stirs our passion, making us feel alert and energized. So many people never realize their potential because they lack energy for what they do. As a result, their daily tasks and obligations start to become a grind. This leads to frustration, loss of hope, and the feeling that what they’re working for lacks meaning — that their dreams will never come true.
Our ability to produce — and re-produce — a winning mindset is a driver to truly living life on our terms. You’ll never live the life you dream about if you lack consistency. Consistency and drive begin with a positive attitude, a hopeful outlook, and an insatiable desire to embrace new challenges and tackle our repeatable tasks with renewed vigor.
Focusing on Short and Long-Term Success
So much of modern productivity research centers around your need to focus on the “process” and to enjoy the journey, rather than eyeing an end-goal or prize. That’s true. But know this, my friend — you absolutely must have goals. Visualize that prize which awaits you for all your hard labor and willingness to rise to meet old and new challenges each day.
Because it’s that vision — that concept of victory — that eases your flow and progress toward approaching each step in your process with the enthusiasm and ambition that you need. Big dreams need goals and big goals need a game plan that is seeded with emotional intelligence and long-term vision.
Caroline Webb illustrates in her piece for Harvard Business Review that it’s hard to commit to short-term work when we can’t immediately see the benefits we’ll realize down the road:
“The problem is our brains are programmed to procrastinate. In general, we all tend to struggle with tasks that promise future upside in return for efforts we take now… it’s easier for our brains to process concrete rather than abstract things, and the immediate hassle is very tangible compared with those unknowable, uncertain future benefits. So the short-term effort easily dominates the long-term upside in our minds — an example of something that behavioral scientists call present bias.”
So what do we do to confront this pernicious present bias? How do we avoid procrastination in order to become the most productive woman or man we can possibly be? I’ve developed five steps to focus on in an effort to yield higher returns of productivity:
1. Stop making excuses
This begins first with what we tell ourselves. Second, it continues with what we share, tweet, snap, or tell others. Your hard-earned cash is far better invested in a book or educational course that expands your mind, rather than that new iPhone that you don’t really need right now. The reasons of why you can’t do something are better saved — instead, tell others you can do it, then commit and figure out how.
2. Position yourself to increase the work or activities that ignite the fire inside of you while decreasing the boring things
This requires deep thought, planning, and a willingness to use your imagination. Know what you love and keep stacking more of it on your plate. That said…
3. Always have a step-by-step plan for mundane tasks
There will always be mundane tasks and urgent matters that require our attention. Break down the boring, less pleasing things into chunks of work. Find within those chunks of work the “wins” that you’ll earn. The strengths you’ll strengthen and weaknesses you’ll gradually reduce.
4. Put a carrot in front of you
Have a treat to look forward to, a light at the end of the tunnel, that inspires you to keep going. It may be a nice weekend getaway. A trip to a sporting event or a nice dinner. It could be re-investing in yourself via a personal development course or retreat. Have something — this is vitally important for fueling our day-to-day actions.
5. Extract value out of each activity by defining how what you do will align with your values, dreams and five-year plan
Tie this back to your purpose which is the fountain of motivation and truth that lives in your soul.
Negative Outcomes and Conclusions
In an article for Psychology Today, Dr. Elizabeth Lombardo enumerates the negative outcomes and factors of procrastinating.
“Procrastination can lead to increased stress, health problems, and poorer performance. Procrastinators tend to have more sleep issues and experience greater stressful regret than non-procrastinators. What’s more, procrastination can also hinder your self-esteem with the guilt, shame, or self-critical thoughts that can result from putting off tasks.” — Source: Dr. Elizabeth Lombardo
The words “regret” and “self-critical” stand out most to me. By putting off things that we don’t want to do, the most likely outcome is that we end up criticizing ourselves, regretting our wasted time, and at worst, we lose sleep and experience higher stress levels. While we’re all conditioned and biased toward the here and now, a simple cost-benefit analysis tells us that putting off things that demand our attention now is not a winning proposition.
Continue forward and know that instant gratification and temporary pleasures pale in comparison to sustained happiness and long-term growth. Come back to this article when you find yourself spinning your wheels and doubting yourself. Your future self will thank you. | https://medium.com/publishous/a-simple-5-step-process-for-conquering-procrastination-34e7691b25ce | ['Christopher D. Connors'] | 2020-09-01 17:45:36.113000+00:00 | ['Inspiration', 'Personal Development', 'Self Improvement', 'Motivation', 'Productivity'] |
Product Updates → July-October 2019 | It’s been quite a while (sheesh, the last one was in June, we ought to this more frequently!) since we shared the previous product update with you. We have been working hard for the last five months to add some cool new features to Slang. Hope you have more fun using them than we did building them.
Slang’s Web SDK
Now add Voice to your website/PWA using Slang’s Web SDK! ( We have added Slang in our website. GIF shows: User asking: “What is 42”. Slang replies back with an answer and also takes you to the page linked to ‘42’)
Woot Woot! Slang now has Web SDK. A lot of clients we spoke to wanted support for web. So we went ahead and built Slang for Web. Earlier your users could talk to your apps, but now they can talk to your websites as well. We heard PWAs are the new sexy, so we went ahead and made sure Slang works with them. You get all the features and components that make Slang awesome for apps now on the web. We made sure it works on iOS browsers too :-). We are currently accepting beta customers for our WebSDK. Don’t forget to reach out to us if you want to see how Slang will look on your website.
Improved NLP engine
When we started Slang, we originally used a third party NLP engine. While we had an abstraction layer around it to add our own extensions, it allowed us to get going quickly. But soon we ran into limitations (eg composite entities, lists, performance, etc) and realized we could not reply on a generic NLP engine but something that is more suited for the kind of capabilities our customers would need and also for us to provide the best possible VAX platform.
Towards this, we started the journey of building our own NLP engine, based on top of one of the best NLP engine but allowing us full fidelity and control.
It took us almost 6 months but we finally are ready for making it our default NLP engine.
We call it Vyasa internally (any resemblance to the engineer Ved who built it is purely coincidental. Or at least that’s what he tells us)
Improved Scalability
Diagrammatic Representation of our Infrastructure before and after the update
We realised early on that our old infra won’t be able to match the scale of our clients. We took a step back and decided to revamp our infra to make sure we match our customer’s scale and deliver them the best performance possible.
In the past five months, our engineering team was hard at work and revamped our backend to make it more robust, reduce latency and increase the number of requests we could handle by 4x.
Multiple geolocations
We now have our servers at multiple geolocations — USA and India.
Alas, after a lot of discussions and fights…err..debates, we decided to set up a server in the land of the dreams. We now have servers in the USA in addition to India. This addition will provide our customers in the west(that’s right, we will be making those announcements soon, follow us on Twitter to keep an eye out) the lowest latency and the best experience possible when their users try out Slang.
Improved Discovery
New Onboarding Screen Built in the framework
After the release of our first customer in prod ‘Madurai Kavalan’ (Yay!), we looked at the usage data and realised that the discovery of what users can do with voice was still a challenge for them. To solve this issue, we added an onboarding experience for voice to Slang’s framework, which helps the user to get exposed to voice and removes the extra amount of work for the developers.
More updates coming
Stay tuned as we continue working with more developers and also dogfooding Slang internally constantly. If you are interested in seeing some specific features do let us know at [email protected] or leave a comment here. | https://medium.com/slanglabs/product-updates-july-october-2019-7fc99a5c294f | ['Vinayak Jhunjhunwala'] | 2020-04-14 20:46:26.399000+00:00 | ['Android', 'Next Billion Users', 'Web Development', 'Voice Assistant', 'NLP'] |
Building Map-Based Web Application using Nuxt and Mapbox | Nuxt Installation and Project Set-up
The following steps are explained in more detail in NuxtJs documentation. I will be showing every option that I choose for this project.
Step 1: Create a directory
Create a new directory and get into.
mkdir <project-name> cd <project-name>
Step 2: Create package.json file
Every project needs a package.json file to start nuxt . Copy this JSON into your package.json and save before running npm install:
{ "name": "my-app",
"scripts": {
"dev": "nuxt"
}
}
Step 3: Install Nuxt
Use the following command to install Nuxt.
npm install —-save nuxt
Nuxt Installation — Succes
Step 4: Create Nuxt Project
The Nuxt.js team has created scaffolding tool create-nuxt-app as mentioned in NuxtJS documentation, Make sure you have npx installed ( npx is shipped by default since NPM 5.2.0 ).
npx create-nuxt-app <project-name>
It will ask you some questions about UI framework choice, linting tools, rendering mode, etc.
In this project, I will use Vuetify UI Framework and Axios for API Consumption.
Step 5: Run the app in Development Mode
npm run dev
It will use 3000 as the default port
Step 6: Open the page
Open http://localhost:3000 in your browser, then you’ll be welcomed by the default screen of this Nuxt app. (it’s already dark mode by default)
Step 7: Remove default layout
To remove the default page, open default.vue file inside layout folder, remove everything and put only the following code:
<template> <v-app dark> <nuxt /> </v-app> </template>
Step 8: Create map.vue file inside /page directory
This step will create a new page called map. Simply create map.vue file inside /page directory, The framework reads all the files inside this directory and creates the application router. bravo
If you open http://localhost:3000/map, it will show the page below:
Mapbox Installation
Step 1: Install Mapbox GL JS
I use this npm package for this project.
npm install —-save mapbox-gl
Step 2: Import the package
Import the package to the map.vue file by put it inside the script tag before the Vue instance.
import mapboxgl from 'mapbox-gl'
Step 3: Adding Mapbox access token
We have to use a valid Mapbox access token in order to use any Mapbox’s features & tools. We can store it in component data.
Step 4: Adding a Map container
Create an element with id. In this example, I will use id="map"
<div id=”map”></div>
Step 5: Initialize a Map
In this step, I will create a method called createMap() . This method containing an Initialization of a new mapbox-gl instance and stored it in a component data called map , so it will be assignable in other component options by using this.map .
Make sure to call the createMap() method inside the mounted() hook so that Mapbox injecting the map into the container element after the page is already rendered.
Step 5: Adding CSS to Map Container
Just to make it full screen, add following CSS to the Map Container:
#map{ width:100%; height:100vh; }
You’re set up! Enjoy the game.
See you next week. Thank you. | https://medium.com/@brahmaputra1996/building-map-based-web-application-using-nuxt-and-mapbox-ba758eaa8594 | ['Brahma Putra'] | 2020-03-03 13:21:15.020000+00:00 | ['Mapbox', 'Nuxt', 'Vue', 'GIS', 'Front End Development'] |
Introduction to Bayesian Statistics for Data Science and Analytics (Part -1). | Over the years, the data science domain has assumed great significance with the exponential growth of data. A solid foundation in the underlying mathematical concepts and statistics is vital to master data science and analytics. Bayesian statistics is a must-know for all data science and analytics professionals since data science has deep roots in the Bayesian approach.
In this article, we will look into:
1) What is Bayesian Statistics?
2) Bayesian statistics vs. Frequentist (Classical) statistics
3) Bayes’ theorem
The next article (Part-2) will deal with Bayesian inference and the diverse applications of Bayesian statistics in data science and analytics.
1. What is Bayesian Statistics?
Bayesian statistics is a mathematical approach that involves the application of probability (mostly conditional probability) to solve statistical problems.
This approach involves initial “prior” beliefs (or probabilities) about an event which is updated when new evidence emerges through data collection. This results in ‘posterior’ beliefs which form the basis for Bayesian inferences. Often, people tend to overlook the prior probability of an event whereas posterior probability is always considered.
Before we actually delve deeper into Bayesian Statistics, let us briefly discuss Frequentist Statistics, the more popular version of statistics and the distinction between these two statistical philosophies.
2. Bayesian statistics vs. Frequentist (Classical) statistics
Firstly, we have to realize that there is a thin line between these two alternative approaches.
a) What is Frequentist (Classical) statistics?
It is the most widely used inferential method in statistics.
According to Frequentist approach, the probability of an event is the frequency of occurrence of that particular event in the long run of the experiment (i.e., it involves repeated trials under the same conditions).
Let’s consider the example of tossing a coin to determine whether it’s fair or not. (Theoretically, the experiment is supposed to be repeated infinite number of times but practically it can only be repeated a large (finite) number of times).
The following table represents the frequency of heads and tails
We can conclude that this is a fair coin since the probability of getting a head is 0.5.
It is evident from this observation that the result of an experiment is dependent on the number of times the experiment is repeated. This is a major drawback of the Frequentist approach.
b) Distinction between Frequentist and Bayesian approach
We have seen that the Frequentist definition of probability is based on the long-term frequency of the event occurring when the same experiment is repeated multiple times. This is in contrast to the Bayesian definition according to which probability is measured by the belief of the likelihood of a particular outcome.
In case of some events, one approach makes more sense than the other. Frequentist statistics is applicable to events such as flipping of a coin, rolling a die, picking a card from a deck etc. that are random as well as repeatable whereas Bayesian approach allows to assign probabilities to events that are neither random nor repeatable. For instance, according to Bayesian approach, it is acceptable to assign a probability to an event like Joe Biden winning the 2020 U.S. presidential race. But, if Frequentist approach is followed, this wouldn’t make much sense since we cannot perform repeated trials (the candidate only ever contests once for this particular election) unless we go for virtual trials.
One major advantage that Bayesian approach has is that it takes the prior knowledge into consideration while calculating probability by applying Bayes’ rule.
Most of us are familiar with Bayes’ Theorem in probability. Let’s delve deeper into this concept.
3. Bayes’ theorem
a) Conditional probability
A good grasp of the concept of conditional probability is essential to understand Bayes’ theorem.
Conditional probability is the probability of an event A, given that another event B has already occurred. This is represented by P(A|B) and can be defined as:
where P(B) ≠ 0
Example: In a card game, suppose a player needs to draw a black card which is a King in order to win. It is given that Lily has drawn a black card. What is the probability of her winning the game?
Solution:
P (A ∩ B) = P (Obtaining a black card which is a King) = 2/52
P(B) = P (Picking a black card) = 1/2
Thus, P(A|B) = 4/52.
b) What is Bayes’ Theorem?
Let’s consider the following equations:
and
From these two equations, we can conclude that:
This is the Bayes’ Theorem.
Here,
Prior (the probability of event A to occur) refers to the preconceived beliefs we hold.
Likelihood (the probability of event B being true given that event A is true) refers to the probability of observing what we did given that our priors are true.
Posterior (the probability of A to occur given event B already occurred) refers to the updated prior based on what has been observed.
We can actually write
This can be substituted in Bayes’ theorem to obtain an alternative version, which is applied a lot in Bayesian inference:
Example: A situation where Bayesian analysis is routinely used is the spam filter in your mail server. The message is scrutinized for the appearance of key words which make it likely that the message is spam. Imagine that the evidence for spam is that the subject message of the meal contains the sentence “check this out”. We define events:
• S which means the message is spam.
• C which means the subject line contains the sentence “check this out”.
Compute the conditional probability P(S|C) when 40% of emails are spam and 1% of spam email have “check this out” in the subject line while 0 .4% of non-spam emails have this sentence in the subject line.
Solution: Using Bayes’ formula,
P(S|C) = P(C|S). P(S) / P(C)
Now we have P(S) = 0.4 and P(C|S) = 0.01.
P(C) = P(C|S). P(S) + P(C|S’). P(S’) = 0.01 x 0.4 + 0.004 x 0.6 = 0.0064 where S’ stands for the event which means that the message is not spam.
Thus, P(S|C) = 0.01 x 0.4 / 0.0064 = 5/8 = 0.625
I’ll be back soon with the next article (Part-2) that deals with Bayesian inference and the diverse applications of Bayesian statistics in data science and analytics. | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/introduction-to-bayesian-statistics-for-data-science-and-analytics-part-1-93e38d67fab5 | ['Lekshmi S. Sunil'] | 2020-11-03 12:39:02.381000+00:00 | ['Bayesian Statistics', 'Data Science', 'Statistics', 'Probability', 'Data Analytics'] |
How to Not Feel Lonely | Escaping the mentally and emotionally draining trap.
by Sasha Freemind on Unsplash
Loneliness is a deeply personal, internal experience. This is why you can be in a room full of people or lying right next to someone and still feel lonely. It is an emptiness, a feeling of disconnect between you and well, everyone. It can engulf us, make us feel uncared for and misunderstood. This can lead to depression and disillusion, if we let it.
Though being alone is not synonymous with loneliness, it is much easier for some than others. That feeling of being lonely most often comes in solitude. Sometimes it’s because we are single, missing romantic intimacy and just having a partner on our life’s journey. Other times it’s because we may not have many friends to hang out or converse with, and we get tired of doing things by ourselves or not at all.
It’s natural to crave human interaction. However, if we cannot ever be comfortable in our aloneness or enjoy our own company, that is an indisputable area in need of addressing. A great book titled Love, Freedom, Aloneness by Osho does just that. You have to be content with yourself or no amount of attention or number of relationships will ever be enough. So, that’s the first step. Learn to relish your me time, have fun by yourself and not view the circumstance as one that is “less than” being accompanied.
Love, Freedom, Aloneness acknowledges the different phases in our lives and gives reasons why each is important. Honor the space that you are in. We tend to compare ourselves against not just others, but earlier versions of ourselves, previous times in our lives and moments that have long since passed. This book is self-proclaimed, “The Koan of Relationships.” It discusses the importance of balancing our need for freedom with our desire for intimacy and connection. It’s thoughtful, insightful, and will lead you on a journey toward being comfortable with just you.
Once that’s taken care of….
Keep yourself occupied. Enroll in classes, pick up or practice a hobby, exercise, redecorate your home, just find productive activities in which you can engage consistently. Take advantage of the time that you have to yourself while you can. Achieve something. Kind of hard to feel lonely when you’re busy doing stuff, growing and learning. It’s idle time that is the killer.
Get out in the world. Go sit at a public place like a coffee shop or a busy park. Check out a movie at the theatre. Sometimes just people watching and feeling the energy of others, even if we don’t interact with them, can make us feel not so alone in the universe. This is even better if done during the day because you get some sunshine, which also helps as it causes our bodies to produce Vitamin D and elevates serotonin levels, improving our mood. Energy levels will also increase. So, if you’re feeling lethargic and wanting to just wallow in your loneliness, force yourself to get up and get out into the sun.
Learn to meditate. Personally, I practice Transcendental Meditation and love it. It’s simple and based on science. But find a practice that works for you. Meditation helps you focus, relax and remain present. It keeps you in this moment instead of anxious about the next or reminiscent about the past, which often accompanies feelings of loneliness — The wondering if we’ll find someone or wishing we still had someone. Sometimes we just need to be still, quiet the noise in our heads and simply breathe. The future is going to be what it’s going to be, what’s done is done and no amount of worry or stress will change that. Meditation is one of the most positive and effective things that you can do to relieve anguish.
Tell your friends and family how you’ve been feeling. One of the worst things that we can do is keep loneliness, or any draining emotions to ourselves. Don’t withdraw. Despite what you may think, there is someone out there who cares about you. Tell them that you could really use their company. Tell them that you could use some extra attention and affection right now. Give them the opportunity to help and offer of themselves when you need them most. They’ll be happy that you did.
If you’re new to an area or live far away from family and friends, ask co-workers to hang out. Try apps like Meetup that connect you to local events where you can interact with people who have similar interests, or Bumble, which now has “friends” and “networking” modes that allow you to platonically match with others in your area.
It’s normal to feel lonely on occasion. Don’t allow the aforementioned suggestions to serve as Band-Aids covering a more deeply-seeded issue, but they will definitely help you get through those scattered moments of saddening isolation. | https://acamea.medium.com/how-to-not-feel-lonely-cfc9fc192024 | ['Acamea Deadwiler'] | 2018-09-28 07:41:40.470000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'Singles', 'Self Love', 'Loneliness', 'Self Help'] |
Are you ready to be anti-ableist in 2021? | Are you ready to be anti-ableist in 2021?
As I start to think about the standard “year-end” / wrap-up articles related to accessibility, this one seems pretty obvious.
We need more people to be anti-ableist.
Ableism is a set of beliefs or practices that devalue and discriminate against people with physical, intellectual, or psychiatric disabilities and often rests on the assumption that disabled people need to be “fixed” and are not equal to non-disabled individuals.
Anti-ableism is the opposite of ableism, with a practical focus on strategies, theories, actions, and practices that challenge and counter ableism, inequalities, prejudices, and discrimination based on any type of disability — including visible, invisible, learning, developmental, physical, or mental health.
Being anti-ableist requires more than just being a disability ally/a11y (a11y is the abbreviation for accessibility, which I will use for the rest of this article). Anti-ableists incur major risk — they put themselves out there, risking being the recipient of the same type of blowback as people with disabilities. Being anti-ableist also requires two separate work components:
The ability to grow in one’s allyship with any underrepresented group. Because this is in general, this is the “breadth” component of anti-ableism. The ability to deepen one’s understanding of the barriers that regularly impact people with disabilities and how to best address and remove those barriers. Because this is specific to disabilities, this is the “depth” component of anti-ableism.
General growth to become a true and authentic ally includes:
Self-reflection. What have you been doing to help people with disabilities? What could you have done better? An aspiration to learn, grow, and change, with a particular focus on intersectional identities. The ability to be humble, empathetic, and compassionate, and have uncomfortable conversations. The capacity to actively listen to the stories and lived experiences of underrepresented minorities and amplify these marginalized voices. The desire to affect change to improve the rights of an underrepresented group using one’s social capital, positional authority, and political influence.
People who want to be allies to any underrepresented group need to be ready to BE better and DO better. The first five tasks listed above help individuals reach that “breadth” first step I identified at the top of this article. These five tasks are necessary to generate the skillset for generic allyship for *any* underrepresented group. Potential a11ies need to be ready to take several specific steps directly related to disability and ableism to be anti-ableist.
Challenge the representation of people with disabilities by non-disabled people by reading books, listening to podcasts, and watching films centered around the experiences of people with disabilities. Disrupt the able-bodied community they have likely been surrounded by since childhood. Stop perpetuating the supremacy of not having a disability by being willing to see and treat people with disabilities as equals. Reject the privilege of either being able-bodied or being able to hide an invisible disability. Follow the societal model of disability while challenging occurrences of the medical and charitable models of disability. It is not my glaucoma or wheelchair use that is disabling. Society allowing businesses to create digital tools that can’t be magnified or used by a keyboard, and physical events that don’t consider attendees with mobility challenges — THOSE are my disabilities. Recognize that people with disabilities are experts at developing workarounds for their disabilities. Include them in every solution you are involved in. Remove barriers that create an inequitable experience for people with disabilities. If you don’t control removing them, report them to someone who can and follow up incessantly. Follow identity-first language when requested, and people-first language otherwise, for all communications. Ask what nouns people use to describe themselves, just like you would inquire about pronouns. Disabled or person with a disability or differently-abled? Autistic, a person with Asperger’s, on the spectrum. Give people with disabilities the dignity of being able to choose how they describe themselves. Avoid and call out inspiration porn, which is incredibly harmful to people with disabilities, no matter how well-intentioned.
One other important side note is to recognize that people with disabilities are NOT automatically anti-ableist. They aren’t even automatically a11ies to other people with different disabilities than those they possess. If you don’t:
Caption your videos;
Describe your images;
Choose an accessible color palette;
Treat all disability categories as equal;
Call out ableism for ALL areas of disability, not just the one(s) you happen to live with;
You are ableist. It is fixable. Do the work. | https://medium.com/@sheribyrnehaber/are-you-ready-to-be-anti-ableist-in-2021-239103637949 | ['Sheri Byrne-Haber'] | 2020-12-10 16:02:43.170000+00:00 | ['Equity', 'Diversity', 'Anti Racism', 'Inclusion', 'Disability'] |
How to use multiple linear regression in R to determine which marketing actions drives sales | We need to prepare our dataset for modeling by turning our character variables into factor type variables which can be done in one line of code for Cart.Notice and Coupon variables. However, Price.Reduction is a numeric variable so we will transform this variable separately.
#Convert all character variables into factor in one line: Make sure tidyverse package is loaded.
grocery <- grocery %>% mutate_if(is.character, as.factor) #Factor Price Reduction variable
grocery$Price.Reduction <- as.factor(grocery$Price.Reduction)
Transformed dataframe
Dummy variable regression
When working with a categorical variable in regression, the variables take on a value that is a label, so it doesn’t have a numerical interpretation. For instance, our coupon variable takes on 2 labels (yes or no). Since it can only take 2 values, to include these in our regression model, we use a technique called a dummy variable regression.
Luckily for us, simply converting our variables to a factor type labels our variables, so when we feed the categorical variables into our function, R will automatically use one of the categories as a reference variable. The number of dummy variables required in a regression is one less than the number of categories in the categorical variable.
Multiple Linear Regression Model
Now we build our multiple regression model using the lm() function. Multiple regression simply means we have two (2) or more independent or explanatory variables in our model. We will model Sales as explained by Coupon, Cart.Notice and Price.Reduction. We do not need the Week column.
# All variables with the exception of Week as an independent variable
grocery_model_lm <- lm(Sales ~ Coupon + Cart.Notice + Price.Reduction, data = grocery)
Model summary output:
Multiple linear regression output
Let’s interpret the output.
Intercept
The intercept is the value of the dependent variable (Sales) when all of the independent variables are zero. We can expect to sell 14.5 cases of tomatoes per week when there is no coupon, no cart notice and no price reduction.
Coefficients
CouponYes
CouponYes coefficient is -1.17 (negative coefficient), but the p-value is not significant; therefore, our estimated coefficient is not statistically different from 0. In other words, we cannot rule out that the true value of the coefficient is zero. This implies that sales of tomatoes are no different when there is or isn’t a coupon promotion.
Cart.NoticeYes
Cart.NoticeYes coefficient is 20.17 (positive coefficient) and the p-value is statistically significant. We can expect to sell 20 more cases of tomatoes when there is a cart notice, while keeping all other variables at the same level.
Price.Reduction1
The Price.Reduction1 coefficient is 5 (positive coefficient), but the p-value is not significant; therefore, our estimated coefficient is not statistically different from 0. This implies that sales are no different when there is a 1 cent price reduction.
Price.Reduction2
Price.Reduction2 coefficient is 12.8 (positive coefficient) and p-value is statistically significant. We can expect to sell 12.8 more cases of tomatoes when there is a price reduction of 2 cents, while keeping all other variables at the same level.
Insignificant variables
We can conclude that coupon and a price reduction of 1 cent is not significant in influencing sales. We will remove the insignificant variables and run our regression model again. First, I simply create a new column to recode all of our 1 cent price reductions to 0 and factor the new variable and then check the results.
#Create new price reduction variable
grocery <- grocery %>%
mutate(Price.Reduction_new =
case_when(
Price.Reduction == 2 ~ 2,
Price.Reduction == 1 ~ 0,
Price.Reduction == 0 ~ 0)) #We need to factor Price.Reduction_new
grocery$Price.Reduction_new <- as.factor(grocery$Price.Reduction_new) #Check levels
levels(grocery$Price.Reduction_new) #Inspect results
str(grocery)
Inspect the results of our new Price.Reduction variable
Final Regression Model
Build model with just the significant variables and check model output.
#Model sales as explained by Cart.Notice and Price.Reduction_new
grocery_model_lm_signifvars <- lm(Sales ~ Cart.Notice + Price.Reduction_new, data = grocery) #Print model output
summary(grocery_model_lm_signifvars)
Final regression summary model output with significant variables only
Removing the insignificant variables definitely has an impact on model fit.
Goodness of fit measures
An R-squared of .855 indicates that this model is able to explain about 86% of the variation in the sales of tomatoes given all the independent variables together. The remaining 14% goes unexplained.
The p-value of the model itself is 0.0001639 which is less than 0.05 which indicates that this model has predictive power.
The residual standard error for the regression model is 5.29 and measures how far off our model is. You have to interpret the standard error in relative to what you are predicting. In effect, the typical difference between observed sales and predicted sales is 5.29 cases. As long as the residuals are normal, then 68% of our predictions should fall within 1 standard error (5.29 cases) and 95% should be accurate within 2 standard errors (10.58 cases). Predictions greater than 2 standard errors would be considered an outlier.
Notably, removing the insignificant variables did not improve R-squared. But if we look at our adjusted R-squared, the second model did improve ever so slightly. More importantly, model 2 did decrease our residual standard errors. Reducing residual standard errors becomes very important in assessing your model if your goal is to build accurate forecasts.
Forecast sales
We will predict sales of canned tomatoes during a week in which you use a shopping cart notice, a coupon and reduce price by 1 cent.
First, create a new data frame to hold the values (out-of-sample data) we want to predict. Since coupon and 1 cent price reduction has no impact on sales as indicated by our first regression model, we will leave out the Coupon variable completely in our new data frame, but we will need to include Price.Reduction, but code it as a zero (0) so that it fits the model.
# Create new data frame and print output
(new_data_02 <- data.frame(Cart.Notice = "Yes", Price.Reduction_new="0"))
Output of new data frame with the values we want to predict
Second, load the broom package because we will use the augment() function to make our predictions. Our regression model is the first argument and the new data frame is the second argument. We will use our regression model that has the significant variables only.
#Using broom package
augment(grocery_model_lm_signifvars, newdata = new_data_02)
The augment function returns a tibble with a new column called .fitted which holds our prediction(s).
Augment function output contains a new column .fitted with our predicted sales
We can expect to sell 36.5 cases of tomatoes. | https://medium.com/mlearning-ai/how-to-use-multiple-linear-regression-in-r-to-determine-which-marketing-actions-drives-sales-cf733eeae28e | ['Anita Owens'] | 2021-09-02 08:43:27.989000+00:00 | ['Forecasting', 'R', 'Marketing Analytics', 'Regression Modeling'] |
An invitation to be a “Good Guy” | The key to advancing gender equality is Men.
10 Leadership Actions Male Allies Can Initiate Now to Advocate for Women
My work focuses on engaging “Ready-Now” men to engage in advancing women. I know many women in the workplace wonder, “Where are all the men — guys who could lean in as genuine advocates, accomplices and full conspirators in removing obstacles to gender equity?”
It’s well documented that women face numerous disadvantages in the workplace. I also have found that many men want to help but simply don’t know what to do on a daily basis to demonstrate advocacy for advancing women.
Into this landscape, my colleagues David G. Smith and W. Brad Johnson recently published their second book, Good Guys: How Men Can Be Better Allies for Women in the Workplace.
In a nutshell, they write that the key to advancing gender equality is Men.
I couldn’t agree more strongly. Engaging men is the critical element to advancing women and creating gender equality within organizations.
Men still hold nearly 80 percent of the leadership roles in many companies, and we will never drive long-term systemic advancement for women without the active engagement of men. Men hold an advantage within most organizations.
In Good Guys, David and Brad have written a research-based guide for how to be a male ally to women in the workplace. I reached out to ask if gender equality is crucial to an organization’s future — and it is — then how do leaders demonstrate allyship and implement strategies to fix systems and outcomes?
The authors contend that organizational change starts with leaders (particularly men) and leadership teams, and they share 10 essential strategies to help level the playing field and support women at work:
Design clarity, transparency and accountability into your workplace. Be clear about the purpose of gender equity initiatives and transparent in communicating what they are designed to achieve, while establishing accountability for yourself and others.
Be clear about your expectations and then set the example. Plainly communicate how gender inclusion and diversity relate to your purpose, intent and values as a leader, and keep them connected to your business outcomes.
Purposefully use your influence. Use your positional power to overcome resistance to organizational change and demonstrate your support and expectations for others to support gender and inclusion events.
Be intentional in attracting diverse talent. Examine your company’s digital and print media for diverse, respectful and healthy depictions of women and men and review educational and training content for inclusion of diverse experiences.
Connect women’s initiatives to leader responsibilities. Integrate gender and inclusion initiatives with leader development training and mentorship programs and hold leaders accountable for achieving these goals as a business outcome.
Put policies and practices in place to stop sexual harassment. Be clear in your messaging that you do not tolerate sexual harassment and encourage and support victims and bystanders.
Create flexible work options that allow everyone to thrive. Acknowledge and support employees’ lives outside the workplace by placing realistic boundaries on time at work.
Carefully assess your parental leave policies. Establish formal company policies for paid family leave and conduct a formal review to ensure that they are having the desired effect and being used.
Create external accountability for your organization. Do not sponsor or participate in conferences without equal representation of women or do business with companies that don’t have at least 30 percent of board members or C-suite leadership who are women.
Get pay equity right. Set transparent hiring and salary criteria and conduct annual pay audits in your company.
These ally actions are best practices from organizations that care about creating a culture of allyship. It starts with support and commitment from senior leadership that sets the example for other leaders to embrace.
What can you do? Invite “ready-now” men into the conversation. If you are a leader take action on the 10 items outlined above. If you are a member of an employee resource group, work collectively to invite men in. Finally, if you are the only (or one of the only) women on a team, buy this book and give it to the one guy (or maybe two) who you believe could be allies for advancing women. You may quickly find out there are more men out there who want to help.
Congratulations again to Brad and David on the publication of their new book. If you know a man (or are one) who cares about gender equality and wants to do his part to build a more equal and inclusive workplace (and world), grab a copy of Good Guys. It’s full of practical ways to put your beliefs into action.
Let’s keep this conversation going and continue to invite others to take action as allies and advocates.
Gender Conversation QuickStarters — Staff Meeting in a Box on this topic.
Published By | https://medium.com/@jthalter-ywomen/an-invitation-to-be-a-good-guy-c1b4097b9267 | ['Jeffery Tobias Halter'] | 2020-12-03 16:49:24.504000+00:00 | ['Mentorship', 'Men', 'Women In Tech', 'Women In Business', 'Gender Equality'] |
People make unpredictable decisions... But we should design for their best interests anyway. | Note: This piece is based on a talk Jay McCormick and I gave at the 2018 IA (Information Architecture) Summit in Chicago. Please skip to the bottom to view the slides or check them out on Linkedin.
Understanding relativity, salience and heuristics will help you understand choice architecture.
The practice of influencing choice by changing the manner in which options are presented is called “choice architecture,” a term coined by Thaler and Sunstein (2008).
When we (humans) are presented with a problem, the way in which that problem is presented influences the choice they make — therefore, as user experience professionals, the way in which we design has a direct impact on the behavior of our users and consumers.
Details such as the manner in which attributes are described, the number of choices presented, and the presence of a “default,” can all have a subtle influence over behavior and decision-making — not to mention the layout, content, context, and range of choices offered.
We can use relativity, salience, and heuristics as a frame of reference to better understand behavior and choice architecture.
Context shapes behavior
The classical school of thought says that people are consistent. The idea is this: if you have a bubbly personality, or a penchant for thrill, that will come through in your behavior, no matter whether you are in the office or in the pub with some buddies.
This theory is the opposite of what choice architects believe: they say that behavior is dependent on context, and that people are systematically biased. Choice architects believe that your context directly shapes your behavior — so you may feel and act differently in the office than you do at the pub. There are three relevant components to creating context: relativity, heuristics, and salience.
Relativity
Ariely (a BE researcher) asked a class of students “ How much would you pay me to read poetry? Would you pay me $10?” He then asked another class of students “How much would I have to pay you to listen to me read poetry? Would you accept $10?”
The first class said they would pay him $10. The second class said they would accept $10 in payment. It was the exact same experience he was offering to each class — reading poetry — but the way in which he framed that experience was what indicated its value, convincing one class that it was worth paying for, and the other that they needed to be paid to sit through it.
When we say that choices are relative, this is what we mean. Choices are relative to the way they are framed.
Another example: two similar European countries have extremely different ratios of citizens that choose to be organ donors. Germany uses an opt-in system for organ donation, meaning that they require people to check a box saying “Yes, I will be a donor;” and 12% of German citizens are donors. Austria requires people to “opt-out” of organ donation. If you choose not to check the box that says “opt-out” than you are automatically a donor. Due to this policy, 99% of Austrians are donors.
How could something as trivial as a checkbox make such a large statistical impact?
Presence of a default
Well, the presence of a default has an inordinate amount of bearing on user decision-making, because it is the choice of lowest effort, essentially making the decision for the user. This is one of the four frames that have a significant impact on relativity when we talk about user behavior.
Besides the presence of a default, the other frames that impact relativity are: whether something is free, whether you provide a weak alternative, and whether there is social/individual pressure.
We will break each of these down individually, to talk about how they over-influence user behavior.
We love free stuff
Let’s talk about the “free” frame first: people generally over-value free items. Think about the last time you were offered something free-of-charge. Did you accept it? Did you actually need or want the item offered?
Think about the last “National Donut Day” where thousands of people wait in line at IHOPs across the country… just to get a single free pancake. Would they do this on any other day?
In Ariely’s book, Predictably Irrational: the Hidden Forces that Shape our Decisions, he says: “Most transactions have an upside and a downside, but when something is FREE! we forget the downside. FREE! gives us such an emotional charge that we perceive what is being offered as immensely more valuable than it really is.”
He goes on to describe a study he did, with 398 MIT students, intended to measure people’s reaction to two different products: Hershey’s candies and Lindt truffles. The Lindt truffles are significantly more expensive than Hershey’s kisses under normal circumstances. However, when the students were asked to select between a free Hershey’s kiss or a steeply discounted Lindt truffle (the total “savings” being much more for the truffle), most students opted for the free Hershey’s kiss, although it was not objectively the best deal. Compared to “not free” (Lindt truffle), the Hershey’s kiss seemed to be the better option.
My cheaper breadmaker must be better than your expensive breadmaker
Another frame that exerts a strong pull over our objectivity is the “weak alternative.” The best way to understand this frame is through a real-world example: In the 1990’s Williams Sonoma came out with an “innovative” brand-new product, the bread machine, priced at a hefty $275. Sales were virtually nonexistent. Clearly, customers didn’t know what to make of the bread machine. They had no context for comparison, they apparently didn’t know 1) why they would want to make bread or 2) why they would pay $275 to make their own bread. However, instead of completely scrapping the product, what do you think Williams Sonoma decided they would do?
They introduced ANOTHER bread machine, priced significantly higher than the first!
And what happened ? The original (now lower-priced bread machine) started selling like crazy. This decoy effect as it’s referred to in the consumer behavior field, caused people to anchor their perceptions of one model of bread machine on the other. Even when they didn’t know much about bread machines, they were attracted by the prospect of a good deal. Since they were choosing between two bread machines, they thought “I can buy this $275 bread machine, and it’s almost equal to the $415 bread machine, therefore I must be getting a deal.” The more expensive, weaker alternative bread machine showed them the value of the original bread machine.
Attorneys and volunteer work
The last frame to discuss is the frame of social/individual pressure. This frame can also be explained through an example.
In a study, attorneys were asked “Will you offer discount prices to senior citizens in the community?” and the vast majority said “no.” When they were asked “Will you donate your time to assist senior citizens in the community?” the vast majority said yes (even though this would make them less money overall). Why? Because they didn’t like the perception that they were lowering their value. Although they were willing to help out seniors, they preferred that they do it under the umbrella of a donation than one that spoke to the value of their work.
So how can we, as researchers, find out people’s preferences if they are shaped by our asking that very question? How do we design, knowing that choices are relative?
Since we know that user preferences are variable, as UX designers, we should keep in mind that the way we present information (and when you present that information) will have a significant impact on user decision-making.
When we design, it pays to keep these four frames of relativity in mind. Example: If we are designing for Dropbox, and the company offers a “free” plan alongside two “paid” alternatives, we should be aware that users are going to be highly likely to opt for the free plan above all else: then think about how to design for optimal sales. Or, if we want users to successfully sign up for our service, perhaps it makes sense to allow for the “presence of a default,” and autofill as much information as possible.
Designing for relativity
With this knowledge in mind, when I think about a new design problem, I take the following steps:
Identify the challenges and “anchors.”
No, not this kind of anchor.
(Then do what you can to ease them.)
2. Provide other reference points.
What else might the user want to know? What can I use to show the value of my “breadmaker?”
3. Highlight points of contrast.
Why is my more expensive Dropbox plan worth it?
Heuristics
The second concept that creates context in our framework was popularized by Jakob Neilson and written about in Thinking Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman.
Heuristics are essentially shortcuts. They are frames of reference that humans use to make quick and efficient decisions.
We make so many decisions in a day (“What will I wear?” “What should I eat?” “What route should I drive to work?” and on and on…), that our brain needs to find faster, more efficient ways to come to conclusions. Enter heuristics.
Often times, heuristics are just shortcuts to an easier question. For instance, instead of interviewing top applicants for your job and thinking “Who has the best set of qualifications?” we might substitute the question “Who do I like the best?” With this example and others, this can be unconscious: we may not even realize that we are performing this substitution.
Case Study at Google
One example I like of how to use and design for human’s propensity for heuristics was some research done in the data-driven cafeteria at Google.
Google noticed that employees were consuming a LOT of calories in unhealthy (free!) food, at their cafeteria, and subsequently that many employees reported weight gain and/or a desire to eat more healthily. While wondering how to help employees achieve this goal, Google found the following heuristics around food consumption, and used them to change something about their cafeteria environment:
1. Location: People tend to fill up on the first thing they see when they enter the cafeteria.
So: Google swapped out the dessert table (one of the closest tables to the door) with the salad bar.
2. Size: People tend to finish what is on their plate, despite the size of the plate. People tend not to want to take more than one plate, or ‘go back for seconds.’
So: Google replaced their large plates with portion-sized plates.
3. Color: People don’t always read nutritional information, so they are not always aware of the calories, and overall health impact of what they are eating. However, people are likely to understand the implicit meaning of color scales (green, yellow, red) because it is familiar (we see it on traffic signs, in intersections, etc.).
So: Google labelled all of the foods in the cafeteria according to an easy, three-color scale. Green=healthy, Yellow=moderate, Red=eat in small quantities.
4. Ease of Access: People are more likely to eat (more) food if it is easily accessed.
So: Google took candy, and other “red” foods, and re-homed them. Instead of putting them in gravity dispensers, they put them in tight-lidded jars where people had to reach in to get the candy vs. pull a lever and have it drop into their bowls.
All of these changes made a HUGE impact.
By understanding heuristics in decision making, we can use design to make complex problems (like this one) more simple.
Designing with heuristics in mind
Understanding what heuristics people are using
What shortcuts have they taken to reach their decisions? Understanding these shortcuts helps us predict their decisions before they make them.
2. How can I think for my user so they don’t have to?
Predicting the decisions that users are likely to make allows us to do work to either support or challenge that decision.
3. Make it clear [and scannable].
Deliver your solution in a consumable way.
Salience
Salience is the last element of this context system, and simply refers to what is obvious or what we pay attention to. When we are given a slew of information, what pieces do we remember, pay attention to, and hang on to?
Other ways I like to describe salience is as “the pattern that pops out,” or “WYSIATI: What you see is all there is.”
Here’s an example of how humans mistakenly jump to conclusions by unconsciously prioritizing salient information:
If you are walking around in downtown NYC, feeling a little hungry, and you see tons of people lined up outside a pizza restaurant, than you might assume: that pizza is good. Everyone is getting pizza. In fact, not everyone is getting pizza, you just only see the people who are.
A better example: after natural disasters, like the September 11 terrorist attack, people think: “The Red Cross needs blood donations,” and turn out in record numbers to donate blood (far more than they typically do during blood drives). Due to this turnout, often times the Red Cross has to discard some of that blood: it’s actually too much. Red blood cells have a shelf-life of 42 days, and they can’t possibly do enough transfusions to merit the amount donated. During the days after Sept 11, people donated 3–5X more than normal, but blood needs were minimal — meaning that the salient information to people was “there was a disaster, people are injured, they probably need blood transfusions,” ignoring the actual data and/or blood requirements.
This is referred to as pattern mismatching.
In design, we need to spend time thinking about the problems and solutions we present, and how salience plays into these decisions. There was a study done where people were handed two dictionaries, one tattered and the other brand-new, and asked what their value was. Those in the study overwhelmingly valued the brand-new dictionary more than the tattered dictionary. However, when those same people were given additional information about the dictionaries: that the tattered one had 20,000 entries and the brand-new one only had 5,000, their answers changed. The salient information when evaluating dictionary value is clearly “how much information it holds/how many entries it has,” but without that information people could not make an informed decision. This is where — in the design of your products and in your usability sessions — if, how, and when you present salient information can vary your results.
Ethics
This topic brings up some more complicated moral questions about how we inform users. I could write another article entirely about that, however; assuming we want users to have as much salient information as possible, we can:
Designing for salience of information
1. Facilitate easy comparison and provide other reference points.
What information about this dictionary should I be evaluating? “The average number of entries in a dictionary is 1,500.”
2. Give a sense of control when possible.
Crosswalks don’t always do anything to signal lights to change. However, as a user of the crosswalk, even if i am not actually getting across the street faster, being able to press the button and feel in control makes me feel involved in the process.
3. Show what is salient [and not more]
4. Highlight points of contrast
This dictionary has 2000 entries, not 1000!
Summary & Conclusion
We have shown that decision-making is a highly malleable process, and that user’s preferences are not as firm as we may have believed. Decision outcomes are actually largely contingent on the environment or context in which those decisions are made.
People’s choices are relative.
People use heuristics to make those choices.
By understanding heuristics, we can guess at and influence choice.
If you know what the best choice is, highlighting what is salient helps people make that choice.
Design has a critical impact on decision-making. Decisions lead to actions, and user actions drive everything.
As designers, we’ve gotten really good at making processes efficient, perhaps without considering what other information users need to complete that process. We may have made it easy to buy, but is it easy to choose?
So, what do we do with this information? Let’s break it down.
User goal: get best decision outcome, ideally with the least amount of effort.
Inherent conflict: typically, the best outcome comes from putting in more effort, not less.
Designer shortcut: try to do the thinking for your user, whenever possible. This promotes more simplistic and positive experiences as users accomplish their goals, and allows them to use these shortcuts to their advantage rather than to their detriment.
Since we know that choices are relative to context, than be mindful about setting that context. Try to design to support what users SHOULD choose, not what they COULD choose (There is a ton of responsibility involved here!)
Translating this to Design
Here’s an example of providing users with more and better information, or “choice architecting” your design.
Here’s our starting point.
Original “Not Architected” Design
How do we make it better? Let’s remember some of the core principles we discussed above.
Relativity
Identify the challenges and “anchors.” (Then do what you can to ease them.)
2. Provide other reference points.
3. Highlight points of contrast.
Heuristics
Understanding what heuristics people are using
2. How can I think for my user so they don’t have to?
3. Make it clear [and scannable].
Salience
Facilitate easy comparison and provide other reference points.
2. Give a sense of control when possible.
3. Show what is salient [and not more]
4. Again — highlight points of contrast
Here’s how — by going through the steps we just discussed:
Here’s our finished and “choice architected” solution: | https://medium.com/nyc-design/the-architecture-of-choice-and-how-it-impacts-behavior-dc9be2767e64 | ['Kaila Manca'] | 2019-02-12 02:07:48.501000+00:00 | ['Behavioral Economics', 'Psychology', 'Decision Making', 'Design', 'User Experience'] |
Web Development Services | Digiclimber is a Canadian registered web design company based in Ontario, Canada. Established in 2013 our company provides web design and development services to customers in Canada and the USA. Whether you’re just a start-up or an established company, we are always happy to provide you the design, development and online marketing services as per your business requirements.
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SEO — Search Engine Optimisation
Google Adwords
Facebook Ads
Social Media Marketing
Email Marketing
Website Visitor/Keyword Tracking & Analytics
We are always happy to hear from you, to enquire about your web development needs please visit our website: www.digiclimber.com | https://medium.com/@robin-77620/web-development-services-4f93fc29029c | ['Robin Garg'] | 2020-12-22 10:21:03.414000+00:00 | ['Website Development', 'Web Development', 'Website Designing', 'Web Design', 'App Development'] |
The cuStreamz Series: Running Streaming Word Count at Scale with RAPIDS and Dask on NVIDIA GPUs | In the cuStreamz introduction blog, we demonstrated how to implement a classic Streaming Word Count example using RAPIDS cuStreamz on GPUs. In this blog, we show how to easily and efficiently scale that same word count job in a distributed fashion to leverage multiple GPU machines.
Here is the notebook that runs streaming word count end-to-end in a distributed mode using Dask. This cuStreamz job reads streaming data in JSON format from a Kafka topic, computes the updated word count after reading every batch, and writes the latest word count result back to Kafka. The details and logistics on how one can start the Dask scheduler and workers are all provided in the notebook.
Deployment Tips and Tricks
Here are some helpful tips and tricks that have helped us write and monitor production-grade large-scale streaming jobs in cuStreamz.
Tune Dask Configurations
While running cuStreamz jobs in a distributed setting, Dask workers can sometimes get really busy with long-running computationally-expensive functions which then can cause connection issues between the workers and the scheduler. For that reason, we recommend tweaking a few default Dask configurations like “distributed.comm.timeouts.tcp” as mentioned in the notebook.
Use Multiple Processes
In general, there’s a non-trivial amount of control flow in Python that makes threading more inefficient than using processes. For this reason, we recommend using multiple processes (one for each Dask worker), in workflows with high-speed input rate. Each worker process can have multiple threads each. Since these workers might also use System Memory intensively, increasing the worker memory limits per process is also a good idea. This can be done using CLI itself while starting up the workers.
Use RAPIDS cuIO for Fast Data Loading
A large percentage of streaming pipelines tend to have data in Kafka in JSON format. Users can use API like cudf.read_json() inside a Stream.map() function to convert the batches of data read from Kafka in an accelerated manner into RAPIDS cuDF dataframes before starting the actual computation. If the data format is not JSON, please have a look at the IO API in cuDF, and you will most likely find a GPU-accelerated reader that can be leveraged.
Upgrade your CPU Specs Too
Majority of the heavy-lifting is done by the GPUs, you would say? Partly, yes. But reading from Kafka comprises a significant portion of time to process the streaming data end-to-end. Since reading from Kafka is CPU-based, it needs considerable CPU cores and RAM (system memory). Especially, when dealing with data coming at a high-speed input rate into Kafka and for cuStreamz to process it in real-time (or under a strict SLA), reading from Kafka becomes a bottleneck, and the more RAM and CPU cores your machine has, the better.
New Accelerated Kafka Datasource
Expanding on the point above, we will soon be releasing a blog on an accelerated Kafka datasource that boosts up the reading-from-Kafka process, and gives really awesome improvements (our experiments show up to ~2x throughput using half the CPUs) in accelerating the streaming pipelines end-to-end. To leverage this accelerated Kafka reader, please use engine=”cudf” when setting up the stream from Kafka as shown in the notebook. This eliminates the need of having to do the preprocessing step wherein the messages in Kafka are to be uploaded to the GPU as cuDF dataframes explicitly using cuIO methods as mentioned above. This cuStreamz accelerated Kafka reader requires that the data in Kafka be in JSON format for now. We are working to support other data formats like Avro and CSV soon.
Dashboards
The Dask diagnostic dashboard provides a ton of information for both real-time monitoring and debugging purposes for cuStreamz jobs. Combine that with NVDashboard for GPU Metrics, and one has an excellent way of real-time visualization to monitor system resources and performance. For example, when you run the word count in distributed mode, you would be able to see the workers on both machines processing the data (the time each batch took, each function execution within the worker took, the system memory (RAM) the worker needed, etc.).
Next Steps
Look forward to upcoming cuStreamz blogs covering:
The cuStreamz accelerated Kafka data source
Running cuStreamz Word Count @ Scale on Kubernetes as an Orchestration Layer
cuStreamz’ Journey though Performance and Benchmarking
Stay tuned, and stream on! | https://medium.com/rapids-ai/the-custreamz-series-running-streaming-word-count-at-scale-with-rapids-and-dask-on-nvidia-gpus-9f85038866b9 | ['Chinmay Chandak'] | 2020-11-20 19:23:35.235000+00:00 | ['Real Time Streaming Data', 'Kafka', 'Data Science', 'Gpu', 'Data Streaming'] |
Five things you need to know about our OTC | Five things you need to know about our OTC
For one, it will provide dividends.
Simple liquidity isn’t just a catchy marketing gimmick. It is the life blood of our business, and the driving force for everything we do.
But what is the Over-the Counter (OTC) Marketplace and why is ours special? Read on to learn five key things you need to know about the Spotcoin OTC.
1. A proven method
OTC marketplaces are often constrained by a lack of liquid assets. This results in caps on trade amounts and restrictions on trade flow. There was a need to support high-dollar trades and fiat to digital services, especially in the Black Sea region.
We wanted better. So, we built it.
Established in November 2016, the preliminary OTC processed over $1M per month in trades just two months after launch. The company cleared over $5M in trades by the end of its second quarter in operation.
Key to success was our next day settlement policy and our ability to successfully settle every trade entrusted to us.
2. Next business day settlements
Success flourished with our ability to deliver all settlements within 1 business day of trade request. Our established relationships with multiple banks in Europe allowed us to facilitate high value bank transfers and ensure simple liquidity remains simple.
As we launch the new version of the OTC, our commitment to next business day settlements is stronger than ever.
3. We’re making it even better
Never one to sit on our laurels, Spotcoin recognized the $10B marketplace needed a more robust solution. With NEO targeting 100,000 transactions per second (TPS) by 2020, our OTC needed to be scalable to grow with the any large increases in digital currency trade volume and demand.
The new OTC is built on the concept of the first. But better.
Our new platform will include: digital asset wallet integration, automated deposit and withdrawal functionality, 2FA, and a simple user interface. Easy to use, the development of automation tools and strategic partnerships ensure our customers benefit from quick trades and quick results. Any OTC client that trades in excess of $1M per month is assigned a Spotcoin Ambassador that will provide personalized service for each and every trade. They are just a phone call away.
4. The go-to OTC marketplace for Big Trades
The access to capital, banking partnerships, and next business day settlements deliver comfort and security to high-dollar investors. This is a big step up from trading on exchanges where it could take a long time for very large deals an order to be executed, creating sell or or buy ‘walls’ that stop the easy flow of orders on the exchange. The simple liquidity our OTC provides reduces risk for our clients.
5. Quarterly dividends for SPOT holders
As the ICO launch speeds toward us, the dividend question is ever-present.
The OTC business line provides that dividend. Every quarter, SPOT holders will earn 12% of net profit from the all business lines, including the OTC. This dividend will start the first profitable quarter and continue moving forward. That is on top of the weekly dividends of 51% of the exchange fees coming from our future automated exchange. It’s a nice way to earn extra cash.
If you are interested in learning more about the OTC, or our other business lines: Check out our Whitepaper. | https://medium.com/spotcoin/five-things-you-need-to-know-about-our-otc-c177c2519cbf | ['René Van Der Hoofd'] | 2018-06-22 13:25:23.478000+00:00 | ['Trading', 'Investment', 'Blockchain', 'Bitcoin', 'Cryptocurrency'] |
Enjin Wallet Update: Reveal Codes, Push Notifications & More | In-Wallet Token Swap Updates
Just over a month ago, we launched Enjin Wallet Swap—the world’s first native, decentralized multi-swap wallet integration featuring Kyber Network, Changelly, and Bancor Network.
This update gave Enjin Wallet users the power to seamlessly convert nearly 200 tokens from thousands of available trading pairs without ever leaving the security of their wallet app.
Now, we’ve made Enjin Wallet Swap even more convenient and seamless.
We know that details matter—so users can now view balances for all of their coins in the token swap selection dropdown, as well as select “max” to fill in max value.
We’ve also added a Changelly Fixed Rate exchange option to provide users with certainty regarding the fees they’ll pay when using Changelly to convert tokens.
Our work here is not done, and we will continue to improve the Enjin Wallet Swap experience, with additional natively integrated token swap platforms coming soon—so stay tuned.
Transaction Info ft. EnjinX
Our transaction information page also has a fresh new look!
The updated page features quick visual confirmation of transaction status and a simple green check to let you know your transaction has been completed successfully.
The page also now includes a direct link to view transactions on EnjinX—our ultra-modern, user-friendly, fast, ad-free Ethereum blockchain explorer.
EnjinX was designed with a pivotal mission in mind: to speed up mainstream adoption of blockchain technology by making its data easily accessible to everyone.
Forged at the intersection of pioneering technology and user-centric design, EnjinX provides a simple yet highly visual search, real-time search results, and easily understandable blockchain data.
By connecting this fast, user-friendly blockchain explorer with the equally user-friendly Enjin Wallet, we are taking yet another step toward our goal of making the understanding and use blockchain data as simple, streamlined, and enjoyable as possible. | https://blog.enjincoin.io/enjin-wallet-update-reveal-codes-push-notifications-more-eed52403a768 | ['Bryana Kortendick'] | 2019-11-23 17:56:18.269000+00:00 | ['Ethereum', 'Bitcoin Wallet', 'Cryptocurrency Wallets', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Blockchain'] |
Cold Darkness | Haiku is a form of poetry usually inspired by nature, which embraces simplicity. We invite all poetry lovers to have a go at composing Haiku. Be warned. You could become addicted.
Follow | https://medium.com/house-of-haiku/cold-darkness-ec07c946cd4b | ['Sylke Laine'] | 2020-12-21 23:58:03.113000+00:00 | ['Self-awareness', 'Haiku', 'Poetry', 'Solstice'] |
My Data Story — How I Added Personality to My Data | Photo by Daniel Semenov from Pexels
Hello there! If you’re reading this then you’re probably interested in Data Science, or the Film Industry, or perhaps both. Before I get into the data and my first project for Flatiron School, I think it is important to talk about my background and how it has made me think about the data in different ways. Growing up in the Los Angeles area I was surrounded by film studios, but not only that, my family has been working in the film and television industry for two generations. Many times I was able to join my dad when he went to work and see some of the “behind the scenes” aspects of producing a movie. Most of that work was post-production which involved receiving multiple raw chunks of film and making the necessary edits, adding effects, and later piecing them together to make one seamless film. Many aspects of this are nearly identical to some of the tasks of a Data Scientist where the first step is collecting the data, which is then followed by cleaning it and making edits, and finally modeling and result analysis. In the past I always considered having a job in the film industry like many in my family, but by chance I happened to stumble across Data Science.
To be honest, I never knew that there was an official title for this field of work. In past jobs I was doing similar analysis on a smaller scale and without the programming skills, but I absolutely loved it! I had always thought that maybe the work I was doing was unique and that I’d never find another job similar, but as soon as I learned of Data Science I jumped straight into the rabbit hole to find how I can join this exciting field. I started doing practice with CodeAcademy’s free lessons, video tutorials, and challenging myself with HackerRank and LeetCode, but I craved more. Eventually this led me to Flatiron School and their Data Science track. Now I am one month into this program and it is everything I had hoped it would be. Data Science has been a way that I can show off my creative side while still using my analytic side as well, something I never thought would be possible and being able to connect my data to something so personal to me has been such a great experience. In just four short months I will have graduated from Flatiron, and I am still so early into my learning adventure. I’ve just barely scratched the surface of what a Data Scientist can do and I am so excited to see where I will be in another four months when I will be finishing up my final project. Whether you’re a professional Data Scientist, a fellow student, or anywhere you fall on that spectrum, I hope that my project findings are of some interest and show the passion I have for both film and data.
Project Intro
For our first Flatiron phase project we are tasked with helping Microsoft understand the film industry. Because other big companies are creating their own original video content, like Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, they want to get in on the fun and provide a service that can compete. We must use our data to create actionable insights that we can present to the head of the filming studio that include our suggestions on what type of movies to create.
First Step: Accessing the Preliminary Data
This is the first time I’ve ever had a project like this and going into this I didn’t know what to expect. Maybe the optimistic part of me had hoped that the data provided would be absolutely perfect and have every bit of information that I could be curious about. But in reality I doubt many projects will ever be like that. We were provided a few CSV’s that had information about some topics, but each CSV was about a different topic from the IMDB website. I knew that I would need to combine these to best view everything altogether and so cleaning the data would be easier later on. The way I combined my DataFrames together was by making sure they had an identical name for a column found on each DataFrame that contained the same data. Perhaps there are better and cleaner ways to do this, but this seemed to work for me and get the results I wanted. Having the data all in one DataFrame made things a lot easier to view, but there was still a lot of work needed to be done to clean and filter out values that I or a new film studio would not be as interested in.
Second Step: Sorting and Filtering
One of the first columns I wanted to sort and filter through was the ratings. Not many people want to see a bad movie or look to watch one. Because there are some films that people claim are “so bad they’re good” like The Room and Sharknado, I decided to start the filtering at a rating of 6.5. I assumed that most movies that are actually good would have a rating ranging from 8–10, but some of the cult favorites that are not as good will have a rating just slightly below. The next way I filtered my data was to only include movies that had a release in America. This didn’t exclude films made by studios outside of the US as long as they still were showing in America and it was important to me to include foreign films because these are still very popular among American viewers and I wanted to also prove this with my data. At this point things were starting to look a little better after filtering, and while there was more filtering I had in mind, I wanted to start getting rid of columns that were not needed and duplicate values. Many of these columns had near all their values as ‘0’, a boolean, or just didn’t have relevant information toward the analysis I wanted to do. I also searched for duplicate values based on the title ID that IMDB used to categorize their data. There were definitely some movies that had different IDs with the same name and it appeared that they were two different movies based off the elements in the other columns, but there were even more movies that had the same name or a variation of the name and the same ID. This took me from 1213 rows down to 742. At this point I felt like I had done as much filtering with the data I had, and it was time to add new metrics to filter my data from.
Third Step: Creating Metrics
The first metric I wanted to add was a calculation between worldwide gross and the production budget. Because the worldwide gross column was in a string format I ran into obvious issues trying to do my calculations. Initially I had planned to just do a simple calculation when making the new column which would look like:
df2[‘ProfitReturn’] = df1[‘Worldwide_Gross’]/df1[‘Production_Budget’]
Unfortunately it would not be this simple. On the bright side, this gave me an opportunity to look more into list comprehension which I ended up using many more times in this project(and will probably use a ton outside of the project while I continue to learn). The final evolution of my code development to make my calculation work ended up as:
df2[‘ProfitReturn’] = [int(x.strip(‘$’).replace(‘,’, ‘’)) / int(y.strip(‘$’).replace(‘,’, ‘’)) for x, y in zip(df1[‘Worldwide_Gross’], df1[‘Production_Budget’])]
Not only did I get to learn a lot about what you can do with list comprehension, I also learned about the zip function which I used to access and connect the two columns. Once my column was made I wanted to filter out any movies that had [‘ProfitReturn’] > 1. I wanted to make sure that we only included movies that were able to get their production investment back because there is no use in using and learning from movie data that did not make money. Lastly, I sorted the data by the profit return value and put the top 100 results in a new DataFrame to work from.
Fourth Step: Journey into APIs
At this point I felt like I had a pretty good set of data to do some of my analysis on, but there was more that I was interested in that was not in the CSVs provided. One thing that was always an interest of mine was where movies are filmed. I would often hear friends and family talking about having their film work take them to places like British Columbia and Ontario in Canada, or to Georgia and the Carolina states in America to avoid more expensive filming locations like Los Angeles, New York City, or places far abroad. I wanted to see how common it was for movies to be filmed in these locations and also if this had any effect on gross and profit return. This led me to search for APIs to look for this information. I knew that most IMDb pages would include the city that a movie was filmed and sometimes even include street addresses of certain locations they filmed at, so I was led to rapidapi.com and found all sorts of APIs available. Once I found an API that met my needs and was able to access the filming location information from IMDb I started to write code. Since the API could only handle one request at a time, I wanted to loop through the title ID for each movie. Doing this manually would be the same amount of requests, but I felt as if automating it would make things easier
and faster. Unfortunately I found that writing the code to automate this process took far longer than it would have to type in all the title IDs on their own line and write out the request one hundred times. Three hours later when I finally got it to work I was so happy I was nearly in tears. The end result required me to put the get request in a function and use a conditional statement in the case that perhaps no location data was provided for a certain movie. Then I made a for loop to call the function and put the data it received in a column. Even though it wasn’t many lines of code I was super proud of the work I created and how much I learned in a short amount of time.
When I received the data containing the filming locations, I realized that they had no coordinates. This led me to Google Cloud Services and enrolling to use all the APIs they offer. Like many, I did not learn from the pain of automating my previous API and get-request and it was time to do it again. Luckily I was able to use my last one as the structure of my code and it took me about half the time! Similarly to before I used a function with a conditional statement to find the coordinates of the addresses I had received. This time I had to add in a line in case a movie had no locations listed, after quickly learning that without this line my request would fail. Now with my columns created with all of the coordinates, I felt ready to start my visualizations.
Plotting the Data
Going into this course, I always enjoyed plotting data. Many times i’d use Microsoft Excel or other programs to neatly plot my data from a spreadsheet, but doing the behind the scenes code has been a challenge for me. Whether it be Matplotlib, Seaborn, or Plotly, I struggled! Part of the problem is probably being a novice at reading documentation and a fear of messing things up and still learning how to read error messages. Initially when planning out my data visualizations I planned on using Seaborn. In our lesson about visualizations it seemed that Seaborn was significantly easier than Matplotlib. While that may be true, after a countless amount of Google searches and spending a lot of time on Stackoverflow, I decided to give up.
We never had an actual lesson on Plotly, but it was briefly talked about and seemed to be even more user friendly than Seaborn. I was discouraged when setting up Plotly and had a brief “woe is me” moment when I ran into an issue with my visualizations loading. No error codes, just a very sad frowny face on the visualization. I was so terrified that if I couldn’t get Seaborn or Plotly to work then I’d have to use Matplotlib, which I’m sure is a very nice library and I will come to love as I develop my skills, but at this point it seems equally as terrifying as the moment your IDE crashes with your unsaved code. In the process to save Plotly and my remaining sanity, I furiously searched through Google to find the solution to my problem and lo and behold it worked! Seeing my data visualized was just as satisfying as the moment I got my API automation to work. Not only that but, the next visualizations I made were so easy with Plotly that I honestly spent more time picking a color for my graph. Having data in a DataFrame is interesting, but I think that the important message that this project is trying to show us is how much visualizations matter. In our future careers we won’t always be presenting to others who are tech savvy or people comfortable with excel spreadsheets and mathematics. In the end I focused my visualizations on things that I feel a business would be interested in — worldwide gross and the profit return ratio. Of course I also had to add my maps of where movies were made because after all that time spent getting the API to work I’d be devastated to not be able to present that and show off my hard work.
Final Thoughts About the Data and Project
With one project under my belt, it’s hard to feel anything but proud and accomplished. A week ago I started this project with some CSVs and a few ideas and now I have a full Github repository and a strong slidedeck to present to my peers. This project has been such a great inspiration for me and makes me very optimistic about the future after Flatiron. Data Scientists are unique and can fit into any field they want because data is all around us. I believe that having a personal connection to a certain industry and the data will only make me a better coder and Data Scientist. For the longest time I was so apprehensive about decisions related to my future career, whether it be a simple question like a family member asking me what I wanted to be when I grow up or declaring a major at university. Data Science has helped alleviate the anxiety I feel of being trapped into a field that I may later get bored of, and reassured me that if I wanted to work in multiple different fields that I could. So maybe I won’t work in the film industry with family and friends of mine in a position where I am writing, producing, and editing film. But that doesn’t mean I can’t work in the industry alongside them and analyze data similar to this project to help them on their next feature film.
Thank you for taking the time to read about my first project with Flatiron and what went into getting it done. If you wish to view my project’s Github Repository you can find it here:
https://github.com/melfriedman/MicrosoftMedia | https://medium.com/swlh/my-data-story-how-i-added-personality-to-my-data-4da495e9b33f | ['Mel R Friedman'] | 2020-10-28 05:53:56.999000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Flatiron School', 'Movies'] |
How To Create Blog Posts Daily | Here are some thoughts, ideas, tips, and recommendations into my process that I hope will give you a framework for writing a blog post daily.
Write Blog Posts Daily Tips
Firstly, always have a big list of topic ideas you can pick from each day. Organize and manage your blog writing process. I use a tool called Monday.com to help me plan out my blog posts and track the progress of creating each post from start to finish.
Secondly, If you have multiple categories for your blog, circulate by writing for one category each day to ensure you’re catering for all your reader’s interests. Make sure you’re adding value to each post, it doesn’t matter how big or small.
Moreover, consider adding a ‘thought of the day’ or sharing a short and relevant story that might inspire and motivate your readers in your blog daily posts. This is a great way to keep them coming back for more. Write your post when your mind is fresh, not when your mind is tired or when you lack motivation. I like to write my posts first thing in the mornings.
Finally, write ‘bite-sized’ blog posts that your readers can get through quickly. You don’t always need to write huge pillar articles for your blog. So, there you have it. Just a few quick tips for writing a fresh blog post daily without boring your readers. Hope you enjoyed this short post.
Learn With Time
Never worry about throwing up the occasional “best of” post, once you get enough material. In addition, have a purpose. Without a solid purpose — a reason for blogging — it will be difficult to create content on a regular basis. That’s why purpose is so important. It guides you on your path and makes it that much easier to stick to your goals
Daily Blog Posts Writing Final Words
It’s not easy, but once you develop the habits, they stick with you. I’m writing quite regularly now, but it took me several years to get my groove down to a science. Some days, it’s still thrown off. Busy schedules can get the best of us, no matter what. That said, try to keep some content “in the can,” so that you’re rarely at a loss to keep your audience happy. What do you think? Any other ideas to add? | https://medium.com/visualmodo/how-to-create-blog-posts-daily-64768cf073bb | [] | 2019-10-20 03:36:25.125000+00:00 | ['Blog', 'Inspiration', 'Blogger', 'Idea', 'Blogging'] |
I’m No Longer Judging Others and This is How I Do It | How you see the world is a mirror back to yourself.
I believe we all mirror our beings in others. What bothers us about someone else is a clear reflection of what’s happening in our inner world. It’s a simple but effective theory. There are two possibilities that we need to be mindful of. It’s either 1) we envy them for not having what they have, or 2) there’s a deeply rooted environment based opinion within us. Let’s go with examples.
Firstly, starting with feeling envious of someone. If you see someone on social media who is living their best life traveling the world, setting up their own business, and spreading all good vibes around and it’s bugging you deep inside and you start to judge that person, there’s a clue about you in that judgment. The way they live their life is bothering you while you’re struggling at your day job and not managed to quit for years simply tells you that you have the potential to. You want to live the way they live too. You just didn’t show the courage to do the same. You didn’t take the leap yet. Your soul craves that relaxing life and asking you to do the same most likely. Apply this to the situations you judge others for being too much of something and see if it mirrors anything about yourself. They are mirroring a trait that you didn’t take the courage to embrace yet.
And secondly, if you say, nope the first theory doesn’t apply to me, I really judge someone when I don’t like what they do, then I have an offering for you too. Look deep inside why that thing triggers you. Another example: A common thing we all judge in real life or social media is usually when we see a woman wearing clothes that are considered provocative or sexual. If you see yourself in that situation of judging the other person, can you bring light into why you feel the need to judge someone or control how someone is dressed up? May there be a deeply rooted opinion towards that situation within yourself? Maybe when growing up or now as an adult you’ve always been surrounded by people who judged how they look, what others wear and it became your autopilot response? Or maybe you’ve been raised in an environment that the clothes are related to sexuality?
These are just simple examples from our day to day judgments. And there’s a very thin line between being envious of someone for having the traits we don’t and being envious because of having an autopilot opinion. But each time you notice that someone in real life or social media triggers a feeling within you, turn the camera to yourself, and see why that thing triggers you.
We’re all doing our best in life.
We all have different stories in life but we’re also very similar in nature. Our lessons may look different on the outside but the deep lesson is usually the same. The way we learn things in life is different. The way I take my lesson about loving another being may look different than the way you learn. But if it’s all about the same lesson, in the end, we’re in the same boat of being human. Or maybe the timing of my life is different than yours too. So, let’s leave the judgment at the door. Let’s not tell others what or when they should do certain things. Let’s not see others small when they make mistakes.
Instead, see everyone as a teacher. Your mom is a teacher. Your lover is a teacher. The person you came across at a cafe that was kind to you is a teacher. You’re a teacher. When we see every situation and everyone as a teacher life gets easier. We don’t take things too personally. Yes, some things are personal and there are things we need to look back at ourselves but if there’s a good thing we can learn from conflicts with others, we have a win.
Another way to achieve a non-judgmental personality is to look at a situation or person with empathy. When we examine someone’s story it’s important to see where they come from, their culture, upbringing, or what experience caused them to respond this way. Of course, if we’re not in the same situation with the person we put judgment on, it’s easy for us to choose the wiser option to act. That’s why we should see the conflicts mindfully from a wider angle and evaluate it without being too harsh on others. | https://medium.com/the-innovation/im-no-longer-judging-others-and-this-is-how-i-do-it-3e3a7578cd3c | ['Begüm Erol'] | 2020-11-17 18:25:16.800000+00:00 | ['People', 'Life', 'Self', 'Lifestyle', 'Mindfulness'] |
Medium May Earnings Newsletter | Join Blogging Guide Today!
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Until next time, | https://medium.com/blogging-guide/medium-may-earnings-newsletter-f092ae78d196 | ['Casey Botticello'] | 2020-06-12 22:22:26.877000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Medium Partner Program', 'Newsletter', 'Social Media', 'Medium'] |
Verify Contracts on Remix with Sourcify | Have you ever wanted to get your smart contracts verified? Have you ever wanted to read the code of a deployed (& verified) contract? The new Sourcify plugin for Remix does both!
Sourcify is a service that listens for newly deployed contracts on Ethereum’s mainnet & most testnets and tries to verify them. If successful, publishes the contract’s bytecode, source code and metadata in a repo.
Remember: Lots of goodies can be found inside the contract’s metadata — including its ABI, Natspec comments, and compiler version.
Why is contract verification important?
The short answer is that verified code is readable code. The process of setting your code to be verified involves publishing source code and metadata to IPFS/Swarm and using Natspec to make code comments targeting developers or end users.
Consequently, verified code can improve both the safety and UX of DApps.
For the complete answer see the Solidity Blog about Sourcify.
Also check the Sourcify FAQ.
The Sourcify Service & Developer Tooling
The Sourcify monitoring service tries to verify all newly deployed contracts. Only those contracts with their source code and metadata published IPFS or Swarm will be verified.
To get more contracts verified, publishing the source code & metadata at deployment time should be seamlessly part of a dev’s workflow.
Once contracts have been verified, reading the source code, grabbing the ABI and debugging deployed contracts won’t be such a convoluted process.
For details about the Sourcify Service — check the Solidity Blog post of the Sourcify FAQ.
Remix IDE & Verifying Contracts
Integration of publishing into the workflow
With Remix, publishing to IPFS & Swarm is easy:
from the Solidity Compiler module: after the contract has been compiled the publish buttons will appear.
after the contract has been compiled the publish buttons will appear. from the Deploy and Run module, by checking the PUBLISH TO IPFS checkbox.
With the contract’s source code and metadata published and the contract deployed, the Sourcify service — which listens for the deployment of new contracts, will verify the contract. The caveat is that the Solidity version must be greater than 0.6.
When your contract has been verified you will see it in Sourcify’s repo of verified contracts. The repo is also on IPFS. The contracts are listed by address.
Using Sourcify — a Remix plugin
Verification and Retrieval
The Sourcify plugin, has two sections:
Fetcher and Verifier
The Verifier allows you to:
Get your contract verified on demand. Get a contract verified that you had previously deployed but had not published its source code & metadata to IPFS / Swarm. Get a contract verified that you had previously deployed and had published its source code & metadata but the contract was compiled with an older versions of Solidity (< 0.6 ). The Sourcify Monitoring Service cannot automatically verify contracts with older Solidity versions so you’d need to use the plugin or the Sourcify website.
The Fetcher allows you to:
Pull in the source code of a verified contract into the Remix editor. Use Sourcify with the Debugger on mainnet or a testnet to debug a deployed contract.
Let’s try the Sourcify plugin
You will need to activate these 3 plugins:
Solidity compiler
Deploy & run transactions
Sourcify
Using the Verifier
Compile a contract.
Go to the Deploy & Run module. It is not necessary to check the publish to IPFS box because we are uploading it to IPFS in Sourcify. But if it is checked, it doesn’t hurt.
Choose the environment. In this example, I’m deploying via metamask to Ropsten (you can also choose any other testnet or mainnet).
Copy the address of the deployed contract.
Switch to the Sourcify plugin.
plugin. Click the Verifier button.
button. Paste the address of the deployed contract.
In the graphic below, you’ll see that the Files box contains: t1.sol and metadata.json. The Files box lists the source files and metadata file of the most recent contract compiled.
Copy the address of the deployed contract so that we can verify it.
Click the Verify
If successful, you’ll get a link to the verified code in the Sourcify repo of verified contracts.
Note: You can also use a local testchain but you’d need to run the entire Sourcify service locally — not through the Remix’s plugin. This will be included in future iterations of the plugin.
Using the Contract Fetcher
The Contract Fetcher is the tool to use when you have a contract’s address and want to get its source code.
The Fetcher will check the repo of verified contracts for the network & address. If the contract is there, it will load it into Remix’s editor.
For me, the Fetcher is magic! I realize its just doing a simple lookup — but I’m so used to thinking about a deployed contract as a black box full of illegible bytecode with no route to its source code. So I’m amazed.
But it is not magic — it is the system of verification and getting everyone to join this system by publishing their source code and metadata.
To learn more about Sourcify and Contract Verification — see this introductory article on the Solidity Blog called Sourcify: Towards Safer Contract Interaction for Humans. Also check the Sourcify FAQ.
In the next article about Remix & Sourcify, I’ll go through how Remix’s Debugger uses the Sourcify plugin to debug a verified contract on the mainnet.
A big thanks to Edi Sinovcic who helped me write write this article. | https://medium.com/remix-ide/verify-contracts-on-remix-with-sourcify-2912004d9c84 | ['Rob Stupay'] | 2020-06-26 15:05:57.733000+00:00 | ['Solidity', 'Smartcontractdevelopment', 'Verification', 'Developer Tools', 'Remix'] |
Bessie Smith, Empress of the Blues | Bessie Smith, Empress of the Blues
One of the giants of America’s Jazz Age
Photo of Bessie Smith by Carl Van Vechten, restored by Adam Cuerden — This Public Domain image is available from the United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs division.
The Jazz Age
Jazz music and dance styles became highly popular across America during the 1920s and 1930s, a period which is now known as the Jazz Age. America is the birthplace of jazz, and the Jazz Age was a fantastic period that gave rise to many famous singers and musicians performing in that genre.
Empress of the Blues
One of those singers was the extremely popular Bessie Smith (April 15, 1894 — September 26, 1937), whose nickname was ‘the Empress of the Blues’ (she was also called ‘the Queen of the Blues’).
Music historians regard her as not only a major influence on other blues singers and jazz vocalists of her time, but as one of the greatest singers of the Jazz Era, or any era for that matter. Without a doubt, Bessie Smith was the most popular female singer of the 1920s and 1930s.
St. Louis Blues
Bessie Smith overcame extreme poverty in her family and eventually became a huge recording star. When the Great Depression happened in 1929, she branched out that year, appearing on Broadway in Pansy, as well in the film St. Louis Blues, in which she sang the title song that was written by the famous W.C. Handy.
“I’ve been poor and I’ve been rich, and rich is better. “ — Bessie Smith
Billie Smith Performs
You can watch her performance in the film St. Louis Blues here.
And below is a video montage from 1925 of her singing St. Louis Blues, while accompanied by the incomparable Louis Armstrong. The video also shows some great old photos of the author’s hometown St. Louis in the early 20th century.
Bessie Smith — St. Louis Blues, 1925, YouTube
A Tragic End
Bessie Smith’s successful career continued until 1937 when tragedy struck. She was a passenger in an automobile that crashed and killed her at the age of 43.
But, fortunately, her beautiful singing lives on through various media that are easily accessible nowadays.
“It’s a long old road, but I know I’m gonna find the end.” — Bessie Smith
References
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Thanks for reading. | https://medium.com/illumination/bessie-smith-empress-of-the-blues-1e5d45d23517 | ['Terry Mansfield'] | 2020-12-11 14:20:31.844000+00:00 | ['Jazz', 'Blues', 'Black Women', 'Music', 'Bio'] |
Causes and Consequences of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill | In the early morning hours of March 24, 1989, the supertanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on Alaska’s Bligh Reef, gashing a hole in the supertanker that eventually dumped 10.8 million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound. The Exxon Valdez was carrying 53 million gallons of oil drilled from the fields of Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, in the North Slope Borough. The oil had been moved to the port city of Valdez via the decade-old Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which spans 800 miles north to south and was en route to Long Beach, California. The spill was the largest oil spill in American history until the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The massive Exxon Valdez was just over two years old at the time of the spill, coming in at a whopping 301 meters long, 51 meters wide, and 26 meters deep with the ability to transport more than 62 million gallons of oil at a time.
Though there was judicial and legislative action taken as a result of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, it was too narrow in scope to prevent future oil spills from happening and only prevented an exact repeat of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The spill fouled Alaskan waters and destroyed a way of life for many Alaskan people, as well as providing a very real wake up call to those not aware of just how much oil was being pumped, transported, and used.
A study by researchers from Northwestern University and the University of Wisconsin, Madison found that the nonstop media coverage that typically follows disasters such as the Exxon Valdez spill serve only to calm fears about the impact of the spill and do not catalyze action to create change. Writing about the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon oil spills, authors Ashlee Humphreys and Craig Thompson wrote that “We found that the national news media coverage of these two events helped to resolve many of the cultural anxieties that resulted, explaining what many environmental activists have labeled ‘oil spill amnesia.’” In a summary of the study, Mary-Ann Twist wrote that:
“The authors identified four distinct narratives in the news coverage that create what they term the disaster myth, or the act of directing consumer attention toward the company responsible for the disaster, and then providing a dramatic closure to the crisis. The narratives include: segregation (separating oil from nature), exception (the disaster was unforeseeable), punishment (how the responsible company is penalized), and restoration (describing how the damage will be undone).”
This exact phenomenon occurred after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, with the spill hitting the front page of the New York Times as soon as possible after the spill. Even though the spill happened at nearly three o’clock AM Eastern Time on March 25, the New York Times managed to run a story on the spill in its late edition that same day. Much ado was made about the removal of oil, from Saturday Night Live skits to Congressional hearings. The crash on Bligh Reef was framed as unavoidable, caused by America’s obsession with finding and utilizing as much oil as possible. The captain, Joseph Hazelwood, and his company, ExxonMobil, were brought to court in both criminal and civil cases. Finally, Congressional hearings were held and news laws were demanded in response to the spill, fulfilling all four tenets of oil spill response that Humpreys and Thompson concluded do not lead to meaningful change.
The response to the spill was a mixed bag, above average in some regards, such as the immediate response from ExxonMobil, and subpar in terms of communications and effective containment of the spill. ExxonMobil had been lauded in the weeks before the Exxon Valdez spill for their response to the Exxon Houston, which spilled oil off the coast of Hawaii and dumped hundreds of thousands of gallons into the Pacific, threatening the coast of Oahu. This spill paled in comparison to the Valdez. Frank Iarossi, the president of the Exxon Shipping Corporation was on his way to Alaska within hours of the spill and flew directly over the spill where he learned that in the first twelve hours since running aground the Valdez had spilled two hundred and fifty times more oil than had been spilled in Hawaii. Iarossi was a graduate of the Coast Guard Academy and had served for a decade and received master’s degrees in naval architecture and mechanical engineering in that time. Under Iarossi’s watch, no major spills had occurred and Exxon’s eighteen tugs and nineteen tankers had mostly performed as desired.
Within days, ExxonMobil had accepted responsibility for the spill and promised to facilitate the cleanup. The New York Times reported that despite Exxon’s promise to accept full financial responsibility, Congress had previously established a fund to pay for damages from oil spills. The Trans-Alaska Authorization Act of 1973 permitted the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and established how any oil spills were to be paid for. Through a 5 cents per barrel fee on oil producers, Congress had created a fund to pay for $86 million worth of damages after the contribution of $14 million from the responsible party. The Trans-Alaska Authorization Act of 1973 also limited oil shippers’ responsibility to only $100 million.
Blame for the Exxon Valdez spill was quickly assigned to Captain Joseph Hazelwood. Hazelwood had not been on deck at the time of the crash and was reportedly drinking heavily, even though the Valdez was officially a dry ship. Just four days after the spill, the New York Times ran an article entitled “Captain Has History of Drinking and Driving.” Hazelwood was asleep in his bunk when the tanker ran aground on the Bligh Reef, despite the official Exxon manual stating that the captain must be on duty and on the bridge “whenever conditions present a potential threat to the vessel such as a passing in the vicinity of shoals, rocks, or other hazards presenting any threat to safe navigation”. The last communication before the spill was when Hazelwood requested permission from the Coast Guard to change lanes. The Coast Guard officer on duty allowed it and then vacated his desk and chatted with the officer set to relieve him at midnight. It was not until after the crash that Hazelwood, possibly slurring his words, radioed the Coast Guard and let them know exactly what had happened.
Despite the widely circulated rumors of Hazelwood’s inebriation, there was no concrete evidence of him being too drunk to operate the ship. A test ten hours after the grounding placed him at a blood alcohol content of 0.061 percent, slightly more than half of Alaska’s drunk driving limit of 0.1 percent. The Coast Guard had a limit of a 0.04 percent blood alcohol content, which Hazelwood’s purported 0.061 percent blood alcohol content exceeded. A toxicologist at Hazelwood’s eventual trial used a hotly contested method of retrograde extrapolation to posit that his blood alcohol content at the time of the grounding was 0.22 percent. This is seemingly implausible however, since a blood alcohol content that high typically kills the drinker. Hazelwood admitted to drinking two Moussy beers, a very low alcohol beer that was permitted on the Exxon Valdez. Two Moussy beers could not have produced a blood alcohol content of 0.061 percent, leaving exactly how intoxicated Hazelwood was up in the air permanently. The Coast Guard officer in charge of searching Hazelwood’s quarters admitted it was brief and less than thorough. Hazelwood received some praise for his maneuvering of the Valdez after the grounding.
This was not Hazelwood’s first incident involving drinking and the law. He had been arrested in 1984 for drunk driving on Long Island and subsequently enrolled in a rehabilitation program. Court records show that before his arrest for drunk driving he was questioned by police officers at his home where he “had a strong odor of alcoholic beverage on his breath, he was unsteady of his feet, and his speech was slurred.” Exxon handled Hazelwood’s arrest internally, suspending him for 90 days. Exxon records show that Hazelwood was an episodic and excessive drinker, resulting in “familial and vocational dysfunction,” including pushing his two-decade-long marriage to the brink of divorce. Though sailors are not typically known as the most well-behaved bunch, Hazelwood earned a reputation as the rowdiest of them, drinking heavily since his high school days and having little sense of when to stop.
Hazelwood and the entire cleanup of the spill were skewered by the public. Just three weeks after the spill, Saturday Night Live’s cold open satirized the cleanup efforts. A cleanup worker on the beach asks his supervisor “where do we put the otters,” to which his supervisor responds, “You know the procedure… There are four otter piles: oily dead otters, clean dead otters, oily live otters, and clean live otters. Got it?” Later in the sketch, the supervisor looks down at a patch of clean sand with oily footprints in it and exclaims, “Alright, who tracked oil through our clean patch?” A man in black behind the supervisor sheepishly raises his hand, and the other cleanup workers all rat him out, declaring “Hazelwood!” The supervisor continues, “Captain Hazelwood, you’re on pretty thin ice already,” eliciting a hearty laugh from the crowd. Saturday Night Live’s version of Captain Hazelwood explains, “Gosh I’m sorry sir, guess I did it again!” before taking a prolonged swig from a flask and announcing, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!” Months after the spill, Captain Hazelwood was on a flight from Anchorage to Seattle when he was heckled by passengers who took videos and pictures of him, and he was called “a real jerk” by one passenger.
Alaska was destined to become an oil haven. Throughout the 20th century, oil had turned the wheels of world progress and domination, with Exxon being an offshoot of the notorious Rockefeller Standard Oil Trust. The 1928 Redline Agreement distributed the dissolving Ottoman Empire’s oil holdings amongst European countries and America. America’s conquest for oil continued with the Suez War and was briefly pushed back by the formation of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which sought to turn the world order on its head and give economic power to oil-rich countries such as Angola, Mexico, and various Middle Eastern states. As the Middle East became more volatile, oil companies could no longer straddle the line of national loyalties and thus began offshore exploration throughout the globe. When oil popped up in the frigid North Slope, Alaska’s fate was sealed as an oil first, everything else second state.
Governor Steve Cowper knew this. Alaska’s government was eighty-five percent funded by royalties from the oil industry. Alaskans paid no sales tax, no income tax, and were paid out annually from a “permanent fund” solely for living in the state. Cowper consulted with Dan Lawn, an environmental engineer who worked on the design and construction of the Valdez Marine Terminal before joining the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation to work as a regulator. Lawn told Cowper that oil companies had not fulfilled their side of the deal with the State of Alaska and that state authorities had been too timid to shut down the pipeline or level sanctions if oil companies did not comply. Theoretically, Lawn had a point, but in practice that was suicide for anyone at the state office that wanted a political future.
Cowper was forced to do damage control, and in a press conference at the Valdez Civic Center stated that:
“We don’t want anybody to think they have to hire a lawyer and go into federal court and sue the largest corporation in America. We want to put a system together that will allow you who are suffering damages — the fishermen and other people in this are — to bring to us a fairly simple set of proof of whatever you lose and we want you to be paid quickly and expeditiously.”
That promise fell short, as many fishermen never received a penny of compensation after the spill.
Prince William Sound is just east of Anchorage, a body of water full of narrow channels and straits created by the many rocky islands throughout its waters. In 1962, a massive 9.2 magnitude earthquake shook the Sound, destroying towns such as Valdez and Chenega. These towns were later rebuilt at higher, safer elevations. The many islands of the Sound are irregular and their coastlines jut in and out, with cliffs, rocky beaches, and coarse sand taking turns as the coastline. Knight Island’s rocky, jagged coastline has been carved by the rapid tides of the Sound and at one point in the middle of the island is less than a mile wide. Just a mile south of the point Knight Island is nearly nine miles across. The cold, clear waters of Prince William Sound lend themselves well to the abundance of life that proliferates in its waters and islands. Beneath the surface live various crustaceans, mollusks, fish, and aquatic mammals. Orcas and porpoises play in the deeper waters and dozens of animals live on the shore, including bears, wolverines, and sea and river otters. Massive glaciers calve and drop icebergs into the water, creating thunderous noise. On the night of the spill, reports of ice floating into the shipping channels delayed the Valdez by an hour. All of these plants, animals, natural areas were soon to be coated by the thick, black oil silently sliding through the water.
The animals that live in the water and on the islands of Prince William Sound were devastated by the oil spill. Richard Newman, whose work documenting the oil spill earned a spot in the White House’s photo archives, described seeing a black-tailed deer trapped in the oil and a sea otter with its eyes scratched out, saying, “It tore up its own face. It scratched out its eyes because of the hydrocarbons. It died with its paws folded on its chest, where they stopped from the scratching. Another otter had chewed off a paw. There was a starfish, still alive, but half-eaten through by the crude.” Just days after the spill 16,000 dead birds had been recovered in addition to 700 otters, plus thousands of other animals spotted dead on the beaches throughout the Sound. It quickly became obvious that an accurate and complete count of the dead animals was impossible, as some animals sank and many aquatic animals died underwater, never to resurface. Dead animals floating in the oil slick were often imperceptible and appeared to just be a small, dark, round bump in the oil.
In the days after the grounding of the Valdez, two priorities came to the forefront. First, lightering, which is the removal of the oil still in the tanks, needed to occur. The second was cleaning up and containing the spill. Lightering was clearly the responsibility of Exxon and less than two weeks after the grounding Iarossi ordered the Valdez to be towed off of Bligh Reef and to Outside Bay, southwest of the reef and by Naked Island. The technical challenges were handled remarkably well by Exxon, as they were able to repair the ship and divert the Exxon Baton Rouge to come from the Port of Valdez. The lightering operation came to use two tankers and four tugs but was successful in removing the oil from the Valdez and avoiding capsizing the ship as its distribution of weight shifted and changed.
How to clean the spill and who should clean it was a much trickier problem. Four days after the grounding the oil occupied eighteen square miles and the four entities involved–the Coast Guard, state of Alaska, Alyeska, and Exxon–all disagreed on who should be responsible for the cleanup. The Alaskan government believed Alyeska was responsible for immediate action, as the state believed that Alyeska’s plan promised a response within two to five hours and the ultimate removal of fifty percent of the spilled oil. This, of course, did not happen as Alyeska took over fifteen hours to arrive on the scene, and when they did they were inadequately prepared. Alyeska’s spill containment equipment had been shoved into corners of storage facilities and buried under snow and in the first twenty-four hours following the spill no booms were on site. A paltry two skimmers were in operation, but those skimmers had nowhere to offload the oil they collected. In the following, days Alyeska was similarly useless and ignored offers of help from fishermen in nearby Alaskan villages. Alyeska’s plan was to remove 100,000 barrels of oil from the Sound by the third day. They had barely recovered three percent of that. Furthermore, their goal of removing fifty percent was completely unreasonable, four to five times as much as the industry standard from other large spills and double the maximum under ideal conditions posited by experts. Iarossi believed that Alyeska’s ability to handle the spill was suspect and had arranged for the slick to be sprayed with dispersant. This plan ran into countless issues, including the fact that Iarossi did not have permission to spray as well as the fact that there was not enough dispersant or planes in Alaska to undertake Iarossi’s plan.
Dispersants were a quick, Band-Aid type fix to oil spills. Basically, dispersants break up the cohesiveness of the oil, breaking it into small droplets instead of the nasty slicks. These droplets then have an increased surface area, allowing the process of decomposition and bacterial consumption to occur faster than sans dispersant. These droplets then sink in the water, and therein lies the main attraction. Dispersants do not clean the water in the way that booms and skimmers do, but they make the surface look cleaner, and Exxon’s public relations suffered massively due to the pictures of animals coated in oil and the shiny black oil sitting on top of the water.
In the weeks and months that followed, the federal government drummed up responses and reactions to the spill. At the Department of Fish and Wildlife, an otter population study was wounded by the spill as the department struggled through bureaucratic bottlenecks to survey the otters of the Sound, as Prince William Sound was home to the most genetic diversity of otters anywhere in the world. Also halted, at least for the time being, was legislation with plans to allow limited oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It had passed committee in the Senate and was expected to be supported by Congress. President George Herbert Walker Bush continued to support and advocate for the bill, but few in Congress were now willing to stick their neck out. The United States government passed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 in response to the spill. The act sought to avoid more oil spills by creating parameters for timely removal of oil and assigning liability for the cost of cleanup and damages. As a result of the Oil Pollution Act, mariners were required to have a “Certificate of Financial Responsibility” which ensured they were able and willing to pay for any costs incurred in the case of an oil spill. Also required was for companies to ship oil in double-hulled ships, though many companies, including Exxon and Texaco, put off the implementation of double-hulled ships. The Oil Pollution Act also led to the withdrawal of several proposals for increased oil exploration throughout American lands and waters.
In Alaska, Governor Cowper made small changes. He required that two tugboats escort every tanker through Prince William Sound from Valdez. In the 1990s the tugboats were replaced with a single Escort Response Vehicle, responsible for monitoring and escorting the tankers on their journey through the Sound.
Economically the spill had wide-ranging impacts. The Chugach Alaska Corporation, one of thirteen Alaska Native Corporations created by Congress to administer Alaskan lands, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after a massive die-off of clams, herrings, and seals, though the corporation eventually recovered. Recreational sport fishing, commercial fishing, and tourism all took hits. Furthermore, many people involved in the cleanup reportedly suffered chronic illnesses as a result of their constant exposure to oil and its fumes. An Anchorage lawyer found these claims to be mostly true, though Exxon countered that “there is no evidence suggesting that either cleanup workers or the residents of the communities affected by the Valdez spill have had any adverse health effects as a result of the spill or its cleanup.”
The spill triggered a litany of lawsuits against ExxonMobil, some of which lasted into the 21st century. In 2008, the Alaska Supreme Court’s final ruling on punitive damages in the wake of the spill was that ExxonMobil had to pay $500 million to the thousands of fishermen and others involved in the class-action suit. An original ruling by a lower court had granted $2.5 billion dollars, but the Supreme Court overturned that. The Supreme Court’s ruling granted approximately $15,000 to those in the class-action suit, which lawyer David Frederick referred to as “a pittance.” The court cases were endlessly complex. In the case of Chenega Corp. v. Exxon Corp., Justice Bryner wrote that a lower court had awarded various native Alaskan corporations almost $6 million dollars. This had been prompted by the corporations filing suit after the spill, claiming damage to their real estate as well as intangibles such as archaeological sites and artifacts. The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 granted Alaskan native corporations the right to seek reparations for damages caused by the spill on land that the tribes claimed but had not been granted to them by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. The corporations in the meantime received payments from the Trans–Alaska Pipeline Liability Fund and a settlement with Alyeska, resulting in the jury deciding that Exxon need not pay the corporations, resulting in the corporations appealing. The Supreme Court affirmed the ruling, asserting that Exxon did not owe the Chenega Corporation any money after the case.
Court cases did not just involve the physical damages of the spill. In the case of Kodiak Island Borough v. Exxon Corp., the Kodiak Island Borough, with the City of Seward, City of Cordova, City of Old Harbor, City of Ouzinkie, City of Port Lions, and the City of Larsen Bay sued Exxon for costs related to the municipal services that had been diverted during the management of the spill. Exxon had used many public buildings as centers for the cleanup efforts and extra police, fire, and medical personnel were required. In the State of Alaska’s penal code, AS 46.03.822(a) established that the owner of a hazardous substance that is accidentally released is responsible for the containment costs incurred by any cities that handle the efforts. A lower court had found that Exxon was not liable for those costs, and the Alaska Supreme Court reversed the ruling, assigning complete responsibility to Exxon.
The public was outraged by the oil spill, especially those closest to it. Captain Joseph Hazelwood’s trial was held in Anchorage, despite his defense’s claims that it was impossible to have a fair and impartial jury there. Said Anchorage Superior Court Judge Karl Johnstone, “If Oliver North can get a fair trial, I’m sure Captain Hazelwood can get a fair trial, too,” proving that even a judge was not immune to bias as he compared Hazelwood to a man who aided in the sale of weapons to Iran during the Reagan administration. The prosecutors had agreed earlier that it was unreasonable to hold the trial in Valdez, and the defense had lobbied to hold the trial in Fairbanks, in Interior Alaska. During the trial, Hazelwood’s sobriety onboard the Exxon Valdez was yet again called into question. The tanker’s pilot, William Murphy, testified that Hazelwood was not impaired in any way. Murphy also testified that “the captain’s speech had not been slurred,” and “responded negatively when asked if the captain’s movements had changed, if his eyes had been watery and if he had undergone a mood change from that afternoon.” Hazelwood was later cleared of the felony charge against him, second-degree criminal mischief, as well as operating a vessel while intoxicated and reckless endangerment, both misdemeanors. He was convicted of a misdemeanor charge of negligent discharge of oil. Despite earlier worries of an unfair trial, Hazelwood had no such issues, as one juror, Jeff Sage, shook his hand after the trial and told him “I’m glad to see justice was done, Mr. Hazelwood.” He was sentenced to 1,000 hours of community service and fined $50,000.
The United States government was also very invested in the oil spill, as it pitted the country’s capitalistic ideals against its appreciation and protection of natural beauty. The House of Representatives held a hearing on the effect of the oil spill on Prince William Sound. The hearing included testimony from many powerful and knowledgeable people, including the Secretary of Commerce, the Regional Forester of the United States Department of Agriculture, a representative from the Department of the Interior, the President of the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, and many others. Alaska’s sole representative in the House of Representatives, Don Young, testified before the committee. He stated that money should be invested to help Alaskan communities recover from the oil spill and also to manage other tanks of oil that sat in Alaska and were liable to spill into the Sound. However, in his prepared statement Representative Young downplayed the effects of the spill, saying that “not a single life was lost during the accident,” “the herring and salmon have returned,” and that “the otter population in my State is as large as ever.”
Representative Young complimented the chairman of the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries on having a bipartisan committee, yet partisanship revealed itself in the statement of Representative Elizabeth Furse of Oregon. While Representative Young, a Republican, had stated that the populations of Alaskan animals had been restored to their pre-spill numbers in just four years, Representative Furse, a Democrat, said that she was “interested in learning how funds are being spent to restore each of the various damaged resources, including marine mammals, fish, and seabirds.” Curt Weldon, a representative from Pennsylvania, had close knowledge of the oil spill, as he had visited the site shortly after the spill occurred. He stated in a prepared statement that “while efforts have been made to improve response procedures in the event of another oil spill, one has to wonder if they are adequate enough.”
Admiral John William Kime, Commandant of the United States Coast Guard, testified that enacting the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 represented a significant portion of the Coast Guard’s work in 1993. He lauded the Oil Pollution Act for establishing the National Pollution Funds Center, which handled claims stemming from oil spills. The National Pollution Funds Center also provided money upfront to states so that they could get ahead of oil spills and not have to wait on funding before beginning clean up efforts. He also announced that the Coast Guard had established an Atlantic “strike team” in order to be able to respond quickly to any oil spill, giving the Coast Guard a total of three “strike teams.” The Coast Guard also established worldwide dates to phase out single-hulled ships and replace them with double-hulled ships, which were less susceptible to oil spills. The Coast Guard also completed a Port-Needs Study on 23 different ports and appropriated funds during the 1993 Coast Guard Appropriations Subcommittee meetings, which were put to use renovating ports.
The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 was in direct response to the Exxon Valdez oil spill and it was supported by nearly all of Congress, as it had passed the Senate 99–0. The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 strengthened the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to respond to oil spills, in part by taxing oil to establish a fund that funded cleanups when the responsible party was not able to pay for it. The Environmental Protection Agency also required detailed plans for their response to an oil spill in the event that one did occur. The Environmental Protection Agency also published guidelines for the above-ground storage of oil, while the Coast Guard published guidelines for the storage of oil in oil tankers. One negative impact of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 was that it disincentivized upgrading to higher quality ships for oil companies. As owners were held completely liable for oil spills, it did not make financial sense to upgrade as double-hulled ships cost much more to maintain and operate. The scope of the act was fairly narrow, as it focused mainly on the Exxon Valdez without an eye to any other potential spills. In fact, a large amount of the act was spent preventing a repeat of the Exxon Valdez spill, especially in Title V, “Prince William Sound Provisions.”
Title V established that “The Secretary of Commerce shall provide for the establishment of a Prince William Sound Oil Spill Recovery Institute (hereinafter in this section referred to as the ‘‘Institute’’) through the Prince William Sound Science and Technology Institute located in Cordova, Alaska.” The Institute was established in order to identify and develop techniques to handle the cleanup and containment of oil spills in arctic and subarctic climes, as well as to study the impact the Exxon Valdez oil spill had on Prince William Sound and surrounding communities. Also provided for in the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 was the creation of the Oil Terminal and Oil Tanker Environmental Oversight and Monitoring Act of 1990, which was created to involve citizens in the oversight of oil tankers and terminals, as well as to assure the upkeep of those. However, the Oil Terminal and Oil Tanker Environmental Oversight and Monitoring Act of 1990 granted little power, as Section 5002(b)(2) established that “the function of these Programs shall be advisory only” and was limited to just the State of Alaska.
The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 was very unpopular with oil companies, which President George H.W. Bush acknowledged when he signed it into law. The oil industry complained that the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 was an impediment to free trade in American water due to its restrictions on international trade, but also the imposition of liability statutes. Some in the oil industry even threatened to boycott American ports if the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 was implemented, but those threats turned out to be empty after President Bush signed it into law on August 18, 1990. The enactment of the Oil Pollution Act led to a small drop in oil traffic into American ports, but nothing substantial. One positive aspect of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 was that a consortium of oil shipping companies united to form the Marine Spill Response Corporation, a corporation dedicated to designing response plans to oil spills, as well as planning the remediation that the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 required after oil spills.
There is no neat and tidy conclusion to the story of the Exxon Valdez oil spill where the Alaskans are showered with money by ExxonMobil and all the otters are lovingly scrubbed clean of oil. Much of the oil remained in Prince William Sound, stuck underneath rocks, on beaches, and in countless other impossible to clean places. Frank Iarossi resigned shortly after the spill and slunk off to a life of anonymity. Captain Joseph Hazelwood returned to work after his trial ended, captaining boats very similar to the one he had allowed to crash in Prince William Sound’s blue waters. Alaskans were forced to reckon with the damage of the spill on their own as lawsuits spent decades in court. Many Alaskans were never compensated. Out of the spill came cries for change that in large part were not answered adequately. The United States government enacted the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, a narrow bill that did little to deal with the United States’ obsessive need for oil. Decades after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the Deepwater Horizon, an offshore drilling rig, spewed oil in the Gulf of Mexico, overtaking the Exxon Valdez as the worst oil spill in American history in terms of total barrels spilled. Clearly, the response to the Exxon Valdez oil spill was not enough.
WORKS CITED
“16 Months After Valdez Spill, Oil Bill Nears Final Passage” New York Times, 139:48,316, (August 3, 1990) sec. B, 6
Ashlee Humphreys and Craig J. Thompson. “Branding Disaster: Reestablishing Trust through the Ideological Containment of Systemic Risk Anxieties.” Journal of Consumer Research
“Captain Has History of Drinking and Driving.,” New York Times, 138:47,823, (March 28, 1989) sec. B, 7
Chenega Corp. v. Exxon Corp., Supreme Court of Alaska. (November 22, 1999)
“Critics call Valdez cleanup a warning for Gulf workers,” CNN, (July 8, 2010)
Day, Angela. Red Light to Starboard: Recalling the Exxon Valdez Disaster. Pullman: Washington State University Press, 2014
“Exxon May Have Small Liability for Spill Claims.,” New York Times, 138:47,823, (March 28, 1989) sec. B, 7
“Exxon Spill Captain is Heckled Aboard Plane” New York Times, 138:47,902, (June 15, 1989) sec. A, 27
“Exxon Valdez Trial to Be Held in Anchorage.” New York Times, 139:48,038 (October 29, 1989) sec. L, 27
Keeble, John. Out of the Channel: The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill in Prince William Sound. John Keeble, 1991.
Kodiak Island Borough v. Exxon Corp., Supreme Court of Alaska. (November 22, 1999)
Langfitt, Frank, “Supreme Court Cuts Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Damages.” National Public Radio, (June 2008)
“Largest U.S. Tanker Spill Spews 270,000 Barrels of Oil Off Alaska,” New York Times, 138:47,820, (March 25, 1989) sec. A, 1
Mary-Ann Twist. “Exxon Valdez 2014: Does Media Coverage of Manmade Disasters Contribute to Consumer Complacency?” The University of Chicago Press
“Oil Spill Cold Opening.” NBC, Saturday Night Live, 15 Apr. 1989.
“Ship Captain Acquitted of Felony But Is Convicted on Minor Charge.,” New York Times, 139:48,183, (March 23, 1990) sec. A, 1&14
“Tanker’s Captain Seemed Sober, Pilot Tells Court” New York Times, 139:48,183, (February 7, 1990) sec. A, 17
United States Congress. Senate and House of Representatives. Oil Pollution Act of 1990, 101st Congress., 1990
U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, The Ecological Changes in Prince William Sound after the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill and the Use of Fines Imposed: Hearing before the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries. 103rd Cong., 1st Sess., (March 24, 1993) | https://medium.com/@tedcarver/causes-and-consequences-of-the-exxon-valdez-oil-spill-5501a4360814 | ['Ted Carver'] | 2020-12-24 20:39:00.270000+00:00 | ['Oil Spill', 'History', 'Disaster Response', 'Alaska', 'American History'] |
284 | Jeri Hilt is creating film | Patreon
Follow Jeri Hilt on Patreon: Read posts by Jeri Hilt on the world's largest platform enabling a new generation of… | https://medium.com/the-i-am-a-creator-collective/284-27c30af0de91 | ['Jeri Hilt'] | 2017-01-23 13:24:12.003000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Revolt', 'Sacrifice', 'Love', 'Patchwerk'] |
How we build data visualizations for a global audience | The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) is an independent research organization whose mission is to improve the health of the world’s populations by providing the best information on population health. A simpler way to summarize what IHME does is:
We collect, process, and distribute big data for global population health.
Part of that mission is to distribute data in ways that inform a diverse user group including expert global health researchers, ministers of health, policymakers, and the general public. To that end, we provide a suite of more than twenty data visualization products that run the gamut from static charts to highly interactive tools with dozens of controls and chart types. The variation in our data visualizations reflects the diverse needs of our audiences, from the layperson who prefers a curated story to the expert user who wants the flexibility to ask their own questions of our population health datasets.
The first few entries in a list of IHME’s more than twenty data visualization tools.
On the Data Visualization team, we commonly get this question from users of our products:
How did you build that visualization?
The goal of this article is to answer that question in as much depth as we can provide, and hopefully provide a starting point for anyone interested in building their own web-based visualization.
TL;DR
Rather than using an off-the-shelf data visualization platform, we build bespoke data visualizations using JavaScript, D3, and React, including two of our own open source libraries: IHME-UI and ScrollyTeller
Our back end technologies have historically used the LAMP stack, but we are moving toward microservices architectures with NGINX and Node/Express back ends
Who built that?
Our visualizations are created by the Data Visualization team, which currently consists of six developers, a technical product manager, a development manager, and a team lead. We are also supported by multiple technology teams including database developers that maintain our MySQL databases, an infrastructure team that manages the hardware and virtual environments we use to deploy our web technology, and a central computation team that handles organization-wide computational assets.
What we build is guided by requests from health data researchers at IHME, external collaborators at health ministries, academic institutions, and the general public, who also supply IHME’s data in the first place. In that sense, the entire IHME community has a hand in building the tools we create. Functionally speaking, the Data Visualization team at IHME operates as many software development teams do, using agile development practices, two-week sprints, and code reviews. We track work efforts using agile project management software and use Git for source control. Our developers are very much Full Stack in the sense that we write our own API’s, create and manage small databases, write the visualization code, and manage application deployments.
How we build it
A major difficulty in summarizing how we build visualizations is that it’s not entirely consistent across our twenty-plus applications. Like many organizations that have been building web applications for more than a decade, we have a mix of legacy code and newer technologies that we are moving toward. With that said, the following sections generalize the most common technologies we use on the front end and back end of our applications.
How do you make those impressive charts?
Most people asking “How did you build that?” are probably most focused on how we created the chart itself. In other words, “How did you convert rows of data into that great bar chart/tree map/line chart/scatter plot?”.
A pyramid chart view of death rates by cause for selected countries in the GBD Compare visualization.
The short answer is: from scratch using JavaScript and CSS. The longer answer is: we use custom D3.js code in older applications, and commonly use D3.js in combination with React.js in our newer applications.
Vanilla JavaScript & D3.js
Some examples of D3.js code can be found on bl.ocks.org or ObservableHQ.com. Many of these code samples offer a good starting point for learning code patterns to build charts in JavaScript, but generally aren’t modular enough, don’t handle component state very well, and don’t follow our code style practices (a modified AirBnB style) to be very usable. Thus, many of our older D3.js components are coded from scratch and are not open source. This US map and a derived choropleth on ObservableHQ are examples with code patterns similar to the way some of our internal D3.js code is structured.
React with D3.js
To standardize some of our visualization code, the Data Visualization team created an open source repository called IHME-UI. Like many React-based data visualization frameworks, IHME-UI uses React to manage component rendering to the DOM, while leveraging D3.js for low-level chart scaling, layout, and map transformation functionality. Elijah Meeks has an excellent discussion of the tradeoffs of this approach in his article and book on the subject. Amelia Wattenberger also has an excellent instructional blog post on the topic.
The example below is from the IHME-UI demo files, and shows how a chart is composed from individual React components that represent different parts of the chart such as scales and symbols (lines in this case). An <AxisChart> component encloses <XAxis> , <YAxis> , and <MultiLine> components to compose a complete line chart. The <XAxis> and <YAxis> components leverage D3.js to compute transformations from x/y space to pixel space, and format ticks and tick labels. The <MultiLine> component uses D3.’s svg path function to place the lines in the appropriate position in pixel space within the svg element.
An example from the demo files of IHME-UI showing React code to generate the chart.
IHME-UI was created primarily to unify the look, feel, and behavior of some IHME charts, but is far from complete in terms of its available chart types. For those interested in building some of the more common chart types using React, several other React-based charting libraries like Victory, Semiotic, React-Vis, and Recharts use similar approaches to customizing axes and chart symbols. Other React-based libraries like Nivo offer higher level implementations of individual charts where props determine axis and shape behaviors.
Scrollytelling
Scrolly-what? Several of our visualizations, such as the child mortality and tobacco control visualizations, are designed to guide the user through a story on a given topic, with the primary interaction being that the user scrolls to continue through the story. Whereas many of IHME’s visualizations are exploratory to allow experienced users to ask their own questions of data, scrollytelling visualizations are explanatory to appeal to users with less experience in a given global health topic.
A scrolling data story about mapping global child mortality rates.
To create these visualizations, our team wrote an open source library called ScrollyTeller, which provides a framework for dynamically creating a scrolling data story from configuration files and tabular data containing the story “narration”. See this link for a scrollytelling data story that explains how ScrollyTeller works.
What about the back end?
As most web developers are well aware, the front end code that renders our visualizations couldn’t exist on the web without a significant amount of development infrastructure. Visualizations with interactive, dynamically changing charts and multiple views require robust web technology, with flexible backend APIs to organize and serve the data from databases, not to mention varying amounts of web traffic, data caching, etc. We won’t go into too much detail about how we deploy, but for anyone interested, we describe some generalities about the types of development methods we use. In other words, what does our stack look like?
A typical stack: LAMP & JavaScript front end
The LAMP acronym might not mean much to those unfamiliar with web technologies. In our case, it stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, which forms both the web server and the back end API for many of our older applications. In most cases, these projects are monorepos containing all of the code necessary to build and deploy the applications. An easy way to explore our stack is to break down the file structure of one of these monorepos for a typical project. The main components are:
An index.php file, which is the entry point into the web server, and routes the web and api server using Apache or sometimes using the Slim PHP framework.
file, which is the entry point into the web server, and routes the web and api server using Apache or sometimes using the Slim PHP framework. An api folder to host backend PHP files. The API connects to IHME’s MySQL databases and uses SQL queries to query data via http routes consumable by the front end.
folder to host backend PHP files. The API connects to IHME’s MySQL databases and uses SQL queries to query data via http routes consumable by the front end. A php-templates folder to serve the base web components (usually just header, footer, body in HTML format).
folder to serve the base web components (usually just header, footer, body in HTML format). A Docker folder + Jenkinsfile to support automated builds via Jenkins, a well known open source automation server. The Jenkinsfile is written in Groovy and orchestrates the containerization of the Linux/Apache web server environment, which is deployed via Rancher.
folder + to support automated builds via Jenkins, a well known open source automation server. The Jenkinsfile is written in Groovy and orchestrates the containerization of the Linux/Apache web server environment, which is deployed via Rancher. A src directory containing the front end JavaScript code, CSS, and any static resources such as images or icons. Most of our D3.js (and/or React) code that renders the data visualizations is here, along with any CSS and sometimes static resources like images and icons.
directory containing the front end JavaScript code, CSS, and any static resources such as images or icons. Most of our D3.js (and/or React) code that renders the data visualizations is here, along with any CSS and sometimes static resources like images and icons. A variety of .files and other configuration files that configure Composer (PHP dependency management), Node (JavaScript dependency management), and Webpack/Babel for transpiling and bundling our front end code.
and other configuration files that configure Composer (PHP dependency management), Node (JavaScript dependency management), and Webpack/Babel for transpiling and bundling our front end code. A README.md file to tell our developers how to set up the project.
File structure for a generic IHME-application to illustrate API, source code, developer tools, and deployment.
This type of architecture has served us well, and because many of our projects are structured in this way, we can get up and running relatively quickly with this stack. That said, many of our developers like to work exclusively in JavaScript and sometimes Python, which has prompted us to explore some different project setups.
A more modern stack: LEMN(?) stack & React front end
Many of our more recent projects have replaced Apache web servers with NGINX, and replaced PHP/Slim back end servers with Node/Express. Thus, many of our stacks use variations of Linux/NGINX/MySQL/Node. In most cases, we still stick to using monorepos, but break each of the services up into their own containers that run separate Node or Apache servers. The main components of this stack are:
An app directory containing the front end JavaScript code. The typical React/Redux file structure may look familiar here, and may vary depending on the project. Upon deployment, the app files are bundled and copied to a separate app container (using Docker/app.Dockerfile ).
directory containing the front end JavaScript code. The typical React/Redux file structure may look familiar here, and may vary depending on the project. Upon deployment, the app files are bundled and copied to a separate app container (using ). A variety of .files and other configuration files that configure Node (JavaScript dependency management), and Webpack/Babel for transpiling and bundling our front end code.
and other configuration files that configure Node (JavaScript dependency management), and Webpack/Babel for transpiling and bundling our front end code. A server folder that hosts an Express backend. In this case, the backend is a separate Node/Express application that is built into its own container upon deployment (using Docker/api.Dockerfile ).
folder that hosts an Express backend. In this case, the backend is a separate Node/Express application that is built into its own container upon deployment (using ). A Docker folder + Jenkinsfile that contain code to containerize the Linux/NGINX web server environment, and configure NGINX to route (proxy) traffic to each of the app and api containers. Again, all of this is deployed via Rancher.
folder + that contain code to containerize the Linux/NGINX web server environment, and configure NGINX to route (proxy) traffic to each of the app and api containers. Again, all of this is deployed via Rancher. It’s worth noting that this configuration still uses a containerized version of Apache (hence the index.php file) for the web server, which exists primarily to conform with some existing Apache-based infrastructure at IHME.
file) for the web server, which exists primarily to conform with some existing Apache-based infrastructure at IHME. A README.md file to tell our developers how to set up the project.
File structure for more modern applications using NGINX/Express/Node back ends.
Microservices architecture in Local Burden of Disease visualizations
The map-based Local Burden of Disease visualization.
A notable exception to our development environments are the Local Burden of Disease visualizations, which are map based and are deployed using a microservices architecture with completely separate components in different code repositories. Because the same codebase is used to display many different health indicators, the codebases must also be highly configurable. Configuration is accomplished via a JSON based configuration language that defines the dimensions and shape of the data, database specifications, and how different controls and chart components should be rendered in the view. This stack is partially open sourced as the Choroscope platform, which is summarized nicely here. On the front end, the Local Burden of Disease visualizations also utilize Leaflet.js, or more specifically, React-leaflet to handle functionalities such as basemaps, map layering, and zooming/panning.
Got all that?
Hopefully this gives a flavor for the complexities of building, deploying, and maintaining the twenty-plus visualizations that IHME distributes. Please visit the IHME website for the latest on what the organization is up to, our data visualizations page for a complete list of our tools, or our careers page if you are interested in working with us. | https://medium.com/ihme-tech/how-we-build-data-visualizations-for-a-global-audience-550b2cb7e4e6 | ['Ryan Shackleton'] | 2020-03-02 21:18:29.278000+00:00 | ['Big Data', 'Data Storytelling', 'D3js', 'Data Science', 'Data Visualization'] |
The Biggest Mistake Early-Stage Founders Make in Customer Interviews | Talking to customers is a cornerstone of early product development; in fact, it can be the fuel for your startup. It can help you:
identify an unmet customer pain or frustration
develop clear design inputs for your product build
give insights into the perceived value of solving X problems across multiple customer segments.
However, when in the very early stages of your business, you are excited. Perhaps you watched the famous Alec Baldwin “Always Be Closing” scene, and you don’t want to miss your chance to turn every conversation into money, internally chanting “carpe diem.”
But, as good as it would be to get a signature on the dotted line before you have a product ready, the reality is, you’re not ready to ask.
Without anything to sell, startups ask what they believe is the next best thing, “If I built this — would you buy it?”
Here is why that is a problem.
People are too nice
This is one of the rare circumstances where being nice is a problem. When asked direct questions about someone’s idea, most people avoid confrontation and reply positively.
“Yeah, sure, buddy, I would love to use that…”
“That sounds like a good idea!”
“Of course! Keep me in the loop.”
Startup founders come back after hearing this feedback ecstatic! They stream into the weekly INCUBATE updates, “Oh Ben, they loved it!”
While my duty is not to make things sour, it is to keep startup founders in reality. After helping numerous early-stage teams, I inevitably highlight to the founders that these conversations rarely result in a sale.
To be frank, the customer was just trying to say the right thing to get the startup founder to leave them alone or they haven’t really thought it through.
This is demonstrated further in Robert Fitzpatrick’s The Mom Test. Let us quickly set the scene: you walk into the kitchen and ask your mum, “is my business a good idea?”
Fitzpatrick highlights that the problem here isn’t that you asked your mum if your product is a good idea or that mums are usually supportive to a fault, but that you shouldn’t ask anyone that question.
2 Ears > 1 Mouth
A famous INCUBATE slide taken from our workshop on customer interviews!
The focus of early-stage customer interviews is listening.
The customer should always be doing the majority of the talking. As a founder, your job is to:
ask the right questions
the right questions listen to the customer’s emotions towards certain things
to the customer’s emotions towards certain things learn how they currently attempt to solve particular problems
how they currently attempt to solve particular problems (most importantly) not make the conversation a hypothetical product pitch.
This is about them, not you.
Heading into these early-stage interviews, you need to set the goal to learn as much as possible about your potential customers. If you find yourself rattling off too much about your idea, you are at risk of losing the opportunity to hear insights.
Additionally, you may accidentally lead them down the wrong path. Talking too much about yourself tends to incorrectly bias the conversation.
🔮🧙♀️ Avoid future speculation, focus on specifics in the past
A considered structure is essential to a good customer interview. Without it, you are at risk of talking and hearing fluff.
Specific details are essential when understanding your customer — generic claims and hypotheticals don’t provide the information you need to develop a product and understand your customer’s behaviour.
The best approach is to focus interview questions on past behaviour. Understand what they are doing and how they currently solve certain problems; don’t be afraid to get them to walk you through it.
Asking if someone might potentially use your product isn’t that clear cut. Instead, utilise specifics in the past to identify the potential value for your product. Ask questions like: | https://campusstartup.incubate.org.au/the-common-mistake-early-stage-founders-make-in-customer-interviews-would-you-use-this-product-9bc0565958b7 | ['Ben Lindsay'] | 2021-08-31 23:07:24.551000+00:00 | ['Startup Lessons', 'Startup', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Startup Life', 'Product Development'] |
Fundamentals of being an AI/ML sorcerer supreme | TLDR
Harnessing the power of AI can be magical and impactful. Before mastering this ability, one must understand the basic foundation of AI. We’ll go over basic math concepts, common prediction types, and popular algorithms.
Math
Vectors
Matrix
Cost function
Classification and regression
Accuracy
Precision
Recall
Mean absolute error
Root mean squared error
Algorithms
Linear regression
Logical regression
K-Nearest Neighbors
Decision trees
Random forest
Support vector machines
Neural network
Math
Mathematical equations lay the foundation for AI. For basic applications of AI, being a math expert isn’t necessary as there are plenty of tutorials and pre-built libraries maintained by the open source community. However, learning some math concepts will help you understand why an algorithm works the way it does and how it can be improved.
Vectors
Vectors are an array of numbers ( x = [1, 3, 5] ), compared to a scalar which is a single number ( x = 5 ).
A vector is a mathematical way of getting from one point to another. Vectors need to travel some distance which is measured in magnitude (length) and direction (orientation).
Vectors are used in machine learning for their ability to organize data. One example of a commonly used vector in machine learning is a feature vector. These contain information on multiple elements of an entity; for example, a feature vector can contain 5 values: the age of a user, the gender of a user, their height, their weight, and their current city. Feature vectors represent attributes of an entity in a way that a machine learning model can easily perform calculations on.
Vectors are written into Python using Numpy. They can be created using the function np.array():
Vectors can be added, subtracted, divided, multiplied, etc.
Matrix
A Matrix is a 2-dimensional array (table) of numbers with at least one column and at least one row. The array in a matrix can be represented as having m columns and n rows; therefore, our matrix is size m x n . A vector can also be considered a matrix. Row vectors can be represented as 1 x n , and column vectors as m x 1 .
A matrix is measured by its size which is the number of rows by the number of columns.
Matrices are used to represent data that machine learning models learn from. By structuring the data in a matrix, machine learning algorithms can leverage linear algebra and matrix multiplication for efficient calculations across large amounts of data.
In Python, a matrix is represented by a 2-D Numpy array:
Like vectors, matrices can be added, subtracted, divided, multiplied, etc. Matrices of the same size are added together by adding the corresponding data points.
Cost function
Cost function is used to optimize a machine learning model to make better predictions. The cost function calculates the error between predicted outcomes compared with actual outcomes. The goal of training a machine learning model is to minimize the error from this cost.
Gradient descent
To minimize the cost function error so a line best fits the dataset, we need to use a gradient descent algorithm. Gradient descent is an optimization algorithm that finds the minimum of a function — finding the value that’ll give us the lowest error.
Gradient descent works by taking steps to find the minimum value of the parabola graph.
As the graph slopes down towards the x-axis, theta (measure of an angle) will increase as the negative slope is turned positive by alpha. As the graph goes up past the minimum, theta will become negative, signaling it has passed the minimum and needs to backtrack. Repeatedly running this algorithm will leave us with the minimum.
Classification and Regression
There are 2 main categories that most machine learning problems belong to: classification and regression.
Classification is the process of taking an input and mapping it to a discrete label. Classification problems typically deal with classes or categories. For example, a photo of a cat (input) and mapping it to be labeled either cat or dog.
Regression allows us to predict a continuous outcome variable based on predictor variables. Generally, regression problems deal with real numbers. For example, trying to predict home prices based on recent sales in an area.
Evaluation metrics explain the performance of a model and can provide insight to areas that might need improvement.
In our example, we built an ML model to predict a color. Every time the model chooses a color, a score will be added to their box. Actual values are on the y-axis and the model’s predicted values are on the x-axis.
Classification evaluation metrics
Accuracy
Accuracy is the total number of correct predictions divided by the total number of predictions made by the model. Accuracy works well on balanced data: a dataset with approximately the same number values across each category present. For example, 100 dogs and 95 cats is a balanced dataset. An unbalanced dataset is 100 dogs and 11 cats.
18 (correct predictions) / 22 (total number of predictions) = 0.81 Accuracy = 81%
15 (correct predictions) / 22 (total number of predictions) = 0.68 Accuracy = 68%
Classification accuracy can give a false sense of achieving high performance. Such can occur when there is a disproportionate number of 1 color over the other (e.g. 100 blues and only 11 reds).
Models can be evaluated based on four features:
True positives are the correctly identified predictions for each class. True negatives are the correctly rejected predictions for each class. False positives are incorrectly identified predictions for each class. False negatives are incorrectly rejected data for each class.
Precision
Precision is the number of correct positive results divided by the number of positive results predicted by the ML model. Using precision, we discover the amount of positive identifications that were actually correct. Precision is helpful for understanding how good a model is at predicting a specific category. This metric is helpful in multi-category classification problems. For example, predicting which color car to sell.
Precision = True positive / (True positives + False positive)
Referring back to our model 1 color identifier from above, the true positive value would be 10 and the false positive value would be 3.
Precision = 10 / (10 + 3) = 0.769 Precision = 77%
Recall
Recall is the number of all positive results divided by the number of all relevant samples. Recall answers the question: what proportion of actual positives were identified correctly? A model that produces no false negatives has a recall of 1. Recall is useful when assessing whether a model can effectively detect the occurrence of a specific category. For example, if you need a model that can catch all fraudsters on your website then you’ll want a model that has high recall. A model with high recall may have low precision (gets a lot of predictions wrong) but it’s really good at detecting all the fraudsters.
Recall = True positive / (True positive + False negative)
Referring to our color identifier model, the true positives are again 10 and the false negative is 1.
Recall = 10 / (10 + 1) = 0.909 Recall = 91%
F1 Score
F1 score tries to find the balance between precision and recall. It tells how precise and robust a classifier is and ranges on a scale of [0,1]. The greater the F1 score, the better the performance of the model.
Regression evaluation metrics
Regression measures the relation between values of one variable and the corresponding values of another. An example of a regression could be the number of hours spent studying (x-axis) to the score received on an exam (y-axis).
Mean absolute error
Mean absolute error measures how far predicted values are from observed values averaged over all predictions.
In our example, our model will be based on predicted grocery item prices vs the actual grocery item prices.
The error can be predicted as: actual cost — predicted cost. After subtracting the two, we change any negative number to a positive by taking the absolute value of that number.
Apple = 2 − 1 = 1 Pasta = 3 − 5 = -2, absolute error = | -2 | = 2 Almond milk = 5 − 4 = 1, absolute error = | 1 | = 1 Avocado = 1 − 2 = -1, absolute error = | -1 | = 1 Ice cream = 5 − 3 = 2, absolute error = | 2 | = 2
The number of training sets in our data is 5; therefore, we will assign the variable n to equal 5.
MAE = (absolute error A + absolute error B + absolute error C + absolute error D + absolute error E) / n
MAE = (1 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 2) / 5 = 1.4
We’re therefore able to identify that our model predictions were off my $1.40 on average .
Root mean squared error
Root mean squared error is the square of the difference between the original values and the predicted values. A result from squaring errors is that larger errors become more pronounced.
Going off to our example above the RMSE would be as followed:
Apple = (2 − 1)^2 = 1 Pasta = (3 − 5)^2 = 4 Almond Milk = (4 − 5)^2 = 1 Avocado = (1 − 2)^2 = 1 Ice cream = (3 − 5)^2 = 4 RMSE = (1 + 4 + 1 + 1 + 4) / 5 RMSE = 2.2
Algorithms
There are many great algorithms, some are better than others depending on your use case or data availability. Here’s a useful visual diagram of when to use which algorithm: | https://m.mage.ai/roadmap-to-ai-ml-sorcerer-supreme-2fc4bdbe89bf | ['John Patrick Hinek'] | 2021-06-17 18:34:54.948000+00:00 | ['Web Development', 'AI', 'Developer Tools', 'Machine Learning', 'Developer'] |
How to access Open Data with Oracle Autonomous Database 🌳🌲🎄 | In this post, I’ll show you a technic that one can use to quickly access such Open Data to enrich your applications and perform on the fly analytics on it.
Source of data: Direction des Espaces Verts et de l’Environnement — Ville de Paris, 11/12/2020, license ODbL.
These JSON data about the remarkable trees in Paris are available using an API.
First, we’ll create a table that will be used as a local cache of the downloaded JSON data:
create table json_cache (
downloaded_at date default sysdate not null,
url varchar2(32767) not null,
cached clob
)
lob(cached) store as securefile (DEDUPLICATE CACHE COMPRESS HIGH);
alter table json_cache add constraint
json_cache_cached_is_json check (cached is json);`
Then we’ll create an Oracle Table Function that will do the magic:
Check the cache to see if the page has been downloaded since the latest 10 minutes, if not present or too old, redownload it,
Parse the parametrized JSON path to look only for JSON objects from the array using the JSON_TABLE function and a dynamic PL/SQL cursor,
function and a dynamic PL/SQL cursor, Generate new rows for further analysis using JSON_VALUE function
In order to work, a Table Function needs a type and table of this type to be returned:
CREATE OR REPLACE TYPE t_opendata_json_doc AS OBJECT (
json_document CLOB
); CREATE OR REPLACE TYPE t_opendata_json_doc_collection IS TABLE OF t_opendata_json_doc;
I’m using CLOB here so that it is compatible with 19c version and it also automatically manages Unicode conversion of the Open Data. JSON standard expects these data to be UTF-8 encoded.
Now the Table Function looks like this:
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION opendata( p_my_url IN varchar2,
p_json_path IN varchar2)
RETURN t_opendata_json_doc_collection PIPELINED AS
TYPE OpenDataCursorType IS REF CURSOR;
l_clob clob;
l_blob blob;
cur OpenDataCursorType; procedure cache_opendata as
pragma autonomous_transaction;
begin
begin
-- retrieve the latest data cached at most 10 minutes ago
-- purging this cache is let as an exercise (hint: you could use dbms_scheduler) select cached into l_clob
from json_cache
where url=p_my_url
and sysdate-downloaded_at < 10/24/60
order by downloaded_at desc
fetch first 1 ROW ONLY;
exception when no_data_found then
-- nothing inside the cache, then download the Open Data
l_clob := apex_web_service.make_rest_request(
p_url => p_my_url,
p_http_method => 'GET'
);
insert into json_cache (url, cached)
values (p_my_url, l_clob);
commit;
end;
end; BEGIN
cache_opendata; open cur for 'select d.json_document from json_table(:l_clob, ''$'' columns (nested PATH ''' || p_json_path || ''' columns(json_document format json path ''$''))) d' using l_clob;
loop
fetch cur into l_clob;
exit when cur%NOTFOUND;
PIPE ROW(t_opendata_json_doc(l_clob));
end loop;
RETURN;
END;
/ show errors;
Once it’s compiled, you can test it using such SQL query:
j.json_document.fields.arrondissement as location,
j.json_document.fields.hauteurenm as heighth_in_meters,
extract(year from systimestamp) - extract(year from to_timestamp_tz(j.json_document.fields.dateplantation, 'YYYY-MM-DD"T"HH24:MI:SSTZH:TZM')) as age_in_years,
count(*) over (partition by j.json_document.fields.libellefrancais) as total_trees_with_same_name
from (
select json_query(json_document,'$') as json_document
from table(opendata('
'$.records[*]'))
) j
order by 4 desc; select j.json_document.fields.libellefrancais as tree_name,j.json_document.fields.arrondissement as location,j.json_document.fields.hauteurenm as heighth_in_meters,extract(year from systimestamp) - extract(year from to_timestamp_tz(j.json_document.fields.dateplantation, 'YYYY-MM-DD"T"HH24:MI:SSTZH:TZM')) as age_in_years,count(*) over (partition by j.json_document.fields.libellefrancais) as total_trees_with_same_namefrom (select json_query(json_document,'$') as json_documentfrom table(opendata(' https://opendata.paris.fr/api/records/1.0/search/?dataset=arbresremarquablesparis&q=&lang=en&rows=200&facet=genre&facet=espece&facet=stadedeveloppement&facet=varieteoucultivar&facet=dateplantation&facet=libellefrancais' '$.records[*]'))) jorder by 4 desc;
Explanations:
we can invoke the function such as: select count(*) from TABLE(opendata( <url>, <JSON path to JSON documents array> ));
as it returns CLOBs, you can’t use the dot notation just yet… you need to convert it first using the JSON_QUERY function
function once it’s done, you’ve got a result set or a row source that is composed of the full JSON documents present in the array… and you can start analyzing your data!
Hint: in the case, the URL for the Open Data contains a & char, then you can run this command to avoid variable substitution: set define off
This query in fact returns the list of the oldest remarkable trees in Paris, their height in meters, and age. It also provides the location of the tree and the number of such trees identified as remarkable trees in Paris.
SQL query over fresh Open Data
Hence, the oldest tree in Paris is a small Robinier of 9 meters which was born back in 1602 and it is the only one…
For the curious, it’s close to Notre Dame de Paris: | https://medium.com/db-one/how-to-access-open-data-with-oracle-autonomous-database-24561983f2ca | ['Loïc Lefèvre'] | 2020-12-18 16:22:25.896000+00:00 | ['Open Data', 'Data Science', 'Database', 'Programming', 'Sql'] |
The World’s Most Dangerous Instrument | Glass fingering
Hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica is the musical practice of rubbing one’s fingers along the rim of a glass or glasses. The sounds are created by using cups or bowls of glass in increasing and decreasing size to produce different pitches by the sheer friction of the fingers.
Does it take much musical talent to become a great armonica player? You wouldn’t have thought so, but Wolfgang Mozart was so impressed with the style he created a few pieces for the intrepid to play.
The first public display has been credited to the Irish musician and inventor Richard Poekrich in 1740. Cut-glass talent at it’s finest! He named the ‘newly’ invented instrument an ‘angelic organ’. Dickie became a virtuoso performer of glass. At first, his rudimental playing was performed with the use of sticks. As he became better accomplished he switched to the ‘wet-finger-around-the-wine-glass’ method. Dick liked to lick his fingers in public before each encore performance. Apparently, he was very popular.
The earliest references date back to the Renaissance. Galileo wrote about the armonica in Two New Sciences. Of course, any child would tell you how they created music by rubbing their fingers along the rim of a glass. The full name translates from Greek. ‘Hydro’ (water), ‘daktulo’ (fingers), ‘psychic’ (soul), and ‘armonica’ (derived from Harmony meaning soul). Or ‘harmonica to produce music for the soul by fingers dipped in the water’. The Oxford Companion to Music mentions that this word is ‘the longest section of the Greek language ever attached to any musical instrument’. | https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/the-worlds-most-dangerous-instrument-d609c1ea346c | ['Reuben Salsa'] | 2020-12-21 17:47:35.172000+00:00 | ['Words', 'Music', 'Salsa', 'History', 'Ideas'] |
THE POWER OF COLORS | Hi everybody, it’s us! Cinefood! :)
Here we are again with a new article!
Today we will talk about COLORS!
Now you may say: “I learned them in kindergarten!”
Well, my little disbeliever, every color has hidden meaning and archetypes useful to know.
Knowing them will help you in every single area: photography, graphics, video editing, fashion, … It can also allow you to “break” them and create new ones.
So, you’re welcome! ;)
Colors meaning and their uses
Colors, they are everywhere! Even when you talk about black & white (there are many discussions about it, but the most can say that black and white are definitely colors!).
Colors have always been there and their history starts with the prehistoric and their cave paintings. Over the centuries the meanings, conceptions and even the number of colors considered as such have changed: they were 3 for Aristotle (black, white and red), 7 for Newton (red, blue, green, yellow, purple, orange, indigo) and only 6 for Pastreau (red, blue, white, green, yellow, black).
Make up your minds, guys!
Well, these are the main colors from which all the others derive, and today we will discover their history and meanings.
RED
Is the color par excellence and one of the colors with the highest positive response!
It’s a bipolar color: it means elegance, energy, happiness, richness and plenty, but also aggressiveness, danger and drama. It’s the color of passions, ’cause it’s linked both to anger and love (both in a sentimental and in a physical way).
It has always been easy to produce and use and it has been a symbol of richness and power since ancient times, because it is the color of fire and blood.
In Europe, it was also the color of the bride on its most important day until the nineteenth century and in the meanwhile it was the color of hookers (We’ve said that this color is bipolar, haven’t we?).
In most of Asian countries it’s a symbol of prosperity and happiness.
In ancient times it was associated with male, until the Protestant Reformation, which considered red immoral and therefore prevented men from wearing it. So, it became the color of women (pink, nowadays, and blue for boys, you know?).
Today, the color red linked to a woman, means sensuality, strength, aggressiveness, confidence and also freedom and emancipation.
This color also has the ability to stimulate appetite, indeed it’s widely used by food brands, like Coca Cola or McDonald’s.
BLUE
The blue color was ignored until the 12th century: it was expensive and difficult to obtain and therefore little used. It was re-evaluated by the Marian cult, when the painters began to paint Mariah’s veil of blue.
It means stability, tradition, trust, but also depression, sadness, distance and hostile behavior. (An example is the song “I’m blue” by Eiffel 65, da bu di da bu da!). It’s also the color of communication, hygiene and transport safety.
Blue is a restful color: fixing it for a long time causes a slow heartbeat
Light blue means freshness, lightness, energy, hygiene and healthy stuff.
For the Egyptian, the color blue was linked to a sweet death, resurrection and fertility, ’cause of the Nile’s color. In China it’s linked to immortality.
It’s often used to communicate travel and transports and it’s not normally linked with food. That’s because it’s a color little present in nature and it’s normally associated with spoiled meat, so it doesn’t stimulate the appetite. However there are some exceptions, like Barilla, Red Bull and Pepsi.
GREEN
Green it’s an eccentric and relaxing color, it was recommended for wallpaper in the 18th century. It’s an easy color to get but is chemically unstable, in fact is the color of gambling and fortune.
It means growth, health, plenty, peace, natural things, freedom and serenity, but also the color of anger, jealousy and illness. It’s also the color of money and good people in gardening (It’s not my case).
It’s the color of dragons, demons and evil beings, and during the middle ages, actors avoided wearing it on stage for bad luck. Then it became the color of gambling in the 18th century. In the 19th century it became a color of permission with the creation of street signs. Today it’s the color of freedom.
Today it’s associated with natural and healthy food and it’s also used for surgeons’ coats. That’s because it is a restful color and complementary to the red of blood.
YELLOW
This color was more appreciated in ancient times than today, ’cause it was associated with richness and wisdom. It was used in weddings in ancient Rome and it was the color of the emperor in China.
In Europe this color assumed negative connotations during the Middle Ages, due to the rivalry with gold. So it became the color of betrayal and jealousy. Another reason for its bad reputation was related to its production: yellow was obtained from sulfur and therefore it had “the smell of the devil”.
It means happiness, life, brightness, comfort and friendship but also jealousy, shame, illness and betrayal.
It’s a warm and motivating color, usually associated with sweet flavors and it stimulates the appetite. It’s also linked to youthful energy, children’s toys.
PINK
It’s a lighter version of red. During the 18th century it became the color of femininity and tenderness. Then it also has been linked to omosessuality: during the Holocaust, it was a way to distinguish homosexuals in concentration campsand. Then it became the color of the LGBT+ community before today’s rainbow flag.
It means wonder, kindness, childhood, pure love, romance and sweetness. It’s associated with emotions.
It’s linked to femminility, but this is a recent connotation. At first pink was, yes, associated with breast-feeding and protection but pink became a Girl’s color during ’50s, with the birth of Barbie. Since then, pink is associated with girls and light blue with boys.
In marketing, it’s associated with skin care, hygiene, childhood and youth.
PURPLE
This color is linked to the mystical and contemplative aspect of the individual. It’s a color little present in nature and for this reason it has taken on an impalpability’s aura.
It means quiet, creativity, imagination, magic, wisdom, spirituality. It’s associated with death and mystery.
In Christian religion it’s the color of the lenten season and in the meanwhile it’s an unlucky color for actors, because in the Middle ages, during this season, all theatrical performances were suspended.
In a dark shade, violet is associated with sadness, melancholy and loneliness, while in a lighter shade it means creativity, joy and freedom of expression.
This color isn’t normally associated with food (except Milka’s, yummy!) ’cause it doesn’t stimulate appetite.
ORANGE
This color is difficult to produce and it wasn’t used in the middle age because the mixed colors were considered impure. It was revalued during the 14th century due to the importation of the homonymous fruit.
Orange is a bipolar color too (like red): it represents both childhood and maturation, sunrise and sunset, humanity and divinity.
It’s also associated with friendship, vital energy, hospitality, aggressivity and meditation (it is not by chance the color of the robes of the Buddhist monks).
In ancient Rome, it was the color of the bride’s veil: it indicated the union in marriage and the impossibility to separate from the husband (another bipolarism: a comfortable life in exchange for freedom).
In Asia it’s associated with good luck and prosperity while in Latin countries it’s linked to gold.
BROWN
This color refers to a dimension of corporeity. The need or the rejection of this color indicate a precise attitude towards what is material.
It’s linked to dirt, poverty and brutality, but also with earth, family, nature as a trunk that means prudence, maturation, patience and perseverance.
It’s usually associated with baked or grilled food and it stirs up welcoming and comforting sensations.
WHITE
It’s intended as the subtraction of all colors and it means totality.
It’s associated with new beginnings, innocence, pureness and virtue but also with sacredness, redemption and religion.
In Asia it’s linked with death and grieving.
It stimulates the appetite and it’s associated with light food. If it’s approached to black represents the duality of good-evil.
BLACK
This color has been difficult to obtain during history. It has the capacity to absorb 100% of light, so it doesn’t reflect anything. For this reason it’s associated with danger, cruelty and the afterlife. It gives us an idea of absolute and emptiness.
In Europe it’s linked to magic, superstition, death, sins and fear but also to elegance and luxury. It’s also a stylish color.
It was the color of pirates, because of their flags. Then it changed its meaning for political reasons and became the color of absolutism and pain during the 1900s.
While in Europe and in America it has negative meanings, in Asia it’s linked to monks and ninja’s, so it means both physical power and holiness. | https://medium.com/@cinefood/the-power-of-colors-f0efe1062f7b | [] | 2021-09-09 13:37:09.734000+00:00 | ['Archetypes', 'Illustration', 'Meaning', 'Graphics', 'Colors'] |
International schools in navi mumbai | There are many International Schools in Navi Mumbai but the one which is known to all is Euro School.
WHY Euro School?
EuroSchool Airoli is one of the best ICSE schools in Navi Mumbai and provides a robust curriculum in accordance with the ICSE board and also offers the ISC course for Grade 11 and 12 for Science, Commerce, and Humanities streams. It has a unique division teaching academics in affiliation with Cambridge Assessment International Education [CAIE] since 2015. Cambridge International at EuroSchool Airoli prepares school students for life, helping them develop an informed curiosity and a lasting passion for learning. Cambridge Pathway gives students a clear path to educational success. We can shape the curriculum around how we want students to learn — with a wide range of subjects and flexible ways to offer them. It helps students discover new abilities and a wider world, and gives them the skills they need for life, so they can achieve at school, University and Work.
For more info visit: https://www.euroschoolindia.com/ | https://medium.com/@abfrl-fashion/international-schools-in-navi-mumbai-bae7f1594af4 | ['Abfrl Fashion'] | 2020-12-28 07:29:14.517000+00:00 | ['International School', 'Schools'] |
Top 6 Instagram Mistakes To Avoid in 2022 | Digital Lavika | Is your Instagram presence falling? Is it true that the number of your followers isn’t increasing? All this points concludes: you’re not playing your cards correctly on Instagram.
Agreed, mastering social media is difficult, especially in today’s environment, when thousands of new influencers appear every day. However, there’s a strong possibility you’re committing some typical Instagram errors that are limiting your Instagram growth.
What Instagram mistakes are you making and how can you avoid them?
Many people believe that mistakes are unavoidable. I would like to respectfully disagree. There are a few things every creator should stay away from. And to assist you, we’ve developed a list of typical mistakes. These are minor details that might cost new influencers a lot of money.
1. Inconsistent postings
When it comes to staying relevant on Instagram, consistency is crucial because the platform’s popularity is so fragile. You may be trending one day and battling to get the bare minimum of likes the next. As a result, it’s critical to update on a frequent basis in order to keep fresh in the thoughts of your followers.
However, publishing on a regular basis does not imply posting on a daily basis. You should pick a few days during the week to post a photo or video. Determine when and where the highest levels of interaction occur, and tailor your content accordingly. The peak traffic hours are 6:30 p.m. and 10:00 p.m., although this may vary based on your specialization.
2. Images or videos of poor quality
Let’s face it, it’s time to confess it once and for all!
Instagram is a visual platform, therefore beautiful photos and videos are essential. That doesn’t imply you have to make the shot perfect in every way. It will make you appear shallow. Rather, invest in a high-quality camera that can catch the true essence of whatever you’re trying to convey.
Then, with minor modification, alter it a bit more.
The goal is to capture clean, sharp photographs under suitable lighting. Some influencers stick to a theme, but it’s entirely up to you and depends on the material you’re sharing. If you have a photographic or flat lay page, theme editing makes more sense. Fashion and cuisine pages benefit from bright colors. Check out these pointers on how to take Instagram-worthy photos.
3. Not paying attention to hashtags
Hashtags make your post more visible and discoverable to those who aren’t already following you. If people enjoy your stuff, they will follow you. As a result, you may employ hashtags to reach out to potential users. You can write them in the captions or in the comments section.
Make use of both particular and general hashtags. Specific ones have a smaller audience, but they’re more focused, and the leads they produce are more likely to become followers. Generic or trendy hashtags, on the other hand, are widely used and so keep you relevant (more tips on how to use the right hashtags).
Click here for additional information on how to choose best Instagram hashtags.
4. Maintaining a private profile
Instagram, as previously said, is a visual media. Users make decisions about whether or not to follow you depending on the stuff you publish. New individuals will be less interested in following you if your profile is private since they won’t be able to see anything!
Furthermore, individuals are hesitant to click the follow button on private accounts. In addition, the following request must be accepted, which might take anywhere from a minute to a day.
Keep a public profile if you wish to be a creator. Seriously, it’ll be 2022, and we have no business telling you this.
5. An Instagram bio that is empty
When someone visits your Instagram profile, the first thing they see is your bio. It has to be relevant to your content. Make the most of this area and keep it as clean as possible.
Mention your name, location, genre, contact information, and what visitors to your page may anticipate. In the website field, enter your blog’s link, website address, e-commerce page link, or any other relevant URL.
6. Captions that are poorly written
Although photos and videos are the “stars of the show” on Instagram, captions play a significant role. They set the scene for the images and aid to elicit discussion.
Users who don’t comprehend the picture’s intent will scroll away if there isn’t a caption. However, avoid crafting phrases that are excessively long or too intricate. Keep your captions to a minimum. To increase engagement, include a question or a call-to-action.
What are some more Instagram mistakes to avoid?
Instagram is a social networking site. As a result, being active and aware is crucial in this situation. Users are prone to ignoring or forgetting inactive or inconsistent pages. So be proactive and take advantage of all of the options available.
Don’t miss out on our comprehensive guide to become an influencer and content marketing trends to follow in 2022.
That’s it, guys! | https://medium.com/@digitallavika/top-6-instagram-mistakes-to-avoid-in-2022-digital-lavika-82ef414c142e | ['Digital Lavika'] | 2021-12-30 09:00:11.365000+00:00 | ['Instagram', 'Instagram Mistakes', 'Instagram Tips', 'Instagram Marketing'] |
Congressman Ted Lieu — Government Oversight and Ethics | In this episode of Intergenerational Politics, Jill Wine-Banks and Victor Shi are joined by Congressman Ted Lieu from California, who also serves on the House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs Committees. We discuss the importance of government oversight and ethics investigations into Trump and his supplicants for their egregious, norm-breaking acts and what reforms can be made in the next Congress and administration to assure government oversight and prevent future abuses.
Enjoy below!
Intergenerational Politics is a podcast created by Jill Wine-Banks and Victor Shi dedicated to engaging all generations in politics with weekly unfiltered conversations with experts across the nation. Be sure to subscribe to and rate us on Apple Podcasts. You can also find us on Spotify or any other podcast streaming services. | https://medium.com/@victorshi2020/congressman-ted-lieu-government-oversight-and-ethics-e7eed1b6ffa | ['Victor Shi'] | 2020-12-22 18:05:17.954000+00:00 | ['Congress', 'Accountability', 'Democrat', 'Government', 'Politics'] |
What is Functional Encryption? | Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
First, let’s talk about physical encryption.
For the purposes of this article, we are calling “physical encryption” the process of encrypting information in such a way that it can be decrypted.
The physical encryption process comes from this library, in case you wanted to give this a whirl. There’s no source here but you can feel free to spend some time reverse-engineering whatever source you may wish to use because you can do this with Python and it’s easy enough albeit perhaps not all that useful.
So what is functional encryption, anyway?
For the purposes of this article, we are defining “functional encryption” to be any process one can code as a function that tends to modify the information using some kind of technique or through the use of a number of techniques.
The rather simplistic functional encryption technique we are using here is a simple fold and a single fold.
The interesting thing about folding data is there is no crease.
When you fold a physical piece of paper there is a crease and the fold can be easily reversed or unfolded.
When you fold data there is no obvious observable crease one might use to reverse the process. This is the power of functional encryption. There is nothing one might observe to guide the reverse of the process.
So what happens when you fold encrypted data and then you try unencrypting the folded data? Nothing happens other than an error.
For the purposes of encryption, which is a highly mathematical process, when you fold the encrypted data you are creating a deformation or corruption of the data using a function you know about others may not know about.
Even when a hacker has your key(s) and they know you used Twofish they will not be able to decrypt your data unless they know how the data was corrupted assuming you use functional encryption to purposefully corrupt your own data.
This sounds like a crazy idea.
Photo by Tengyart on Unsplash
Yes, this sounds like a crazy idea but everyone loves a crazy idea that works.
Every bit of human progress began as a crazy idea that worked.
Electricity was a crazy idea when it was discovered in the form of static electricity and it was viewed as a parlor trick until someone else learned how to transmit and store electricity and then it became the electric grid none of us wants to live without.
Functional encryption may seem like a crazy idea until someone learns it can be useful and then it will suddenly become a great idea.
I give you the encryption keys.
Photo by Jozsef Hocza on Unsplash
I assume hackers will get my encryption keys especially because I have to store them somewhere. Hackers will get into your networks, they will. There is nothing you can do about this. Network Security is a myth. There will always be holes in every network no matter how much money you spend to plug them. Accept this as a given and stop spending money on this type of security. Yes, use firewalls. Yes, use CIDR blocks. Yes, use SSL. Yes, do all this because it costs nothing but a bit of your time to set it up.
I use an encryption scheme that stores the keys in the encrypted data. I give you the keys. This too sounds like a crazy idea, doesn’t it? Of course, it does. But keep reading.
You do not know what my keys look like because this too is a form of functional encryption. Reverse-engineer the source and maybe you get to learn this detail. Maybe. Until it changes.
You do not get to know where I put my keys. Keep looking at the Python byte codes, if you wish.
Because my keys are randomly generated and stored with the encrypted data there is no need to store the keys where someone might find them. There is no need to write down the passphrase where someone might find it sticking to a computer screen. In essence, there are no keys. There is only data.
Functional encryption…
Functional encryption allows us to build a library of functions we can use to further corrupt the data which means there is no encryption and no keys there is only data.
Can a hacker find all your functions?
Can a hacker spend enough time to reverse-engineer all that high-level code into usable source code that the hacker might use to do the deed? Probably not, and doubly not so unless they are inside my organization which I can assure you they are not.
Now for the code:
Consider the following code: (Available here.)
This code works for me however it may or may not work for you.
The encrypted data is folded once and then it is used as-folded to see if it can be decrypted and of-course it fails.
This is a proof-of-concept to show encrypted information can be obviously manipulated to render it useless through the use of a function to raise the bar on security.
A future article, in this series, will continue to talk about this idea to show additional techniques one might use to help illuminate the concept.
The bottom line is standard techniques are not working and never worked. It is time for a renaissance and I want to be the spark for that movement which may seem crazy now however later some of these ideas may become useful much like the development of our modern electric grids. | https://python.plainenglish.io/what-is-functional-encryption-749bc169c178 | [] | 2021-01-21 07:18:42.130000+00:00 | ['Security', 'Encryption', 'Cybersecurity', 'Python', 'Trump'] |
What Are RBMs, Deep Belief Networks and Why Are They Important to Deep Learning? | What Are RBMs, Deep Belief Networks and Why Are They Important to Deep Learning?
In this article, we are going to take a look at what are DBNs and where can we use them.
A Deep Belief Network(DBN) is a powerful generative model that uses a deep architecture and in this article we are going to learn all about it. Don’t worry this is not relate to ‘The Secret or Church’, even though it involves ‘Deep Belief’, I promise!
After you read this article you will understand what is, how it works, where to apply and how to code your own Deep Belief Network.
Here is an overview of the points we are going to address:
What is a Boltzmann Machine?
Restricted Boltzmann Machine
Deep Belief Network
Deep Boltzmann Machine vs Deep Belief Network
What is a Boltzmann machine?
To give you a bit of background, Boltzmann machines are named after the Boltzmann distribution (also known as Gibbs Distribution and Energy-Based Models — EBM) which is an integral part of Statistical Mechanics and helps us to understand the impact of parameters like Entropy and Temperature on the Quantum States in the field of Thermodynamics. They were invented in 1985 by Geoffrey Hinton and Terry Sejnowski.
There are no output nodes! This may seem strange but this is what gives them this non-deterministic feature. They don’t have the typical 1 or 0 type output through which patterns are learned and optimized using Stochastic Gradient Descent. They learn patterns without that capability and this is what makes them so special!
One thing to note, unlike normal neural networks that don’t have any connections between the input nodes, a Boltzmann Machine has connections among the input nodes. We can see from the image that all the nodes are connected to all other nodes irrespective of whether they are input or hidden nodes. This allows them to share information among themselves and self-generate subsequent data. We only measure what’s on the visible nodes and not what’s on the hidden nodes. When the input is provided, they are able to capture all the parameters, patterns and correlations among the data. This is why they are called Deep Generative Model and fall into the class of Unsupervised Deep Learning .
Restricted Boltzmann machine
RBMs are a two-layered generative stochastic building blocks that can learn a probability distribution over its set of inputs features( i.e. image pixels).
Note: First, they aren’t used as much nowadays if at all and second they aren’t themselves neural networks, they are used as building blocks, more on this on the next section.
RBMs were also invented by Geoffrey Hinton and has many uses cases such as dimensionality reduction, classification, regression, collaborative filtering, feature learning, and topic modelling.
As the name implies, RBMs are a variant of Boltzmann machines with a small difference, their neurons must form a bipartite graph, which means there are no connections between nodes within a group(visible and the hidden) which makes them easy to implement as well as makes them more efficient to train them when compared to Boltzmann Machines.
In particular, this connection restriction allows RBMs to use more efficient and sophisticated training algorithms than the ones available for BM, such as the gradient-based contrastive divergence algorithm.
In simpler terms, this means that we basically have fewer connections.
As shown in the figure above. RBMs hold two sets of random variables (also called neurons): one layer of visible variables/nodes(which is the layer where the inputs go) to represent observable data and one layer of hidden variables to capture dependencies(calculate the probability distribution of the features) of the visible variables.
Forward pass
Example without data
Example using actual data. Image credits
Backward Pass
Example without data
Example with data. Image credits
RBM is a stochastic building block (layer) which means that the weights associated with each neuron are randomly initialized then we perform alternating Gibbs sampling: All of the units in a layer are updated in parallel given the current states of the units in the other layer and this is repeated until the system is sampling from its equilibrium distribution.
Now Given a randomly selected training image 𝑣, the binary state ℎ𝑗 of each hidden unit 𝑗, is set to 1 where its probability is:
𝑃(ℎ 𝑗 = 1|𝒗) = ℊ (𝑏𝑗 + ∑i V𝑖 . W𝑖𝑗 ) — (12)
Where ℊ(𝑥) is the logistic sigmoid function ℊ(𝑥) = 1/(1 + exp(−𝑥)). Therefore 𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑎 can be computed easily.
Where 𝑊𝑖𝑗 represents the symmetric interaction term between visible unit 𝑖 and hidden unit j, 𝑏𝑖 and 𝑎i are bias terms for hidden units and visible units respectively.
Since there are no direct connections between visible units in an RBM, it is very easy to obtain an unbiased sample of the state of a visible unit, given a hidden vector
𝑃(𝑣𝑖 = 1|𝒉) = ℊ (𝑎𝑖 + ∑j ℎ𝑗 W𝑖𝑗 ) — (13)
However computing 𝑚𝑜𝑑𝑒𝑙 is so difficult. It can be done by starting from any random state of the visible units and performing sequential Gibbs sampling for a long time. Finally due to impossibility of this method and large run-times, Contrastive Divergence (CD) method is used.
Contrastive Divergence (CD)
Since Gibbs sampling method is slow, Contrastive Divergence (CD) algorithm is used. In this method, visible units are initialized using training data. Then binary hidden units are computed according to equation (12). After determining binary hidden unit states, 𝑣𝑖 values are recomputed according to equation (13). Finally, the probability of hidden unit activation is computed and using these values of hidden units and visible units, 𝑚𝑜𝑑𝑒𝑙 is computed.
Figure 3: Computation steps in CD1 method.
𝑃𝑜𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 (𝑒𝑖𝑗) is related to computing 𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑎 for 𝑒𝑖𝑗 connection.
Negative (𝑒𝑖𝑗) is related to computing reconstruction of the data for 𝑒𝑖𝑗 connection.
Although CD1 method is not a perfect gradient computation method, but its results are acceptable. By repeating Gibbs sampling steps, CDk method is achieved. The k parameter is the number of repetitions of Gibbs sampling steps. This method has a higher performance and can compute gradient more exactly.
This method is great at learning features that are very at modelling/reconstructing data input data.
Let’s say you take a binary matrix that is an image of handwritten digit(i.e. number 6), turn it into a binary vector and feed it to trained RBM model, using its trained weights the model will be able to find low energy states compatible with that image and if you give it an image that is not of handwritten digit the model will not be able to find low energy states compatible with that image.
So what is this energy?
An energy function can be defined as a function that we want to minimize or maximize and it is a function of the variables of the system(model weights and bias).
We use energy functions as a unified framework for representing many machine learning algorithms(models).
Deep belief network
A Deep Belief Network(DBN) is a powerful generative model that use a deep architecture of multiple stacks of Restricted Boltzmann machines(RBM).
Each RBM model performs a non-linear transformation(much like a vanilla neural network works) on its input vectors and produces as outputs vectors that will serve as input for the next RBM model in the sequence.
This allows a lot flexibility to DBNs and makes them easier to expand.
Being a generative model allows DBNs to be used in either an unsupervised or a supervised setting. Meaning, DBNs have the ability to do feature learning/extraction and classification that are used in many applications, more on this in the applications section.
Precisely, in feature learning we do layer-by-layer pre-training in an unsupervised manner on the different RBMs that form a DBN and we use back-propagation technique(i.e. gradient descent) to do classification and other tasks by fine-tuning on a small labelled dataset.
Architecture & Fine-tuning
As we already know by now with most of Neural Networks whether CNNs, LSTM, Transformers and etc. Pre-training helps our network generalise better and we can slightly adjust this pre-trained weights to many downstream tasks(i.e. binary classification, multi-class classification and etc) with a small dataset.
Applications
Here are some of the tasks that this family of networks can be used for:
Image generation Image classification Video recognition Motion-capture And Natural Language Understand(i.e. speech processing), for detailed description, read check out the paper by the creator of DBNs himself Geoffrey Hinton
Deep Boltzmann Machine
After DBNs another moodel called Deep Boltzmann Machine (DBM) was created that trains better and achieves a lower loss, although it had some issues like being hard to generate sample from.
A DBM is a three-layer generative model. They are similar to a Deep Belief Network, but they while DBNs have bidirectional connections in the bottom layer on the other hand DBM has entirely undirected connections.
Now that we are equipped with the theory it is time to dive into the implementation details.
Code implementation
If you looking for a plug and play like implementation of DBN but also Ives lots of flexibility, checkout:
If you a looking for a DIY and step by step tutorial from scratch, checkout:
Conclusion
Deep belief Networks are family of deep architecture networks that uses stacks of Restricted Boltzmann Machines as building blocks. Furthermore, DBNs can be used in a both unsupervised setting for tasks such as image generation and in a supervised setting for tasks such as image classification, and it takes full advantage of great techniques such as unsupervised pre-training and fine tuning on a down stream task.
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Ms. Esther M Dzitiro for suggesting the topic of this article.
References
Checkout for more detailed explanation: Lecture 12C : Restricted Boltzmann Machines
Lecture 12D : An example of Contrastive Divergence Learning
Gibbs sampling
https://cedar.buffalo.edu/~srihari/CSE676/20.4-DeepBoltzmann.pdf
https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hinton/absps/fastnc
http://www.robotics.stanford.edu/~ang/papers/icml09-ConvolutionalDeepBeliefNetworks
https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hinton/absps/ruhijournal.pdf
https://astrostatistics.psu.edu/su14/lectures/CosPop14-2-2-BayesComp-2.pdf
A Tutorial on Energy-Based Learning
Loss Functions for Energy-Based Models With Applications to Object Recognition | https://medium.com/swlh/what-are-rbms-deep-belief-networks-and-why-are-they-important-to-deep-learning-491c7de8937a | ['Prince Canuma'] | 2020-12-23 22:46:05.160000+00:00 | ['Deep Learning', 'Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Computer Vision', 'Deep Belief Network'] |
Bauhaus & the Politics of Design | If you understand the Bauhaus, you will, pretty much, understand twentieth century art and design… and much of what followed. The artists, designers, teachers and students who worked at the Bauhaus have a more direct and encompassing influence on the culture of the current western world than any other school or movement. A bold and sweeping claim, perhaps, and one not made lightly…
Walter Gropius wrote the Bauhaus Manifesto a century ago, setting out a mission statement for a new, more holistic, way of teaching and practicing Design. Operating ‘between the wars’, from 1919 to 1933, the Bauhaus was a German school of art and design based first in Weimar, then Dessau, and finally in Berlin.
In terms of design and manufacture, they were the culmination of what had begun in the Industrial Revolution and their core ideology upheld the principles set down by the British Victorian visionary designer, Christopher Dresser, who outlined an approach to design and making in which, “Form Follows Function,” and emphasised that things should be, “Fit for Purpose”. One of his most quoted mottoes was, “Knowledge is Power”.
Dresser is often said to be the ‘first designer’ because he was the first to set-down design principles that could be taught and applied across different disciplines. To these basic tenets, the Bauhaus added some of their own such as a rejection of all superfluous decoration and a remit to maintain a, “Truth to Materials”. Their approach and output was to define ‘The Modern’.
1919
After the First World War, the German economy was in tatters and culture was in crisis. The Bauhaus Manifesto pushed mass manufacture as the intended outcome in a vision to rebuild Germany with a new visual culture, style and inclusive identity. Gropius aimed to abolish any division between the artist and artisan, pointing out that so called ‘artists’ were simply artisans that had been elevated by elitist structures within a society.
Bauhaus curriculum in 1922
Any artisan has the potential to be an artist and according to Gropius, any builder or practical artisan was of greater value that any ‘second-rate’ painter. He also acknowledged that, whilst there are techniques and methods associated with creativity, art in itself could not be taught. So the Bauhaus approach would be preoccupied with technical instruction and all lectures would be hands-on and workshop-based.
Having said this, Gropius goes on to say that there are artists who have technical prowess, in their chosen media, and who have great spiritual and philosophical value, and in order to inject innovation both in thought and in ways of doing, these people are invaluable as teachers and would instruct alongside those expert ‘technical’ practitioners:
“…a school of design should have on its faculty the purely creative and disinterested artist, such as the easel painter, as a spiritual counterpoint to the practical technician in order that they may work and teach side by side for the benefit of the student.”
…and:
“The Bauhaus strives to bring together all creative effort into one whole, to reunify all the disciplines of practical art — sculpture, painting, handicrafts, and the crafts — as inseparable components of a new architecture. The ultimate, if distant, aim of the Bauhaus is the unified work of art — the great structure — in which there is no distinction between monumental and decorative art.”
1925
After establishing itself in Weimar, the Bauhaus moved to a purpose-built site of their own design — the now iconic Bauhaus building in Dessau — and were recognised by the government as a Design Academy along with an approved Diploma qualification. In a very short period, the school managed to exert an indelible influence upon nearly all aspects of art and design that remains ubiquitous in teaching and manufacture… But the political climate in Germany was also rapidly changing with the rise of the extreme right.
The Bauhaus B306 Chaise Longue (1928) is considered to be a design icon
designed by Charlotte Perriand, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret
In the face of mass redundancies, the disbanded National Socialist German Workers’ Party found favour once more and was re-established with 270,000 members. Adolf Hitler was its new leader. They re-branded as the National Socialist Party and openly declared their opposition to Bauhaus ideology, campaigning to close the design school and demolish its campus…
1932
Under the directorship of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the Bauhaus moved to a disused factory in Berlin. It was now an independent design school after having its official approval revoked due to political pressure.
The socio-political upheaval around them swiftly intensified: The Reichstag Government collapsed and Adolf Hitler was instrumental in forming a new government. In response, the German Communist Party planned a general strike and public demonstrations, but too late as the the ruling Nazi Party declared demonstrations illegal and arrested all members of the Communist Party for planning to break the new laws. The SS were formed, an armed police division to enforce bans on trades unions and unapproved literature. Many union leaders were arrested and many books were burned in the streets.
Next, the opposition party of Social Democrats was outlawed and all other political parties were dissolved. The Gestapo were formed, another armed police division that reported directly to Adolf Hitler and were absolved from any legal accountability.
New statutes were then passed to abolish democracy and make the Nazi Party the sole representatives of the German State as they withdrew from the League of Nations. The Aryan ideal was made central to the new German cultural identity, and ‘non-Germans’ were denied work permits. (In the midst of our current political turmoils, it would serve us to remember and recognise this pattern.)
Left — Right: Weimar (1919–24), the famous Bauhaus campus in Dessau (1925–1931), and finally Berlin (1932–33)
Important artists who taught at the Bauhaus include, Joseph Albers, Lionel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Lazlo Moholy-Nagy and Piet Mondrian. You may note from the names that these contributors were from a widely varied cultural background, Hungarian, Swiss, Soviet, Netherlands… and some were Jewish.
This multiculturalism, plus their support of new and challenging styles of art along with their promotion of creative free-thinking, placed the Bauhaus at odds with all the dominant Nazi ideologies. After the police raided the Berlin Bauhaus building and arrested many of the students, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was finally forced to shut down the Bauhaus in the summer of 1933.
Although the Bauhaus ceased to exist as a single school of design, the principles of its Manifesto lived on… Many of the influential teachers and students became refugees, taking their talents and ideals with them to other countries, mainly Britain and the USA, thus spreading the big Bauhaus influence far and wide where it thrives to this day. | https://medium.com/signifier/bauhaus-the-politics-of-design-be99b36a6551 | ['Remy Dean'] | 2020-08-09 16:43:16.753000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Art History', 'Bauhaus', 'Europe', 'Design'] |
When I Punched the Walls Until My Knuckles Dripped With Blood | As I wave goodbye to the librarian and walk out of the library clutching “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”, I feel a sudden and powerful blow to my stomach that empties the air out of my lungs and leaves me gasping for breath and reeling in pain.
Still bent over and clutching my stomach, I look up at his grinning face and him saying, “Ups” before jogging away. I slowly trudge back home, seething, and grinding my teeth.
I shut myself up in the bathroom and overwhelmed by rage and frustration, I punch the walls with tears streaming down my eyes, until my knuckles drip with blood.
Why? Why the hate? Why always target me? Why want to make me hate life and feel like shit always? Why me? Just why?
My mom rushes over and bombards me with questions but I don’t utter a single word. My mind is blind with shame, rage, frustration, disappointment, and unhappiness.
“Well, calling it fighting would be wrong — I was getting beaten into a pulp while managing to land a blow here and there.”
The next day, I patiently lie in wait, and as soon as I get the chance, I sneakily walk up to him, scream “Ups” and punch him in the back. He kicks me in the stomach and before we know it, we are fighting like dogs.
Well, calling it fighting would be wrong — I was getting beaten into a pulp while managing to land a blow here and there. The others enjoy the show, grinning and prodding him on. They like it. They love it.
Stirred by the commotion, a teacher walks in and to no one’s surprise, everyone blames me. As the teacher reprimands and lectures me on good behavior, I stand still, barely able to hold myself back from breaking down. | https://medium.com/illumination-curated/when-i-punched-the-walls-until-my-knuckles-dripped-with-blood-b44dcd81b69e | ['Neeramitra Reddy'] | 2020-12-26 02:33:12.399000+00:00 | ['Mental Health Awareness', 'Trauma', 'This Happened To Me', 'Mental Health', 'Bullying'] |
Sleep Training Your Baby: 7 Tips for Success | For the first few months of her life, Laura Welk’s child, Greyson, was a dream sleeper. He used to nap regularly during the day, and all it took was a quiet bottle in the evening and he would go to sleep early. He used to get up for food only once a night, and he stayed till morning.
But when he was about three and a half months old, the routine broke. “I’ll feed him, but he won’t sleep at the end of the feed,” Weld recalls. “I would stone him and knock him down until he fell asleep, and then he would get up after 30 minutes and I would complete him again.” Desperate for some rest, Weld brought Greyson to bed with her, but then she lay overnight, peace in her mouth. “I knew nothing about sleep,” Weld says. “I didn’t know you couldn’t rock them to sleep and then put them down.”
When Greyson was four months old, the first-time parents contacted a sleep consultant, who tied him to a few things that were matching Greyson’s way of sleeping well: all rocking and calming now He was proficient in sleep associations — or he needed crutches to sleep and sleep. They trained him to sleep.
Sleep training is a loaded idiom, and one that is often used synonymously to soothe your child, or “cry it out,” but that’s not the whole picture, Alana McGinn, a certified sleep consultant and The founder of the Good Night Sleep site says. “It’s more about being able to teach your child that they are able to sleep independently,” she says. You want your child to be able to get out on their own — ideally without nursing, rocking, or using a pacifier — because all the equipment they sleep on is the same thing as waking up at night. Going to . Yes, you may find it unmatched and downright cruel. You’ll find experts on both sides of the issue: Breastfeeding advocates say that it is normal for nurses of all ages to wake up multiple times to nurse, and even sleep coaches interviewed for this article disagree That how much crying and suffering is acceptable.
Recent research has shown that, in children over the age of at least six months, sleep training with controlled crying and bedtime (both described below) improves infants’ sleep and cortisol levels Do not increase. This assures some that a little cry — if it leads to better sleep — will likely cause no harm to your baby.
Pediatrician Michael Dickinson, president of the Pediatric Society of Canada, advises parents to trust their instincts. “I don’t think there’s any evidence to suggest that it’s psychologically damaging to let your baby cry, but I think people need to be reasonable,” he says. “For most of us, letting your baby cry is five to 10 minutes.”
What is the right age for sleep training?
Most sleep coaches say the ideal time to start sleep training (or to promote independent sleep, not necessarily using the cry-it-out method) is based on your child’s development, but typically four to six The middle of the month is when your child didn’t have enough time to get into the habit of nursing or rocking to sleep. At this stage, most children are also ready to learn the skills of sleeping on their own, according to Jennifer Garden, an occupational therapist who runs SleepDerms in Vancouver. Around the age of four months, some children undergo sleep regression as their sleep cycles change and there are longer sleep periods per cycle. “This is a great time to work on independent sleep skills,” says McGinn. Other infants sleep at this time because they are working on new skills, such as walking and rolling. Some parents, says McGinn, choose to wait until work on the sleep training method begins, but you shouldn’t.
If your baby is older than six months, don’t worry, McGinn says: “It’s never too late to develop good sleeping habits.” Dickinson says it is nine months for the parents in terms of the children’s sleep at night. “They are at a good age to understand the routine and don’t have to eat during the night,” he explains.
Your child’s age may determine what kind of sleep-training method you have, however you choose. You can try a gentle shash-pat technique with a five-month-old, but you will be likely to leave a one-year-old in the crib as they protest (cry or scream) about the arrangement while sleeping new. Do not try a formal sleep-training method before four months, until your baby is able to walk longer between feeds and their circadian rhythms begin to develop. (Many children at this age still feed at night — contrary to popular thinking, sleep training is not synonymous with nighttime sleep.) Dickinson states that many four-month-old children biologically pass without feed at night. Are able, but this does not mean that if you are not calming them down, they should not react and if they do not have to work. Since every situation is different, we are going to give your child nighttime meals. Before stopping, it is recommended to check with your doctor.read more | https://medium.com/@kundanmali05/sleep-training-your-baby-7-tips-for-success-32bc230ce43d | ['Kundan Mali'] | 2020-12-23 13:59:24.930000+00:00 | ['Sleep', 'Baby Care', 'Baby', 'Mothers Day', 'Mothers'] |
Stem cells skincare; worth the hype? | I don’t think so.
Stem cells have become one of the most talked about magical ingredient in the skincare sphere, with companies attempting to include into their products accompanied with a hefty price tag. Typically they are found in anti-ageing skincare products that pay dramatic lip service to their claims, but do they really deliver?
So, what are stem cells?
Stem cells are like raw materials, they are undifferentiated and can become specialised cells such as muscle cells to brain cells. Also known as worker cells, they play an important role for the repair of damaged tissues, and the regeneration of tissues that turn over rapidly, such as the skin and blood.
While Wolverine and Deadpool in Marvel’s exhibit their ability to heal and produce stem cells with age, we experience this diminishment on our skin and our overall health. In a nutshell — ageing. As we age, our bodies gradually lose the reserves that keep us protected, leaving us vulnerable to dramatic changes.
Stem cells in my skincare product! Take my money! OR NOPE?
The truth is stem cells have many valuable properties for us, but for them to be effective, they have to be ALIVE. Therefore they must be stored under specific conditions. Sorry to break the news but you wouldn’t get to use your skincare products with live stem cells since they would already be dead.
Most common stem cells preached by cosmetics brands — plant stem cells
Plant stem cells are the most exciting development in skin care since human stem cells, with no ethical and legal arguments against using plant stem cells in cosmetics. But do they meet the claims that companies have made? It turns out that plant stem cells in skincare products are rooted more fiction than facts — though they’re not completely ineffective, either.
But I’m seeing results from my plant stem cell creams!
The extraction of plant stem cells does not have the ability to signal growth factors and it does not speak the same language, but it is true that they are scientifically shown to increase epidermal and collagen production. While the extracts found in plant stem cells are great, the same properties can be found in many other skincare products containing Vitamin C, Niacinamide, Resveratrol and many more to name.
“The truth is that stem cells in skincare products do not work as claimed; they simply cannot deliver the promised results,” said by Dr Christopher Calapai, an osteopathic physician, has been described by the New York Daily News as ‘the stem cell guru’.
Source from: https://www.cosmeticsdesign-europe.com/Article/2016/10/06/Stem-cells-in-skin-care-don-t-work-expert-claims?
What about animal stem cells — how safe are they?
There are not many clinical research on using animal stem cells in human, or in skincare products. Theoretically, using the same concept as plant stem cells, they too should not be able to influence human stem cells because of genetic differences. Our human body may not be able to properly regulate stem cells from another species. Would you take stem cells from a crocodile? #justsaying
So… I have to use HUMAN stem cells!?
In a sense, yes.
Research using stem cells research for rejuvenation purposes has been ongoing for decades. While not yet approved, many clinical trials using Mesenchymal Stem Cells (MSCs) via IV infusion have been conducted with positive results to help combat frailty.
Oh no! That’s not ethical!
Unlike embryonic stem cells, which come from fertilised embryos, MSCs are actually found in umbilical cord tissues, bone marrow, and fat tissues. Cord blood and tissue banks are very common, and I know several mothers who store their baby’s cord blood and tissues for peace of mind (similar to insurance) or future uses.
“Stem cells that are in contact with skin are not really alive anymore,” said Margaret Foster Riley, a law professor and expert on food and drug law at the University of Virginia. “So I don’t really see how a stem cell product is working on the skin. I suppose some of them may actually work in a way that cosmetics work otherwise, because of moisturizing capability. But it’s not stem cell capability that’s working there to the degree we know how stem cells work.”
Source from: https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2015/09/01/stem-cells-fda-facial-cream-lotion/71506494/
My hope is that stem cell technology will be able to play a role in enhancing skincare products in the foreseeable future. At least for now, it appears that your skincare product contains other ingredients that contribute to your results, so there’s no reason to buy expensive, overhyped stem cell products to achieve the same results!
Love ya!
S. T.
References:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5674215/
https://www.dermstore.com/blog/stem-cells-in-skin-care/
https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/rej.2017.2048
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235232041830035X | https://medium.com/@serenetserlin/stem-cells-skincare-worth-the-hype-9fdedfeaa190 | ['Serene T.'] | 2021-09-05 08:11:41.881000+00:00 | ['Cosmetics', 'Education', 'Skincare', 'Bioscience', 'Stem Cells'] |
Gastropod Gossip | When exploring the Dalton Discovery Center here at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida, one of the most popular attractions is the Touch Tank. Several of the resident animals are quite memorable and noticeable without much explanation; however, some of our other denizens are often left underappreciated by guests. One of these is a collective group that actually makes up the majority of the population of the exhibit: gastropods!
Gastropods are a class of mollusks and they represent 80 percent of the mollusk phylum (Myers & Burch, 2001). Snails and slugs fall into this category, and they are extremely widespread, occurring in every ocean and on every continent except for Antarctica!
Gastropod anatomy follows a general body plan, with variations that have allowed them to adapt to almost every ecosystem on Earth. Through their natural history, several groups have lost one of the main characteristics of a gastropod: a univalve shell.
Shells come in all shapes and sizes, and the animal makes its shell larger as its body grows by secreting different protein/mineral complexes through the mantle, (the membrane that lines the inside of the shell) Most gastropods also have a tongue-like appendage that is used for eating that is called a radula.
Radula viewed using a Scanning Electron Microscope. (Martín & Negrete, 2007)
Radulas are covered in small chitinous teeth, similar to a cheese grater, and can be highly specialized to fulfill specific needs. For example, many people keep freshwater snails in aquariums because they use their radula to scrape algae off of the glass and decor. Others use their radula paired with an acid to bore through shells of bivalves, like clams, to eat them.
In order to use this radula, however, gastropods have to be able to move around, which they do by using a very muscular “foot.” Fused to the top of the foot is aa structure called the “operculum.” It is positioned in such a way that when the animal twists and rotates back inside its shell for protection, the operculum fits over the opening in the shell, effectively sealing off the vulnerable body from predators.
Next time you visit the Touch Tank, look around for our multiple gastropods, and remember that even though they are slow, they are a very interesting set of animals!
Read more from the Education Department | https://medium.com/environmental-education/gastropod-gossip-2deb0ab540ea | ['Conservancy Of Swfl'] | 2017-05-10 15:10:38.088000+00:00 | ['Wildlife', 'Environment', 'Florida', 'Education'] |
CODED BIAS Unveils Racism in Technology | The phrase “unprecedented times” may seem overused to many, as 2020 has demonstrated to be a tumultuous year of economic and political instability as well as civil unrest across our nation. Incidents and conflicts in our American cities demonstrate the negative impact of racial inequality and disparity. Virtual learning as a mitigation effort to thwart the spread of a world-wide pandemic has exposed the disparity in technology. Many schoolchildren from lower socioeconomic communities don’t have access to computers and the internet to participate and complete their classwork.
One would think that the technology industry would offer more parity to individuals of all races and ethnicities. However, as demonstrated in the documentary Coded Bias directed by Shalini Kantayya, this assumption is grossly inaccurate. This insightful documentary exposes and examines how machine-learning algorithms are biased and continue to perpetuate inequities amongst race and class. | https://cinapse.co/coded-bias-unveils-racism-in-technology-ae2120a072a2 | ['Debbie Cerda'] | 2020-12-17 15:16:05.508000+00:00 | ['Movies', 'Coded Bias', 'Human Rights', 'Streaming', 'Documentary'] |
About communication in Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning | Communication is one of the components of MARL and an active area of research itself, as it might influence the final performance of agents, and it affects coordination or negotiation directly. Effective communication is essential in order to interact successfully, solving the challenges of cooperation, coordination, and negotiation between several agents.
Most research in multiagent systems has tried to address the communication needs of an agent: what information to send, when, and to whom and result in strategies that are optimized for the specific application for which they are adopted. Known communication protocols such as Cheap talk can be seen as “doing by talking” in which talk precedes action. Others include “talking by doing” in which one of the agents have incomplete information and stands for actions speaking louder than words.
We will go through how different approaches for learning communication protocols with Deep Neural Networks can help and some novel ideas in the ripped of three different papers, one as a baseline and the other two taking part at ICML 2019:
1 ) Learning to communicate with Deep Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning paper: Identification of messages as communication protocols and have them in a Q-Learning scenario in which are trained and influence the action selection. Born of a unit DRU that is able to enrich the training signal and make communication shareable and trainable among agents.
2 ) Social Influence as Intrinsic Motivation for Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning paper: Introduces the innovation of decentralized learning, as previously seen only decentralized execution and new reward functions, metrics, and topologies to approach the communication challenge
3 ) TARMAC: Targeted communication for MARL paper, which explores the benefits of targeted as well as multi-stage communication. The goal is to offer a possible solution to complex collaboration strategies with a custom attention mechanism.
One of the key concepts here is the centralized/decentralised tradeoff in between learning and execution that is exposed in the different papers. The baseline is to find centralized learning -parameter sharing- with decentralised execution -each agent executes their outputs independently- but it changes depending on the paper and experiment.
Let´s get started with Learning to Communicate with Deep Multi-Agent RL paper from 2016 that offers a first baseline for understanding the use of Neural Networks in MARL.
1 ) Learning to Communicate with Deep Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning
Learning to Communicate with Deep Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning takes a step towards how agents can use machine learning to automatically discover the communication protocols in a cooperative setup and what Deep Learning can offer to this, as deep neural networks are used to learn communication protocols in multiagent systems with partial observability using two different approaches : Reinforced Inter-Agent Learning ( RIAL ) and Differentiable Inter-Agent Learning (DIAL) , having as main difference how gradients flow in the learning loop making a step towards differentiable communication: while RIAL is end-to-end trainable within each agent, DIAL is end-to-end trainable across agents.
RIAL vs DIAL: Trainable each agent approach vs across all agents with the DRU discretize/regularized unit in a multiagent setup. RIAL : In a timestep t, the environment gives an observation ot to Agent 1, together with another input mt-1 -the communication message from the previous timestep -. The Q-Net values are fed into the action selection which selects both the environment and communication actions, sending a message to Agent 2 mt-1 and action or set of actions to the Environment. At timestep t+1, Agent 2 receives the message from agent 1 and the observations from the environment, processes the action selection and returns it to the environment.
RIAL . This communication and action selection protocol involves several agents in a t and t+1 timesteps, in which the messages are trained and used for the action selection process. RIAL is RL based communication that combines Deep Recurrent Q-Networks with independent Q-learning for action communication selection, meaning that the network Qa is split into Qau -for the environment- and Qam — for action communication- in order to reduce action selection complexity.
All the learning loop involves a t and t+1 timesteps and Gradients flow only through the Q-network of a single agent. RIAL can be configured for parameter serving, reducing the number of training parameters. However, in RIAL the agents do not give feedback about their communication actions.
DIAL share the same idea as RIAL but change how gradient flow is calculated and executed, as gradients are pushed from one agent to another through the communication channel.
The Discretize/ Regularize unit is the main difference in between RIAL and DIAL, in which there is a connection in between the messages in the different neural networks of the agents.
At a time step t, C_net Agent 1 output is both the Q actions for the environment and the message m. Here comes the difference: instead of being fed into the action selector, is fed into the discretize/regularize unit DRU(ma ) that acts in centralized learning with regularization and discretization with decentralized execution: a situation in which several agents are able to learn simultaneously and execute their own actions independently.
2 ) Social Influence as Intrinsic Motivation for Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning
Introduces the innovation of decentralized learning, as previously seen only decentralized execution. This method stands for giving the agent´s an intrinsic reward for having an influence on other´s agent actions, creating possible alternatives to events that have already occurred. These actions that could have been taken, if shown a better result, are rewarded. So in this case communication has a direct influence in MA-MDPs. Ultimately and in a higher abstract level, this paper comes to address how influence can have an impact on coordination and communication.
The idea of this approach goes beyond the classic literature of “doing by talking” or “talking by doing”, and guess it tries to go for “guessing by observing what the other is doing or might do” or, ultimately “ guessing by observing what the other might have done” high-level idea.
In this case, each agent is equipped with a trained Neural Network that represents a Model of Other Agents -MOA- in a competitive or cooperative setup. The actions of all agents are combined and each agent receives its own reward which may depend on the actions of other agents.
The paper divides itself into three different experiments: Basic Influence, Influential Communication, and Modeling other agents. This separation gives several different experiments working with two different environments: Cleanup and Harvest .
2A ) Basic Social Influence
In a first baseline influence experiment, A3C agent is compared to a pruned version of the influence setup: in the longtail shows promising results, in which a composed reward — influence + environmental — reward has been set up. In this case, a new set of probability with different actions is calculated, sampling counterfactual actions, using centralized training and assuming that influence is unidirectional.
we can see as influencer/speaker purple agent vs yellow influenced/listener agent: the behavior trained with social influence reward doesn´t move unless there are apples and yellow agent is highly influenced by its behavior.
KEY: Basic Influence introduces a combined extrinsic or environmental reward and a causal influence reward.
2B ) Influential Communication
After the results of the baseline social influence experiment, the message -discrete communication symbol- is trained to obtain the policies. This influential communication protocol works at various levels :
In one hand, two heads are trained with two different policies and value functions; one for the environment and the other one as a speculating policy for emitting communication symbols.
The topology of Influential communication, in which both the environment and the discrete message vector of all agents are trained sequentially
At Influential communication, the state is feed into a convolution and 2 fully connected layers. A last LSTM with the communication message is fed also with the communication message from the previous timestep.
Vm and πm have modified an agent´s immediate reward a sum of e -environmental reward- and c -causal influence reward-.
KEY: At Influential communication, 2 different policies are trained, one for the environment and the other for the communication speculative/reflective protocol.
A first approach to measuring effective communication might let you think that we shall measure better performance in terms of task reward, which is fundamentally true at a high level. However, the paper introduces new cognitive metrics in Influential communication in order to analyze communication behavior and measure its quality:
Speaker consistency [0,1] : consistency or trust in a speaker agent emitting a particular symbol when it takes a particular action. The goal of the metric is to measure how much of a 1:1 correspondence exists between a speaker´s action and the speaker´s communication message. More exactly, it evaluates the entropy of the probability of both actions given messages and messages given actions.
: consistency or trust in a speaker agent emitting a particular symbol when it takes a particular action. The goal of the metric is to measure how much of a 1:1 correspondence exists between a speaker´s action and the speaker´s communication message. More exactly, it evaluates the entropy of the probability of both actions given messages and messages given actions. Instantaneous coordination (IC) measures how well agents are coordinating through communication. It works at two levels :
measures how well agents are coordinating through communication. It works at two levels : Symbol / Action IC measures the mutual information in between the influencer message and the influence next action. Influence through communication occurs when the agent decides to change its action based on the other agent´s message, and in those moments this metric is very high.
measures the mutual information in between the influencer message and the influence next action. Influence through communication occurs when the agent decides to change its action based on the other agent´s message, and in those moments this metric is very high. Action / Action IC measures the mutual information in between the influencer action and the influence next action.
Here you have some bullet points and lessons learn from here.
Influence is sparse in time
Listeners selectively listen to a speaker only when it´s beneficial
Agents that are the most influenced also achieve a higher individual environmental reward
From measuring in some experiments, the results show that listeners selectively listen to a speaker only when it´s beneficial and that agents that are the most influenced also achieve a higher individual environmental reward. Besides, the communication mt should contain information that helps the listener maximize its own environmental reward.
2C ) Influential Communication vs Model of Other Agents
MOA introduces a new topology. Here comes the innovation: achieving independent training by equipping each agent with its own internal Model of Other Agents, taking out centralized learning. MOA comes a set of layers that comes after the convolution and predicts all other agent´s next actions given its previous.
Once trained, it can be used to compute the social influence reward.
MOA learns both a policy and a supervised model that predicts the actions of other agents in the next timestep
As the environment becomes more complex and the communication message is different, the topology of the Neural Networks might be different, although in this case is the same.
KEY : Two Neural Networks compute the environmental policy and the model of the probability of actions
This paper is great, not only for the novel ideas that it brings but to the communication and evolution through the experiments, that allows knowing more about the research approach. The results show a better long tail performance of the Influential model-based communicating protocol
3 ) TARMAC : Targeted Multi-agent Communication
In this paper, a cooperative Multi-agent setting is settled in which effective communication protocol is key. Focusing on targeted communication with deep reinforcement learning, the agents learn targeted interactions — what messages to send and who to send them to — enabling a more flexible collaboration strategy in complex environments.
With targeted communications, the paper refers to direct certain messages to specific recipients, where agents learn both what messages to send and who to send them to. This communication is learned implicitly as a result of end-to-end training using a task-specific team reward. The difference in between the previous paper is that agents communicate via continuous vectors rather than discrete symbols.
At every timestep, each agent receives an input in the form of observation (wt) and aggregated continuous message (ct) and predicts an environment action and a targeted communication message (mt). The different messages of the different agents are aggregated into a unique message.
Targeted, Multi-Stage Communication
The multi-stage communication protocol proposes an attention mechanism. Each agent has a message that consists of 2 parts: a signature k used to encode agent-specific information and a value v which contains the actual message. Besides, The vector prediction q comes from the hidden state .
The signature and query value are processed in order to obtain an attention weight for each value vector. The resulting aggregated message is processed by the receiver.
Thanks for reaching this point!
This medium article has been made as part of my ICML 2019 papers ripped list. If you might want to add something or if u attend and want to discuss and talk about MARL, ping me on twitter. ! :) | https://gema-parreno-piqueras.medium.com/marl-icml-2019-a3cda00d8fff | [] | 2019-06-04 14:36:38.036000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Icml', 'Deep Learning', 'Reinforcement Learning', 'Multi Agent Systems'] |
Bitcoin Halving & the Step to Maturation | It’s about a week to the long-expected Bitcoin halving.
You can easily find a counting down page by visiting the website of any exchange, online magazine or data aggregator. Yes — everybody is waiting for it.
Source: Bitcoin Block Half
It’s an event that brings both predictability and uncertainty.
What is Predictable?
Bitcoin was designed as a deflationary currency with a 21 million fixed supply, like gold. Over time, the issuance of bitcoins will decrease and thus become scarcer.
When it was first created, 50 Bitcoins per block were given as a reward to the miners. After every 210,000 blocks are mined (approximately every 4 years), the block reward halves and will keep on halving until the block reward per block becomes 0 (approximately by year 2140).
At about 06:18 UTC on May 12, 2020 (as of writing), the block rewards of Bitcoin will drop from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC.
What is Uncertain?
As is shown in this chart, we can note a significant price jump after each halving.
But will this time turn out to be a different story when both the stock market and the crypto market are much more volatile than usual due to the global COVID-19 pandemic?
The past few months saw a big shakeout in the crypto market due to the coronavirus pandemic and its aftermath. On March 12, the Bitcoin price dumped 40% touching $3,800 within the day, marking a Black Thursday of the year.
The stock market went through a severe crash too. The US stock market triggered the “circuit breaker” four times within 10 days.
Just recently, the Bitcoin price soared above $9,000 and has now retraced to $8,864 at the time of writing, according to the statistics on CoinMarketCap.
Nobody knows for sure how things will be when the halving happens. Will the Bitcoin price be even more volatile or will it stabilize?
2020 Bitcoin Maturity Test
According to the Bloomberg Crypto Outlook (April 2020 Edition), the increasing futures open interest, declining volatility and relative outperformance despite the stock-market shakeout this year indicates Bitcoin is maturing from a speculative crypto asset toward a digital version of gold.
Increasing futures open interest
Source: skew
The number of Bitcoin futures contracts outstanding listed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) has recovered significantly from the March lows, indicating a resurgence in institutions that want to buy the cryptocurrency. The high volume also represents taming of the highly speculative bull market.
Declining Volatility
Source: Bloomberg
This graphic shows that the correlation between Bitcoin and gold has jumped to the highest since 2010, twice that of equities, suggesting that Bitcoin is now divorcing equities and joining gold.
Bitcoin Outperformed Stock Market
Apart from that, Bitcoin is becoming less of a risk-on asset. In the first quarter of 2020, Bitcoin remained up about 9% when the S&P 500 showed a correction of 20%.
To Sum Up
2020 marks a key test for Bitcoin’s transition from speculative asset to the crypto market’s version of gold. We believe that the first-born crypto will pass the test to move towards a mature gold-like asset.
At Leverj, we are working actively on the decentralized derivatives market including Bitcoin perpetuals which is expected to be launched in a couple of months.
Visit live.leverj.io to enjoy our zero-fee trading for a limited period of time as of now. Follow us on Twitter or join our Telegram group to stay tuned for our updates.
Please keep in mind
US Persons are not allowed to trade on Leverj. Users from sanctioned countries or Specially Designated National (SDN) as per OFAC are also not allowed to use the system.
Before you trade, please make sure you are legally permitted to trade cryptocurrencies, derivatives, and any other instruments offered on this platform from your home jurisdiction.
Nothing in this article constitutes an offer, solicitation, or investment advise. | https://medium.com/coinmonks/bitcoin-halving-the-step-to-maturation-1cbf2aa3c64b | ['Xiaoqing Liu'] | 2020-08-21 16:52:10.949000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'Bitcoin Mining', 'Bitcoin Halving'] |
How To Build An Effective Business Intelligence Dashboard In React? | The automation of business processes is increasing rapidly with huge corporate needs. To manage every department of an organization, every process of manufacturing to supply chain and every employee in-house, every activity from payroll to marketing, an organization needs an Intelligent System. The technological advancement has presented a solution in the form of Business Intelligence. It is a technology-driven solution to analyze data, deliver actionable information that helps executives, managers and workers make informed business decisions.
A BI helps make marketing, sales and customer service more efficient and effective. It helps to speed up the decision-making process by identifying ever-changing business and market trends. It also helps optimize internal business processes, increases operational efficiency and drives higher sales and revenues.
One of the main focuses of BI is to provide everything in one place, which is called a ‘Dashboard.’ In this article, we will learn how to build a useful Business Intelligence Dashboard.
First, we will learn more about a BI Dashboard and why a business needs one.
What is BI Dashboard and Why Do You Need One?
A BI Dashboard is an information management solution that helps to design and track KPIs of the business and employees, metrics and other useful information related to a business, department, or specific process. By gathering all the data, a BI dashboard helps to visualize and simplify complex data sets to provide users with at a glance awareness of business, department or individual performance.
For businesses having a lot of data is always a hassle, but if the data is logically grouped, sorted and filtered, then it can help businesses to make a firm and sound decision more quickly. The data should also be easily accessible and maintainable. The entire job of gathering, sorting, filtering and grouping the data is done by BI dashboard.
Now, you would be wondering if there are different kinds of BI Dashboard. Well, yes, there are different types of BI Dashboard as per client needs and requirements. These types are:
Operational Dashboard Analytical Dashboard
What is an Operational Dashboard?
A dashboard which is designed to monitor frequently changing business processes and track performance of key metrics and KPIs is called ‘Operational Dashboard.’
Unlike other types of BI Dashboards, an Operational Dashboard is designed to record and monitor data updates on a very frequent basis. In some cases, the data changes or is updated in minutes. The Operational Dashboards are viewed by executives and managers many times throughout the day. Usually, the Operational Dashboard monitors the progress towards a specific target.
One of the most common examples of an Operational Dashboard is a ‘Daily Web Overview.’ It tracks hourly web performance against predetermined objectives for a digital marketing team.
What is an Analytical Dashboard?
A dashboard designed to analyze a massive amount of data and allow its users to investigate the trends, predict outcomes and monitor insights is called an ‘Analytical Dashboard.’
The Analytical Dashboard is very common reporting tool as it is designed to perform very basic analysis and designed by data analysts. The data on Analytical Dashboard collected infrequently, and it should be 100% accurate and up-to-date. These dashboards also offer advanced BI features like drill-down and ad-hoc querying.
One of the most common examples of an Analytical Dashboard is MRR/Accounts.
Not all Business Intelligence Dashboards can be trusted. Let’s have a look at some of the factors which make a BI Dashboard more effective.
What Makes A Business Intelligence Dashboard Effective & Useful?
The purpose of a BI Dashboard is to simplify a detailed analysis of huge amounts of data to avoid missing any trend or pattern. A useful BI Dashboard can provide graphs, charts, and other meaningful and presentable visualization instruments to empower a team or department to interpret the data and transform it into actionable insights that will benefit the organization in many ways. Apart from visualization, many other factors matter a lot. These factors are:
Real-Time Access to Key Metrics
BI Dashboard is mainly focused on tracking KPIs and Key metrics for a specific target or the entire organization’s goals. With real-time access to the key metrics, it is easy to amend the strategies to meet targets more quickly than expected.
Trend Identifications
BI Dashboards helps businesses across different sectors to identify and analyze changing trends. It empowers the business to respond to positive trends related to a wealth of business activities while isolating and correcting negative trends for improved organizational efficiency.
Quick Fixes
A useful BI Dashboard must have the flexibility and freedom to monitor derivations, analyze them, and fix the issues quickly without giving any command in the programming. It should be designed to make small fixes itself.
Overall Performance
A BI Dashboard should have the ability to observe departments, employees, and company performance on both the individual level and overall performance basis.
Real-Time Tracking
A BI Dashboard should have the ability to track time-sensitive actions and target progress frequently.
Analytical Approach
A useful BI Dashboard is designed to find a weak point in the company management system and notify the management.
What features a BI Dashboard should provide to its users? Let’s discover them.
The list of Must-Have Features
The most important BI Dashboard features include:
Customizable Interface
A BI Dashboard interface should be customizable to be mould as per the team and department needs. The customization is also important for the type of data collecting over the dashboard.
Interactivity
Interactivity is one of the most important features of a BI Dashboard. Interactive reports help executives and managers to condense the vast data into a wide variety of views. Through interactivity, users can take advantage of statistical analysis and regression to identify trends, anomalies, and outliers in the data.
Ability to Pull Near Real-Time Data
The data on the BI Dashboard updated frequently, and this feature makes it possible for the organization to pull near real-time information anytime.
Real-Time Monitoring of Key Metrics
Another most important feature of a BI Dashboard is real-time monitoring of Key metrics by providing an at-a-glance view of pertinent data and analytics with visualization. Areas where urgent attention is required to become ‘Call-to-Actions.’
Single View of the Truth
Single View of the Truth (SVOT) is a concept of having a centralized database. It is better than a diffused system where data are kept in multiple databases or files. A centralized database helps organizations to integrate all channels, including sales, CRM, warehouse, inventory, and supply chain, via a single system.
Ranking Reports
A BI Dashboard allows you to generate reports to learn about your business’s best- and worst-performing facets. These ranking reports help companies to view rankings across multiple dimensions and specify various criteria to focus your results.
Flexibility
A BI Dashboard provides complete flexibility and freedom to view trends, performance, and track metrics 24/7 from anywhere. You cannot provide admin rights to every team member. Therefore a BI dashboard should be flexible and aligned for different departments and user levels such as managers, executives, and analysts.
Identifying Goals
A BI Dashboard can work on different key metrics. A user must identify the goals before starting creating metrics. You should know your target audience, what kind of data you will pull in, who will have access to this data, and what level. Every question should be answered correctly.
Solving Business Problems
The reports generated by the BI dashboard should be problem-solving oriented. The dashboard should be flexible to adjust and customize based on user type.
Attractive & Simple UI/UX
The UI/UX should be detailed and straightforward at the same time. Clutter should be avoided because less is better when it comes to the analysis of massive data. Don’t pack too many visual elements into one dashboard.
How to Build BI in React?
React is a super-fast JavaScript library. It allows for creating modular and interactive UIs. React efficiently update and render components whenever data changes. This makes it a perfect choice for real-time data visualization.
React works exceptionally well with common data visualization libraries such as d3 or high charts.
Our Case Study
Selleo has recently worked with Accelerated Digital Ventures — a UK UK-based company to create a platform that sits at the heart of the venture ecosystem connecting leading early-stage companies with funds like Seedcamp, Episode1, or Techstars. ADV has managed to help 54 companies operating in 13 business sectors, mostly in a Pre-Seed, Seed, or Seed Extension stage.
ADV’s mission is to increase the flow of investor capital to the back of the startups. They aimed to connect top 20% institutional investors with leading 20% tech companies. To make it happen, ADV wanted to develop an environment that would serve that purpose and improve their business processes.
The ecosystem should serve the needs of:
Leading tech companies who are ready and motivated to pursue their long-term ambitions
Early-stage investors looking for capital supply
large institutional investors by enabling them to engage with the early-stage venture ecosystem
Accelerated Digital Ventures itself by optimizing their business processes, making them more comfortable, practical, and less time-consuming
To support ADV’s vision, two platforms were built.
The Business Connect platform provides a complete environment for startups and investors to establish connections between those parties. Notable features that were implemented include:
Tracking time-sensitive actions
Tracking every step of a multi-step procedure
Allow collaboration between experts
Managing the company’s portfolio
Generating reports to track company performance
Feedback sharing
Why Should You Choose Selleo?
BI Dashboard is not only about data visualizations but also using the right tools in the right place. At Selleo, we use BDD to better understand customer processes, products and needs in order to suggest the best solutions. We share our experience from multiple markets to help grow our clients fast. By creating dashboards that are also focused on the best user experience, we design a powerful and intuitive tool for experts and common users.
If you are looking for an expert BI Dashboard developer team to make your dreams come true, contact us. | https://medium.com/@k-korczynski/how-to-build-an-effective-business-intelligence-dashboard-in-react-2aebc8deb45a | ['Kamil Korczyński'] | 2020-11-27 15:13:36.176000+00:00 | ['Data Visualization', 'Dashboard', 'Business Intelligence', 'Business', 'Business Analysis'] |
2019 recap | Time flies. It is the end of 2019 and we want to highlight all good in 2019! And happy holidays with our custom postcard with Batman;)
Analytics Trends 2019
We started the year from Canada Analytics trends.
We talked a lot about cloud analytics, data warehouse modernization, and cloud migration. And this is still valid. We expect more cloud, more analytics modernization and data warehouse migration in 2020.
Cloud Analytics Workshops
During 2019 we worked a lot with our partners. We delivered two workshops in order to promote cloud analytics and the benefits of modern cloud capabilities.
Microsoft Workshop — Azure Data Platform
The first event was in the Microsoft Vancouver office. It was a full-day event where shared concepts, strategies, and best practices for designing a cloud-based data warehousing solution using Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse and Azure Data Platform.
We demonstrated how to collect, store, and prepare data for the data warehouse by using other Azure services. We also explored how to use business intelligence (BI) and ETL tools to perform analysis on your data and integration.
Azure Data Warehouse in a day
Matillion ETL Workshop — Cloud Data Integration
During the workshop, we learned best practices for Cloud Analytics and Data Integration. Find out the differences between ETL and ELT from Matillion and see they're built for the cloud product on a live demo.
We covered real-world use cases about data warehouse modernization and cloud data migration projects from industry experts. Finally, there was a hands-on exercise everyone learned more about unlocking the potential of data with Matillion’s cloud-based approach to data transformation.
Released 3 books.
We started a year from Tableau released Tableau Cookbook 2019. This is a 600 pages book that includes some of the new Tableau features for the 1st time:
Tableau Prep
Tableau for BigData including Elastic Map Reduce and Hive, Redshift and Snowflake
Tableau Server both on Linux and Windows
Tableau and ETL Integration with Cloud ETL Matillion
TSM and many more.
Another book was the 1st ever book about the new Cloud Data Platform — Snowflake. It calls Jumpstart Snowflake: A Step-by-Step Guide to Modern Cloud Analytics. This book is about modern analytics with Snowflake. You will learn:
Know the key functionalities of Snowflake
Set up security and access with cluster
Bulk load data into Snowflake using the COPY command
Migration from a legacy data warehouse to Snowflake
Integration of the Snowflake data platform with modern business intelligence (BI) and data integration tools such as Tableau and Matillion.
The final book was again about Tableau — Tableau Desktop Certified Associate: Exam Guide. This book is all that you need for exam preparation and a successful pass.
Finally, we reviewed another two books about Tableau:
Learning Tableau 2019
Mastering Tableau 2019
International Conferences
In 2019 we presented at the biggest North America Conference about data — Enterprise Data World in Boston, MA. It is 6 days conference full of interesting sessions and workshops.
We talked about the role of analytics and learn about the modernization of data warehouse projects and enabling cloud capabilities and visual analytics. In 2020, we will be presenting at EDW in San Diego about Cloud Analytics and Architecting as well as Big Data and ML capabilities based on real-world examples.
Another big conference was about performance marketing — Performance Days. It was a huge conference and had a single room with over 1000 people. We talked about marketing analytics, cloud, modernization.
Performance Days
Azure Marketplace
We explored Azure Market Place and added a couple of solutions to it:
In 2020 we will continue to grow our Azure Data Platform practice and add more solutions with Big Data, Data Lake and AI/ML services.
Meetup and User Groups
One of the key activities of Rock Your Data is participating in local analytical communities, share knowledge and use cases. There are some of our favorites events:
Microsoft Pass SQL Saturday in Edmonton
In April 2019, we presented at Edmonton SQL Saturday and we talked about the modern analytics as well as demonstrated real-world use case of Data Warehouse migration from on-premise to the cloud.
McKinsey and Quantum Black meetup
Another great event was at McKinsey Boston Office on Boston Data Engineering Meetup with Quantum Black.
Microsoft Virtual Pass User Group
We participated in the Microsoft PASS Virtual User group and presented about modern analytics with Azure Data Platform and use cases with the topic name Building a Modern Data Warehouse. You may check a record of this event on youtube.
Victoria Microsoft PASS User Group
Another Microsoft event was in Victoria, BC where we made a demo of Snowflake on Azure Cloud and covered the difference between Azure Data Platform and Snowflake.
Vancouver Tableau User Group
We helped to run and organize the Vancouver Tableau User Group. Started from presentation and demo about Cloud Data Platform and Snowflake
Then we helped to organize and promote another event at the end of November.
Victoria Tableau User Groups
In 2019 we ran 3 user groups in Victoria, BC where we covered lots of interesting topics:
Tableau 2019 new features
Getting Started with Tableau and Visual Analytics
Data Visualization Best Practices
Financial reporting with Tableau
Marketing Analytics with Tableau
Data Science with Tableau
And many more
Victoria Tableau User Group
Launched Snowflake User Groups
2019 was a year of Snowflake, the company was growing fast. We launched 3 user groups in Canada and one user group on Linkedin.
Snowflake User Groups:
Vancouver Snowflake User Group
Calgary Snowflake User Group
Toronto Snowflake User Group
AWS User Group
We presented on local AWS User Group about AWS and big data architecture.
Business Analytics School
Finally, we shared cloud knowledge with lots of people who are interested in Cloud Analytics.
University of Victoria Relationship
HighTechU
We joined the HighTechU organization in order to help high school students learn computer science and programming. Based on the University of Victoria Faculty of Engineering, HighTechU is an innovative learning community & skills incubator for high-school-aged youth to make connections, build professional skills, and explore diverse education and career pathways related to technology.
Continuing Studies@University of Victoria
We presented at the Business Intelligence and Data Analytics course about Cloud Analytics, Big Data, and Data Engineering.
Hour of Code and career fairs for kids and students
By the end of the year, we were volunteering with elementary schools and ran Hour of Code event with Dance Party.
Merry Christmas and Happy New year! | https://medium.com/rock-your-data/2019-recap-200833e9bf51 | ['D Ma'] | 2019-12-28 06:41:19.232000+00:00 | ['Entrepreneurship', 'Analytics', 'Cloud Analytics', 'Cloud Computing', 'Big Data'] |
【Tutorial】LBTC Onchain Asset issue | LBTC Onchain Asset issue Tutorial
The function of LBTC ochain asset issue has basically completed that has been deployed in LBTC testnet.Welcome developer to test and use it!
Blockchain Explore：http://47.96.169.139:9699/
Full-node wallet download：https://pan.baidu.com/s/1j9DJ-K4OAAnx8o7jt6nhfQ
Tutorial video:https://youtu.be/Paiidic7khw
1. Registername(It will take 1LBTC to register before issuing asset)
Arguments:
1. “address” (string, required) The lbtc address.
2. “name” (string, required) The address name.
Result:
“txid:” (string) The transaction id.
Examples:
> bitcoin-cli registername “1M72Sfpbz1BPpXFHz9m3CdqATR44Jvaydd” “testname”
> curl — user myusername — data-binary ‘{“jsonrpc”: “1.0”, “id”:”curltest”, “method”: “registername”, “params”: [“1M72Sfpbz1BPpXFHz9m3CdqATR44Jvaydd”, “testname”] }’ -H ‘content-type: text/plain;’ http://127.0.0.1:8332/
cli cmd：
./bitcoin-cli registername mi5HWG19ocB81cqFqLeD6NRqM6nqYk2Rug owner
2. Createtoken(It will take 10LBTC to creat tokens.)
Arguments:
{
1. “tokenSymbol” (string, required) The token symbol. (8 numbers+8 alphabet)
2. “tokenName” (string, required) The token name. (32 numbers+alphabet)
3. “ownerAddress” (string, required) Creater’s address.
4. “tokenAddress” (string, required) Token contract address.
5. “totalSupply” (numeric, required) Total amount of the token. (100 million to billion )（It will rounded up if input decimal.）
6. “decimal” (numeric, required) The token fund amount decimal. (Integer number from 1 to 8)
}
Result:
“result” (string) The result description.
Examples:
> bitcoin-cli createtoken “tokenSymbol” “tokenName” “1M72Sfpbz1BPpXFHz9m3CdqATR44Jvaydd” “1LtvqCaApEdUGFkpKMM4MstjcaL4dKg8SP” “100000000” “2”
> curl — user myusername — data-binary ‘{“jsonrpc”: “1.0”, “id”:”curltest”, “method”: “createtoken”, “params”: [“tokenSymbol”, “tokenName”, “1M72Sfpbz1BPpXFHz9m3CdqATR44Jvaydd”, “1LtvqCaApEdUGFkpKMM4MstjcaL4dKg8SP”, “100000000”, “2”] }’ -H ‘content-type: text/plain;’ http://127.0.0.1:8332/
cli cmd：
./bitcoin-cli createtoken BTC BTCtoken mi5HWG19ocB81cqFqLeD6NRqM6nqYk2Rug mvycp4LXckLZ98atxj6SvMFSCoijG4d6yB 10000 8
note：
Creat a token marked as BTC,named as BTC token
Owneraddress is mi5HWG19ocB81cqFqLeD6NRqM6nqYk2Rug
Tokenaddress is mvycp4LXckLZ98atxj6SvMFSCoijG4d6yB
3. Sendtoken (It will take 0.01LBTC to make transaction.)
sendtoken tokenAddress fromAddress toAddress amount changeAddress commnet
Sent an amount from an address to another address.
Arguments:
1. “tokenAddress” (string, required) The token contract address.
2. “fromAddress” (string, required) The address to send funds from.
3. “toAddress” (string, required) The address to send funds to.
4. “amount” (numeric or string, required) The amount to send (transaction fee is added on top).
5. “changeAddress” (string, optional) The change address. (目前不支持)
6. “comment” (string, optional) A comment used to store what the transaction is for.
This is not part of the transaction, just kept in your wallet.
Result:
“txid” (string) The transaction id.
Examples:
> bitcoin-cli sendtoken “1LtvqCaApEdUGFkpKMM4MstjcaL4dKg8SP” “1M72Sfpbz1BPpXFHz9m3CdqATR44Jvaydd” “1LtvqCaApEdUGFkpKMM4MstjcaL4dKg8SP” 0.01 “1M72Sfpbz1BPpXFHz9m3CdqATR44Jvaydd” “Comment”
cli cmd：
./bitcoin-cli sendtoken
mvycp4LXckLZ98atxj6SvMFSCoijG4d6yB mvycp4LXckLZ98atxj6SvMFSCoijG4d6yB mi5HWG19ocB81cqFqLeD6NRqM6nqYk2Rug 10.999
Note：
Send 10.999 BTCtoken to the address of mi5HWG19ocB81cqFqLeD6NRqM6nqYk2Rug
4. Locktoken(It will take 0.01LBTC to lock token)
locktoken tokenAddress fromAddress toAddress amount changeAddress commnet
lock an amount from an address to another address.
Arguments:
1. “tokenAddress” (string, required) The token contract address.
2. “fromAddress” (string, required) The address to lock funds from.
3. “toAddress” (string, required) The address to lock funds to.
4. “amount” (string, required) The amount to lock (transaction fee is added on top).
5. “heights” (string, required) Lock heights.
6. “changeAddress” (string, optional) The change address. (It dose not support now)
7. “comment” (string, optional) A comment used to store what the transaction is for.
This is not part of the transaction, just kept in your wallet.
Result:
“txid” (string) The transaction id.
Examples:
> bitcoin-cli locktoken “1LtvqCaApEdUGFkpKMM4MstjcaL4dKg8SP” “1M72Sfpbz1BPpXFHz9m3CdqATR44Jvaydd” “1LtvqCaApEdUGFkpKMM4MstjcaL4dKg8SP” 0.01 100 “1M72Sfpbz1BPpXFHz9m3CdqATR44Jvaydd” “Comment
clicmd：
./bitcoin-cli locktoken mvycp4LXckLZ98atxj6SvMFSCoijG4d6yB mvycp4LXckLZ98atxj6SvMFSCoijG4d6yB n212T8EGcoRGSAD31aSfBWiKtnGptXsjL6 999 100
note：
Lock 999 token in the address of n212T8EGcoRGSAD31aSfBWiKtnGptXsjL6,and then unlock behind 100 block height.
5. Gettokeninfo (Inquire detail information of token.)
gettokeninfo “tokenAddress” )
Get token info.
Arguments:
1. “tokenAddress” (string, optional) The token address.
Result:
[ (json array) Token info array.
{
“tokenSymbol” (string) The token symbol.
“tokenName” (string) The token name.
“ownerAddress” (string) Creater’s address.
“tokenAddress” (string) Token address.
“decimal” (numeric) The token fund amount decimal.
“totalSupply” (numeric) Total amount of the token.
}
]
Examples:
> bitcoin-cli gettokeninfo “1M72Sfpbz1BPpXFHz9m3CdqATR44Jvaydd”
cli cmd：
./bitcoin-cli gettokeninfo mvycp4LXckLZ98atxj6SvMFSCoijG4d6yB
6. Gettokenbalance (Inquire balance of token adress)
gettokenbalance “useraddress” )
Get token balance.
Arguments:
1. “userAddress” (string, required) The target address.
2. “tokenAddress” (string, optional) The token contract address.
Result:
[ (json array) Token balance array.
{
“tokenSymbol” (string) The token symbol.
“availableBalance” (numeric) Available balance.
“lockBalance:” (json array) Lock balance array.
[
{
“expiryHeight” (numeric) Expiry height.
“lockAmount” (numeric) Lock token amount.
}
]
}
]
Examples:
> bitcoin-cli gettokenbalance “1M72Sfpbz1BPpXFHz9m3CdqATR44Jvaydd”
> bitcoin-cli gettokenbalance “1LtvqCaApEdUGFkpKMM4MstjcaL4dKg8SP” “1M72Sfpbz1BPpXFHz9m3CdqATR44Jvaydd”
cli cmd：
./bitcoin-cli gettokenbalance n212T8EGcoRGSAD31aSfBWiKtnGptXsjL6 mvycp4LXckLZ98atxj6SvMFSCoijG4d6yB | https://medium.com/lightning-bitcoin-blog/tutorial-lbtc-onchain-asset-issue-5c7378a8bdb | ['Lightning Bitcoin', 'Lbtc'] | 2019-03-14 07:37:02.473000+00:00 | ['Lightningbitcoin', 'Blockchain', 'Lbtc'] |
What’s the Difference between a Computer Scientist & a Coder? | Legend has it that computer science started off as a mathematics subject. Mechanical inventions and mathematical theories paved the way for computer concepts and systems.
The early history of computer science boasts of names such as Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, and of course, Alan Turing. It might surprise you to learn then, that the term computer science did not actually appear on the scene till the 1950s.
But, since when has anything related to the world of computer science ever been easy? Even though universities across the world created departments solely for the pursuit of computer science — people were still arguing among themselves about what the term ‘computer science’ actually meant.
Then came the debate over software engineering and computer science, which further complicated the issue. And, unfortunately for us, the debate continues to this day.
But, that’s exactly why, asking what being a computer scientist entails, is kind of like trying to figure out what Elon Musk truly does for a living. Everyone thinks they know exactly what it is, but no two people will ever give you the same answer.
Nevertheless, I’m going to boldly venture where a bunch of people have gone before, and give you my take on what it means to be a computer scientist. So, let’s make like the Starship Enterprise and get on with it.
Problem Solving vs Language Proficiency
Being a computer scientist is more than just dealing with computers and programs. Computer scientists tackle real-world problems and figure out if these can be solved computationally.
They’re involved in developing techniques to make computing data more economical, they create and work with languages to find solutions, and they’re involved in building and designing computer systems that offer multiple services across a wide range of applications.
Think of computer scientists as wizards that can blend mathematical concepts with technology and build systems that can produce viable data. I suppose we could describe them as individuals who can create sense out of chaos.
That’s why when others say being a computer scientist is all about being proficient in programming languages — I disagree. Picasso said, ‘Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.’
Likewise, you can describe a computer scientist as an artist who can come with different styles of paintings based on the type of tool they use. Whoever heard an artist limiting himself to a single paintbrush?
Being a computer scientist is unlike being a coder. You don’t have to be bound to a particular language — rather at its core, being a computer scientist, is about being a problem solver.
Why Perspective Always Matters
As I said earlier, there’s a vast difference between how coders and computer scientists operate. I’m not down-playing the role of coders because they have their own distinct place in the world of computer science. In fact, both computer scientists and coders help drive the wheel of technology forward.
The difference between the two is a matter of outlook. Any artist worth his salt will tell you that what you create depends on your perspective. That’s why two people looking at the same still life can create compositions that look nothing alike — because one of them is standing too close to the object, while the other is standing at a distance.
The computer scientists of this world tend to look at the bigger picture. They face challenges that are bigger in scale and complexity, and they’re not picky about the tools they can use to reach viable solutions.
On the other hand, coders with their knowledge of a singular language or category of technology are more like specialists. They’re extremely skilled but will perform better on whatever expertise they’ve amassed. Some coders excel as Java developers, while others are MySQL developers.
Taking the art analogy further, a coder can be described as an artist who’s an expert who’s used to a very specific medium of art, or is devoted to a particular art movement. A computer scientist, on the contrary, would be the kind of artist who dabbles in all types of mediums and styles, and is more devoted to getting his vision across to the audience, rather than following the rigors of any one type of movement.
Sure, there’s a bit of overlap in what coders and scientists do, but it’s their perspective of things that sets them apart.
Scale and Complexity Make A Difference
Now that we’ve discussed why perspective matters in all walks of life, let’s move on to the concepts of complexity and scale.
Picture an electrician working on wiring a lamp, as opposed to one working on a grid that’ll eventually supply power to an entire city. If you ask them what they do for a living, their answers will be similar, they’re an electrician. However, the truth is there’s a world of a difference in how their jobs differ in terms of scale and complexity.
Likewise, compare an online website that promotes the goods and services of a small family-owned business to a company like Amazon. Both online businesses are involved in catering to online consumers and retail goods, but Amazon deals with 4000 transactions per minute.
The point of telling you all this is that certain things may share similarities in the real world, be it a job title or company purpose, but in the digital world, they’re eons apart based on operations and size.
But, what the heck does that have to do with being a computer scientist? Based on the scale and complexity of their work, a computer scientist is kind of like the Amazon of the digital world. They’re the people who’re more likely to be working on the proverbial power grid, rather than the lamp.
Being a computer scientist means you have to assess an issue or challenge from all sides and have all your bases covered. It’s invention, understanding, empirical experimentation, and many other things all rolled into one. The point is — a computer scientist is more involved in dealing with complex challenges or tackling issues that need resolutions.
So, do you need a Coder or a Computer Scientist?
Working in a recruiting firm has its set of advantages — one of which is being able to ask what industry leaders and firms are looking for in their ideal computer scientist candidate.
Most are on the lookout for people who’re more interested in solving problems rather than being focused on coding. As a scientist, you’re mostly judged by your ability to understand the problem of the business requirement, and whether or not you’re asking the right questions.
It’ll be surprising to know how much the questions you ask let on about your personality and depth of knowledge. If you’re hung up on a particular type of language or technology, then you’re not open to other avenues of advancement.
This isn’t a bad thing, but it’ll seem like you’re a coder that’s very fixated on a specific set of skills, tools, and technologies that you’re comfortable using. But, if someone’s looking to hire personnel that can fit under the heading of ‘fungible’ then you’re probably not gonna make their top candidate.
Think about it — if as a coder you’re somewhat taken with Scala as your language of choice, but the company’s looking for a recruit that’s more focused on solving problems for business requirements, then you’re gonna be the round peg trying out for the square hole.
Not to mention, challenging the limits of any problem is something else people tend to take into consideration when hiring a scientist.This is where understanding edge cases becomes crucial.
In programming, an edge case (or a corner test) is a situation where the values require scrutinization, or more simply, it involves testing the boundary conditions of an algorithm or function, etc. You need to know the boundary of any algorithm, method, or function of any software you present before you can be sure that it works on both ends of the magnitude spectrum.
A computer scientist needs to have the basics of working within the problem space down pat. The problem space is where all the elements of problem-solving converge to create a solution. So the question you should ask yourself is — do you understand the key aspects of algorithms, design, architecture, etc. in the digital world?
In a nutshell, people are looking for scientists that are interested in challenging the status quo and pushing the boundaries of invention and transformation. As Steve Jobs said — Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower. | https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/whats-the-difference-between-a-computer-scientist-a-coder-e59f5c458d6 | ['Shane Shown'] | 2020-06-12 01:01:01.016000+00:00 | ['Computer Science', 'Software Development', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Interview', 'Software Engineering'] |
We Need Government to Evolve as Fast as Technology | Whether it’s lack of trust, corruption, or not being fit for purpose, evidence of poor governance can be found around the world. A recent Pew survey shows that only 19 percent of Americans say they can trust government “always” or “most of the time” — which is close to the lowest level in the past 60 years.
The World Economic Forum estimates the cost of corruption is $2.6 trillion — more than 5 percent of global GDP — with over $1 trillion paid in bribes each year.
Beyond the numbers, the real “face” of corruption is the girl who is denied schooling because funds for building schools, paying teachers, and other needs are diverted elsewhere. Or the mother who cannot access basic health care for her children because governmental funds are diverted.
An illustrative example of the challenge to being fit-for-purpose is the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2015 currently underway in Paris.
The stakes are high — as Newsweek magazine put it, “leaders and high-level officials from 196 parties have 12 days to reach an accord that could save the planet.” And yet, although 97 percent of climate scientists insist climate change is real and caused by human actions, significant percentages of people around the world are still in denial, with government policies not reflecting the severity and magnitude of the global consequences.
Are national and global governance bodies fit for the task of creating the right forward-thinking policies to prevent a global catastrophe?
As we increasingly shift into a globally connected world — environmentally, economically, socially, technologically — legacy governance structures based on nation states may no longer be able to meet emerging challenges. Both formal and nonformal governance structures will struggle to keep up with the exponential and accelerating pace of change.
Examples abound of new technologies that are already straining governance structures: drones for civilian use, self-driving cars, genetic engineering, crowdfunding, artificial intelligence, cybercrime, and others.
We don’t need policies that lag behind but policies that rapidly adapt and enable innovation, equity, and safe regulation. This applies equally to all organizational governance structures — from large corporations to small startups.
While technology is posing new challenges to governance, it is also rapidly evolving new approaches to governance.
Blockchain (the technology underpinning digital currencies such as Bitcoin) can be applied to most any contract, increasing transparency, accountability, and efficiency. Virtual reality can be used to increase empathy and “feel the future” that is likely to result from policy options. New forms of direct democracy and consensus decision-making are emerging such as liquid democracy, adhocracy, Loomio, and holacracy.
Current governance structures were developed over thousands of years, and while they may have been suitable for a slow-changing and parochial world, they are ripe for disruption. While technology changes at exponential rates, governance tends to change at linear rates. This discrepancy must be rectified to ensure that humanity not only avoids a range of catastrophic consequences, but also enables innovation and creates an equitable world where all Global Grand Challenges are solved. | https://medium.com/singularityu/why-we-need-government-to-evolve-as-fast-as-technology-aeda3f7baa08 | ['Singularity University'] | 2017-01-24 20:25:26.958000+00:00 | ['Global Grand Challenges', 'Singularity University', 'Governance', 'Innovation', 'Government'] |
Trigger Warnings Are Not About Victimising | Trigger Warnings Are Not About Victimising
The point of acknowledging oppression is to empower the oppressed.
Photo by Kasturi Laxmi Mohit on Unsplash
Ironically, the very notion of trigger warnings triggers a lot of people.
“You can’t say anything any more,” they say.
“Bunch of crybabies,” they sob.
These people badly miss the point: the fact that putting trigger warnings allows us to read and write about more things, things that couldn’t be said or read before.
Trauma has always existed. Trauma created by the violence of an unequal society has always existed. It doesn’t always have to though. To change things, we need to fight systemic inequalities. We need to empower those that are oppressed. The way to do that, clearly, is not to leave them to deal with their trauma, whilst reinforcing it every way that we can.
The purpose of trigger warnings is not to coddle those that might need forewarning about difficult topics because of their own life experience. Nor is to suggest that they are weak. The point is to not add violence on top of violence. It is to acknowledge that things are harder for those that suffer from oppression, and thereby recognise their strength and the challenges that they are dealing with, have to deal with and have dealt with.
Trigger warnings are not about treating people as though they were weak, they are about doing what we can to make them strong in a world that does not want them to be.
This is not limited to trigger warnings — there are many times when the fight against oppression is countered by people saying that the movement itself is victimising the oppressed by suggesting they need uplifting. There is a valid concern behind this — the oppressed have long been infantilised. In the case of women, the damsel in distress trope dies hard.
But when we don’t recognise the challenges the oppressed face, they blame themselves for issues that are far larger than them. And guilt is not an efficient emotion. It doesn’t lift people up. It does not empower. It promotes self-loathing and lethargy.
It’s a cliché-d saying: You need to know the rules to break them, but it is certainly true when it comes to oppression. Once you have understood the mechanisms leading to your own behaviours and the way people interact with you, only then can you start acting to make a change. Only then can you stop blaming yourself, or feeling that such outcomes are inevitable. | https://starkraving.medium.com/trigger-warnings-are-not-about-victimising-15ab5d31e889 | ['Stark Raving'] | 2019-07-12 09:36:54.332000+00:00 | ['Political Correctness', 'Feminism', 'Mental Health', 'Equality', 'Activism'] |
Corporate Construct Rebooted | Introduction
The music industry has existed from the beginning of people gathering for the purpose of entertainment. Now after thousands of years of development it’s a good time to reflect on how technology has impacted music. Technology has continued to evolve alongside music offering new sounds, more accessibility, and more effective ways to earn money for artists. To name a few notable inventions that furthered the music industry, paper allowed music to be written down which allowed for storage & portability, the radio offered further distribution of songs, and streaming allowed anyone to access whichever song they wanted to at any time.
That being said a major concern in the music industry today is the fact that there is very little opportunity for artists and they are often exploited by the record labels. In a traditional recording agreement royalties for artists ranging from 10% to 25%. However, the artist is often left with much less than these figures given expenses would be factored in later. An unignorable upgrade to collective technology this past decade has been blockchain technology, many industries are attempting to harness the overall benefit of decentralization.
Here at Musifi, we’re utilizing blockchain technology to offer NFTs for the music and art created by the artists to provide a better connection to the business aspect of their music, allowing better access to funding for independent artists, and allowing artists to maintain the copyrights of their music. We are also allowing fans to be better connected to their favorite artists while gaining access to investment opportunities. Additionally, fans will be allowed to stream music from our platform. This will build a stronger sense of community around the artists.
Creative Control
Musifi will have a fully functional launchpad and will provide an efficient method for artists to mint their NFTs. Artists will be able to manage the creative process of their own art NFTs as well as the ability to mint their songs as NFTs. They can contract out artists of their choosing to create the art that will be placed on the blockchain, and have it styled to their preferences. Prior to this record labels pressure artists into certain genres or styles they believe will be more profitable. This can dilute the artists' raw creative expression. This will provide the artist with more independence which is often a reason many fans lose interest in their favorite artists.
Financial barriers
The NFT marketing has globally exploded in 2021 generating $10 billion of revenue in the third quarter. It’s believed to be only the beginning of what NFTs are capable of. Many industries will find use cases for digital ownership. Musicians have typically needed the support of record labels for recording, touring, and distribution. Now with our NFT launchpad artists will be able to directly connect with their fans for launching NFTs to fund their music business. They will also receive nearly 97% of their total earnings from our platform. An additional unique benefit is that artists will earn residual earnings every time their NFTs are sold after the initial sale. It will be a smaller percentage of the total sale but it can be a significant inflow of capital depending on the frequency and total sale. For the fans, they will have a stronger connection to the artist given the fact they are financially connected to the artists' success. We are fully committed to benefitting the community of the artists. In the long run, we believe a more supported Musician will develop better music in this method.
Copyrights
Given the minimal cost to create art and mint NFTs more artists will be privately funded or at least have a higher percentage of their income from revenue streams they control. This will allow artists to be less reliant on external third parties for investment. The NFT intervention of the music industry is only just beginning and this shift in the music business will take time for global adoption. Many artists are left without an income stream and many artists experience poverty after glimpses of success. We will also be creating a trust fund for artists to help with their transition out of the limelight. We believe the maintained connection between the artists and their music will allow the artist to be better connected with their community long term.
In conclusion
The music industry is one of the difficult to achieve financial stability. Currently, artists are subjected to the exploitation of a third-party bureaucratic system. Artists are already embracing NFTs as a source of secondary income. Once ownership of songs stored on the blockchain becomes normalized we will see a dramatic uptick in NFT sales volume around the globe. Artists will be better supported allowing them to be more deeply connected to their fans creating a nourishing community. The music industry will radically meld with the highest form of technology of the times just as it always has. Fans and artists will benefit from NFTs and decentralization regardless of whether or not they can explain blockchain technology. | https://medium.com/@musifi/corporate-construct-rebooted-ac46d749f06c | [] | 2021-12-31 23:49:25.915000+00:00 | ['Nftartist', 'Nft Marketplace', 'Nft Collectibles', 'Nftart', 'Nft'] |
You deserve safety — and answers. The following was adapted from my email… | The following was adapted from my email newsletter.
You deserve to live in a safe city.
You deserve to be as safe as possible from criminals.
You deserve a prompt response from a 911 call taker and from the police in your time of need.
You deserve a city government that devotes the necessary resources to public safety.
You deserve to have confidence in those who are sworn to uphold the law.
And you deserve to be safe from a deadly virus.
To thrive, people must feel safe. And improving your safety should be the guiding principle for the leaders of your city government. That is why I have pushed for increased COVID-19 vaccinations, mask-wearing, and new public safety solutions — with and without the involvement of law enforcement.
And it’s why I am going to push for answers after Police Chief Eddie Garcia announced on Thursday that a veteran officer has been charged with two counts of capital murder. While the case remains under investigation and all the evidence needs to be heard, it was sickening to learn of the allegations on Thursday. Justice must be served in this case. The loved ones of the victims, especially, should hear the truth.
But this case raises a host of other questions about decision-making from those in charge at the city level. The officer has been a person of interest in this case since 2019. Former Police Chief Renee Hall confirmed to the media that she decided not to put the officer on administrative leave while he was under investigation. That means the officer remained on patrol despite the allegations, which investigators determined were sufficient enough to warrant the charges. Usually, while officers are under criminal investigation, they are put on leave.
But Hall initially said she took a recommendation made by investigators who were “collaborating with the FBI.” Then, after the FBI said they had nothing to do with the decision, she restated her position and said it was actually Dallas Police Department special investigators who made the recommendation.
Chief Garcia on Saturday said he has heard enough of the back-and-forth, and that the buck stops with the police chief when it comes to these personnel issues. And it’s nice to have a chief who is clear about his responsibilities.
But Chief Garcia just got here last month, and he told The Dallas Morning News he doesn’t know what exactly occurred in 2019. That shouldn’t be the end of the discussion. The city manager, to whom Chief Hall reported, and others need to account for this situation. Why was this decision made to leave him on duty? Who knew about it? When did they know? And what exactly, if anything, did investigators gain from that decision?
The people of Dallas deserve answers, and they should expect to have the utmost confidence in the decision-making of their public safety leadership, which runs from police headquarters through the city manager’s office.
Stay tuned for more updates soon on this important issue. Until then, here are some more safety-related updates for you.
Masks and vaccines
Monday was COVID-19 Victims and Survivors Memorial Day in Dallas, and downtown buildings went amber at night to commemorate the occasion. Dallas County also tragically passed more than 3,000 COVID-19 deaths last week — a jarring figure to hit in less than a year.
The next day, Governor Greg Abbott announced he was lifting statewide restrictions, including the mask mandate. He also forbade local governments from instituting new ones. But, he allowed businesses and local governments to require face coverings inside their own buildings.
So, on Thursday, I signed a new order to do just that. The order covers libraries, recreation centers, City Hall, city-owned performing arts centers, Fair Park’s buildings, the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, the American Airlines Center, and other facilities.
Masks save lives and can stop COVID-19’s spread and mutations. Dallas businesses and other establishments should continue to require masks for the time being. This won’t be forever, but until the city and the rest of the country get closer to herd immunity (which could be in the next few months!), it’s critical for the people of Dallas to stay on guard.
The governor’s order also makes it even more crucial to vaccinate as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. To that end, the city opened up its new vaccination hub at The Potter’s House in southern Dallas, and the county and the state are now deciding how and when to vaccinate teachers after the federal government directed it.
The Potter’s House site gave out 3,000 first doses of the Moderna vaccine last week and will give out another 3,000 this week. Meanwhile, the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center hub and Methodist Dallas Medical Center will continue giving out second doses to those who received their first doses at either site in previous weeks.
The Potter’s House operation has the capacity to give out many more vaccines if the state provides them. Hopefully, the supply will increase greatly in the coming weeks.
When it’s your turn to get the vaccine, don’t hesitate. It’s safe and effective, and it will help everyone get back to normalcy. Thankfully, hesitancy is decreasing. A new Pew Research Center study shows that 61% of African Americans nationwide are now likely to get the vaccine, which is up 19 percentage points from November. Those numbers still need to go higher, but the poll is encouraging to see.
Remember, you must register to get the vaccine in Dallas County, and all vaccination sites are currently by appointment only. To register for the Dallas County wait list, visit DallasCountyCovid.org or call 1–855-IMMUNE9 (855–466–8639) between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., seven days a week.
You can also visit DallasCityHall.com/COVID19 for more information on the city’s vaccination efforts.
Public safety report
The new monthly public safety report is out, and you’ll see below that with seven months still left in the fiscal year, about three-quarters of the police overtime budget has been spent.
That means police overtime spending is on pace to go over budget by millions of dollars — which is exactly what I sounded the alarm about when the City Council decided, irresponsibly, to slash the proposed police overtime budget by 25% amid a reduction in officers and an increase in violent crime. That decision was not made in the interests of putting public safety first, and some of the city councilmembers who supported the cut in September are now scrambling to find money.
Below are all the numbers for the public safety progress report for February. The parentheses show the change from last month’s report. Remember, the crime statistics had reset on January 1 and reflect the calendar year, not the fiscal year. Other numbers reflect the fiscal year, which began October 1, 2020. The numbers are current as of February 28.
Task Force on Safe Communities implementation
Number of new streetlights installed as part of the Priority Improvement Zones: 795 (No change)
Number of new streetlights installed as part of the Digital Divide and Strategic Streetlighting Plan: 100 (No change)
Number of new streetlights installed as part of the environmental improvements for crime prevention plan: 76 (No change)
Number of blighted properties remediated by Neighborhood Nuisance Abatement: 15,354 (+1,970)
Number of blighted properties remediated by the Office of Integrated Public Safety Solutions, utilizing Code Compliance personnel within Risk Terrain Area: 542 (+113)
Number of violence interrupters funded by the City of Dallas: 0 (No change)
Murders
Total number of murders and non‐negligent homicides year‐to‐date: 38 (+22)
Murder victims by race/ethnicity
Black: 24 (+13)
Hispanic: 9 (+5)
White: 5 (+4)
Other/unknown: 0
Murders by City Council district
District 1: 1 (No change)
District 2: 1 (+1)
District 3: 4 (+3)
District 4: 8 (+4)
District 5: 1 (No change)
District 6: 0 (No change)
District 7: 6 (+4)
District 8: 8 (+3)
District 9: 1 (+1)
District 10: 5 (+4)
District 11: 1 (No change)
District 12: 0 (No change)
District 13: 0 (No change)
District 14: 2 (+2)
(For your reference, here is a map of City Council districts. You can also find your representatives here).
Total number of murders and non‐negligent homicides during the current year in which no arrest has been made: 25 (+16)
911 calls
Number of 911 call takers on staff: 80 (+6)
Average 911 call holding time, in minutes and seconds: 17 seconds (+4 seconds)
Police civilianization, hiring, and overtime
Total amount of overtime funding expended to date in the current fiscal year: $12.77 million (+$3.57 million)
Total Dallas Police Department overtime budget allocated for the current fiscal year: $17.3 million (No change)
Total number of jobs transitioned from sworn officers to non‐sworn employees as part of KPMG civilianization plan: 16 (-12)
Total number of police officers and trainees hired year‐to‐date: 27 (+2)
Total number of police officers and trainees who have resigned, retired, or have been terminated: 82 (+18)
Total number of police department civilian employees hired: 74 (+16)
Total number of police department civilian employees who have resigned, retired, or have been terminated: 37 (+6)
Police response times
Median police response times to priority 1 calls: 6 minutes, 5 seconds (+12 seconds)
Percentage of priority 1 calls receiving a response in under 8 minutes: 56.35% (-2.16%)
Median police response times to priority 2 calls: 14 minutes, 11 seconds (-4 seconds)
To view the report as a PDF, click here.
Other than police overtime, a few numbers really jump out here. Murders are up in an alarming way, and Chief Garcia and his department know they will need to work hard on a plan to reverse the trend. The city manager’s office also corrected the police civilianization number, which shows the process is not moving as fast as indicated in previous reports. And 911 call wait times and response times are still not where they need to be.
Proposals for new violence interrupters are now finally being evaluated, and it remains clear from some of the crime statistics that they are desperately needed.
The numbers are another reflection of the fact that there are many high-priority issues to deal with right now. But it’s clear that the most important ones are all about your safety.
And to reiterate: everyone deserves to live in safe communities.
That’s why public safety must be prioritized by city leaders. That’s why public safety budget cuts for their own sake must be stopped. That’s why masks and vaccinations are so important. And that’s why answers are needed from city executives about decisions regarding the officer who is facing murder charges.
Continue taking care of yourselves and each other, and watch for more updates soon. | https://medium.com/dallasmayor/you-deserve-safety-and-answers-1230b8b8b081 | ['Mayor Eric Johnson'] | 2021-03-08 23:36:18.092000+00:00 | ['Masks', 'Covid 19', 'Vaccines', 'Public Safety', 'Newsletter'] |
Best Pieces Of Advice To Find Your Designer Bag | Handbags are the former love of women these days, don’t you think? Well, we all love that pouch hanging from our arms every single time we tend to go out. There is no doubt that having a handbag is something that every woman wants for sure.
That is one of the most important reasons why they tend to spend their boscovs coupon online in order to find the right handbag that they need to have. With the amazing handbags, they get the confidence to take on the world. So, why wouldn’t you want to be a part of this game, ladies? We are certainly sure that you would and that is why we are here to provide you with some great tips that would help you pick out the handbags.
Some Tips You Need To Know About
Now when it comes to designer handbags, there are certain tips which might be able to help you out in the best way. With these tips, you can select the right handbags that would match with the designer outfit of yours. So this is your chance to use the Boscovs coupon code and get the discounts on designer handbags right now. Make sure to follow these steps to land on the perfect piece.
· Choose A Reliable Store
When you are looking for designer handbags, there are not many stores that are able to provide you with the best of the options. However, when you come to Boscovs, there is no doubt that you will not be able to find an end to the list of options that are provided here. So, make sure that you are choosing a reliable provider like Boscovs in order to get what you want.
· Check Your Budget
This is one of the most important things that you just cannot miss for sure. You need to check on the budget of yours to make sure that you are not going too over the price. When it comes to designer handbags, you might get a bit carried away. However, this is certainly not going to be a problem when you are at Boscovs because there are amazing discounts offered to you right there.
· Try Some Vintage Bags
Here is another tip that might interest you. When you need designer handbags, there is one thing that you can try out and that is to have the vintage handbags. These vintage handbags are not only stylish and gorgeous but these are also not that pricey for sure. So, that is something you might want to try out.
So there you have it, ladies. These are some tips which will definitely help you when you need to select the perfect designer handbag for yourself. | https://medium.com/@maddycoupons37/best-pieces-of-advice-to-find-your-designer-bag-ddf0f313eb84 | ['Maddycoupons Online Coupons'] | 2019-11-05 07:55:45.695000+00:00 | ['Coupon Codes', 'Coupons Promocodes', 'Discount', 'Coupon'] |
The best of home security gadgets-April 2021 edition | Your home is your sanctuary, and no one should get in uninvited. So keeping your home and family safe has to be a priority. Luckily, in April 2021, there are some great home security gadgets out there. Check out this roundup to see what we mean.
It’s always a good time to think about home security. And whether you’re looking to beef up your current setup or want to go for a new one entirely, the products on this best of home security gadgets roundup have you covered. From a whole-home system to a camera that doubles as a floodlight, these are some of our favorite home security gadgets this month.
Related: Arlo vs. Ring-which home security system should you buy?
Concerned about privacy? Some of the indoor cameras below offer monitoring features that are easy to activate and deactivate. Or maybe you want a smart doorbell that opens with your fingerprint? With these gadgets, it’s easier than ever to sit back and relax at home.
Ring Floodlight Cam Wired Pro
Thwart intruders in their tracks with the Ring Floodlight Cam Wired Pro, the first item on our best of home security gadgets roundup. This advanced home security camera uses ultra-bright LED floodlights and keeps your home secure with 3D Motion Detection. The Bird’s Eye View lets you monitor everything from above, and the two-way talk feature lets them know you’re watching.
Nooie Cam Indoor Security Camera
Every home security setup needs an indoor camera, and the Nooie Cam Indoor Security Camera is a great one. It works with Alexa and Google Assistant. And with 1,080p Full HD livestreaming, you can keep an eye on everything as it’s happening. The night vision capability even lets you use it as a baby monitor.
Hex Home DIY Security System
For a comprehensive home security system, look no further than the Hex Home DIY Security System. Its patented technology wraps around corners and sees through walls for complete coverage. But you can adjust the sensitivity levels to ignore things like a pet or robot vacuum.
Nooie Smart Cam Doorbell
The Nooie Smart Cam Doorbell adds style and security to your front door. It comes with an antitheft locking mechanism, alarm siren, two-way talk audio, and more. Live view even lets you see who’s at the door in real time.
Porch Pod Delivery Safes
Since you’re getting more deliveries than ever, why not protect them with the Porch Pod Delivery Safes? These gadgets accept deliveries from major carriers and provide a safe, waterproof area for your packages.
Vivint Ping Indoor Security Camera
The Vivint Ping Indoor Security Camera made our best of home security gadgets roundup because it lets you check in on your home from anywhere. It’s like having your own 24/7 security guard since it captures footage when motion is triggered. It also lets you chat with family members or pets right through the camera.
Kangaroo Motion + Entry Sensor Home Security Device
The Kangaroo Motion + Entry Sensor Home Security Device makes it easy to keep tabs on your home’s doors, windows, and hallways. Just place one on your door for a notification anytime someone opens it. Best of all, its peel-and-stick setup means you don’t even have to take out any tools to set it up.
Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2
The Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2 is what you want for a high-quality smart doorbell. It lets you see and hear like never before, thanks to the boosted HD+ video and crisp audio quality. With Alexa Greetings, this doorbell can even speak to visitors and accept deliveries when you can’t get to the door.
Arlo Essential Indoor Camera
Another great indoor camera is the Arlo Essential Indoor Camera. The cool thing about this home security device is, you easily stop it from recording and detecting motion and audio. They won’t work again until you open the shield on the Arlo App.
Netatmo Smart Indoor Siren
The Netatmo Smart Indoor Siren is the gadget you want if there’s an intruder in your house. When the camera sees someone it doesn’t recognize, it sets off a 110-decibel alarm, making it one of the best home security gadgets in April.
ecobee SmartCamera Indoor Security Camera
See what’s going on at home, easily, with the ecobee SmartCamera Indoor Security Camera. It’s compatible with Alexa and Apple HomeKit so that you can manage it via voice control. An eight-core processor analyzes your footage locally, and it even comes with a baby monitor mode.
HeimVision Assure B1: 2K Ultra HD Camera and Smart Hub
If you’re looking for one home security gadget that ticks all the boxes, go for the HeimVision Assure B1: 2K Ultra HD Camera and Smart Hub. It connects up to four wireless cameras to its base station, so it covers every corner. And the human face detection can tell the difference between an intruder and the neighborhood cat.
LOCKLY Vision Doorbell Camera Smart Lock
The LOCKLY Vision Doorbell Camera Smart Lock made our best of home security gadgets roundup because it gives you so many ways to access your front door: app control, 3D fingerprint reader, online or offline access code, voice command, and more. It even has a camera for real-time streaming.
Cync Indoor Smart Camera
The Cync Indoor Smart Camera is another great way to protect your home and ensure your privacy. That’s because it’s easy to turn off both the camera and microphone when you’re at home. Plus, all content gets stored on the SD drive, so it never leaves your home.
Arlo Ultra 2 Spotlight Security Camera
Feel safer indoors and while you’re away with the Arlo Ultra 2 Spotlight Security Camera. It has auto-zoom and tracking features that take the lead on monitoring your home. Best of all, it automatically adjusts to movement to track irregular activity in an instant.
As you can see, there are plenty of great home security gadgets in April 2021. From whole-home systems to indoor cameras that can protect your privacy, these devices offer some pretty high-tech ways to protect your home. Which of these gadgets would you like to own? Let us know in the comments.
Want more tech news, reviews, and guides from Gadget Flow? Follow us on Google News, Feedly, and Flipboard. If you’re using Flipboard, you should definitely check out our Curated Stories. We publish three new stories every day, so make sure to follow us to stay updated!
The Gadget Flow Daily Digest highlights and explores the latest in tech trends to keep you informed. Want it straight to your inbox? Subscribe ➜ | https://medium.com/the-gadget-flow/the-best-of-home-security-gadgets-april-2021-edition-ad92df10d884 | ['Gadget Flow'] | 2021-04-17 18:33:30.412000+00:00 | ['Home Improvement', 'Smart Home', 'Home Automation', 'Gadgets', 'Technology'] |
Commercial HVAC System Issues Frustrating You in Tampa, FL? | original article published here
Running your business should be your first priority, but experiencing issues with your HVAC system can create a huge distraction. Additionally, a humid environment can harm equipment and impair the health of your employees. What are the common commercial AC repairs needed to restore your HVAC system to working order? Ball Building Services wants to help alleviate and prevent these frustrations. Here are common problems that a professional HVAC technician will resolve.
Common Commercial AC Repairs in Tampa Florida Include:
Irregular Temperatures
It’s a great day in the office when no one complains about being too hot or cold. Have these complaints increased? Check the thermostat to see if the AC is maintaining the set temperature. If not, call an HVAC technician to check the coolant levels and ask for more ways to regulate the temperature.
Leaking Water
Leaking water is never a good sign, especially around your HVAC system. Systems vary, but many are connected to a traditional furnace and leaking water is sometimes a sign of a corrupted heat exchanger. This can become a safety risk if carbon monoxide releases, so contact your commercial AC repair technician immediately if you see water!
High Utility Bills
Have you noticed your utility bills increasing? This could be a sign of a blockage in your HVAC system or a signal you need a new air filter. An increase during peak months of commercial AC use is normal, but keep track of any huge usage spikes and ask your HVAC technician for ways to reduce cooling expenses.
Regular Maintenance
Does your HVAC technician check your HVAC system each year? Scheduling regular maintenance is ideal to help catch any blockages before you need emergency commercial AC repair during a peak month in Tampa, FL. Not maintaining your commercial HVAC system can reduce the lifespan of your system and lead to costly repairs.
If your commercial HVAC system is frustrating you in Central Florida contact Ball Building Services. Our licensed contractors will do a thorough inspection of your system and make sure your AC system is running efficiently. Contact us to learn more about our services today. | https://medium.com/@brevardctybest/commercial-hvac-system-issues-frustrating-you-in-tampa-fl-f1cb33f1c743 | ['Brevard Countyfl'] | 2019-06-17 21:57:24.438000+00:00 | ['Tampa', 'Commercial Hvac', 'Hvac Contractor', 'Hvac', 'Florida'] |
The Secret Ingredient for Creating Your Dream Life | Image by Fathromi Ramdlon from Pixabay
The Secret Ingredient for Creating Your Dream Life
You weren’t built by accident. You were built uniquely for a purpose that not only serves the world, but that also inspires and motivates you.
Unfortunately, most people, like moms, find that their deepest desires have been masked by what other people want or need you to do. You get a business degree because your parents expect it, when you secretly want to pursue a career in the arts. You agree to start a family right away, even though your real passion is to travel the globe. You love being a mom, doing organic gardening, and cooking healthy meals, but that’s not considered an “important” career, even though it’s the most important work any of can ever do in our entire lifetime.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. On the way to pleasing others, being politically correct, paying the bills and securing the “future,” most moms have sadly lost track of their own true desires.
So what’s one way out of this predicament? Start removing the clutter and obstacles in your life that are holding you back from following your heart.
When you begin to eliminate fear, the weight of debt, laziness, self-sabotage, and toxic people, your true self will begin to emerge. You’ll start to get a glimpse of what’s inside of you, and your heartfelt passions will come to light.
Of course, passion is the fuel that will help you achieve your goals and change your life even if you don’t have the knowledge, contacts, funding or opportunities right now. Passion is the secret ingredient you can use to fuel your own success and create an amazing life. So what can you do to add more passion and purpose to your life?
• Identify what you are passionate about. What are you so passionate about that you’d dedicate every waking moment to achieving it? What’s the goal, topic, vision, calling, or future that you are equally passionate about? If it makes you lose track of time, puts a sparkle in your eye, and occupies most of your waking hours, that’s your passion. For me, it’s all things surrounding pregnancy, birth, postpartum, and breastfeeding along with supporting moms like you in discovering and pursuing your passion.
• Turn your passion into the ultimate career. Unfortunately, many moms get so caught up in the clutter of everyday life, they don’t see an opportunity for themselves in an activity they love. They don’t realize that social media, e-commerce, and other technology has changed the equation by creating opportunities in blogging, photography, travel, publishing, entrepreneurship, forex trading, spiritual leadership, developing new inventions, and providing unique services. Countless businesses and careers have grown out of a mom’s passion for chemical-free households, quilting, surfing, scrapbooking, hunting and shooting, hiking, writing fiction, eco-travel — the examples are endless. In fact, today, it’s more possible than ever to turn your passion into a full-time career, thriving business, or side gig that pays the bills.
• Find what you naturally love to do. If you got outside your life and actually focused on you, chances are good your true heart’s desire would emerge. Unfortunately, passion and purpose are two things that can easily get buried by paying the bills, managing toxic relationships, and plain old everyday stress. But by setting goals, working through roadblocks, taking action, and working toward your ideal life, your unique purpose and passion will appear.
Of course, finding your unique passion and life purpose starts with creating overall balance in your life. That means identifying what’s not working (and then fixing it) in every area of life. The key is to decide what you want in these areas, set some goals, and stay accountable to taking action daily to reach those goals. Working with a coach, like me, can help keep you on track and accountable for results. And I’m here to help.
Email me or schedule time with me, and we can jump on a call to chat about it. You can also go here to check out the Oola Coaching Program I deliver for clients who want more balance, less stress, and more happiness in their lives. It’s based on the international bestselling book, Oola: Find Balance in an Unbalanced World, by the Oola Guys, Dave Braun and Troy Amdahl. Over just 10 weeks, with the Oola Guys as your instructors and mentors, you and I will work on every major area of your life including finances, fitness, family, field (career), faith, friends and fun. Together we’ll face what’s not working for you and create a workable plan for lowering your stress, creating life balance, having more fun, and pursuing major life goals that are important to you. Ready to get your own Oola life? Contact me and let’s get started. | https://medium.com/@angietayloryespreneur/the-secret-ingredient-for-creating-your-dream-life-4498e13277f3 | ['Angie Taylor'] | 2021-08-27 21:53:52.951000+00:00 | ['Balance', 'Oolalife', 'Goals', 'Moms'] |
Borith Lake and Majestic Hunza — Published in The More Magazine | As I whizzed past the chilly Chilas, I was thinking about what lies ahead of me. I had never gone past the lower Kashmir let alone the princely state of Hunza before.
The thought of a medieval princely state with Mirs still perched upon the throne with riveting folklore rampant among the fair-skinned denizens of these barren mountains arose a feeling of mixed exuberance.
My passion for mountaineering and high-altitudes have taken me to scenic Zermatt where the mighty Matterhorn stands tall looking over the small but delightful town. I was charmed by the winding train rides in Austrian Alps and their funny German accent which they proudly claim to be the only way of speaking it. I drove to Norwegian fjords through a spectacular landscape driving through hordes of reindeer.
Only my homesickness grew by my interactions with the travelers who had been to Pakistan and their stories. I was told about, a world, I never knew existed very close to Nanga Parbat and the spot where the three greatest mountain ranges meet are a visual delight.
Crossing there I had spent a good half of my life. The Himalayan folklore was nothing like Bavarian dresses and customs. It was elegant, a story of perseverance, valor, and belief, very different from pastoral Gesellschaft of the Alps. I was northbound to one of the remotest city in Hunza called Shimshal, a good 80 km off the Karakoram Highway, the city is known for its remoteness and peace. Chronicles from Mustansar Hassan Tarrar and word of mouth were intriguing enough to lure me away from touristic routes and places without a story.
Even though it was only in the coming hours that my destiny was revealed to me. After a rainy and rocky journey to serene Dasu, we hit a stop because of a landslide. An ironic felicity subdued me from my natural confusion over the time it took to clear that up. That was something that would never happen in The Alps but again, I was on a journey like Frodo and fewer chances of rescue meant a slightly more palatable sense of adventure.
As I perched on a rock with a local Baba willing to impart his wisdom through his wizened eyes the tumultuous Indus river kept roaring, a kind of unintimidated welcome only for the brave. As our happy caravan set off again, among them the older, grunted despise for the inconvenience they have had to endure. Our public transport snaked along the miraculous KKH. The miraculous highest paved international highway, it’s sometimes sarcastically called the joy-ride to death.
It takes a type of sadistic pleasure to enjoy a barricade-less treacherous ride that can punish your reluctance in a lethal manner. Connecting Islamabad to historic Kashgar, KKH was ranked 3rd among best tourist attractions in Guardian. Catching glimpses of snow-clad Diamir district, we entered into the fairy tale state of Gilgit. The Alps were already fading away by the majestic elevations of the terrain.
The tallest rock sculpture of the Swiss Alps, Mont Blanc, which literally means ‘White Mountain’ stands at an elevation of 4807 meters and I was struggling to find a peak that was below that altitude already in Gilgit. After an acclimatization overnighter, I took a local bus to Aliabad, the de facto capital of Hunza state. A great travel tip that has always served me well from good old days as ‘Do in Rome as the Romans do’. A simple shalwar kameez and low profile will do you wonders.
Showing off your Northface climbing gear will only make you another tourist, the ones infamous for their Mallorca style havoc. My new travel partner in Aliabad, which I befriend over a cup of tea in a local bus stop cum hotel was heading towards a small village called Shiskat in Attabad Lake. A lake that was supposed to be a part of KKH before a disastrous landslide in January 2010. Attabad village came crumbling down onto the road merging it with the river leaving behind a 23 KM lake with changing watercolors.
As with us Pakistanis, when life gives us lemons we make a perfect lemonade. Years from the incident there are boats that take in cars, cattle, motorbikes, luggage and sometimes a moving hotel across the lake. As we sat and sipped our strong teas, entered a lanky young lad over-tanned with high-altitude sun and a hazel-eyed, blond foreigner. They ensconced themselves in seats and ordered some snacks as the foreigner started talking to an eager youth. | https://medium.com/minhaajmusings/borith-lake-and-majestic-hunza-712649e50c48 | ['Minhaaj Rehman'] | 2017-11-05 02:28:59.193000+00:00 | ['Hunza', 'Borith Lake', 'Pakistan', 'Travel', 'Trekking'] |
I Am A Creator: A Truth We All Should Embrace | Tweet this! Share on Facebook!
I AM A CREATOR. I am. And so are you.
I know we don’t say it often. It’s not our immediate thought when we look in the mirror. It’s not how we greet those around us in our community. We assign people dozens of labels, but “Creator” is rarely one of them.
But it should be and here is why…
The more people I talk to, the more research I do, and the more experiences I live through, the more I am convinced creativity is key to not only unlocking purpose, but is essential to self-expression, self-care, personal and professional development, and transformational change within Communities of Color.
Creators — From the Beginning
The truth is, creativity is at the core of who we are — as individuals and as a People.
One Sculpture from Cheryl Ekstrom’s Earth Warrior Series at the Cosmopolitan Hotel.
I am often baffled by how little attention our society gives to our origin myths, given they are so critical to how we understand history and to underpinning our worldview. These spiritual and historical text outlines a way to understand how we are made in the ‘image’ of the divine — literally evoking our capacity to call things into existence, to design our own realities, and take action for the benefit of our world. These type of origin stories have been preserved over generations to remind us that the distinguishing quality we all share as human beings is our role as ‘Creators’ as well as our subsequent requirement to put that innate ability to work in our lives.
It is no coincidence then that many ancient cultures were built on traditions where art and creativity rested at the center of everyday life — whether it was expressed in how we adorned our bodies, decorated our homes, lifted our worship, or led our communal rituals. Not to say that this isn’t true to a certain extent today, but the difference is major and twofold: 1) American society’s concept of creativity is highly specific and commodified, and 2) our idea of creativity, when it is engaged, is generally not applied to our lives in a holistic manner. Instead we use terms like ‘creatives’ to imply creativity is a skill of specialization within our economy and society, when in fact creativity is and must be accessible to all.
It is out of this core belief that the ‘I Am A Creator’ Collective was born. Out of a need to recognize the inherent power and creativity that we possess as People of Color; a creative power we must bring to bear in everyday life, in every situation.
It recognizes that as People of Color — our teachers, parents, pastors, conveners, community activists, artists, entrepreneurs, and everyone in between — act as catalysts who have and continue to create change.
A Safe Space for Creators
This Collective is dedicated to reorient ourselves toward the importance of our own creativity as individuals and a community, in part to lessen the toxic grip of consumerism and reactionary social critique within Communities of Color. This is not to say these concepts have no role in our lives and our discourse, but in a wider culture dominated by mass and social media we can ill-afford to let these ideas crowd out the truth expressed through our own creativity.
Thus, the ‘I Am A Creator’ Collective is an interactive, multi-media platform convening a wide spectrum of Creators who support one another in producing social and cultural transformation while inspiring others to do the same.
Our Collective is a community that celebrates creativity birthed from People of Color.
We are a platform dedicated to helping Creators develop and express their talent and ideas. Moving forward, we are working to develop systems to assist people with bringing creative thoughts to action. We are also committed to working with Creators and other networks to find fair and equitable ways for them to be compensated for their creative energy and efforts.
Our end goal is simple: to produce a virtuous cycle of creativity. To give ourselves a safe space to nurture, support, inform, and affirm. To elevate our stories — and to do so in a way that does not require compromising those stories to fit the expectation of the wider culture or approximations and stereotypes about who we are.
I Am A Creator — Joining the Collective
A key part of the Collective’s platform, the #IAmACreator Medium Digital Magazine, exists as a rich tapestry of creative work in an array of formats, including: op-eds, essays, fictional short stories, poetry, video and short films, music, photos, infographics, and any other multi-media work that can be shared on this digital platform. We are here to showcase and foster our Community’s creativity, and our editors are willing to get creative with you to make it happen.
Every six to eight weeks we will rotate the topics and themes we highlight for publication and submission. Most of our topics will capture the complexity of our current personal, social, and political realities and the ways our creativity presents itself in these moments.
Our inaugural topics include:
#SLAY — /slā/
This space addresses with themes around death, dying, Black Lives Matter, and the innumerable expressions of beauty and excellence People of Color create in face or spoken and unspoken opposition and oppression.
#REVOLT — / rəˈvōlt/
In light of our fraught political climate this is a space to explore ideas around revolution and well as the range of issues that cause anger, frustration, and angst in the individual and collective lives of People of Color.
#Patchwerk — /ˈpaCHˌwərk/
This is a permanent space in our publication for loosely-threaded thoughts, initial musings, brief reflections, short poems, photos, or any other offerings that do not fit into our current themes. We welcome posts inspired by current events if the pieces fit together to support our larger design toward a greater, creative whole.
If you are interested in contributing to this collective creative work, submit your stories through Medium.com or email us at [email protected].
‘I Am Here To Create:’ Foundational Principals of a Creators’ Collective
“I Am A Man” — Photo taken by Ernest Withers of the Memphis Sanitation Worker’s Strike in 1968.
Long before I considered launching #IAmACreator, I spent most of my life fascinated by social movements. Of all types. From around the globe. Anti-slavery movement, anti-colonialism, anti-apartheid, anti-war, voting rights, civil rights, LGBTI rights, human rights, black arts, Pan-Africanism, women’s liberation, independence movements. In hindsight it can be hard to understand how everyone was not on the side of peace, social justice, or freedom; but the truth is getting individuals to coalesce around an idea and take group action, especially against staunch opposition, is hard work. In an effort to understand movements past and present, we often oversimplify the role of leaders, overcomplicate the process to get involved, overestimate the effort required, and undervalue the impact that we can make.
‘I Am A Creator’ is a vehicle built around the belief that everyone is valuable and every creative contribution matters to the ongoing healing within our community.
That is why our Collective created a platform with a focus on people and a fairly low barrier of entry (you can draft on Medium.com from your mobile phone). We did this because we believe creativity is not just the tool of some magical talented tenth. Or the powerful. Or the influencers.
This project is about honoring the creative tension of what is and what could be. This space acknowledges that we create out of necessity. We create out of joy. We create out of frustration. We create to tell the stories that need to be told and the ones we are scared to faced. This Collective is about creating in a way that connects with the full range of humanity expressed in our lives, homes, organizations, neighborhoods, and institutions. We believe through our collective creative energy and effort we have all we need to find our way through, our way out, our way forward.
In the end, the “I Am A Creator” Collective isn’t about theoretical distinctions or branding. It’s about identity. This is a platform centered around a vital self-affirmation.
WE ARE CREATORS. We are.
This is a message we can all get behind; it is one you can help us bring to the forefront.
We hope this is a message you will help share.
We look forward to exploring our creative future together. | https://medium.com/the-i-am-a-creator-collective/about-iamacreator-3e7a162f6770 | ['Iamacreator Collective'] | 2017-03-18 05:57:57.109000+00:00 | ['Creativity', 'Expectant', 'Creators', 'Social Justice', 'Social Change'] |
The Tiny Owl Who Came to Visit the Big Apple Is ‘A Christmas Miracle’ | Imagine your surprise if you are awakened in the middle of the night, when you and your entire bedroom are bundled up tightly and transported from a small rural town to New York City.
This is exactly what happened to a Northern saw-whet owl who was trapped for three days in a 75 foot (23 meter), 11-ton Norway spruce tree that now stands in Rockefeller Center. The tree, which was felled on Thursday in Oneonta, New York, was transported to Manhattan, a distance of 170 miles (274 km).
According to a statement on facebook, officials at Ravensbeard Wildlife Center received a phone call on Monday morning from a woman about a ‘baby owl’ that was discovered in a tree. The woman’s husband, who works for the company that transported and secured the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center, discovered the owl.
Northern saw-whet owl (Aegolius acadicus) shortly after it was discovered in the Norway spruce tree destined for Rockefeller Center. (Image courtesy of Ravensbeard Wildlife Center.)
But this diminutive owl is no baby. He is an adult male Northern saw-whet owl, Aegolius acadicus. Saw-whet owls, which range across much of North America, are one of the smallest owl species on the continent, standing no more than 8.3 inches (21cm) tall. Because larger owls and other raptors find these tiny birds make tasty snacks, saw-whet owls only venture out under the cover of darkness. They spend their days perched motionless on a branch of a dense conifer tree, close to the trunk. Although they often perch at eye level, they are rarely spotted by people because their mottled plumage camouflages them from prying eyes.
“Yesterday morning, I received a phone call from someone who asked if we take in owls for rehabilitation”, wrote the spokesperson for Ravensbeard Wildlife Refuge in a facebook statement.
“I replied ‘yes we do’, there was silence for a moment and she said: ‘OK, I’ll call back when my husband comes home, he’s got the baby owl in a box tucked in for the long ride’.”
“She lived about an hour south so we met in the middle to do the transfer”, the Ravensbeard spokesperson added on facebook.
This adult male Northern saw-whet owl (Aegolius acadicus) was rescued from the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree as it was being erected. (Image courtesy of Ravensbeard Wildlife Center.)
The tiny owl, now known as ‘Rockefeller’, is recovering at Ravensbeard Wildlife Refuge, after a veterinary check-up and x-rays on Wednesday night revealed that the hungry and dehydrated bird had not been seriously injured by his wild adventure.
Ravensbeard is a non-profit wildlife rescue center located in the small town of Saugerties, which lies partially inside Catskill Park, the smaller and less well-known of New York’s two Forest Preserves.
Shortly after arriving at the rescue center, this adult male Northern saw-whet owl (Aegolius acadicus) was swaddled in a cloth “donut” to prevent injuries during his veterinary exam. (Image courtesy of Ravensbeard Wildlife Center.)
After arriving at the rescue center, the tiny owl received fluids and has been given “all the mice he will eat” because he had nothing to eat or drink during his three day road trip whilst bundled tightly inside the tree.
“It’s amazing he didn’t get crushed”, said Ravensbeard Wildlife Center director Ellen Kalish, who added that he is “a Christmas miracle of 2020”.
How is he doing now?
“So far, he’s pensive and cautious. Very alert, bright-eyed. And the cuteness factor is just off the charts.”
Of course.
Ravensbeard Wildlife Center director Ellen Kalish holds the Northern saw-whet owl (Aegolius acadicus) that was rescued from the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree. (Image courtesy Ravensbeard Wildlife Center.)
Meanwhile, the tree apparently did not withstand the journey as well as its avian passenger. It has been mocked widely on social media as ‘the perfect symbol of 2020’ because it is rather ‘sparse’. The tree, which did look much better in photographs taken earlier in the year, was donated to Rockefeller Center by a homeowner in Oneonta, New York. Undaunted by all the negativity, the tree is already being decorated with five miles of lights and will be topped by a large star. The star weighs 900 pounds, and is made of 3 million Swarovski crystals mounted on 70 illuminated spikes.
What are the plans for this tiny owl?
“Once he checks in with the vet and gets a clean bill of health, he’ll be released to continue on his wild and wonderful journey”, the Ravensbeard spokesperson wrote on facebook.
Ravensbeard does not plan to release the tiny owl in the same location where he had been roosting because the staff are worried that enduring such a long journey — again — could be too traumatic. But a different release site is not a serious problem for this bird because most Northern saw-whet owls tend to roam in winter anyway: some even migrate south for the winter, although they do eventually settle down in springtime to find new mates and territories. | https://medium.com/swlh/the-tiny-owl-who-came-to-visit-the-big-apple-is-a-christmas-miracle-1a013ef59c89 | ['𝐆𝐫𝐫𝐥𝐒𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐭', 'Scientist'] | 2021-02-18 14:01:20.571000+00:00 | ['Owls', 'New York City', 'Manhattan', 'Birds', 'Christmas Tree'] |
The Ultimate Free Machine Learning Development Stack | Keeping up with data science’s intense pace of innovation is difficult for all of us. This problem is only compounded with the loss of a job, which comes with the loss of business problems to apply data science and machine learning to, the enterprise development tools utilized in order to do so, and the teammates to build solutions with. Job site Indeed has reported that data scientists have been the most negatively impacted positions within tech due to the coronavirus. However, the field continues to progress. Regardless of your current professional situation, there’s no such thing as staying still. If you are a machine learning developer or data scientist in the unfortunate position to have lost your job during the pandemic but are not working to improve your skills in these areas, you are absolutely getting passed by. I’ve spent the past 3 years helping data scientists and developers navigate the vast ecosystem of cloud and open source machine learning development tools, and wanted to recommend a workflow that enables end-to-end machine learning with a couple of services, all of which are free, to help keep skills sharp. Check out the ultimate free machine learning development stack here!
[Free Download: The ODSC Introduction to Machine Learning]
Object Storage
Object storage is critical to machine learning development, and provides a place to store training, test, and validation data sets as well as pretrained and fine-tuned models. It’s also a huge revenue generator for cloud companies, as AWS’ S3 is reported as its most popular service, so finding free and unlimited cloud object storage is quite difficult, but not impossible.
Algorithmia is a serverless machine learning deployment platform (more on deploying models below). There are a number of utilities that Algorithmia provides in order to facilitate the deployment of models, including free object storage. According to their documentation, “Algorithmia’s Data Sources make it easy to host your data files on the Algorithmia platform for free, while our Data API makes it a cinch to work with your hosted data.” Their Data API is available in Python and has a getFile()/putFile() structure that makes it easy to download and upload data sets, models, and other utilities that may facilitate machine learning. Data collections can be made public, shared between teams, or private, and is free to store and access.
Model Development and Training
There are a number of free, hosted Jupyter environments that can help in developing machine learning models. My favorite is Google Colab. Colab only requires a Google account to use and provides free access to GPUs, even including NVIDIA V100’s if you are lucky. It has very tight and very easy to use integrations with both GitHub and Weights and Biases (more on Weights and Biases later). I have prepared a notebook hosted on Colab as an introduction to the service and others mentioned in this article.
Hyperparameter Optimization and Monitoring
Hyperparameter optimization allows developers to vary aspects of a model in order to tune its training performance. Weights and Biases’ Sweeps automates HPO to explore a space of possible models. Sweeps provides a number of great features in addition to being a free service, including easy integration, early termination of poorly performing training sessions, and a variety of search strategies. Sweeps also decouples optimization from model training via their central sweep server, so multiple workers can iterate through a search space asynchronously and in parallel. Weights and Biases automatically logs model metrics as well, which can be used with or without hyperparameter optimization to monitor and visualize model training processes. Their monitoring allows easy tracking of machine learning projects in or to share or reproduce models and identify performant experiments. The monitoring is great in Jupyter enviroments, providing benefits such as automatic authentication in Colab and saving code sequentially based on when a cell was run, not where it appears in a notebook.
Weights and Biases is a free tool that can manage hyperparameter optimizations and track model training metrics
Model Libraries and Deployment
Model registries, repositories, and libraries help fast track end-to-end machine learning development by providing pretrained models and other utilities that can be fine-tuned towards a specific task. Hugging Face’s Transformers library provides a great set of models and preprocessing tokenizers for use in natural language processing. State-of-the-art performance can be achieved in a number of NLP tasks with Transformers in as few as two lines of code, or completely customizable into larger machine learning pipelines with TFTrainer and PyTorch Lightening support.
Another great resource for using pretrained models is coming from the group already mentioned as a provider of free Object Storage, Algorithmia. They provide the functionality to use deployed machine learning models, upload your own for inference, or to pipeline together in a fully managed, serverless environment that can be used across programming languages. Using deployed models on Algorithmia is not technically free, it costs 1 cent per 100 seconds of compute time, but accounts are given 5,000 free seconds of compute time a month, which I’ve found to be more than enough for personal use.
Get Started with Your Free Machine Learning Development Stack
Algorithmia, Google Colab, Hugging Face’s Transformers, and Weights and Biases can form a powerful combination in practicing end-to-end machine learning. A demonstration of all these tools working in concert can be found above in the model training and development section above as well as right here. If you have lost your job recently getting you skills out of data science obsolescence is just one component of a job search, and there are a number of resources that can provide assistance, including Open Data Science’s very own AI+, which provides career services and job placement to Data Scientists and Engineers. | https://medium.com/@ODSC/the-ultimate-free-machine-learning-development-stack-d6fb0741ba3 | ['Odsc - Open Data Science'] | 2020-10-26 13:02:22.375000+00:00 | ['Open Data', 'Data Science', 'Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Open Source'] |
Is Toenail Fungus Holding You Back? Look Into This Treatment (Clinics Included) | If you are still struggling to find a cure for your toenail fungus, then you probably have not heard of laser phototherapy units.
Laser phototherapy units are a type of portable, laser-emitting medical device intended to treat nail fungal infection (onychomycosis) using low-level laser treatment (LLLT).
These units typically have a digital display for clinicians to customize settings, as well as a treatment platform for the patient’s foot.
What is onychomycosis?
Although not life-threatening, onychomycosis (a fungal infection of the nail, usually caused by a dermatophyte) constitutes an important public health problem because of its high prevalence (
Affecting roughly 10% of the U.S. population, onychomycosis is a fungal infection of the nail. It is caused by a dermatophyte fungi or yeast (namely Candida albicans); non-dermatophyte molds may also be responsible.
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash
Fortunately, for patients there a range of product lines that are on the market.
A few examples include: | https://medium.com/@DeviceTicker/toe-fungus-holding-you-back-look-into-this-treatment-clinics-included-8417eadeab89 | [] | 2020-06-16 02:49:56.554000+00:00 | ['Toenail Fungus', 'Laser', 'Chiropractic', 'Medical', 'Fungus Treatment'] |
Top 5 Ways to Job Search During the Holidays | During the holidays, many work seekers take a break from job hunting. It’s a hectic time of year, and balancing getting ready for the holidays with holding a work search going forward can be a challenge. But, maybe that’s a mistake.
Still not sure whether after the New Year, you can call it quits? During the holiday season, here are some reasons to keep your work hunt going.
Pay attention to requirements and responsibilities
Right now, the job boards might look a little grim, but even if your dream gig isn’t jumping out at you, there’s a good likelihood that some of the roles you’re coming across are a near match to what you’re actually searching for. They may not be the jobs you want to apply for, but that doesn’t mean they have zero merit whatsoever.
So, read through the details carefully during the holidays, paying attention to requirements and responsibilities. These two subheads are chock-full of valuable knowledge that will help you plan your materials and find out if your skill set has any gaps.
Update Your Resume
Aren’t you shocked to see this here, are you? It’s commonplace advice for a reason: your resume really matters. It needs to be up-to-date, typo-free, and important to your industry and the work you have set your sights on as the first glimpse at who you are, where you have come from, and what you have achieved.
Get Your References
There is nothing worse than getting to a certain exciting point of your job: looking for references in the post-interview request, yes, and scrambling to ensure that you have good references, and correct contact details for solid references listed above.
It is not sufficient to be assured that your former boss just has positive things to say about you. So asking to use others as a guide is both considerate and professional and necessary to let him or her know what you’ve been up to.
Make a List of Contacts
It’s true that the holiday season might not be the ideal time for everyone and anyone who may be of support to you in your job quest to network and reach out, but that doesn’t mean you can’t at least get the ball rolling. Do your study, check your brain for possible individuals to touch, and scroll through your LinkedIn.
Create an exhaustive list, narrow it down, and start writing emails afterwards. I would recommend waiting until at least a few days after the holidays have ended to finally send your carefully designed emails or LinkedIn messages, bearing in mind that on your first day back in the office, most people who took time off would be overwhelmed with emails. And you certainly don’t want yours to get lost in an inbox that’s overflowing.
Work on Your Social Media
So you haven’t mastered Twitter altogether. Or, maybe your experience of LinkedIn leaves a lot to be desired. Or your Facebook profile has an awful lot of dubious college videos. December is an excellent time to tidy up your social media pages and polish them.
Any type of social media presence is more or less a prerequisite in more and more industries. Find out how much credit your sector gives to it now, and behave accordingly. And even though most people will be out of the office for the holidays, their messages will still be reviewed. That you can be involved and interact with people in your industry where it will help you in your quest.
Conclusion
Check to make sure you have a current phone number and email address for each one once you have your names lined up. Keep this data at the ready so that you have one less thing to think about if and when a hiring manager needs it. | https://medium.com/@emonics-llc/top-5-ways-to-job-search-during-the-holidays-4d1acbfca89c | ['Emonics Llc'] | 2020-12-21 16:56:42.199000+00:00 | ['Job Hunting', 'Job Search', 'Holidays', 'Jobs', 'Job Search Tips'] |
Everything I learn in 1 year of Web Development? | This is the most essential skill to master for a web developer because because more than 40% of website traffic came from the mobile users, for making a website responsive media queries came into picture which in layman terms an if else condition i.e. if the width or height of the window is of certain pixel we can load different CSS and make the page responsive.
Here are the awesome resources for learning about responsiveness
1. CSS Media Queries & Using Available Space | CSS-Tricks (css-tricks.com)
Many of the programmers don’t learn about media queries , because it is relatively time consuming and due to this they seek the help of the 3rd party like bootstrap or material UI, Using these libraries are not bad as it saves a lot of time but you should also know about how to make a webpage responsive by yourself.
Bootstrap and other 3rd party styling Library
There are 100s of free to use library that are really easy to use in the website just add a script tag to the html page and done, These libraries are the best way to save time while creating everything from scratch require a lot of time.
How to use the bootstrap like a pro: Bootstrap Beginner Crash Course
The Main Question is should I use it ?
I don’t like using 3rd party libraries because I think this gives me a sense of handicap when I want to make something creative but I know many developers who like to use bootstrap and using bootstrap is a skill in itself which is required by some of the employers so I guess Its good to know about the bootstrap and how it works.
About other libraries, I would say it depends, you can create some small project to learn new libraries as it will give a sense of confidence on how much you can use the resources to build new stuff.
Advance Animation
Animations
Animation is the most fascinating thing to watch the way to present a website is the skill that needs a eye for design but presenting a website in a way to attract user is a a work for a Product manager, As a developer your job is to implement those ridiculous demands and implement it at ease.
I have categorized the animation into two parts
1. Animation on particular Objects: The Article that I attached is the best place to learn about animation. I want to talk a little about the Keyframes and transition in particular .CSS transitions allows you to change property values smoothly, over a given duration. Keyframes gives more control over the intermediate steps of the animation sequence than transitions. Keyframes is more powerful as we can create our own animation as we want i.e. Keyframes can be defined as a group of transition.
2. The entrance and exit animation : These animation are done on the pre-existing object present on the website and these animation will get triggered when certain events are called like scrolling or while page loads. The Tool that I use for creating such animation is GSAP. GSAP is a tool used to create a timeline on the webpage which means we can create any type of animation and set a time period to it. You can use Keyframes as well to create these animation but I like to think that GSAP is relatively easy to use.
JavaScript
For this article I have created a list of topics that you
Disclaimer: If you are a Beginner you don’t need to study all these concept, you must focus on building new projects for the time being because eventually you may forget these in future. You just need to know these things exist for future.
1. Primitives
2. Call stack
3. Value Types and Reference Types
4. Scope
5. var vs let vs const
6. Modules and Namespaces
7. DOM and How Browser renders a web page
8. this, call, apply and bind
9. Prototype inheritance and Prototype Chain
10. Classes, New Keyword, Constructor
11. Object. Create an Object. assign
12. map, reduce, filter
13. Map and Set
14. Weak Map and Weak Set’s
15. Pure Functions
16. Closures
17. High Order functions
18. Promises and async/await
19. Inheritance, Polymorphism and Code Reuse
20. setTimeout ,setInterval
21. Iterators and Generators
22. Message Queue and Event Loop
23. Hoisting
24. Currying
25. Debouncing
26. async vs defer Loading Strategies
27. Event Bubbling & Capturing
28. Throttling
29. Debouncing vs Throttling
31. Local Storage and Session Storage
32. CORS
33. Web Storage APIs
35. Web Sockets
36. Destructuring
37. Functional Programming
38. OOP
39. JavaScript Design Patterns
These are some of the JavaScript specific topics that I think a JS dev should know, If you think something is missing in this list please comment, I will update the list
DOM Manipulation
When writing web pages and apps, one of the most common things you’ll want to do is manipulate the document structure in some way. In simple words one can change the style in the HTML by triggering some events with the help of JavaScript.
DOM Manipulation is the heart for making an interactive website, You are triggering events even if you move your mouse, press a key or hover on some element. Events are actions or occurrences that happen in the system you are programming, which the system tells you about so you can respond to them in some way if desired. For example, if the user selects a button on a webpage, you might want to respond to that action by displaying an information box.
Everything on the website has a meaning to it which UI designer want to showcase.
Here are some of the articles to understand DOM Manipulation from scratch
1. Understanding Dom with examples : This article have a lot of examples and method you don’t need to know all, I personally don’t know all of them but this article will give you a sense of understanding on what to learn in DOM manipulation
2. Dom Manipulation — YouTube : Implementing is the best way to learn, This playlist consist of 4 videos on DOM manipulation by Brad Traversy, This is enough you need to know to get started with the frontend project and getting yourself an internship in frontend.
While Reading Articles and watching videos helps you find new methods and new techniques to approach a problem, the implementation of the new acquired skill is really important,
A Collection of application ideas which can be used to improve your coding skills. : This is a GitHub repo with a lot of app ideas which you can implement by some DOM manipulation and will be good for side projects and learning Dom manipulation in depth
Should I use jQuery for Dom manipulation?
If you have started building projects and start searching stack overflow for how to do things, You must have seen jQuery in the answers, This is because a long time ago Dom manipulation was not possible like today, So back in day people use jQuery for DOM manipulation because it was really easy to use it but nowadays jQuery is not being used by the projects and many of the projects are moving forward with refactoring all the codebase and removing jQuery from it, The reason is because jQuery is a heavy library and it takes a bunch of time to get loaded and you can do everything with vanilla JavaScript instead of jQuery
There is a website “You Might Not Need jQuery” which have given all the used case of jQuery and basically wrote every syntax in vanilla JavaScript. So Instead of learning jQuery It is good to know how to convert a jQuery syntax to vanilla JavaScript
Version Control — GIT 101
I want you to consider a situation, You are a web developer and are developing a website for a employer and you tell create a website. Now the employer ask you to change some things, you made those changes.
Now After watching that design your employer wants you to revert those changes. What will you do? Reverting manually takes time you know :(
Lets take one more case you create a website and you think of adding new features to the website but when you are adding the features you somehow crashed the whole website. How will you get back to that place where everything was working fine?
That’s where the version control come into picture, I want you to watch this video Git & GitHub Crash Course For Beginners This will make you somewhat familiar with git. Now you know what git is Its time to know about GitHub.
GitHub is a code hosting platform for version control and collaboration. As a developer you have to work with many developers for developing a product.
How can you work with other developer on the same product. Don’t you think if he change some code it must be visible in your code as well because you are working on the same product but how can you manage it. If you write a line of code for a feature how will you make ensure everyone in the team knows about it? That’s where GitHub come into picture. There are some ways you can collaborate with other developers. Here is an article on how you can collaborate with other developers Using Git and GitHub for Team Collaboration.
Networking
Ever wondered how your web page get loaded when you search for something. As a web developer you need to know about basic networking.
Here is a perfect article to get you started with the networking Developers Need to Learn Basic Network Engineering
When you type some address in the search-bar, There is a call that been send to the server where the website is being hosted and that server send all the files that are needed to load the website
When you are streaming a video you are sending a request to the server that send you the video packets and that is how your video in YouTube gets loaded.
The connection that your device and YouTube build is a TCP connection.
TCP connection is being established when you cant afford to lose data-packets, when you are watching a video you cant afford to lose a a video data otherwise you would not be able to watch the whole video.
Lets take it in this way, When you video call someone and you have a poor connection do you need the packets that is 5 second old and somehow not able to reach to your location, While playing game sometimes the game buffers due to poor connection do you need to find out what happen in the during that period? The answer is no. This connection that I talked about is UDP connection.
Ever wondered How does BitTorrent work?, This is the good time to know about it.
There are a lot more regarding the networking and we will cover that in the backend section.
How to fetch data from API
An API is a set of programming code that enables data transmission between one software product and another. It means that there exist a lot of data in the internet like about weather or data about food but how can you access all the data into your website and spread that data in your webpage? That’s where the fetch api comes into picture. You can fetch the data via creating a promise that will respond you back with a response and that response can be used to spread across the website. Here is an article to get you started with fetch API
How To Use the JavaScript Fetch API to Get Data and a youtube video Fetch API Introduction to get you familier with the fetch API
React
The reason React was created is because it’s easy to get lost in a bit of maze of DOM searches and updates with plain JavaScript. The javascript started become complex with dom manipulation. Also, the way that React forces you to create components changes the way you approach software development. It helps you create your web applications in a more maintainable way.
So for complex apps, a library like React is definitely worth the extra learning curve at the start. It means you can write more maintainable apps with fewer bugs. And once you take the time to learn it, writing React is faster and more fun as well!
Here are the resources that are best for beginners to get started with react:
ReactJS Tutorial Introduction: This tutorial is a best for beginners and free as well, If you can afford some paid course from Udemy Then that will be a great way to start learning react, There are very talented Instructor Like Brad Traversy, Stephen Grider, Maximilian Schwarzmüller and many more :D
Here are some articles
1. A Complete Beginner’s Guide to React
2.The React Cheatsheet for 2020 📄 (+ real-world examples) : This is a cheatsheet to revise all your react concept and when you get stuck with the syntax of react
Redux
If you have learnt about react you must know that there are different states that need to be managed.
These are the best article to learn what redux is A cartoon intro to Redux | by Lin Clark | , Editing An Unforgettable Way to Learn Redux
You Might Not Need Redux. People often choose Redux before they need it. You must know what’s the problem you are in before getting started with exploring new libraries. If react works fine for you there is no need for adding redux to it | https://medium.com/@teltia-arun18/everything-i-learn-in-1-year-of-web-development-eb8b6447102d | ['Arun Teltia'] | 2020-12-27 03:02:37.396000+00:00 | ['Web Development', 'React', 'JavaScript', 'Front End Development', 'Typescript'] |
When Not to Press Publish | Photo by Kai Pilger on Unsplash
A question that maybe every writer experiences is whether to publish in the first place
When you are working with editors, the decision falls into their laps. When you are writing alone here on Medium or running your own blog or publication then it falls into yours.
We all have anxiety of how some may take our writing. We may have trepidation about how readers will receive it and even what action they may take from it. The critical comments may appear and we may have more trepidation over what someone could say than over what someone actually says.
Maybe I should wait?
What happens when we look over the article and decide that we choose not to publish it even though we researched it, wrote it, edited it and polished it. We question whether now is the time to press publish or publish it unlisted if at all.
I am not talking about whether someone will be offended but whether someone puts into action what the article depicts.
There is a reason that certain programs include the disclaimer don’t try this at home. People try it at home and then end up in the hospital or worse. However, what if it involves something more drastic.
When I was doing some research I found a name kept coming up. I decided to look it up and found one of the most stark events of the anti Vietnam war movement. It was the case of a twenty-two year old man acting in protest against the war in New York in 1965. He died a gruesome death thirty excruciating hours later. The consequences of his actions could not possibly have been unseen and he was the third such person to commit such an act of protest in the United States in as many weeks. Fortunately, he was the last.
It was a powerful story, even one year later, writers addressed the state of our country as a reflection on the anniversary of his protest and at least one reflection on the incident by a colleague I found written forty years later.
Today, when there is so much shock running through the country and the world, I had to ask whether this article should be published at all.
Is this the time to publish such a stark story?
Many would call that censorship and indeed it is. However, I am not sure now is the time to publish it. This becomes the issue for the independent writer who is also editor.
I remember when I first started writing I would be overwhelmed by anxiety and had to learn to let it go. I reflected on when I parachuted in Otay Mesa, California. There are some actions you just let happen knowing when you act, you reach the point of no return.
I was thousands of feet in the air on a static line jump standing on the wing of the airplane. The instructor said jump. I actually just let go and immediately fell into the point of no return. There is no way back to the aircraft as it continues forward and for me the only way was down with the help of the parachute, (hopefully).
I remember feeling almost every cell in my body react like: “What did you just do?!” The adventure was a great experience but I always remember that moment whenever I reach places where just completing the action or hitting the publish button is in order.
We all have those moments when we just reach our point of no return. When an article is ready, we know some people will benefit from it and maybe others will hate it. However, there is always that one article that you say, I will hold this one back right now, maybe revisit it in the future. I felt I had to do that with this one.
The history was fascinating:
The previous Saturday there were protests nationally against a new federal law making it a felony to destroy a draft card. It was 1965, the first year of Lyndon Johnson’s only term for which he was elected president. The anti-war movement was not as much in full gear as it would be in a year or two. Resistance was just starting to grow. Often times men yelled “Hell No, I won’t go.”
Similarly, there were counter protestors calling for dedication to our country no matter what. The tension grew between both sides as the war raged on. We learned decades later it was escalating in ways that leaders were not forthcoming about it to us.
Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement wrote of published news report where some economists saw the war was going to be good for the American economy. As a pacifist, Christian anarchist such sentiment was obviously anathema to her. Counter protestors supporting the establishment called her ‘Moscow Mary.’
Police arrested men for burning their draft cards at the protest event in New York City. They ended up spending two years in jail.
The following Tuesday one participant in this protest wanted to make a stand against the war and did so across the street from the United Nations. Thirty hours later he succumbed to a long gruesome death by his own hand.
Fear obviously entered the scene that this the third such incident in three weeks would lead to more but he was the last. Maybe because it was so gruesome and well reported by journalists for the Catholic Worker as well as other more mainstream publications including Time Magazine; the shock of the incident could not be dismissed.
Today, with our country currently in such division and people struggling so desperately I decided I could not publicly publish this article and so it remains unlisted.
I just don’t feel now is the time to publish such a disturbing account of a protest to a divided nation when the nation is now similarly, starkly divided. | https://medium.com/@rjcarr02134/when-not-to-press-publish-f42ad3c0e201 | ['Rj Carr'] | 2020-12-21 17:39:35.605000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Censorship', 'Draft', 'Vietnam', 'Catholic'] |
Sparsity in Online Learning with Lasso Regularization | Forward Backward Splitting (FOBOS)
Note: The method was named Forward Looking Subgradient (FOLOS) in the first draft and later renamed since it was essentially the same as an earlier proposed technique, the Forward Backward Splitting. The authors abbreviated it to FOBOS instead of FOBAS to avoid confusing readers of the first draft.
First, a little background. Consider an objective function of the form f(w) + r(w). In the case of a number of machine learning algorithms, the function f denotes the empirical sum of some loss function (such as mean squared error), and the function r is a regularizer (such as Lasso). If we use a simple gradient descent technique to minimize this objective function, the iterates would be of the form
where the g’s are vectors from the subgradient sets of the corresponding functions. From the paper:
A common problem in subgradient methods is that if r or f is non-differentiable, the iterates of the subgradient method are very rarely at the points of non-differentiability. In the case of the Lasso regularization function, however, these points are often the true minima of the function.
In other words, the subgradient approach will result in neither a true minima nor a sparse solution if r is the L1 regularizer.
FOBOS, as the name suggests, splits every iteration into 2 steps — a forward step and a backward step, instead of minimizing both f and r simultaneously. The motivation for the method is that for L1 regularization functions, true minima is usually attained at the points of non-differentiability. For example, in the 2-D space, the function resembles a Diamond shape and the minima is obtained at one of the corner points. Each iteration of FOBOS consists of the following 2 steps:
The first step is a simple unconstrained subgradient step with respect to the function f. In the second step, we try to achieve 2 objectives:
Stay close to the interim update vector. This is achieved by the first term. Attain a low complexity value as expressed by r. (Second term)
So the first step is a forward step, where we update the coefficient in the direction of the subgradient, while the second is a backward step where we pull the update back a little so as to obtain sparsity by moving in the direction of the non-differentiable points of r.
Using the first equation in the second, taking derivative w.r.t w, and equating the derivative to 0, we obtain the update scheme as
(Note: The equation above looks suspiciously similar to the Nesterov Accelerated Gradient (NAG) method for optimization. The authors have even cited Nesterov’s paper in related work. It might be interesting to investigate this further.)
This update scheme has 2 major advantages, according to the author.
First, from an algorithmic standpoint, it enables sparse solutions at virtually no additional computational cost. Second, the forward-looking gradient allows us to build on existing analyses and show that the resulting framework enjoys the formal convergence properties of many existing gradient-based and online convex programming algorithms.
In the paper, the authors also prove convergence of the method and show that on setting the intermediate learning rate properly, low regret bounds can be proved for both online as well as batch settings. | https://medium.com/explorations-in-language-and-learning/sparsity-in-online-learning-with-lasso-regularization-f65f97e08e4e | ['Desh Raj'] | 2018-02-24 09:47:53.669000+00:00 | ['Online Learning', 'Machine Learning'] |
Rendering Angular Content Without a Containing DOM Element | Image by Vikramjit Kakati from Pixabay
Scenario
We want to iterate over tr elements while also using a conditional directive within the tr element. We have this template:
<table>
<tbody>
<tr *ngIf="customer.age > 18">
<td>{{customer.name}}</td>
<td>{{customer.age}}</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Since we are using the *ngIf conditional directive, we cannot also place the directive *ngFor=”let customer of customers” on the same element.
We also cannot wrap the tr element in another element if we want to adhere to the schema structure for HTML table elements.
Approach
<table>
<tbody>
<ng-container *ngFor="let customer of customers">
<tr *ngIf="customer.age > 18">
<td>{{customer.name}}</td>
<td>{{customer.age}}</td>
</tr>
</ng-container>
</tbody>
</table> | https://medium.com/@fireflysemantics/rendering-angular-content-without-a-containing-dom-element-74330b6f125b | ['Ole Ersoy'] | 2020-12-18 15:43:04.734000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'UX', 'Web Development', 'Software Development', 'Programming Languages'] |
Create Video Games As Your Fun Career | Photo by Skyler H on UnsplashCreate Video Games As Your Fun Career
Title:
Create Video Games As Your Fun Career
Summary:
Do you like video games? Do you beat video games after playing once? Do you feel like the games are too easy? Well, it sounds like you have a passion for these things then you should go where your heart leads you.
If you at the point where you are thinking about your career, I suggest that you do what you love to do. You should consider a different course of action: majoring in something you TRULY enjoy… something you could do hours on end without feeling like you are w…
Article Body:
Do you like video games? Do you beat video games after playing once? Do you feel like the games are too easy? Well, it sounds like you have a passion for these things then you should go where your heart leads you.
If you at the point where you are thinking about your career, I suggest that you do what you love to do. You should consider a different course of action: majoring in something you TRULY enjoy… something you could do hours on end without feeling like you are working at all. And if you are like many people, this ‘something’ would be playing video games.
That’s right! You can actually get a job creating and/or playing video games. Below is a list of some of the careers available for those with a video game degree.
Photo by Wahid Khene on UnsplashCreate Video Games As Your Fun Career
1) Video Game Programmer
Gameinformer Magazine mentions that, video game programmers are the “heart and soul” of the industry. They are the ones responsible for creating the code necessary for getting video games to function. And contrary to popular belief, their jobs aren’t always easy. Video game programming often involves creating complex functions and algorithms often times more challenging than programs created in Corporate America.
Indeed, game programming may not be the appropriate course for everyone seeking a video game career, but if you were deciding to go into the computer field anyway, which job would be more enjoyable… coding the next Halo, or working on a boring, hum-drum piece of no-name software?
Photo by Ildefonso Polo on UnsplashCreate Video Games As Your Fun Career
2) Video Game Tester
As a video game tester it is a position in which you truly would get paid for playing video games. According to current game tester Doug D. from Electronic Arts, he say’s as a game tester you would “go over different components of a game and look for things that just don’t make sense.” You would also “break the game,” meaning you would “do things a normal user would do and accidentally see something go wrong.”
Doug Powell further adds that video game testing is a good place to start for young people who want to “break into the industry.” To get such a position in it is best to have a “passion for gaming” and some educational background. Doug recommends a degree, or some form of higher-level education.
Photo by Mike Von on Unsplash
3) Video Game Animator
Animators are in charge for coordinating the movement of video game characters. Accomplishing requires more than drawing something on a piece of paper, which according to Alex Jones, an established game animator, occurs after a lot of “brainstorming, chilling, playing, planning and testing” with the programmer. But when the busy work is done, the video game animator will finally get a chance to do what he or she does best… animate. Alex Drouin says the thing he liked best about his job was “being able to come there late in the morning, sit behind his computer, put on a great CD, and then create crazy animation that will end up in a game that will be seen all around the world by gamers.” With a video game degree it is certainly possible!
Photo by Denisse Leon on Unsplash
4) Sound Designer
Sound designers are responsible for creating the music and sound effects of video games. Video game music is created either from digital sources or real-life stimulation. As video game consoles become more advanced, many sound designers favor the latter when deciding on what type of music they want in the games they are working on. Creating appropriate sound effects, on the other hand, sometimes requires more creative experimentation.
To be successful at designing video game sounds it is best to: 1) have an interest in both music and sound, 2) possess knowledge of recording equipment and 3) be familiar with the types of music and sound used in today’s most popular video games. A video game degree will help develop these talents and skills.
Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash
5) Game Designer
Video game designers are responsible for creating the ‘experience’ of a particular game. Charles Perry, a video game designer, sums it up by saying “the main tasks of the designer is to make sure the game is fun.”
Wells further adds that game designers are responsible for macro and micro level design. Macro level design involves “figuring out the core mechanics of the game; the variety of level looks, power-ups, etc.” Micro-design involves creating the “actual levels and the moment-to-moment gameplay within those levels… the enemies, the objects, and the particular way you encounter those enemies and objects.”
Good game designers should obviously have an interest in video games along with some drawing and programming skills. | https://medium.com/career-realted-article/create-video-games-as-your-fun-career-52e414abfacc | ['Mohit Chawla'] | 2020-12-27 11:16:02.489000+00:00 | ['Careers', 'Jobs', 'Career Change', 'Career Advice', 'Career Readiness'] |
Secular Buddhism and the superior whiteness of being. | With “mindfulness” and secular Buddhism increasingly shaping the everyday understanding of what the Buddhist tradition is, I thought — as a Buddhist of colour — I’d bring a critical lens to the table.
Photo by DLKR Life from Pexels
Various presentations of Secular Buddhism have left me uneasy for a while, and I thought it was time that I put fingers to keyboard and make some inroads at a — admittedly limited — critique of this movement. What you read below by no means exhausts all of my criticisms.
First off, let’s start with the idea of racial coding and dog whistling, if you’re a person of colour, you will know that white identified people have a way of speaking about race and perpetuating racial essentialism, without ever mentioning black and brown people. Think of music categories like “urban” or descriptions like “ghetto”.
What set off my spidey-senses, were the categories of “heritage” and “secular”. Now, we know that the vast majority of Buddhists are heritage Buddhists (I’ll use their terminology throughout) and the vast majority of those, are people of colour. So I can only come to the conclusion that “heritage Buddhist” means… Asian person?
Secularism, as an ideology with its roots in Protestant theology, has very definite limitations when encountering a tradition like Buddhism. As many of the points of Protestantism were critiques of the Catholic church: “excessive” and “blind” ritualism, theological control by a religious elite etc, these very often, unreflectingly, become arguments levelled at South Asian traditions like Buddhism, Hinduism etc.
Think of how Shakyamuni Buddha is described as a Martin Luther–like figure in the history of Indian “religions”. Also, think of the reflexive repugnance/unease with Buddhist “rituals” and opposition to religious/ritual specialists/monastics etc. Many of these positions are simply secularised Protestant critiques of the Catholic Church.
Please keep my observations above in mind, as you go through my critiques below. For the rest of the article, I’ll be using the content on the FAQ page of the Secular Buddhist Association. You can find the link to their site here. So, let’s begin.
From the website’s FAQ page:
“What is Secular Buddhism?
1. We allow questioning of a literal interpretation of rebirth.
A minority of Secular Buddhists believe in literal rebirth. More believe in non-literal rebirth (i.e. that we are reborn from moment to moment). Many are “agnostic” on rebirth (i.e. that belief or non-belief in literal rebirth does affect the truth and power of the rest of Gautama Buddha’s teachings as they have been transmitted). By allowing such questioning and exploration without excluding questioners and explorers, we allow for more and ultimately deeper engagement with the Dhamma…”
Here we can see a subtle (or not so subtle?) move at claiming that heritage Buddhism does not “allow” questioning. We also know that momentary presentation of rebirth is actually found in both Theravada and Mahayana forms of (heritage) Buddhism. And that there, it is not pitted against literal rebirth but is seen as an uninterrupted continuation of the process.
Sentences like “allowing such questioning…” again, frame heritage Buddhists, as dogmatic, oppressive and authoritarian. The contrasting of secular Buddhism positively against heritage Buddhism seems clear here. But let’s move on and look at their stance on appropriation and ethnicity:
“…2.We reject the appropriation of Asian/Diasporic culture/s as part of engagement with the Dhamma
You will see many references to separating the Dhamma from specific Asian/Diasporic cultures. Unfortunately, these are often read as attacks on those cultures; it is claimed that this separation is due to an aversion to these cultures or as a preliminary step to appropriation.
And for Asian/Diasporic Secular Buddhists specifically, this allows practice of forms that are not specific to their specific ethnicity without similar issues around appropriation and harm to the practitioner’s culture (i.e. a person of Thai heritage could explore elements of Zen without issues that might otherwise arise). This is why we seek a separation of specific cultures from the Dhamma — to prevent appropriation and to facilitate access to the Dhamma by those of BI/POC descent (who otherwise may have to choose between the Dhamma and healing their cultures) — and NEVER as a form of erasure…”
Now the above claims above are a bit knotty, but at baseline, represent a basic misunderstanding of what cultural appropriation actually is. Cultural appropriation is not that people from other ethnicities should not participate in the traditions of others, or share ideas, technology and art. C.A. refers to a phenomenon where dominant groups can change the very meanings of the cultural capital of non-dominant groups and thereby marginalising the source community. This has social, cultural, legal and economic implications for the marginalised community.
Then let’s also look at the idea that “culture” is somehow optional for people, specifically those who identify as white. The claim that the Dhamma can be separated from “culture” — and that white people are in a position to do this — is a stupendous claim, tantamount to being able to resurrect the dead. But it glides past those who identify with whiteness and its universalising norms.
Let’s please set this straight: there is no human society that exists sans culture, it simply is not possible, has never been observed and is tantamount to a metaphysical claim, rooted ignorance of the social sciences. In fact, all science.
And consequently, there can be no (non-magical) way to extricate the Dhamma from a culture, when it is the very product of culture.
What this irrational claim does do however, is render whiteness, and its attendant cultural assumptions invisible, while marking heritage Buddhism as constrained, limited and provincial.
Self-described secular folk, white (or otherwise) do, in fact, possess a culture. And this plays a pivotal role in how they frame heritage Buddhists in opposition to themselves:
Secular Buddhists = rational, thoughtful and “scientific”. Heritage Buddhists = irrational, dogmatic and “bound” by culture. Now on to their section on ethics:
“…Ethics
Since Secular Buddhists still believe in Kamma, there is still Kamma as a motivation for acting ethically — just as there is in other Forms of Buddhism. However, in addition to this, we also emphasize other arguments to act ethically.
For example, atheists are just as capable as any others of living ethically. This is because it is recognized that, as social beings, our lives are more enriched by an altruistic approach than an antagonistic one. Our ethical behavior creates a better world now, demonstrably, and that helps build the foundation for a better life for others both now and in the future.
Thus, our practice of ethics isn’t diminished — it’s strengthened by having multiple arguments for it…”
The above, I confess, I find just bizarre. The Theravada Tipitaka alone, is replete with arguments for ethical behaviour that has nothing to do with kamma and vipaka. So why this baffling stance on ethics when Buddhist texts themselves abound with admonitions to ethical behaviour without appealing to karma or rebirth? Once again, we can see this dogged dichotomy of heritage vs secular. But with a distinct framing of heritage Buddhist ethics, being dogmatic and entirely reliant on metaphysics.
From the Dhammapada:
All tremble at the rod,
all are fearful of death.
Drawing the parallel to yourself,
neither kill nor get others to kill.
All tremble at the rod,
All hold their life dear.
Drawing the parallel to yourself,
neither kill nor get others to kill.
(129–130)
From the Anguttara Nikaya:
“And how, Lord, does a lay follower live for the welfare of both himself and others?”
“If, Mahānāma, a lay follower himself has faith, virtue and generosity, and also encourages others in gaining them; if he himself likes to visit monks and to listen to the good Dhamma, and he also encourages others to do so; if he himself retains in mind the teachings heard and carefully examines their meaning, and he also encourages others to do so; if, having understood both the letter and the meaning, he himself practises in accordance with the Dhamma and also encourages others to do so — in such a case, Mahānāma, a lay follower lives for the welfare of both himself and others.” (8:25)
There are, O monks, eight reasons for giving. What eight? People may give out of affection; or in an angry mood; or out of stupidity; or out of fear; or because of thinking: “Such gifts have been given before by my father and grandfather and it was done by them before; hence it would be unworthy of me to give up this old family tradition”; or because of thinking, “By giving this gift, I shall be reborn in a good destination, in a heavenly world, after death”; or because of thinking, “When giving this gift, my heart will be glad, and happiness and joy will arise in me”; or one gives because it ennobles and adorns the mind.
(8:33)
Photo by Suraphat Nuea-on from Pexels
Let’s also have a look at their stance on nihilism:
“…Nihilism?
Nihilism has the meaning of life having no meaning and being of no inherent value. Rather than take that less-than-savory understanding of the impermanence of life (anicca), Secular Buddhists see impermanence as providing a wonderful opportunity to value fleeting existence and see it for the rich experience it can be. Rather than expecting meaning to be an intrinsic quality of the process of living, Secular Buddhists understand that it may not be — but that’s not a problem as we can create our own value — from moment to moment — in how we address our experiences…”
Here we have a clearer picture of the shallow secular Buddhist understanding of Dharma/Dhamma. The suttas/sutras are clear that reflections on impermanence and death are pivotal in spurring people on to Dhamma/Dharma practice and by extension imbuing meaning and purpose into the life of a Buddhist. In fact, this is a pronounced and well-known teaching found all forms of so called, heritage Buddhism:
Again, monks, there is another good, thoroughbred person who neither hears nor sees that some woman or man is ailing or has died; but a kinsman of his, a close relation, is ailing or has died. Thereby he is moved and stirred … he realises in his own person the supreme truth and sees it by penetrating it with wisdom. This good, thoroughbred person, I say, is similar to the good, thoroughbred horse that is alerted and stirred only when his skin is pricked. This is the third good, thoroughbred person found in the world. (4:113)
Another interesting quote that I thought was worthy of attention:
“But if Gautama Buddha was Enlightened (i.e. attained Nibbana), then shouldn’t all of his teachings be above exploration?”
From the traditional/heritage point of view, the Dhamma/Dharma is only transformative in the seeing. And the seeing is actually, a fundamental form of exploration and engagement. Buddhists have for centuries developed new understandings and ways of exploration beyond the status quo, leading to innovative schools that continue to inspire Buddhists today. And all the while, painstakingly ensuring that the foundational ideas remain as radical and liberating as they have always been. This, as far as I can tell, is the very definition of “exploration”.
So, for me, secular Buddhism leaves far too many normative assumptions unexamined. Coloniality and unexamined whiteness as “universal truth” have played far too large a part in the creation and continuation of this movement to actually stand as a radical critique of how to approach the Dhamma/Dharma in the 21st century.
Seekers of the Buddhist Path deserve so much more than weak nods to mangled and misunderstood woke-speak. A decolonial approach to how secular Buddhists approach the Dhamma/Dharma is becoming ever more urgent. With Asia and its norms and values in ascendence, secular Buddhism will need more than yoga pants, beatific smiles and scientism to seriously offer a compelling, genuinely transformative alternative to heritage Buddhism. Is a genuinely secular Buddhism possible? It may be. But I haven’t seen any signs of it yet… | https://medium.com/@yaseenkerman/secular-buddhism-and-the-superior-whiteness-of-being-9d1514f83ee0 | ['Yaseen Ackerman'] | 2020-12-23 08:33:43.277000+00:00 | ['Secularism', 'Race', 'Religion', 'Mindfulness', 'Buddhism'] |
Why Your Body Sometimes Jerks As You Fall Asleep | Ahh… sleep. How nice. You turn off the lights. You close your weary eyes. You sigh. You relax. Your breathing slows down. Your mind begins to wander off, fading into the nightly oblivion.
Then…
You stumble, trip, fall. Your body jolts. Your leg kicks. Your heart pounds. Huh? What happened? Did you mistakenly fall asleep on a trapdoor?
Nope. You simply experienced a hypnic jerk.
Why Do We Sleep?
The hours spent sleeping may be the most important for your brain
elemental.medium.com
What’s a hypnic jerk?
Image for post
A hypnic jerk, or sleep start, is a phenomenon that occurs when your body transitions from wakefulness to sleep. It involves a sudden involuntary muscle twitch and is frequently accompanied by a falling or tripping sensation. It’s that strange muscle spasm that happens when you’re lying in bed, trying to sleep, and are suddenly jolted awake because you feel like you stumbled over something.
Hypnic jerks are common and benign.
But what causes them? Well, no one really knows. It’s still a mystery. However, researchers have come up with several hypotheses that may explain them, with the following two being the most popular.
Hypothesis 1: Your body twitches as daytime motor control is overridden by sleep paralysis
How is it that a bedfellow of yours doesn’t wake up pummeled and bruised if you have a dream about a boxing match? Is it because they’re having a complementary dream where they’re blocking all your jabs, hooks, and other punches?
Nope. The person sharing the bed with you doesn’t get pummeled because when you’re asleep, your body is paralyzed. This is due to something called REM sleep atonia, which prevents you from acting out your dreams.
REM atonia works by inhibiting your motor neurons. It does so by raising the bar on the amount of electricity the brain must send down a motor neuron to trigger a movement. So, for instance, the little bit of electricity that your brain sends to your finger to make it move when you’re awake is no longer enough when you’re under REM atonia.
When you’re asleep, your body is paralyzed. This is due to something called REM sleep atonia, which prevents you from acting out your dreams.
Now, the thing is that there is no single on/off switch in your body that inhibits all your motor neurons at once. Instead, the subsystems of your brain that handle sleep need to wrestle control from the subsystems that handle wakefulness. And sometimes, during this wrestling match, some motor neurons are fired randomly, causing your body to twitch.
Hypothesis 2: Your brain thinks you’re a monkey falling off a tree
Image modified by the author. Illustration source: Alessandro D’Antonio/Unsplash
Imagine you’re a monkey and the last rays of sunlight have just disappeared behind the green forest canopy. It’s getting dark, and you say to yourself: time for sleep. Your brain begins to ooze some melatonin into your bloodstream and you yawn. Drowsy, you settle down on a comfortable tree branch.
Your eyelids become heavy and your breathing slows. The outside world begins to fade. Sounds become distant.
At this point, the subconscious part of your brain takes over. “Perfect,” it says, “time to boot up the dream images.” Your brain initiates the dream procedure, and just when you’re about to nod off completely, it notices that all your muscles have suddenly and unexpectedly relaxed. “Holy Banana!” your brain screams panic-stricken, “Mayday! Mayday! We’re in freefall! Dammit! Wake up! Wake up! Shit, crap! Brace for impaaaact!”
As you’re probably aware, we humans descend from primates who lived and slept on trees. This means that we’ve inherited some monkey brain routines that no longer serve any purpose. Among them, according to the monkey-fall hypothesis, is a reflex that jolts you awake when you’re falling from a tree.
You see, when a monkey is unexpectedly soaring through the air, its muscles no longer have to prop it up and so they go limp. Confusingly, however, your muscles also go limp when you’re sleeping.
So, when you drift off into sleep and your muscles relax a little too fast, your groggy brain sometimes misinterprets this for falling off a tree. As a result, your brain freaks out and triggers a reflex that startles you awake in an attempt to prepare for an imminent crash onto the forest floor. Little does your brain know, in its sleepy state — and that you no longer live in trees.
What’s clear either way
Hypnic jerks are involuntary muscle contractions that occur during the transition from wakefulness to sleep. They’re most likely to occur if you’ve been gulping down too much coffee, have been stressed or sleep-deprived, or did some vigorous exercise before going to bed. About 70% of people have experienced them. Even so, they are not well understood.
Either way, hypnic jerks are benign and nothing to worry about. The worst that can happen is probably an occasional kick against the shin of whoever is sharing the bed with you.
https://soul-hd-21.tumblr.com/ | https://medium.com/@nuruldwiagustin1111/why-your-body-sometimes-jerks-as-you-fall-asleep-d91c874bbd85 | [] | 2020-12-27 10:19:35.160000+00:00 | ['Neuroscience', 'Health', 'Sleep', 'Biology', 'Science'] |
Heaven Is Not a Place — The Parable of the “Happy Home” | “Why say, ‘We want to hear from the stand concerning the mysteries — the eternal mysteries of the kingdom of God, that which we have never heard.’ I might say to such, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the Prophets have spoken. Is it a mystery to you, sisters, how to knit a stocking? You all answer, ‘No, not at all.’ “But bring an individual from a world where they never had stockings, and it is as much of a mystery to that person, as anything you have ever thought of could be to you, because he would be perfectly ignorant of all ideas pertaining to that art. “You may now be inclined to say, ‘O, this is too simple and childlike, we wish to hear the mysteries of the kingdoms of the Gods who have existed from eternity, and of all the kingdoms in which they will dwell; we desire to have these things portrayed to our understandings.’ “Allow me to inform you that you are in the midst of it all now, that you are in just as good a kingdom as you will ever attain to, from now to all eternity, unless you make it yourselves by the grace of God, by the will of God, by the eternal Priesthood of God, which is a code of laws perfectly calculated to govern and control eternal matter. If you and I do not by this means make that better kingdom which we anticipate, we shall never enjoy it. “We can only enjoy the kingdom we have labored to make.” — Brigham Young, discourse delivered in the Bowery, Great Salt Lake City, 15 June 1856, reported by G.D. Watt; Journal of Discourses, vol. 3, 333–344
There once was a family at the end of their rope. The children detested their parents, and the parents had no idea what to do with their children; each sibling fought with the other, contentious as ever; the spouses each quietly resented one another, either erupting into sudden bursts of anger or simmering in distant silence. It seemed there was no love in that home, and each family member knew they needed help.
One day they received two visitors.
The first visitor was a real estate agent who came to pitch to the family a marvelous new house in a well-rated private community. The agent said that once the family moved into this new neighborhood, they would once again be happy; the house on the market was so spectacular that it would make them a happy home. Generously, the agent even offered to accompany the family to the bank to acquire a loan, help them make their surefire offer on the splendid house, and to take care of all the necessary paperwork and legal necessities — the agent would even help them move. Once the house is purchased and the family is all moved in, the agent exclaimed, they would have no other option but to be happy!
Later that day, the family received a second visitor: a therapist. The therapist sat with the family and explained that much of the family’s dysfunction was directly linked to their unhealthy habits. Over some time the family had created toxic behavioral patterns which had gone unnoticed and thus unchecked, gradually creating the hostile home environment now threatening their relationships. To curtail and perhaps repair the damage, the therapist proposed that the family attend a clinic for therapy — as individuals, a couple, and a family. Additionally, the therapist assured the family they would be given helpful tools and habits they could take with them into their day-to-day lives, to help mitigate any strain or struggles when the therapist was not around. With everyone’s concerted efforts, the therapist assured them, the family could replace their toxic patterns with healthier ones, restore their home, and find fulfillment in their relationships. The therapist even offered to do this pro bono, at no cost.
Of the two visitors that day, which do you believe would have the greatest chance of helping the family?
I believe these two visitors express the two paradigms in which Mormons and those of other religious traditions have pitched various visions of the afterlife. One theology (that of the real estate agent) describes the celestial kingdom as “a place you go,” while another theology (that of the therapist) describes the celestial kingdom as that which is created and constituted by celestial persons in healthy relationships. One heaven is given, often as the reward for the completion of tasks which have no ostensible connection to their rewards other than their connection to the giver; the other heaven is one created, its fruits having everything to do with the effort its constructors put in. I believe Mormonism, at its best, has insisted upon this latter theology — that of the therapist, so to speak.
On a related note: in the nineteenth century, Friedrich Nietzsche condemned the Christianity of his contemporary Europe for deifying “Nothing”; or, put another way, for having a general disdain for Life. Resenting and attempting to escape the suffering inherent to life, Nietzsche insisted, European Christendom had created an “afterlife” to which they might flee upon death, evading the evils of “this life.” This worldview invested such value in an afterlife to the point that mortality seemed to be nothing in comparison. After the Enlightenment, when normative religion began to wane in the West, many Europeans rejected Christianity’s metaphysical claims, including that of the soul and its persistence after death — its afterlife. But, said Nietzsche, all these ex-Christian Europeans had done was slough off the problematic view of an afterlife; yet they had not restored the value to this life which Christendom had shifted to the afterlife. As a result, Europeans found themselves living in a world devoid of value, slipping into aimless nihilism. In response to this nihilism, much of the religious world has doubled-down on traditional formulations, while others have simply dropped the topic altogether. However, some have attempted to re-frame the conversation on a fundamental level. I believe Mormonism is a part of this latter response.
Rather than a dramatic break from “this life,” Mormonism describes (y)our afterlife as an indefinite extension of (y)our life here and now, into eternity, beyond death. Further, rendering life infinite, relationships we create here and now will follow us beyond death (cf. D&C 130:2). In sum, (y)our life after death will differ from (y)our life before death in the same way that (y)our life tomorrow will differ from (y)our life today. In this way Mormonism seems to blur the lines between “this life” and “the afterlife” as to do away with their distinction entirely —seeing a singular and uninterrupted Life. Moreover, “in the ordinances [of the priesthood], the power of godliness is manifest” (D&C 84:19–20; emphasis mine), or unveiled before our eyes. Rather than beginning things altogether, the Mormon ritual complex reveals the cosmic narrative in which everyone and everything is always already playing a part, challenging participants to take part in that cosmic unfolding more deliberately now.
For example: like a civil marriage ceremony, a sealing gives one an opportunity to deliberately lay their lives upon an altar in sacrifice to their spouse, similar to the way in which Christ sacrifices for each and every human being. By this ritual action, two people consciously commit themselves in Christ-like love to each other in marriage, with the understanding that that relationship, and any relationships which may blossom from it — between in-laws as families join, the spouses and their children, their children’s children, etc. — do not need to end but can last as long as all participants are willing to put in the necessary effort. Rather than directly effect an eternal relationship between the two newlyweds, a sealing may be a moment for them and their families to come together and acknowledge what has already begun between them, and to promise their mutual fidelity to one another before their families and community. However, these eternal relationships are not vouchsafed by ritual. These relationships may be expressed through ritual, but they are vouchsafed by action, whether or not one participates in the temple.
For clarification, we might consider Paul’s letter to a community of Christ-followers in Rome. Though Paul describes Jews and gentiles (non-Jews), and circumcision and “uncircumcision,” in the following passage, we may easily imagine in their stead the terms “Mormon” and “non-Mormon,” “baptism” or “sealing” and “unbaptism” or “unsealing,” to apply Paul’s point:
“But if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast of your relation to God and know his will and determine what is best because you are instructed in the law, and if you are sure that you are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, a corrector of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth, you, then, that teach others, will you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? You that forbid adultery, do you commit adultery? You that abhor idols, do you rob temples? You that boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? For, as it is written, ‘The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.’ “Circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law; but if you break the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision. So, if those who are uncircumcised keep the requirements of the law, will not their uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? Then those who are physically uncircumcised but keep the law will condemn you that have the written code and circumcision but break the law. For a person is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is true circumcision something external and physical. Rather, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart — it is spiritual and not literal. Such a person receives praise not from others but from God.” — Romans 2:17–29:, New Revised Standard Version
By distinguishing the letter from the spirit of the Law, Paul describes what Giorgio Agamben in The Time That Remains calls “the Cut of Apelles,” a double-cut. Rather than merely divide the world into Jew and non-Jew, or even to do away with that distinction altogether, Paul doubles the distinction, creating a category Agamben calls the “non-non-Jew.” For Paul, the letter of the Law may express the spirit thereof, but what matters ultimately is the latter, not the former. In this schema, one may possess the letter of the Law (as a Jew) and yet not follow it, thus lacking the spirit of the Law; conversely, one may lack the letter of the Law (as a gentile or non-Jew), and yet follow of themselves the spirit of the Law. Whether Jew or non-Jew, what matters is whether one is faithful to the spirit of the Law — if one is a non-non-Jew.
Nevertheless, after raising this point, Paul goes on to ask a pressing question: “Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? Much, in every way. For in the first place the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God” (Romans 3:1–2, NRSV). Thus for Paul, to insist upon the precedence of the non-non-Jew over the distinction between Jew and non-Jew (or on the non-non-Mormon, shall we say, over the distinction between Mormon and non-Mormon) is by no means to devalue Judaism (or Mormonism) but to contextualize it. Suffice it to say, we may compare the relationship between the letter of the Law and the spirit of the Law to that of a word and the thing to which it attempts to point. For instance, were I to find you crawling through the desert, dehydrated and on your last leg, it would be no help for me to kneel by your side and mouth, “Water, water, water!” You wouldn’t need the word, but the thing itself. However, that is not to devalue the word — or even language — only to put it in its proper context. I may help you to your feet, nod in a certain direction, and say, “Water, water, water,” indicating that that is what I’m taking you to get. Or you may happen upon an oasis yourself, no words necessary. The letter of the Law (or Mormonism, we might say) is a language by which the Gospel may express itself — but it is not the Good News itself.
I believe it was in this spirit that B.H. Roberts expressed the need for Mormonism to continually refine its letters, so as to more readily convey the spirit:
“I believe ‘Mormonism’ … calls for thoughtful disciples who will not be content with merely repeating some of the truths, but will develop the truths; and enlarge it by that development. Not half — not one-hundredth part — not a thousandth part of that which Joseph Smith revealed to the church has yet been unfolded, either to the church or to the world. The work of the expounder has scarcely begun. The Prophet planted by teaching the germ-truths of the great dispensation of the fulness of times. The watering and weeding is going on, and God is giving the increase, and will give it more abundantly in the future as more intelligent discipleship shall obtain. The disciples of ‘Mormonism,’ growing discontented with the necessarily primitive methods which have hitherto prevailed in sustaining the doctrine, will yet take profounder and broader views of the great doctrines committed to the Church; and, departing from mere repetition, will cast them in new formulas; cooperating in the works of the Spirit, until they help to give to the truths received a more forceful expression and carry it beyond the earlier and cruder stages of development.” — B. H. Roberts, “Book of Mormon Translation,” Improvement Era 9:9 (July 1906), 713
The goal is not to become a “good Mormon,” but through Mormonism to express and discover what it means to become what we might call a “non-non-Mormon.” To articulate and express what that means takes tremendous effort, a herculean work which must play out within every person who participates in the tradition, translating Mormonism into their particular lives and circumstances.
As I said, Mormonism insists that that which we create in this life we will take with us into the next, in the very same way that that which we create today we will take with us into tomorrow, in the same way that that which we created yesterday we took with us into today. Mormonism is not the construction of an afterlife wholly other than “this life,” but the extension of life here and now beyond death. In mortality, healthy relationships require vulnerability and honesty, compassion and forgiveness, patience and compromise, quality time and alone time — among several other factors. However, some popular Mormon rhetoric often disregards these necessities when discussing eternal relationships, narrowing the requirements for a healthy relationship beyond death to legalism and rituals — focusing upon the letter of the Law, to the detriment and even disregard of the spirit thereof. Yet this is the theology of the real estate agent, not that of the therapist, describing the celestial kingdom as an exclusive social club we find our way into, rather than as a kingdom constituted by those who create and sustain healthy eternal relationships. With love for his Mormon community, Joseph Smith said:
“…let me be resurrected with the Saints, whether I ascend to heaven or descend to hell, or go to any other place. And if we go to hell, we will turn the devils out of doors and make a heaven of it. Where this people are, there is good society. What do we care where we are, if the society be good? I don’t care what a man’s character is; if he’s my friend — a true friend, I will be a friend to him, and preach the Gospel of salvation to him, and give him good counsel, helping him out of his difficulties” — History of the Church, 5:517; 23 July 1843
We find a tremendous illustration of the therapist’s theology in a vision recounted by Joseph Smith, in Kirtland, Ohio on 21 January 1836 (D&C 137). In this vision, Smith sees the celestial kingdom, in which he finds Adam and Abraham, as well as his own mother and father (who were still alive at the time); however, most importantly, he sees his late older brother Alvin. To understand the gravitas of this vision, it’s necessary to add that Alvin died years prior to Smith’s founding of the Church in 1830, having never been baptized in his life, therefore believed by many to have been damned for eternity — and yet there he is, nestled in the arms of his mother and father, standing at the side of Adam and Abraham themselves, in the presence of Christ and God. Moreover, this vision was received and recorded some time before Smith instituted posthumous ordinances, rituals performed in remembrance of the dead who had not received them in their own lives.
The voice of the Lord enters the vision, narrating to Smith a scheme far different than the legalistic ritualism he and his family had inherited from their American Protestant milieu: “All who have died without a knowledge of this gospel,” the Lord says, “who would have received it if they had been permitted to tarry, shall be heirs of the celestial kingdom of God.” Further, the Lord adds that “all that shall die henceforth without a knowledge of it, who would have received it with all their hearts, shall be heirs of that kingdom” (D&C 137:7–8). To have “received [the gospel] with all their hearts” in such a way as to become “heirs of the celestial kingdom” holds no ritual element. Rather, the people mentioned in this text, those who “die without a knowledge of this gospel,” are described as living their lives in such a way that “they would have received it had they been permitted to tarry.” The message of this vision was not that God had supplied a loophole by which Alvin may navigate God’s bureaucracy — it was such a view of the afterlife that caused so much heartache among the Smiths in the first place. The answer was not a loophole but a reassurance, merited by who Alvin was, not what had been done in his behalf (cf. D&C 49:8–9). What saved Alvin Smith was not baptism, whether in his own life or by proxy in a temple, but the unbreakable bonds he shared with his family.
Proxy ordinances for the dead are also quite illustrative in themselves. Mormonism is laden with ironies, some of them even good ones, and I find Joseph Smith to be one of the greatest ironists of nineteenth-century America. One of these ironies is quite helpful. As mentioned above, Smith and his contemporaries lived in a religious atmosphere much like that of modern Mormon culture: suffused with an intense legalism, insisting that one must either belong to the proper sect, believe the proper doctrines, or submit to the proper rituals (such as baptism), all through the proper channels, in order to “go to heaven.” With Alvin’s death, as well as the deaths of several of Joseph Smith’s own children, the concept of “dying out of grace” or beyond the reach of these “saving” factors must have weighed heavily on Smith’s heart and mind. Such a perspective seemed to cause Smith only suffering — and needlessly so — but while many might have negated this legalism by doing away with ritual altogether, Smith instead sprinted in the other direction, introducing rituals for the dead.
As a missionary, I met a member of the LDS Church who explained this irony to me quite simply: he asked me and my missionary companion what our purpose was as missionaries. The preconditioned response was that as missionaries, “we baptize!” But he seemed unimpressed with that. He responded that that’s nice, but that everyone will be baptized, regardless of our efforts as missionaries; in a more literal view of Mormonism than my own, he described the temples of the LDS Church as already well at work, and that upon the return of Christ that posthumous work would continue, until every last person had received every ordinance — from baptism to sealing — by proxy. Feeling emotionally-charged absolutes with which I had wrestled for so long, and which I often loathed, melt away under this unnoticed irony — an exclusive ritual which every person would receive, no matter what — I heard this man ask me and my companion one more time, what was our purpose as missionaries? When we didn’t answer, he did: it was to alleviate the suffering of others.
The celestial kingdom is not a place you go, much less a place which will make you happy; even less so a place where you will simply be so happy as to not notice the absence of other members of your family (as one bastardized version of Mormonism puts it). As a happy home is built by those who can create and sustain healthy relationships, the celestial kingdom is built by celestial people who work to maintain those relationships beyond death. Furthermore, while such an effort may require internal transformation, it is nonetheless a communal process. For instance, no one can be moral in themselves, in the same way that a sphere in an absolute void could never move, for there would be nothing else it could move in relation to — movement would have no meaning for the sphere. Without others, morality would have little to no meaning to an individual. Moreover, no one can impute to another that inner nature required to become celestial, whether that means to be moral or something broader still. Ordinances cannot be made to do the work for us, as if they were a kind of folk magic or scientific mechanism; such a languid approach to ordinances would be no more beneficial than setting up camp in your garage would make you a car or being granted a diploma would convey to you the knowledge you should have acquired in your training. Instead, ordinances are symbols to help us articulate what eternal relationships may look like, structures to help us discipline our actions to serve that end, volitional covenants to periodically reaffirm our commitment to that gradually refined vision — they are means to that celestial end, not the celestial end in themselves.
On a somewhat related note, Latter-day Saints have often made a distinction between, for instance, “baptism of the dead” (phrasing they eschew) and baptism for the dead. While I agree with this distinction, I wonder if we’ve yet to really think through its ramifications: we cannot baptize the dead in any direct way, perhaps not simply because this can offend numerous people (for example, the surviving families of Holocaust victims who are told their Jewish ancestor was “baptized into the Mormon Church”), but perhaps because baptism can never be “of” a person, only “for” them. Rather than some dynamic change to the person themselves, baptism may be a tool by which one may affect that internal transformation, being an aid but never the be-all, end-all. To borrow a Buddhist aphorism, in the same way that a finger points to the moon, ordinances point to salvation and exaltation; they do not affect salvation or exaltation any more than the finger affects the moon, and they are not the only means by which one may find salvation and exaltation any more than the pointing finger is the only means by which one may notice the moon in the open sky — they are, nevertheless, tools which help us articulate what we mean by the terms salvation and exaltation, and which challenge us to consciously (and repeatedly) commit to aiming our developing selves in that direction.
So think of those you love most, and of those whom you may have once loved but now not as much, or even of those you’ve never loved in the first place — ask how you might act toward or think about them were you to realize that the relationship you share with them depends upon your mutual efforts, even into eternity. If a member of your family leaves the LDS Church, rather than wring your hands over whether they will return, or sermonize on what God will supposedly do to separate your family, or even speculate on all the ways in which they must now be less happy (or even miserable) “because they left the Church”— ask how you might act toward and think about your family member were you both already beyond the veil, in eternity. That which threatens your eternal relationships may not be a child leaving the Church or a spouse without a temple recommend, but the mutual discomfort, conflict, and alienation which can arise as a result — stresses one may wrongly attribute, by way of ignorance of defense mechanism, to the departure of the person who has disaffiliated from the LDS Church. Let Mormonism be that which helps families stay together, not that which tears them apart. Ordinances are not folk magic or beatific bureaucracy which will guarantee healthy relationships by legal bind or supernatural means; they are tools to aid us in becoming the kind of people who can create and sustain eternal relationships ourselves.
In What’s Wrong With the World, G.K. Chesterton wrote that “religion is not the church a man goes to but the cosmos he lives in.” Further, he adds, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult, and left untried.” Perhaps the Mormon ideal, too, is in a similar bind. What good are our ordinances if they cannot sustain our families in the moments that matter most, when our relationships may be most strained, such as in a faith transition or when a loved one no longer fits the culturally-accepted mold of “the ideal Latter-day Saint”?
The Good News is that we may have eternal relationships, not eternally-Mormon relationships. The possibility of healthy relationships beyond death is an existential grace, which, like any relationship here and now, requires work. So let us work together.
— — — — — — — — — —
Recommended Reading:
Related Posts | https://medium.com/interfaith-now/heaven-is-not-a-place-the-parable-of-the-happy-home-7935ab97e047 | ['Nathan Smith'] | 2019-09-16 14:04:18.729000+00:00 | ['Christianity', 'Mormon', 'Temple', 'Transformation', 'Religion'] |
Religion For Sale | Religion For Sale
a poem
Knock Knock.
Religion For sale!
There stood 2 guys at the door.
‘Uhh…we’re Atheist and Jewish!!’ we yell
(Need we say any more?)
‘But, we just want to tell you
Why the Bible‘s the way!!’
‘No thanks — that book might be a fairytale’
Maybe there’s no more to say.
‘Can’t we just have one moment?
Can’t you just let us in?
We can pray for you both
For all of your devilish sin!’
‘You can get free passes to the afterlife!’
‘But…we just believe in the NOW!!
What if we’re goodhearted humans
But don’t position our heads in a bow?’
They continued with force and with vigor
‘But this book is the TRUTH and the WAY!!’
‘Wow you guys sound like the Taliban
Staunch and rigid , wont sway.’
‘Thank you, but that’s not for us.
The ‘Golden Rules’ more our religion
Then we both walk back in to fry our eggs
In our slippers in the kitchen. | https://medium.com/lifes-funny/religion-for-sale-19bdc2f0902f | ['Michelle Monet'] | 2019-09-21 20:12:34.047000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Poetry On Medium', 'Sarcasm', 'Poem', 'Religion'] |
Building friendliness into Backend Services | Making backend API services easy to use and work with!
Photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash
What makes a backend service (that exposes functionality in the form of ReSTful APIs) fun to work with? Not just for the devs working on the service but also for everyone else using it including but not limited to developers who consume those APIs. I think this question is more valuable if flipped: What makes working with a backend service a nightmare? What feels like you are fighting the service at every point in your code?
In this post I want to draw on my experience building API services and talk through a few considerations I like to look into while building backend services. Some of these could be provided by the framework itself while others might be functionality worth building!
Consistent APIs
Consistent API naming that includes everything API related: paths, requests, responses and headers! This allows working with APIs more easy and it set a nice consistent pattern for all new APIs. Teams the consume this API will see a more predictable pattern that makes consuming the APIs easy.
Consistent Error Structures
I dedicated a whole section to error responses because this is probably one area, I wish more APIs prioritized consistency for! It is hard to work with services that don’t pass back a consistent error response for all APIs. It is possible to have certain fields in the error response be absent or present depending on the particular error but having the same over all structure makes working with these APIs very easy because consumers of the API can dedicate a central location to handling errors vs having to handle API specific errors. Similarly devs building these services can create and use error handling at a global level vs having different error responses come from different sections of the backend service.
Logging
Logging is the core of any software application. Backend services are no different! It is important to identify all the places that require logging and pick the right log level so that it makes logs reading easy in tools like Splunk (easier to filter all the error level logs vs the debug logs etc). Along those lines it is more important to make sure the things that are logged DO NOT contain sensitive information of any kind. This includes (but is not limited to) Personally Identifiable Information aka PII, API keys, authentication credentials etc. It is extremely important to make sure these values are not logged in plain text because that is a trap that is easy to fall into and could bear unwelcome consequences.
Tracing
When something goes wrong, more often that not, it helps to know the entire journey of a request: Where it came from, what came in, what time was the request received, what the backend service did to handle that request, what other API services (if any) were called etc. The ability to trace a request all the from what was received to what was sent back helps in keeping track of request handling and debugging.
Support for Secrets
There is going to be atleast one secret that your application is going to need, unless you are building a “Hello World” application. When I say secrets, I mean everything that is sensitive that should not be exposed to the whole world, anything you would never check into source control. API keys, secret values to access other services/applications, signing keys, expiration times, username/password credentials etc. When building a backend service it is important to make sure that the app or the app and the host provider (if your app is going to be deployed to the internet) have some kind of support for secrets. This includes being able to host and store secrets in such a way that only authorized personnel can manage those secrets. Some platforms take this a step further and also provide the ability to rotate secrets on a regular basis. This is very powerful because this your backend service a little away from being the weakest link in the chain. Noteworthy while we are on the topic of secrets is, to never (ever) commit your secrets to source control. If that happens there are tools to revert those commits and remove it from source control but in some cases it might be easier to just re generate that secret, invalidating the old one.
Support for API documentation
Documentation is the bridging language between everyone who consumes a backend service and the rest of the world. While picking a framework to build your service or as you are building your service it is important to think about how all the APIs are going to be documented. This should be usable by any team that wants to consume your APIs. Swagger hub is a very popular and widely used tool. Other options include Spring Rest Docs, if you are building your service on a Spring stack. If the generation of documentation is closely coupled to the code itself, meaning any new updates to the code will automatically update the documentation, that would be an added bonus because it relieves developers from having to constantly keep the code and documentation on par. | https://medium.com/dev-genius/building-friendliness-into-apis-a776adb2ab21 | ['Janani Subbiah'] | 2020-11-27 16:56:17.910000+00:00 | ['Api Development', 'Rest Api', 'Backend Development', 'Software Engineering', 'Developer'] |
Covid-19 Lessons for Ourselves and our Work | This week I’ve been sensing increased uneasiness and despair among the British population, due in part to the uncertainty of when lockdown will end and when we’ll ever be able to fully enjoy the sunshine or give our loved ones a hug. Meanwhile, the endless stream of upsetting news continues, with constant reminders not only of the scale of the pandemic and number of people dying, but also of the ineptitude of the UK government and its failures towards the doctors and nurses trying to save lives.
Every week, I’m sure for everyone, there have been countless incidents that we hear of or experience directly, that show us the grief, anxiety and trauma gripping the world’s population. I am lucky that no one I know has fallen seriously ill from Covid-19; although I may have had it when I had two days of minor symptoms, and I have family members who had the same suspicions only with far more serious symptoms, and who luckily recovered without a proper diagnosis. And I hear of many others, friends and associates, who have lost loved ones or are deeply worried about them but unable to provide direct attention and care because of social distancing rules.
Given these circumstances, these times may feel desperate and agonising. But as I touched upon in my previous blog post, I am reluctant to jump on the bandwagon of offering quick fix solutions or self-care strategies. Whilst I respect these may be useful and much needed for many people, I also believe that there is an opportunity to lean in to, not just get rid of or transcend, the difficult emotions that are coming up. Perhaps they are coming up so strongly now because they were previously repressed by constant distraction and ‘busyness.’ Perhaps they are coming up so they can teach us something, about who we really are, what our vulnerabilities are and what really matters to us. Perhaps our shadows reveal themselves now in order that they may be witnessed, listened to, and healed.
I say this from a position of privilege. Not being able to continue with a normal working day, being forced to sit with the feelings and reflect on my purpose in the wake of lockdown may be a curse, or it could be a blessing not afforded to many. I certainly have days when I do just want to ‘turn off’ the feelings and get away from the darkness of these times. But increasingly now I see my situation as an opportunity to learn; about why I feel the way I do, and about how this could be useful for the sector in which I work — in the humanitarian and development space. I wouldn’t claim to have any big life shattering answers to these questions; but as I continue with this learning process, trusting the potential for bigger answers and meaningful changes to come, I do have some reflections on what this pandemic could mean for humanitarian and development work that I feel are worth exploring. I present them here.
In the aid sector we are used to crises, and we are used to responding. We are put up on pedestals and seen as heroic because we save the lives of distant others. But here is a situation where aid workers don’t have the immediate answers or solutions, and where it is impossible to respond the way they might want — because of so many being furloughed and grounded, unable to travel. Perhaps then it is a moment to accept that there are not always clear-cut solutions, a right and a wrong. Perhaps now is not the time to be heroic, but to be humble. To open up to all perspectives in this wide-ranging debate about what needs to be done, and to consider whose voice matters most and whose is not being listened to.
Many INGOs and aid agencies have massively reduced their staff and operations in the wake of the pandemic, with thousands put on furlough. Whilst there is no doubt a downside to this in terms of humanitarian response, it has also meant that work routines and priorities have shifted. People have been forced to get out of the emergency mode that guides most aid work, even in everyday situations away from an actual emergency. For many, days are no longer filled with hour after hour of ‘urgent’ meetings. This invites the question: what is really needed in our working day? What can we let go of and how can we better use the space that opens up when we let those things go?
Whilst many international staff are grounded, more responsibilities are handed to local staff in humanitarian and development contexts. To some extent, the localisation agenda is being implemented in a way that hitherto had failed to happen in spite of promises made at senior level; local staff are likely to have a greater presence and decision-making powers in the Covid-19 response in their own countries in the Global South. This raises questions about whether they are provided with the same protections as their international colleagues, particularly given the significant risks they are exposed to right now. And it also raises questions about where international staff are really needed; and where it may be time to fully relinquish those powers to the experts on the ground.
Spending a bit more time, whilst in lockdown, on acknowledging our privileges compared with others is not necessarily a negative exercise resulting in pointless guilt. In one way it helps us to cultivate some gratitude (a popular self-care and wellness exercise currently doing the rounds) for our circumstances; not in the way so crassly suggested by U2’s Bono in Do They Know It’s Christmas (“Well tonight thank God it’s them, instead of you”). But I do believe that a step towards greater understanding of the communities served by aid workers is to understand ourselves better; our privileges and our differences, and the shadows that prompt us to behave the way we do. Furthermore, if we can learn to be more compassionate to those parts of ourselves that we perhaps don’t like very much, we can increase our compassion towards others.
And whilst there are clear differences in living conditions for the average Londoner, for instance, compared with the average Kenyan slum inhabitant, the emotions arising for us may not be that dissimilar; trauma and anxiety are being felt by everybody to different degrees. How might this experience break a historical pattern of ‘othering’ the recipients of aid, casting them out as weak and defenceless and the aid worker as the hero and saviour? How might our own complex emotions bring us closer to being with the emotions of others in completely different environments, so that we avoid flawed generalisations and assumptions, and can make more informed judgements about people’s needs?
Ultimately I believe that the more we take notice of our own emotional turmoil right now — how it feels in our bodies and what are its triggers — and the new realities we are confronted with as a result of lockdown, we might come a lot closer to taking care of each other; in our work environments, in our families and communities and in the way we respond to this pandemic on a global scale. | https://medium.com/@AidSoulSearch/covid-19-lessons-for-ourselves-and-our-work-5e262a20551c | ['Gemma Houldey'] | 2020-04-22 19:57:50.006000+00:00 | ['Humanitarian', 'Coronavirus', 'Global Health'] |
S(he) | Although outdated in upholding binary gender norms, this poem describes my thought process in making the decision to come out in 2016. Many healthcare providers advise transgender patients to undergo medical and surgical transitions if making the decision based on their own desires, and not others’ expectations.
My first tattoo, obtained shortly after coming out. Many have questioned if I regret the tattoo because (1) I cannot go “stealth,” (2) I now identify outside the gender binary. My answer: I still shout proudly, visibly the best decision I ever made.
She smells perfume,
but cannot wear it.
She does it in secret.
She adores pink,
but is entangled in blue.
She rebels.
Forced to disrobe
the dress she wears,
she defies.
She pleads,
It is my life, not only a scent.
It is my life, not only a color.
It is my life, not only a garment.
She washes off her perfume,
water smearing her blush.
Her dress at her feet,
she remains a woman.
She sees herself.
She is not defined by a scent,
or a color,
or a garment.
Yet she wears them.
And they see her.
They snarl,
they stare,
and they shame her.
They plead,
This is your life, it’s only a scent.
This is your life, it’s only a color.
This is your life, it’s only a garment.
She listens.
Yet she will not remove her fragrance,
nor adorn a faded color.
She wears these clothes,
because she does it for herself. | https://medium.com/@mackenzielerario/s-he-10e3b2235acf | ['Mackenzie Lerario'] | 2020-11-27 23:19:58.902000+00:00 | ['LGBTQ', 'Gender Identity', 'Transgender', 'Transgender Rights', 'Coming Out'] |
Join the ‘Cloud Native Geospatial’ Outreach Day and Sprint | On September 8th we will be continuing SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog (STAC) Sprint #6, but we decided to expand its scope to include more of the ‘Cloud Native Geospatial’ ecosystem. The core idea of Cloud Native Geospatial is articulated in this ‘blog series’, with the first post positing the question: ‘what would the geospatial world look like if we built everything from the ground up on the cloud?’. The second post introduced the Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF (COG), and it has since emerged as a default format for anyone doing geospatial on the cloud.
So the ‘Outreach Day’ will aim to introduce STAC, COG, and other emerging cloud-native geospatial formats and tools to new audiences. Our hope is to make the day accessible even to those who do not have deep geospatial or software development knowledge. We want to welcome new people into our community, as we believe that having all geospatial data in the world on the cloud, with tools that can process it, can help us tackle the largest problems that face us. But the technology won’t have a real impact on our planet unless we enable a diversity of users to learn it, contribute to it, and use it in their work.
The PySTAC Intro Session from STAC Sprint #5
The full agenda will be announced soon, but our plan is to have a number of ‘Introductory Sessions’ that run in various timezones through the whole day of September 8th. These will enable people who want to learn more about Cloud Native Geospatial topics and tools to learn and ask questions in smaller groups. We’ll even have some sessions that introduce the basics of geospatial and remote sensing, so please join us even if everything is new! We’ll have many people who can welcome you and answer your questions. We will also try to organize a ‘virtual job fair’ of some sort since there are many organizations looking to hire people to work in Cloud Native Geospatial.
Starting at 13:30 UTC (in the ‘middle’ of the day globally) We’ll do a couple of hours of ‘core’ sessions that everyone should try to join. And we will aim to record and post these as soon as possible for those who can’t join live. This will include a ‘State of Cloud Native Geospatial’ talk, with brief overviews of STAC & COG, along with a variety of ‘lightning talks’ from various community members. We’ll hear about companies large and small embracing Cloud Native Geospatial, dive into various datasets that are becoming available in the formats, and survey the ecosystem of tools that supports working with them.
After the core sessions, we’ll continue the beginner sessions. If you are interested in presenting a lightning talk or a beginner session please submit your ideas. After the talks, we’ll also hold the kick-off for the ‘Data Sprint’. This sprint runs for a week, and the goal is for everyone to team up and convert as much interesting data as possible to STAC and COG formats, and to do projects that show off the data. There will be a wide variety of tasks that people can do to help out — no matter what skills you come with we’ll be able to find a way for you to help out! And our hope is that people can take what they learn in the beginner sessions and actually apply it during the sprint, since the best way to learn is by actually doing.
An example of data labeling with Groundwork
We’re also going to run a Data Labeling contest as part of the sprint. This should be a great task for those who are new to geospatial, we’ll use Azavea’s Groundwork to provide a nice user interface to trace geospatial imagery, automatically creating geospatial labeled data for Machine Learning applications. The results of everyone’s work during the sprint will be a new STAC + COG dataset that we release to the world on Radiant Earth’s MLHub.
Thanks to all our sponsors!
We’ve had really amazing sponsorship, with Planet and AI for Earth at Microsoft leading the charge, and Arturo also providing substantial support. Digital Earth Africa and the World Bank are first time sponsors and are helping push us to be globally inclusive in our outreach. Maxar, SparkGeo, Element84, Amazon Web Services, Pixel8, CosmiQ Works, TileDB, and Azavea round out our great sponsors. Normally we’d use the sponsorship money to fund travel grants to welcome new people to our community. But with a purely virtual event our plan is to give out a variety of prizes to recognize the work done and help encourage new contributions. We will post the list of prizes soon, but there will be several that are available to groups less represented in STAC+COG today.
A top prize will be the location of your choice tasked in high resolution and available to all as part of Planet’s open STAC data, like the image above.
There will be some nice prizes, including an openly licensed Planet SkySat SkySat 50cm image tasked to the location of your choosing, and $15,000 in Azure credits for top projects focused on sustainability. Anyone who makes a meaningful contribution during the sprint will get a t-shirt (with some limit if we get an unexpected amount of contribution), and there will be at least one top prize of $2500 or above.
If you are interested in attending please sign up at on this Google Form and you’ll receive email updates on all the details on the event. Thanks!
UPDATE: More information on how we are working to welcome new people and prize specifics is available here. | https://medium.com/radiant-earth-insights/join-the-cloud-native-geospatial-outreach-day-and-sprint-286f6fd553c3 | ['Chris Holmes'] | 2020-09-03 13:20:57.240000+00:00 | ['Geospatial', 'Stac Spec', 'Remote Sensing', 'Cloud Native Geospatial', 'blog series'] |
An A-Z of the skills of the future | What is the future of work, from the perspective of an employee? Well, it’s likely to be a little — or a lot — different than today. The world’s workforce will have to adapt. New roles will be created while other roles become redundant.
We know that AI will take over some of the more repetitive jobs, but humans have unique skills — such as emotional intelligence and creativity — and any talk of the robots taking over is nonsense.
As such I thought I’d compile a list of future skills that you can learn, develop and nurture.
Most of the skills outlined in that report began with ‘c’, so it didn’t help me too much with this A-Z format, but here goes…
A is for Adaptability
This one is not a surprise. Organisations will continue to make the most of new technologies as they are rolled out. It will be down to the rest of us to develop our skills to such a level that we can use them without problem. The employees of the future need to be adaptable and agile.
B is for Business sense
Some degree of business knowledge will help increase your employability. Many of the world’s fastest growing companies are startups, which look for entrepreneurialism and commercial acumen. A side project can be a good way of learning some business smarts.
C is for Creativity
The art of being creative is a unique human quality. It allows us to write books, compose music and draw art. These are all things that other species are incapable of, and artificial intelligence would have to come a long, long way to compete with us on that score. AI may well take over some mechanical work in the future, but humans will always be needed for their creative input.
D is for Dynamism
Quick reactions will likely be key to staying on top of the future job market. This could apply to those displaced by AI or similar technology in the future — it will likely be on their shoulders to demonstrate the ability to shift with the times.
E is for Emotional intelligence
This is all about being able to identify and regulate your own emotions, and also show empathy towards those of others. The former can help reduce procrastination and increase effectiveness in the workplace, and the latter will help you to forge stronger bonds with your teammates. Surveys have shown that 71% of hiring managers say that they valued emotional intelligence over IQ.
Travis Bradberry, author of Emotional Intelligence 2.0, stated in 2014 that 90% of the top performers at work are high in emotional intelligence, and only 20% of the bottom performers are this way.
There is a new breed of ‘EngageTech’ business tools that focus on “engagement, emotional connection, and nurturing very human emotions like trust, reciprocity, belonging and good will”, which will help bring these unique skills to the fore.
F is for Flexibility
Cognitive flexibility, to be more exact. Nobody wants to see your plié move in the office.
This is a psychological state of being able to refocus attention and adapt behaviours when external stimuli change. This pretty much describes the future of work. Technologies and methods of work are going to change, and it’s going to be important to have the capacity to keep on top of it.
G is for Globally connected
Links to various parts of the world will serve to help people more and more into the future. As transport becomes faster and messaging becomes easier, organisations readily have contact to places a fair distance away. Offices in multiple continents will become even more the norm.
Can you speak Spanish? Have professional contacts in Asia? All of these global skills and links will help you to progress your career in the future.
H is for Helping others
This is a rather underrated skill. Being able to share your knowledge with someone in a way that they can understand it is a talent, and it also allows companies to grow and relationships to flourish.
In fact, we think it’s so important at Guild that we wrote about some best knowledge-sharing practices.
Of course, this is a skill which has always been around and always will be, but its importance certainly won’t decline.
I is for Interdisciplinary knowledge
It’s going to be a must to have some specialist knowledge from multiple fields in the future. Coming up with solutions to new issues will require workers to pull in knowledge from more than one field, and the ones who can do this best will be amongst the most employable.
Practice doing some daily research about topics you are interested in, and slowly broaden your horizons!
J is for Judgement
A skill which serves you well in all of life, and is certainly not something new going into the future. However, being able to make the right decision from a set of data is something that will make you instantly more employable.
K is for Kindness
In tomorrow’s ever-stressed out world, a little kindness and empathy towards those around you will be a valued quality. It’ll also help you demonstrate social skills and emotional intelligence in the workplace, and ensure that you are considered a much-needed member of the team for years to come.
L is for Learning
Implementing effective forms of learning will always put you one step ahead when it comes to increasing your skill-set. It is usually helpful to figure out what type of learner you are, and then execute the behaviours that will help you learn the most.
For example, an auditory learner would make the most progress tackling an issue by listening intensely to some instructions. Making the most out of your learning style can help keep you on top of all other skills which will be required in the future.
Lifelong learning is central to career — and personal — development, and companies that support learning programmes will be among the best places to work.
M is for Malleability
According to Nick van Dam, global chief learning officer at McKinsey & Co., “lifetime employment doesn’t exist anymore”. This means that companies dissolve more often, so employees will have to hold down a few positions over their lifetime.
A rigid desire for one type of job or a lack of diverse skills could really be detrimental for workers of the near future.
It’s no longer “cool” to be ignorant about the latest technology. Some people pride themselves on the fact that they stay simple, and don’t dabble in any technology. However, for the jobs in the near future, being able to comprehend new forms of technology and media is going to be vital.
O is for Organisation
In a past time of fewer distractions, it may have been easier to work more effectively. Nowadays with the repetitive buzz from our mobile phones, and hundreds of daily emails to sift through, organisational skills are becoming a priority.
You can increase your productivity at work in four key ways: focus, learn, collaborate and socialise. Make the most of your time by becoming better organised. Your boss will thank you for it.
P is for People-management
This one makes an appearance on the World Economic Forum report of the 10 most important skills for 2020. Although technologies and job titles will be changing, there is always going to be the need for strong leaders and managers who can motivate a team of workers.
Q is for Quantitative skills
Handling data, understanding statistics and feeling comfortable around numbers. These are all highly sought-after qualities in the current job market, and this will probably just continue to be the case into the future.
With the forecasted increase in automation, coding and number-crunching will be central players.
R is for Research skills
With a considerable amount of new information coming to light, and the inevitable implementation of new working techniques, it is going to be important to have the skill to conduct your own research. Having the gumption to work things out for yourself will save you lots of time.
Nesta lists research and quantitative research skills as one of the most promising skills to have on your side by 2030.
S is for Social intelligence
With the impending increase in automation, humans will likely be pushed into roles which require strong communication and the need to be creative with each other. This is according to the Institute for the Future, which places social intelligence as one of its key skills to develop going into the future.
T is for Transferable skills
Not just a hot phrase for university graduates explaining what they learned during their studies, transferable skills are also key in the workplace. Nail your communication skills, problem solving skills and learning skills and you will be able to give a good go at any sort of job.
U is for Understanding other nationalities
The global nature of work will keep rising, and international colleagues will become commonplace. To help keep communication polite and respectful, it will be important to understand and respect some basic values of other cultures and countries.
V is for Visualisation skills
A nice mixture of creativity, imagination and problem-solving, visualising your path to completing the task at hand is often a good way to get things done. Efficiency will always be a valued trait, so anything you can do to increase that will help you in the future.
W is for Written communication
Even if your future job doesn’t specifically involve writing, it will always remain a key part of the way organisations communicate. Being clear when sending messages to colleagues is very important for the smooth progression of tasks.
X is for X-cultural competencies
Cross-cultural communication is going to be crucial with the ease of global messaging. Impactfactory.com provides some tips to help you perfect your cross-cultural conversations, including avoiding slang and etiquette tips.
Y is for Your network
Building and maintaining your professional relationships is a crucial part of developing your career. People who bring a black book of connections are always sought after, as they can help to open doors and recruit proven talent.
It goes without saying that helping people to stay connected to the right people is one of the reasons why we launched Guild.
Z is for Zealous
Not a noun, I know. But cut me some slack with the ‘z’. Being zealous simply means to be full of passion for a task. Showing enthusiasm and being someone who is uplifting to work with will likely win over any workplace even hundreds of years from now.
Photo by Jungwoo Hong on Unsplash. | https://medium.com/the-guild-journal/an-a-z-of-the-skills-of-the-future-4e4a5c15f731 | ['Team Guild'] | 2019-01-28 15:01:51.925000+00:00 | ['Skills Development', 'Future Of Work', 'Skills'] |
BANKS CONSUME OVER THREE TIMES MORE ENERGY THAN BITCOIN, ACCORDING TO RESEARCHER | HAVING THE WRONG CONVERSATION
According to Katrina Kelly-Pitou, the popular debate on whether or not Bitcoin’s $6438.93 -0.02%network electricity consumption is causing serious damage to our climate is not headed in the right direction. Kelly-Pitou is a clean energy technology researcher at the University of Pittsburg,
Citing recent studies, which suggest Bitcoin dramatically increases the consumption of electricity on a global scale, Kelly-Pitou claims that experts are failing to understand some of the basics behind renewable energy systems:
“Electricity production can increase while still maintaining a minimal impact on the environment. Rather than focusing on how much energy Bitcoin uses, the discussion should center around who indeed is producing it — and where their power comes from.”
While she doesn’t neglect the substantial amount of electricity used for Bitcoin mining, she also notes that banking alone consumes “an estimated 100 terawatts.”
This is a little bit more than three times the energy Bitcoin mining consumes. She also makes an interesting claim, assuming 100x increase in Bitcoin’s current market size. Kelly-Pitou notes:
“If Bitcoin technology were to mature by more than 100 times its current market size, it would still equal only 2 percent of all energy consumption.”
THE RIGHT DISCUSSION
According to the Kelly-Pitou, the focus shouldn’t be directed towards the energy consumption of Bitcoin’s network but rather towards the carbon production of Bitcoin and finding out how it could be reduced.
Bitcoinist recently reported on a new study that concluded Bitcoin has an energy problem that could affect global climate change due to high carbon emissions.
According to Kelly-Pitou, though, there is not enough information to support these kinds of claims. The same opinion is shared by Stanford lecturer Jonathan Koomey, who noted:
“For two decades, people have been eager to overestimate electricity use by computing. My concern is that we simply don’t have adequate data to come to the strong conclusions that he’s coming to.”
Source: bitcoinist.com
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______________________________________ | https://medium.com/ktiglobal/banks-consume-over-three-times-more-energy-than-bitcoin-according-to-researcher-c538b27c02a3 | [] | 2018-08-23 11:12:08.856000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Blockchain', 'Consuming', 'Bitcoin', 'Banks'] |
The Arrogance Loop | The Arrogance Loop
The Dark side of an Arrogant Elite
Can you imagine living in a country where few tell the truth, and the news just reports viewpoints that seek to regulate opinions. A country where all laws serve a happy few and the term ‘take what you can get away with’ is the rule of thump for the elite? Everyone else is still free to shout what they want (on the internet), yet media manipulation, propaganda, spin doctoring, fear mongering amongst parts of the population make all calls for change sound weaker and weaker, while the unrest among the masses grows. They just know, they’ve been scammed, but it’s harder and harder to get a fair hearing. For now apathy is most common, but as problems rise and solutions seem more and more out of reach for many poor people, a resistance movement is growing. At the same time it seems the elite is getting more brazen and arrogant about what they do. They start to believe it’s their right to live like this. The word ‘entitlement’ becomes household. Do you feel your country is like this? (USA, France, UK, other?) Do you feel the end of freedom and morality seem not to far ahead, or even feel like a forgotten borderline that has been passed already?
The core of the ‘Arrogance Loop’ pattern.
What is going on? I once had a girlfriend whose father was manic depressive. Within the family his attitude would grow every day a little more rude, arrogant and scoffing. And as his family feared his outrages his demands would slowly increase, as would his outrages when things didn’t play out to his liking. All the way to a point that his wife would threaten to leave him, his children exploded back and everyone refused to play the game and demanded some excuses. He’d mumble some kind of sorry, would play all nice and sweet and giving for a bit. And then, when everyone thought he learned, his attitude would slowly get worse again. To prevent his outrages, once again they’d all play along, until he really crossed too many borders again. They’d revolt, he’d tone down, after which the loop was repeated. This is what I call an Arrogance Loop.
How it works and what it needs.
This harrowing tale of destructive relationships is nothing new. Yet our understanding of it in the bigger scale of things isn’t developed enough yet.
What do I mean with that? Namely that national or even global politics follow the same pattern. Hillary Clinton behavior in the 2016 election shows a beautiful curve of arrogance towards Bernie if she’s winning enough, and mimicking his stances when she feels she has to win over his followers. The same with the American elite. Currently the news gets more and more manipulated1, through playing the card of possible voter fraud voters rights get limited in absurd ways2 and truth’s distorted. And since they get away with it, they slowly put more and more self serving laws and regulations in place on top of the old ones. No laws stopping them, no gigantic protests or arrests as yet pressing for change. So they continue on this course.
The discrepancy between what feels right and what is right (by law).
Big corporations are the same. Once, at the end of the 19th century, child labour in the West, immensely long work hours were stopped by the rise of workers unions and the fear of the mighty for communistic revolutions. Those changes also led to the rise of the middle class. Corporations went with it for a while. When mobility during the 20th century became easier, and unions in the West were strong, they found out it was possible to open up sweat shops in Asia. And child labour and long working hours returned on massive global scales. Only through protests and activists that hit corporations like Nike in the wallet, did quite a few of them tone down their practices, or just hid them better and spin doctored all news around it. And now with smart framing it seems incomes below the poverty line in the US are a must to do what? Keep the billionaires rich? The story of the banking crisis is also one of expanding rules and self enrichment on more and more shady scales.
The dangers of an Arrogance Loop out of control
It’s not even that the greedy elite is evil or want to rule as dictators. They just want to keep on growing more powerful (very addictive stuff: power) and protect their interests. Hell, they even might think they need all that power to do good, according to their limited personal believes3. And since their actions seem normal, they keep it up. The thousands of people working for them, and even helping them pressing these interests for good salaries all make it seem more okay too. The higher they get, the less they feel for others. Madeleine Albright is a perfect example of not valuing lives other than her own side4. It shouldn’t surprise you that it has been discovered that people who are richer than 10 million seem to lose their moral compass. And the more and more power they gain, the more the elite is allowed free play, the more they’ll believe it is okay, as wild dogs who got unleashed.
All work should support life on this planet and be liberating rather than bonding.
The current loop out of control means pollution and destruction of nature, for the profit of a few. It means wars, against created enemies, to enrich a weapon industry. It means documents and researches into damages done by medications and GMO’s may be falsified or smartly framed to protect interests. It means a growing amount of poor working full work weeks and still earn not enough to support their families. It means you feel small and the world dishonest. And you’ll see very rich people smiling on the covers of magazines, toasting to successes you never experience the results of.
Two future scenario’s
Here’s the thing. It’s all much like this Manic Depressive father: The loop will spin out of control, until the borders become clarified. Until then, most often, the arrogance will betray itself by becoming more and more brazen, as everything seems to be allowed. Often even applauded by believers or people hoping to benefit from supporting the elite. Yet, when the Arrogance Loop is not contained it has only two possible endings. The first is a (hopefully a velvet) dictatorship, where if you want access to good, money, food and housing you need to play along, or even support the regime. Such a regime will suppress resistance with self justified violence and regulations, mostly way worse and expensive than solving the true issue for the general public. Here the Apartheid regime is a good example. It made a few white guys very rich, but South Africa as a whole much poorer. Very much like what’s happening in the current USA.
The second thing that can happen is a resistance that starts with banners in the streets and ends in violence. The most well know example being the French revolution (or the current Yellow Vests protests 2019 edit). The reign of Louis XVI was the perfect example of an arrogance loop out of control. Also the English arrogance towards Americans that led the the war of independence was infuriating. The elite had become totally blind and or indifferent to the tolls of normal people. Rather than seek answers and help, they regarded protests as attacks. And when even the pretext of leading and caring for normal people gets lost, apathy may turn to resentment and resentment turn to anger. Regimes often seek to turn the anger towards a minority, believe or group of foreigners (illegal immigrants!). But, like it happened to many dictators the last decades, in the end, the shots may be fired at the ‘happy few’ in the biggest palaces.
Suggestions for the Populace
S o the lesson for all normal people is: apathy or fear of confrontation makes matters worse. They later you step up, the bigger measures will be needed to make the elite listen. Already relationships between rich and poor, between en elites and minorities are severely damaged. And posting shouts on facebook or rants on Youtube will not be enough. Even several thousands people protesting at the doors of CNN for falsifying the news, hardly, or not at all, reached mainstream media. You really have to be louder. And like Martin Luther King use higher morals everyone can identify with. All violent actions will be framed as criminal or perhaps even terrorism. And this in turn will incite more restrictive laws.
Why is this USSR poster propaganda and FOX news ‘free press’?
Gandhi and Nelson Mandela made change work without violence. Like the father of my ex, somewhere deep within, the Elite know they are out of bounds. They need to get clear and strict boundaries. Yet, if their idiocy is repeated often enough the liars and their followers do tend to start to believe it. Like, try to explain to an average American (who believes FOX) the difference between social democracy (modern Norway) and communism (old USSR or current Venezuela). This makes all the anti Muslim rhetorics worrying too. At some point this will become a new ‘accepted reality’.
Don’t accept rules that make no sense or feel harming to individuals. Make clear statements with civil disobedience if necessary, hit them in the financial pockets if you can. And don’t get self righteous either. Many revolutions turned to shit when the revolutionaries became as corrupt as the former elite, or fought over spoils, or, like in Syria, drowned in blood. Look for the best examples, like Vaclav Havel and Mandela to see how change needs to include those you oppose, not make enemies out of them.
Suggestions to the Elite
And the lesson to the elite is: when you think you can get away with it, you’re on the wrong road. When you have more than 10 million (should I say billion by now?) and have friends in high places or even feel part of the ruling class and you still don’t understand what this is about, you’ve gone too far. If you can’t or don’t dare to walk any normal suburb you’ve gone too far. If you need to have body guards and lawyers to stay safe you’ve gone too far. If you need to buy lobbyists, spin doctors, politicians and or cronies to stay out of prison you’ve gone too far. If you google yourself in a negative way and find loads of different links, you’ve gone too far, even when half of those are exaggerated. You’ve become too arrogant to understand what your actions mean to other humans. Arrogance, self righteousness and manipulation to protect interests make the bubble on which you float bigger and will make the burst harder. It is time to self reflect on your position. Arrogance means you’re forgetting that at one point you promised to serve, not to amorally take (even with the law on your side) ‘at the cost of’. Your arrogance may cost thousands loss, life and homes. Probably it already did.
For if you don’t work for the ‘bigger whole’ and all citizens feel acknowledged, respected and supported, you are doing something wrong. Think about it as water. It’s healthy when it goes full circle. But when money only goes up and it never really rains (a trickle is not enough), you get draught and resentment. You could bring the rain back. Go do that!
Share! Truly share and help. It will make you so much happier as well.
Notes:
1 Very few people actually own the big media corporations, and control messages. Also these same news corporations (in the USA) are by law free to lie (yes, crazy), as corporations are free to lie, as they are regarded as individuals, who also may lie.
2 Yet when thousands of minority people can’t vote or a heavily discouraged, this doesn’t seem to be fraud. That’s called ‘security’ Even when most of these voters seem to prefer outsiders or underdogs who campaign against the establishment.
3 When the personal believes of very few people, like the Koch brothers become the solutions for everyone, you can not have a balanced and healthy society. Most often opposing sides have both good ideas to bring to the table. It’s all about balance, not about strong singleminded policies. Especially not, when fueled by warped world views and pure self interest.
4 From Wikipedia: On May 12, 1996, Albright defended UN sanctions against Iraq on a 60 Minutes segment in which Lesley Stahl asked her “We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?” and Albright replied “We think the price is worth it.” (She didn’t explain who the ‘we’ in this answer was. To me the lack of shame or care was shocking.) | https://medium.com/the-gentle-revolution/the-arrogance-loop-1bf46ec4539c | ['Floris Koot'] | 2019-04-23 14:35:51.432000+00:00 | ['Social Change', 'Economics', 'Politics', '2016 Election', 'Revolution'] |
Franchise Business Opportunities in Ahmedabad | Are you looking for franchise business opportunities in Ahmedabad? In this article, you can check the top 6 franchise business opportunities in India. Now, these franchises are offering franchise business in Ahmedabad. These all are very well-reputed brands and a great business opportunity to start your start-up.
You can select any one of them as per your interest and budget. Franchise business is better than your own business in terms of growth because it gives you a chance to grow at a very fast speed and gives good profits in a shorter period of time. People prefer franchise business because it’s products and services already have a brand reputation in the market.
But, we believe our team efforts and marketing strategy and our passion for work are very necessary to earn a good profit and own name in that area so that you can add your franchise name in this already reputed franchise chain.
Please check top 6 franchise business opportunities in Ahmedabad as below:
Apnaa Addaa
Source: Facebook
A group of four friends has an idea of running a café and how Apna Adda came into reality. In a very short period of time, Apna Adda makes its presence as a very popular brand in Ahmedabad. It has more than 6 franchise outlets and is searching for opening this brand in PAN Gujarat.
A café started by four friends to sell tea and snacks and now this cafe has become a regular place for friends, groups and it really proves its name Apna Adda. Love and good reviews received by our customers make our business more successful and we made progress from lorry to our business van.
Mahesh Joshi is the one who takes this business to new heights. Apna Adda has already more than 5 successful branches and is still offering franchises in Ahmedabad because it is a really profitable business.
Franchise Chokhi Dhani
Source: Chokhi Dhani Chennai
Chokhi Dhani franchise is an emerging business opportunity in India. Chokhi Dhani is a Rajasthani heritage resort and it is built in such a way that everything represents Rajasthani culture and traditions. People love to visit this place as it introduces the root of village life. Chokhi Dhani has multiple outlets like Franchise Chokhi Dhani Panchkula, Sonipat, Pune, etc.
Every evening the village fair is organized in the Chokhi Dhani and it is the center of attraction for them. Different types of games and rides and shows take place in that fair. People can enjoy true Rajasthani dining in this place. It is not only loved by local people but also tourists love to visit this place.
Chokhi Dhani is now offering franchise opportunities in Ahmedabad. It is a great business opportunity because it is an all season business irrespective of weather season.
Urban Khichdi
Source: Facebook
Urban Khichdi is a current setup of providing a healthy & nutritious diet. Khichdi is our popular food and is obliged amongst all the cultures and in diverse formats. Urban Khichdi serves more than 50+ verities with amazing Indian Tadka.
Urban Khichdi is now offering franchise business opportunities in Gujarat. It has USPs like Healthy food, Balanced diet, suits all age groups and fine dining experience. It offers 2 franchise business models.
It is also a good business opportunity in Ahmedabad.
Coffee Culture
Source: Coffee Culture
Coffee culture is also offering franchise business opportunities in PAN India. It is offering franchise opportunity in 2 business model as below:
· The Sizzling Cafe
Area Required: 250 to 300 sq ft
Franchise Fee: 15 Lacs
Total Investment: 50 to 60 Lacs
· The Restaurant Lounge
Area Required: 1600 to 3000 sq ft
Franchise Fee: 15 Lacs
Total Investment: 80 Lacs to 1 CR
Purple SPA
Source: Facebook
Purple Salon n Spa” is the very popular brand of Specialized Salon & Spa. “The Purple Spa & Hair Pamper” as a product is looking to enlarge its branches in Pan India through a consistent franchise grid constructed by connecting with businesspersons like yourself.
The Salon & Spa business is flourishing and the chances ahead are huge. Purple Spa with its organized method and franchise welcoming processes offer a solid agenda for you as a franchise companion.
· Franchise Details:
Area Required: 2000 to 2500 sq ft
Franchise Fee: 7 Lacs
Total Investment: 60 to 70 Lacs
Vadapav Mistri
Source: Vadapav Mistri
Vadapav Mistri is India’s leading food chain and is now providing franchise business opportunities in Ahemdabad. Vada pav is very popular street food and Vadapav Mistri is a very well-known brand in the market. It is offering franchise opportunity in 4 models as below
· Cart
· Kiosk
· Food truck
· Store
It believes and Statistics show that success rates of franchises are significantly higher than those of individuals starting their own business concept. It is a great vada pav franchise business opportunity. | https://medium.com/@chokhidhanifranchise/franchise-business-opportunities-in-ahmedabad-b8c3b2172ad8 | ['Pankaj Gupta'] | 2020-02-20 12:16:11.597000+00:00 | ['Business Opportunities', 'Ahmedabad', 'Opportunity', 'Franchise', 'Business'] |
From Russia…with Big Dreams | Ana (Design Toast): So, full disclosure for our readers, we have known each other for quite a while. We met back in prep art school in Estonia when we were still in our early teens. Then we lost touch and reconnected a few months ago. I don’t really know much about your life or career during the time between then and now. How did you get your start as a designer?
Katerina: Almost right out of Estonian Academy of Arts in 2011 I moved to Moscow. I worked as a freelancer at first and managed to win some awards despite little experience at that time. I’ve known my life would be connected with art since I was a kid. I used to be interested in fashion design. Then–in architecture. In the end I decided to choose something more broad–graphic design combines everything that I enjoy.
Ana: Nowadays you work as a freelancer, though you’ve had a wide range of experience working both in an in-house and agency setting…What made you want to switch to freelancing?
Katerina: In Moscow I used to work at a web agency, Belti, as well as a large sports company, Sportdepo, as a lead designer. When I moved to Sochi in september of 2018, I shifted focus to freelancing. Some of my latest clients include the publishing house “Novoye Nebo” [“New Sky”] and the car maker Haval who I created a holiday gift packaging for. As a freelancer I am more free to choose my projects.
All photos courtesy of Katerina Makatrovskaya.
Ana: Based on what I know about you, you are what I call a versatile creative (others might use the word “unicorn”)..Any specific examples of when going beyond the graphic or web design scope came useful on a project?
Katerina: There were a few curious moments with clients. When our team started working on “House of Football”, we reached out to an Italian agency for retail concept design. According to the concept, the store was supposed to have 2 stories with a circular staircase in the middle. However, the stories of the building were purposefully misaligned, which caused severe spacing issues on the second story between the staircase and wall. Since I was in charge of the project, I noticed that based on the proposed design, we would be losing 43 sq ft of useful retail space. That’s considering leasing prices in Moscow. The agency ended up changing the drafts and the type of the staircase used.
All photos courtesy of Katerina Makatrovskaya.
Ana: As designers, we often work with constraints, be it budget limitations, corporate bureaucracy, or unrealistic timelines. Our task is to make these constraints work in our favor. Do you have any inspiring stories about defying such limitations?
Katerina: When I was working at Sportdepo, they introduced a new customer loyalty campaign. My job was to come up with 5 concepts: 4 for different types of sport–soccer, hockey, martial arts, figure skating–and a premium card. Though I had creative freedom, the subject matter of professional sport is quite specific, on top of which I felt limited by the corporate color palette. I spent over a month working on the design and ditched almost 70 ideas before I got anywhere with it. When I did, it required extensive Photoshop-ing with numerous treatments and layering to achieve the 3-dimensional effect you can see in the images. I composited 24 photos of the same equipment from various angles, trying to instill movement into the design.
Some time later, a mom of a figure skater came to a store in Nizhny Novgorod and was offered the loyalty card with the figure skating theme–she seemed very pleased. Next thing we know, 200 cards are gone because all the moms from that school came and got them. This was the project I received a national “Victoria Awards” for in 2017.
Ana: What about some less-than-perfect client experiences?
Katerina: I had an extremely beneficial experience with an orthodox publishing house. See, there are specific canons when dealing with religious depictions. I was working on promotional banners for them. We settled on a concept–a pattern using various orthodox symbols. We settled on the color palette. And I started working on mockups. It’s our final presentation and I’m going over the designs as I notice the client in somewhat of a shock. Turns out the rotated cross in the pattern was entirely against the canon and I had to redo all 20 banners.
All photos courtesy of Katerina Makatrovskaya.
Ana: Is there a project you consider your golden ticket when pitching a project or applying for a job?
Katerina: It was 2013. An important client was looking to create a brochure that would be impressive when showing the top-managers of their customers. The client’s business was cement and concrete… This needed some creativity, so on top of a non-standard layout I paid close attention to the paper, the Pantone colors, even the UV-gloss. The brochure turned out excellent–matte balck cover with spot gloss and gold foil. In the end, the brochure cost as much as a great book. The client was extremely proud.
Ana: You are currently planning your move to the States and you mentioned wanting to work for a big name company once there. Do you have an ultimate career dream?
Katerina: Since I was 17, my dream has been to work on the innovative new projects of Apple. I must be their biggest fan–I love their philosophy, their tech, and the style. I would love to be able to add to the history of this brand.
My other big dream is to start my own design school. At the end of February 2020, I am launching my new site and announcing the first few courses. My hope is to help young designers, marketing professionals, social media specialists, and anyone working with their hands. By the way, I already have my first few students whom I teach remotely. I am very much looking forward to seeing what the future brings. | https://medium.com/design-toast/from-russia-with-big-dreams-e76bfbcc950e | ['Aiga Los Angeles'] | 2020-02-20 23:18:38.981000+00:00 | ['Interview', 'Career Paths', 'Graphic Design', 'Visual Design'] |
Getting started with Kafka and Rust: Part 2 | Switching to Manual commit
By default, the offset commit process is taken care of by the library itself. But we can exercise more control over it by switching to manual mode.
First thing would be do set enable.auto.commit to false - set("enable.auto.commit", "false");
At-least once delivery
To achieve this, we need to make sure we indeed process the message successfully before committing the offset. To simulate this, let’s write a function (named process ) that can fail randomly. We will then use this in our consumer loop and commit only when this functions returns successfully.
We will need to modify our consumer loop
Add manual offset commit based on response from the process function
function Add a label ( 'consumer_thread ) to our thread loop
We call process - this is to simulate processing of each record received by the consumer. In case the processing succeeds (returns Ok ), we commit the record using commit_message.
Note that the commit itself may fail. This should ideally be handled in the commit_callback implementation of ConsumerContext
Run the program
Rename the file src/3_manual_commit.rs to main.rs , and
to , and Execute cargo run
The program output is lengthy, please bear with me.
Output:
produced message with key user-1 in offset 22 of partition 2
produced message with key user-2 in offset 28 of partition 4
post_rebalance callback
rebalanced partition 0
rebalanced partition 1
rebalanced partition 2
rebalanced partition 3
rebalanced partition 4
rebalanced partition 5
received key user-5 with value User { id: 5, email: "[email protected]" } in offset 52 from partition 3
SUCCESSFULLY processed User info User { id: 5, email: "[email protected]" }
committed offset Offset(53) in partition 3
received key user-2 with value User { id: 2, email: "[email protected]" } in offset 28 from partition 4
SUCCESSFULLY processed User info User { id: 2, email: "[email protected]" }
produced message with key user-3 in offset 35 of partition 0
committed offset Offset(29) in partition 4
received key user-1 with value User { id: 1, email: "[email protected]" } in offset 22 from partition 2
FAILED to process User info User { id: 1, email: "[email protected]" }
loop encountered processing error. closing consumer...
post_rebalance callback
ALL partitions have been REVOKED
Notice these logs messages when process returns successfully:
received key user-5 with value User { id: 5, email: “[email protected]” } in offset 52 from partition 3 SUCCESSFULLY processed User info User { id: 5, email: “[email protected]” } committed offset Offset(52) in partition 3
For a failure scenario:
received key user-1 with value User { id: 1, email: “[email protected]” } in offset 22 from partition 2 FAILED to process User info User { id: 1, email: “[email protected]” } loop encountered processing error. closing consumer…
We ended up stopping the consumer when processing failed? The question here is:
How to handle messages that did not get processed?
Note that failure could happen due to many reasons. A couple of them are:
Processing failed (this is what we simulated in this example), or,
Processing was successful, but the commit failed
If we continue with our consumer loop after a failed message, we could end up losing messages (data loss). Why? It’s because the commit_message method also marks smaller offsets (less that the one being handled) as committed. For e.g. if you had a scenario where offset 20 from partition 5 failed to get processed (and committed), you continue processing and offset 21 from partition 5 was processed and committed successfully, you will end up missing data from offset 20 - this is because committing offset 21 will also commit offsets 20 and below. Even after you re-start the application, this will not be detected.
To prevent this…
You can either: | https://itnext.io/getting-started-with-kafka-and-rust-part-2-129c372dc1ad | ['Abhishek Gupta'] | 2021-04-14 18:12:01.768000+00:00 | ['Messaging', 'Programming', 'Kafka', 'Rust'] |
this is what happens when I’m my own therapist | this is what happens when I’m my own therapist
addiction, art by debora Ewing
in your absence
I’ve re-designated your empty space
Projection
Transference
Sublimation
Dissolution
are directed at you,
Nemesis,
polar opposite, dark force
you are safe, in absentia
the database can’t be deleted
it wants purpose
none of this has anything to do with you
in your absence
you are my punching bag | https://medium.com/a-cornered-gurl/this-is-what-happens-when-im-my-own-therapist-117075b2499e | ['Deb Ewing'] | 2020-10-19 14:39:19.711000+00:00 | ['Respect', 'Therapy', 'A Cornered Gurl', 'Psychology', 'Poetry'] |
two simple things to aim for in strength training | There are lot of technical aspects to strength training, and there are lots and lots of movements. And hundreds of variations of each movement too.
There’s the overwhelming confusion that stems from technique. How do you pack your shoulders? How do you brace? How much do you stiffen up? What angle should you turn your toes out? What does all this even mean?
And while there are remarkably excellent books and coaches that we can pick up these techniques from, mastering them is a life-long journey. For example, Brett Jones is still searching for his perfect kettlebell swing, he says.
As a beginner, or sometimes, even as an experienced lifter, we can get bogged down with technique and get in the way of things. As a over-thinker, I certainly fall into that category.
But I realised something profound and simple — watch a ballet dancer, or a speed skater (or any elite athlete) and you will see that they look good doing what they are doing. It is not clunky or weird.
Don’t think so? Here’s something you can do. Take a video of something you do reasonably well — playing badminton or running or whatever. And then compare it to the world #1 and look at the difference in beauty of the movement.
You know it when things look right. It is just how it is. Even as coaches, before I can point out whether there’s something off, I know there’s something off. And when someone moves well, it is blindingly obvious.
There are two attributes that I strive for, when it comes to my training. One comes from Pavel and the other comes from Dan John.
They are rhythm and grace.
Rhythm: movement or procedure with uniform or patterned recurrence of a beat, accent, or the like Grace: elegance or beauty of form, manner, motion, or action
Rather than be robotic about a movement, or being over-stiff or too floppy or trying to do 27 different things in my setup for the deadlift — finding my natural rhythm and aiming for grace — seems to nail things for me.
These might not be two things that one would associate with lifting heavy weights and it took me a long time to understand what the two greats were saying, but this has been amongst my biggest learnings in my training.
Aiming to find my rhythm — whether it is doing heavy squats or going running or doing a metcon. And striving to look graceful when I do that, as opposed to trying to do it as fast as possible or going as hard as possible.
Next time you find yourself over-thinking or unsure if you are doing it right or not — focus on a solid setup and then just aim to find rhythm and look as graceful as you can.
Maybe it will change how you train forever. | https://medium.com/@arvindashok/two-simple-things-to-aim-for-in-strength-training-80e45d51a26a | ['Arvind Ashok'] | 2021-01-06 14:53:14.494000+00:00 | ['Framework', 'Mindset', 'Student Of Strength'] |
DREAM CODE: OCTOBER OF 2020 | DREAM CODE: OCTOBER OF 2020
October 7
I had a dream where in I woke up because I was cussing at my school requirements due to their deadline and very loudly at that so I thought I was really doing it in real life and woke up which made me do my requirements
October 21
This time my head thought of having the idea of dreaming that my family had powers but I didn’t even remember what they were
October 25
The perspective was that I was a character at a manhua/manga that had raped a "nether" ( this was her power ) cat girl and it was forced to her along with a tofu making person and a black and white tiger ( this was their power as well ) but she got raped by us individually after that our "master" found out and gathered us in to one room I met my cousins Auntie Diane, Tolsheg and Maya when I was supposed to say sorry to her for I felt etremely repulsed at myself but I could not due to my pride so I decided to go to our car but she was looking outside that is why I snuck out and met my cousins. I remembered thinking that after this dream I thought I wanted to die just in case I go crazy and perform this heinuous crime that I’d rather die than destroy someone else’s life. I gladly woke up after the second dream and was thankful it was a dream. Even though it seemed obvious I still hated my self for some time after the event.
Separate Dream for October 25
I thought it was 7 am already and I told myself no I’m just dreaming then woke up and it actually was 6 in the morning. | https://medium.com/@aljobasalong/dream-code-october-of-2020-9dcc8a897d5c | ['Aljo Basalong'] | 2020-12-23 00:19:52.789000+00:00 | ['Time', 'Another World', 'Self Improvement', 'Dreams', 'Rape'] |
Tell Me A Love Story As If I’ve Never Known Another | Tell me a love story
as if I’ve never known another.
Break my heart and make it whole again.
Sew up the pieces of my heart with every word.
Can you romance me with your words
that breathe and move in real live action?
Can you slow dance with me with every pause
and when the tempo begins to beat faster…
keep me on my toes.
Would you stop in the right places
and linger in all the wrong ones?
Yet, through it all,
work the magic of your pen
on the parchment of my heart.
Take my breath away with your words.
Let my tears blot your words
into a thousand more verses.
Unravel the parchment of my heart
so your pen can write some more.
My heart wants your love —
like Nature’s thirst for nectar
and a hungry pen for paper.
Tell me a love story
like I’ve never loved another.
Show me that it’s real.
Devour me with your words.
With love. ❤ | https://medium.com/the-loners-hideout/tell-me-a-love-story-as-if-ive-never-known-another-738cac837792 | ['Laura Gulbranson'] | 2019-06-22 07:14:05.759000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Books', 'Writing', 'Love', 'Creativity'] |
What Can An SEO Professional Do For You? | Today, a lot of people are interested in getting into online businesses. Why not? This type of business costs less and is definitely convenient for those who do not want to be stuck in a business place all day. With online business, you do not need to have huge capital money just to get the business started. You just need to create your online shop and make sure that you get those advertising and marketing going. One way to advertise or market your online business is through SEO or search engine optimization. This is getting your website visible in the online scene to make web browsers become attracted in checking out your business. This is a good way to attract sales and income for your online business.
Hiring an SEO professional is the way for you to have optimization techniques done to your website. These professionals have studied and trained to perform optimization and other online marketing techniques for clients. They may be hired in a big SEO firm or they work as freelancers. There are now lots of SEO firms that have the best SEO professionals to better serve all types of clients. It is just important that one has researched well about the firm that they will hire. This is to make sure that they will not be tricked by those firms that pretend to be the ‘good ones’. So, what can an SEO professional do for your business? Here are some of them.
An SEO professional should be able to make a business website rank high in the search engines for better visibility. They should also make the website look more attractive and appealing to the web browsers. In doing this, all links and performances of the website will be checked and corrected for any errors. This is to prevent any waste of a possible client. The professional should be able to attract more traffic for the website, which gives it better possibilities of having more clients and sales. This is how a website could gain income and continue on with their operations. Without proper marketing, the website will not be visible and unvisited by web browsers.
The professional will then be using online tools to link the web browsers to the website. They can use articles, keywords, social media sites or just about anything that can link the web browsers to the website. Once SEO is done perfectly, it will surely increase traffic for the website and improve sales as well for the business. The professional can also conduct trainings or consultancy services to their clients. This will give the business owners more information about running an online business. This will also make their clients understand about what they are doing for the website.
Hiring the right professional is vital for the success of the business. It is important that one knows how reliable the professional is before hiring them. This will assure the business owner that their business will get positive results from the services of the SEO Agency Brisbane that they have hired. | https://medium.com/@adriennemariereeves/what-can-an-seo-professional-do-for-you-515eb0aa17f0 | ['Adrienne Reeves'] | 2021-09-04 14:39:22.508000+00:00 | ['SEO', 'Seo Services', 'Seo Tips', 'Seo Agency', 'Seo Training'] |
Help Wanted: Dispersed network leaders — only the passionate need apply! | Welcome to the Collective Mind blog! Our blogs are a combination of reviewed resources and original content to capture practical guidance in short, easy-to-read narratives.
Sign up for the Collective Mind newsletter to receive these in your inbox!
For this edition, we looked at the following sources:
Everybody Leads: Building Leadership from the Community Up
Get Together (or see here for a good overview of the book’s substance)
Inter-Organizational Networks: A Review of the Literature to Inform Practice
Net Gains: A Handbook for Network Builders Seeking Social Change
Ah, leadership. We have books, articles, podcasts, and blogs by the gazillions on the topic.
But you guessed it: network leadership isn’t your typical, “traditional organization” leadership. Network leadership has to be as fit-for-purpose as with everything else in networks. And it’s not just leadership style that’s different in networks, the structure of leadership is different too.
Networks don’t have a clear chain of command — instead, they rely more on informal power through interpersonal relationships. Imagine a network map with dots everywhere and all the lines between them.
While some network actors may have formal roles — like staff that manage coordination and communications for the network — any number of network members will be acting in a range of roles at any given time. The table below defines a number of roles within a network:
It’s clear that in fact, we need a whole bunch of people doing a whole bunch of things to keep the network alive and afloat, often in informal roles, not formal positions other than network “member”.
If we want people playing many roles across the network, how do we facilitate that?
We decentralize and disperse the network’s leadership.
Leadership in a network spans the network; it isn’t centralized within a specific leader or even a leadership team. That’s both because any one person or team can’t fulfill all the requisite roles and because dispersed leadership is the means to relevance and sustainability for a network. More leaders working in a synergized manner can make the network more resilient, drive its work forward, and broaden its impact.
So, how do we do dispersed leadership?
Dispersed leadership requires reframing leadership as collaborative or, according to Paul Schmitz (@PaulSchmitz1), author of “Everybody Leads”, “moving from an emphasis on the noun leader to an emphasis on the verb lead”.
According to Schmitz, leadership in this collaborative sense is three things:
(Slide taken from Paul Schmitz’s presentation at the Collective Impact Forum’s Champions for Change convening on 15 October 2019.)
Networks don’t exist without members: those members must be empowered not just to take on network tasks but to own those tasks and to play a role in the decision-making. Anyone in a network is potentially capable of taking on leadership. To facilitate this, leadership — as well as ownership and decision-making — should be broken up into manageable chunks and those nuggets distributed across the network.
We can cultivate as dispersed network leaders those extra-passionate people who are always raising their hands to do the network’s work, push the network forward, and expand what’s possible. When we identify those folks who are both a) genuine in their passion and commitment to the shared purpose and b) qualified to take on responsibilities, we’ve found our candidates. We empower those dispersed leaders by giving them a stake in network decision-making and ownership and supporting them to be accountable to the network. | https://medium.com/@collectivemind/help-wanted-dispersed-network-leaders-only-the-passionate-need-apply-781715e17efb | ['Collective Mind'] | 2020-06-17 11:59:08.852000+00:00 | ['Systems Thinking', 'Leadership', 'Collaboration', 'Facilitation', 'Network'] |
Chimps, words and silence | I’m reading a great book at the moment. It’s called “The Chimp Paradox” by Professor Steve Peters. If you haven’t read it, then I would definitely recommend doing so. It’s extremely thought-provoking and gives you those “aha” moments.
The basic premise (and I’m really simplifying) is that we have three brains within our Psychological Mind; the Human, the Computer and the Chimp. The Human part is you and makes the logical decisions; the Computer holds all the info, it’s the storage area and the automatic functioning machine working 20 times faster than the Human; and then there’s the Chimp, our emotional engine, which works 5 times faster than the Human brain. The Chimp is that part of you that jumps to conclusions, makes those snap judgements (then stores them in the Computer to pull out later), and has those emotional reactions to things. It has the Flight, Fight, Freeze responses too, so definitely keeps us safe when needed. Prof Steve is keen to ensure we know that the Chimp is not good or bad, it’s just a chimp (sometimes a badly behaved one), and one who’s actions and words we are responsible for.
So we still have a responsibility for our words, even though our Chimp may have been faster to get the words out. I don’t know about you, but there have been many a time that I have said something, and then either immediately regretted it or, after reflecting on the conversation, thought of something kinder, more appropriate or less judgemental. I’ve also decided in some situations that silence would have been a better way of responding to someone. I think it’s easy to want to fill the gap in conversation with words before we have a chance to engage our Human brain.
Words are so powerful. I particularly like this quote: “Be careful with your words, once they are said, they can only be forgiven, not forgotten”. They can have such an impact on others; they can be inspiring and motivating, give confidence and offer reassurances. Or they can give that niggle of doubt, dampen your enthusiasm or confidence, or crush you completely. We have such a responsibility to think before we say something. Just because what you have to say meets your agenda, doesn’t mean it’s going to meet their agenda. Perhaps we should ask ourselves:
“How will they perceive my words?”
“What impact will my words have on that person?”
“Do I really need to say this?”
“Is this my Chimp talking?”
Prof Steve gives some tips on how to let our Chimps run wild without harming others; he calls it exercising them. Letting our Chimps loose on the unsuspecting public isn’t advisable. However, releasing your Chimp to yourself in private or someone who knows and loves you (and knows that this is only your chimp talking) is definitely more acceptable. Let it loose, and listen without comment. I’ve told my partner about this book and now he tells me to let my Chimp go wild while he listens to me rant for 10 minutes about something. He knows that I’m not directing my emotions towards him, and that helps me voice my Chimp thoughts on the matter in a controlled environment. Afterwards, I not only feel much better but also my Human brain has had time to kick in and I can then assess the facts and think logically about the situation. I’m very grateful that I have someone to let my Chimp loose on but I also have Chimp outbursts to myself in the mirror and to my dog (who is a great non-judgemental listener).
If you haven’t managed to have a rant to a caring listener and have mistakenly let loose on someone (who perhaps isn’t aware that this is your Chimp talking), that’s ok too. It’s normal and we all do it. However, it’s important to take responsibility for your words by apologising genuinely to the person (“I’m sorry I upset you”, rather than “I’m sorry if I upset you”). But also, don’t be too hard on yourself. Take it as a learning and work on understanding your Chimp more.
Your Chimp does have valuable things to contribute so don’t ignore it completely; it just needs to be managed. Prof Steve asks his readers to assess how they feel, what they are thinking or how they are behaving and question whether that’s what they want to feel, think or behave. If it’s a yes, then we are in Human mode and that’s great. If it’s a no, we are being hijacked by our Chimp and we need to start managing it.
So next time you feel you are being hijacked by your Chimp, pause until you have assessed the impact of your words or actions, or had a chance to exercise it in private. Hopefully this will help us all in being more mindful of the impact of our words.
Happy holidays! | https://medium.com/@gerry-lifecoaching/chimps-words-and-silence-a8c793cc6479 | ['Gerry Weiss'] | 2020-12-24 08:35:07.008000+00:00 | ['The Chimp Paradox', 'Impact Of Words', 'Think Before You Speak', 'Life Coaching', 'Coaching'] |
HyperDraft Hopes for 2022 | 2021 was a big year for HyperDraft. We onboarded users working within in-house legal departments, small and midsize law firms, and Big Law firms in various practice areas. We heard from our users how HyperDraft allowed them to produce their personal best output while allowing them to have a more flexible work schedule. We connected with hundreds of legal professionals and discussed current issues in the legal community during our continuing Fishbowl Live series. Lastly, our interactions with tired, hard-working attorneys during another busy year inspired us to continue to push forward on our mission to supply legal professionals with the modern tools they deserve.
We are excited about the changes we are starting to see within the legal industry. The modernization of law is happening now, and we cannot wait to see how it continues to evolve in the year to come.
Here are our hopes for what hopefully will be an innovative 2022.
Attorneys Realize that Legal Tech and the Billable Hour are Not Enemies
A common myth that can be a roadblock to Legal Tech adoption is the idea that the billable hour and Legal Tech are enemies. When talking to people about HyperDraft, we are often asked by attorneys if Legal Tech will make them so efficient that they will not be able to meet their billable hour requirement. Our answer always surprises them because they are so used to inefficiency in their day-to-day workflow that it is difficult for them to imagine anything else.
Legal Tech is not the enemy of the billable hour, in fact, when used correctly, it can lead to more billable work being done. Attorneys are so accustomed to working harder for the sake of working harder that they do not realize how routine, low-value work ruins their momentum, negatively impacts their work product, and increases their desire to procrastinate. By focusing on high-value work that is more rewarding, attorneys are more likely to maintain productivity, bill more, and scream at their computer screen less (yeah, we’ve done it too).
Legal Tech aims to automate low-value, routine tasks so technology can keep up with attorneys instead of attorneys having to slow down their process to accommodate out-of-date technology or manual tasks. When not slowed down by technology, attorneys can be more productive, provide more value to their clients, and have more energy and time to professionally develop.
Small and Mid-Size Law Firms Use Technology to Battle Big Law
Increasing costs, geographic flexibility inspired by the pandemic, and various other factors are leading in-house counsel and other clients to look at new options when looking for counsel. Greater client service and more affordable rates make small and mid-size firms look more attractive than ever as legal service providers.
With the evolution of Legal Tech, all attorneys now have access to modern tools that can help them do their work more efficiently and, in some cases, do the work of a larger team with fewer people. Legal Tech gives small and midsize firms the ability to level up their practice to battle Big Law and provide greater overall value to clients.
Hiring and retaining top legal talent is more difficult than ever and more attorneys are looking for work-life balance. The right combination of Legal Tech and lower billable hour requirements has the potential to make mid-size and smaller law firms ideal targets for overworked, talented associates and partners who are looking for a change once their bonuses hit their accounts in early Q1.
While the legal press mainly focuses on Big Law, small and midsize law firms are the unsung heroes of the legal profession. Most legal services in the U.S. are provided by them and their attention and quality of service makes a significant impact on the local economies and communities they serve. It is time for them to shine and receive the growth and recognition they deserve.
More Life is Lived Outside of the Billable Hour
Unfortunately for most attorneys, other than those lucky ducks in-house, the billable hour is a reality they must face head-on. However, the pandemic and the upswing in deals in 2021 has spotlighted the impact of burnout and the importance of mental health in the legal industry. Living a fuller life, inside and outside of work, has never been more important. That is why we are on a mission to bring modern tools to lawyers that can empower them to have a more flexible work schedule or just a lifeline when they are swamped and do not want to cancel plans … again
Life experience makes lawyers better counselors and problem solvers for their clients. It also inspires lawyers to develop and contribute to their communities. We hope that more attorneys will focus on working smarter and not harder so that they can be the best attorneys and humans they can be. Imagine a world full of happier, more productive attorneys? How fun would that be!
Bring on 2022!
HyperDraft is growing and we are just getting started. If you’d like to see HyperDraft in action, schedule a quick demo here. If you have any other questions about HyperDraft or Legal Tech, feel free to reach out to us at [email protected]. Chatting with legal professionals is one of our favorite things to do so don’t be shy! 🤗
This article is brought to you by HyperDraft. Our team of lawyers and engineers have developed tools that enable lawyers and other professionals to maximize their time and deliver greater value to their clients.
Click here to request access and learn more. | https://medium.com/@HyperDraftAI/hyperdraft-hopes-for-2022-24ab43f1b1f5 | ['Hyperdraft Ai'] | 2021-12-30 20:24:33.032000+00:00 | ['Lawyers', 'Legaltech', 'Law', 'Legal', 'Legal Services'] |
Best Blogging Platforms that Promote Your Content and Drive Massive Web Traffic | Best Blogging Platforms
Blogging is one of the easiest ways to excite and educate the audience with your own thoughts, unique ideas, feelings, opinions or experiences. Also, it has now become the easiest ways to earn money. For a company, blogging is important, as it not only drive wide traffic but also increases search ranking. It is very good at rallying the troops that keep readers engaged with your website and educate them about your products and services, which increase the chances of conversion.
Blogging is an art that inspires the audience, but attracting that audience to it is science, which is a bit tough and tricky. Though, you can sail through the tricky path if you choose the right topic, share relevant content that’s too on the right blogging site. There are thousands of blogging sites available on the internet or intranet and choosing the best among all is easier said than done. If you are a novice and overwhelm with the options available to you, roll down to the list jotted down below. Here is the list of top blogging platforms that are perfect to kick-start writing and giving value to it. So, let’s watch them out.
1. WordPress
Speaking of blogging, WordPress is the very first name that strikes the mind. It’s a platform that can be your best friend forever, as it understands your needs and let you understand its function, which makes it easier for both to work together. Apart from that, it has plenty of plugins, themes, templates, and a lot more features to offer that improve the functionality of your website and make it easier for Google to crawl it.
2. Blogger
Blogger is by far the most popular and widely used blogging platform that rule over the heart of writers. Working on this platform is a cakewalk and one without digging into the pool of coding can use this platform. It has a great community to support the neophytes as well as the veterans to pick them out of the trouble. Best of all is that the platform is free to use, so, if you don’t have enough budget or just start blogging, you can opt for this.
3. Tumblr
Tumblr is perhaps the easiest micro-blogging platform out there that is loaded with tons of features including stunning themes, templates, plugins and much more. You can simply sign up and post your content to it. It’ll help you drive so much traffic to your website and won’t let you down. Additionally, it plays pretty well with mobile devices and makes it simple and flexible for an aspiring writer to share different types of content quicker than ever before.
4. LiveJournal
Another top best and easiest blogging platform to use is LiveJournal that adds an extra pinch of social networking to it. It’s a perfect blend of platform and social media that open up the doors of opportunities and keep you a step closer to a wide audience. Nothing to brag about, it has some amazing features that make it a user-friendly platform to use that one should give a try to drive more and more traffic to their websites.
5. Medium
As the name suggests, Medium is the platform that helps you cover a bridge gap between the audience and bloggers. Its work justifies its name, and it makes it easier for you to share your thoughts and stories in your own words with the world. By following simple steps, you can create your account and publish your post.
6. Weebly
Weebly is more than just a blogging platform and features a drag and drop interface support for videos, images, slideshows and much more. You don’t need to join a coding school or class to start publishing your content on this platform. It is as easy as it seems and one can publish their blog with some single clicks only.
7. Squarespace
Its outstanding features stand this platform apart from any other blogging site. People use it for blogging across the globe and it opens the doors for wider audience worldwide. You can simply create your blog on the platform and share your story with the world. All its themes are available with customizable features that allow you to show your creativity without even having a vast technical or designing knowledge.
8. Svbtle
You can use this blogging platform, its templates and themes allow you to make changes as per the need and offer you complete control. It’ll make your content visible to billions of people and drive traffic to it as well.
There are plenty of other platforms that you can choose for blogging purpose and one thing you need to remember before you choose is that the choice of the platform depends profoundly on your goals. Also, you have the option to choose multiple platforms but make your choice wisely to not get diverted from your goals. So, what are you waiting for? If you want to show the words of your magic to the world, choose the right blogging platform and get started. | https://medium.com/bloggernib/best-blogging-platforms-that-promote-your-content-and-drive-massive-web-traffic-4065528b7f5 | ['Gangadhar Kulkarni'] | 2019-03-27 09:54:49.911000+00:00 | ['Blogging Tips', 'How To Start Blogging', 'Content Marketing', 'Blogging', 'Blogging Platform'] |
Top 5 Tourist Tips For Getting a Thai Girl — An Action Guide | Top 5 Tourist Tips
As a tourist, traveling through Thailand is infinitely better when a Thai girl accompanies you. While many men wisely choose to book ahead and line up many Thai women using online dating, other guys land and then start wondering what to do next.
Is that bewildered guy now you?
How do you go about quickly find Thai women in Thailand as a newly landed tourist?
Meeting Thai girls when traveling in Thailand is not easy. Opportunities dramatically increase when a traveler uses proven strategies. Our research shows using business cards, asking direct questions, and giving Thai women compliments will provide you with a 260% uplift in meeting opportunities.
We have got you covered though.
All of these techniques will work for new tourists. You’ll be entering Thailand through a major airport and a capital city.
Large cities are densely populated, with willing Thai women, many of whom will be ready companions.
Prepare a Business Card
This technique is for shy guys and players. You are better to prepare ahead of time, but local assistance is available too, so don’t fret.
What’s Needed, First?
Your name — either first name only or full name is ok, depending on your privacy concerns). Decide on an occupation to list. ‘IT Consultant’, ‘Business Strategist’, ‘Financial Services Manager’ is vague enough to use. If you have a Thai phone number list, we recommend using a Line ID though.
The Line application is used predominately throughout Thailand.
It is available free through any App Store as well as a desktop application.
Once installed, configure you own Line ID
List this Line ID on your business card
4. Go to your local printer before you leave your country and get 100 printed or whatever their minimum happens to be.
5. No cards when you land? A quick visit to Fortune Town at Pharam 9 is the answer. You’ll have business cards in 30 minutes.
What is ‘Business Card Strategy’?
Each example style has its own merits for privacy and your fun value. Mix and match.
Thai women are typically shy and reserved when meeting strangers, especially foreigners.
You need to break the ice with these girls and allow them time to settle in and be comfortable.
The easy option is a business card with your contact details.
You will use your freshly printed business card in a variety of situations.
The BTS and MRT Transport Systems
Bangkok has the worst traffic imaginable.
The easiest and fastest way to commute around the city is to use the convenient rail systems.
The rail systems are fabulous for the first time visitor like you, but Thai girls are here in abundance.
Thai people use public transport extensively. Thai women use these rapid transit trains to travel to their job, try out new eating spots during their lunch break, and then there’s party time after work.
The BTS and MRT lines are perfect to meet Thai girls.
Your benefit is seeing the girls in their sexy work uniforms.
Just give them the card though. Don’t bother trying to talk to the girl. The transport trains are busy, over-crowded and the women may not be alone.
You don’t want to embarrass her.
She’ll contact you on Line if she’s interested to know you more.
This plan is a mass handout strategy. Ride the BTS/MRT, hand out your cards to many and a few girls will contact you. You’re on your way to chatting and dating.
When You’re Out Eating
When the guy is eating out, you will see Thai men give their cards to Thai girls.
The passing of Info cards is a standard system used across Thailand. You need to do the same. The giving of cards is already a proven technique, and Thai women expect the receive business cards.
Always do what the locals do. Acceptance is high, and resistance is low. THE PASSING OF CARDS IS THE SECRET SAUCE
Give your cards out at a restaurant, when girls are waiting around for their street food or when you see a group of Thai girls eating together after they’ve finished work.
We’ve used this approach ourselves to great success.
Coffee Shops
Thai women love coffee shops. Visit and pass out your cards.
Coffee shops have a massive attraction to groups of bored Thai women.
The girls don’t go for the coffee which most finds bitter and keeps them buzzed up for too long. The women love the selfies they can snap with the tasty treats and bubble tea.
As we mentioned before, just give them one of your cards and return to your table. The woman will hook you up on Line either then and there or later when she’s more comfortable at home.
Spend several hours browsing the town, have a few coffees, see the sights and pass out the business cards.
You’ll be getting incoming friend requests before you return to your hotel.
The Lost Puppy Strategy
Thai women love cute things. Be her lost puppy. Act cute and unassuming.
This approach works wonders in shopping malls and grocery shops.
You will be using your lack of knowledge to trigger your chosen girl to help you.
Thai women are mothering by nature. Thai tradition teaches them always to be helpful. Use this to your advantage.
Arm yourself with the Google Translate app installed on your smartphone, in case you do run into some translation problems. You are in a different country, after all.
Good Introduction question include:-
‘Do you know where the toilets are?’
‘Hello, where is a good coffee shop?’
‘Where do I find the coffee?’
‘Can I buy good Thai food here?’
The best idea is to pre-load these questions into Google Translate and ‘Star’ them, so they’re readily available when you need to whip the app out and present the problem to the girl.
The Good Mannered Man
What did your mother always tell you as a boy?
“Be polite and well-mannered, my boy”.
With Thais being a gentle natured, happy, and polite people; being well behaved and respectful goes a long way in Thailand. Especially for grabbing the attention of lonely Thai girls.
As a matter of course, always say ‘Hello’ to staff and give your full attention to them as if they are someone special (which they are). Look directly at the woman’s eyes and give a beaming smile as you do it.
Every Thai girl craves for the attention of a respectful good-mannered foreigner man. All of them!
You will be surprised how many waitresses, young cleaners, and hotel staff will come knocking on your door during your stay at their hotel.
These female staffs know you’re on a short stay holiday. The girls have nothing to lose with a gentle knock on your door. And everything to gain which includes you getting some quality sex time with the opportunity of a happy Thai travel companion.
Pro Tip:- Pay the same ‘attention and respect’ practises to older Thai ladies too. Treat them with exceptional politeness and get to chatting with them whenever you see them. Older women will love the attention and English practise and start to like you. Older Thai women have an expansive network of female friends and relatives. After a few days, casually ask the older lady “do you have a good girlfriend for me?” Thailand Fact:- Personal recommendation carries tremendous positive weight here. When you’re suggested to a young Thai girl by an older woman, the younger girl knows she must comply. There’ll be no games played on you by the girl. She has already been mentored and understands your expectations. Take the girl out to dinner, and both enjoy yourselves. Indulge in a nightcap or three. Then it’s back to your hotel room for the remainder of the night’s festivities.
The Sole Farang Syndrome
Being the only one of your kind has its advantages.
Many parts of Thailand are never visited by foreign holiday-makers; including parts of every major city.
Foreign holiday-makers avoid many parts of Thailand; including parts of every major city.
Being a ‘foreign newcomer’ means you become an object of great interest to Thai girls. Even in parts of Bangkok, there are Thai ladies who rarely if ever see a foreigner. To your advantage, most of those girls have never slept with one either.
Where should you start?
Choose any BTS or MRT rail line and journey six or more stops away from Sukhumvit. Look on Google Maps for the main Soi (this is Thai for the word ‘road or street’) near that station and take a taxi a mile or two down that Soi.
You’ve arrived at the start of an area with little to no foreigners.
It’s time to go shopping. All you’re doing is browsing the shops for Thai girls, but you can pretend to shop, at least.
Stop in and browse around. If you spot an attractive girl, stroll up and compliment her. Tell the girl “Sawadee krap, you very beautiful”. Drop your business card and walk out. The woman you just complimented will be thinking about you all day. She will never have had that attention from a foreigner before. Rinse and repeat to more stores Line requests will inundate you.
It isn’t difficult to see why this works so well.
You are the same as a bar of Belgian chocolate in Thailand.
Rare and never tasted before. These girls want to unwrap their sweet.
A Wingman
It’s common for tourists to travel with a friend.
Having a friend is another winning formula, and you get even better opportunities with scoring Thai women.
Try this:-
Go out together with your mate. You can decide on a bar/club or Shopping Mall
the location isn’t as important as the technique.
2. Now for the Rule
The one that finds a girl invites her for a night-out
Ask that girl to bring a friend to meet with your friend
Why does this tactic work?
Your invited Thai girl isn’t scared to come because she won’t be alone
Dating in a small group is more fun
Both you and your mate are in for a treat. Thai women are a bundle of happiness together
The invited girls know exactly how the evening is going to end
We’ve used this strategy many times and ended up traveling around Thailand several times, with our two girl combo.
Your potential outcomes with girls in Thailand are incredible. They love to fuck, and they love to travel. Combine the two with your travel buddy.
Pro Tip:- Agree with all your travel buddies to never hit on any Thai girl any of you have contacted. We’ve seen many good friends have tragic falling outs together, all over a girl their friend was sweet on. You must all make a cardinal rule and agree. Nobody else hits on another guy’s contact. There are 23 million Thai women within the dating age range in Thailand. Don’t fuck over a long term friendship when it is easy to find another girl or just pay a Freelancer for a release.
Ask And Ye Shall Receive
Asking all Thai girls whether they have a boyfriend is as direct as it comes.
Most men aren’t brave enough. You will be after several attempts.
Remember, no-one else knows you in Thailand. There is no reputation tarnish.
What happens in Thailand stays in Thailand.
Ask if the girl has a boyfriend. If she says she does, reply that her boyfriend is a lucky man because she is so pretty.
BUT …
You continue your brief interlude with the girl by asking “She have a sister or a friend ‘same like you’. I look for a good girl”.
If the woman doesn’t have a boyfriend, ask for her Line ID and give her your business card. Depending on your schedule and location, have a coffee or chocolate drink together.
That will be your first date too.
Closing
Your opportunities dramatically increase when you follow proven strategies.
These five techniques have been used multiple times across multiple holidays in Thailand.
These approaches are easy to follow and will work for your equally well.
Equip yourself with business cards in your wallet and watch the magic happen.
Enjoy your travels with many pretty Thai girls across Thailand.
FAQ
What are good strategies for picking up Thai girls as a tourist?
Business cards are essential in many situations
use cards on public transport systems
while you are out eating
at any local coffee shop
The ‘Lost Puppy’ strategy is awesome
The ‘Good Mannered’ tourist works 100% of the time
Play the ‘Sole Farang Syndrome’ and Thai women will always contact you back
A wingman and a double Thai girl combo
Why is it difficult for Thailand tourist to find good Thai girls?
Many Thai girls are simply shy of foreigners
You are looking in the wrong places
She is busy and your timing is off
You are coming across too strong and demanding
Where are the best places to meet good Thai girls? | https://medium.com/@romancesgroup/top-5-tourist-tips-for-getting-a-thai-girl-an-action-guide-56ab3aa13823 | ['Martin Cooney'] | 2020-10-26 11:04:00.495000+00:00 | ['Dating Tips', 'Dating Advice', 'Dating Advice For Men', 'Thailand', 'Dating'] |
Deploy PHP/Laravel applications using Gitlab CI/CD | We make sure our PHP/laravel applications are always in shape. Here is how to setup your servers and gitlab to get an awesome multi-environment deployment.
Intro
I am a big fan of process optimization, and I love trying out new ways to develop, deploy, and work on big software projects.
As head of a software development agency in Vienna, Austria, I was lucky enough to have worked on over 100 big web and mobile applications over the last 15 years with startups, international companies, and other amazing developers to try, fail and refine these processes over and over again.
The following approach is meant to share the learnings and our current solution with you.
To get this out of the way: If you have feedback, suggestions on that, please share them with us in the comments! I would love to hear your thoughts and the approach that works well for you.
We use GitLab for continuous integration/deployment, but this should also work with other tools like Jenkins, ….
Requirements:
To go along with this post, you have to have the following things already setup:
A gitlab instance or an account on gitlab.com
A gitlab ci runner (click to go to gitlab docs, about setting it up)
3 webspace on a server
A PHP/laravel project ready to be deployed
Preparation
To prepare our PHP project for our deployment workflow, we have to prepare 3 Servers/Webspaces:
(we will refer to these as “environments” from now on)
Environments:
Development (only internally to test and review)
Staging (for the client to test and review)
Production (final system for end-users)
They will correlate with our branches:
development (= development environment)
master (= staging environment)
production (= production environment)
To find out why exactly 3 environments and how this works, check out my other blog entry on that topic:
https://simonauer.medium.com/how-to-set-up-your-staging-environment-for-web-applications-480e0138e620
Domain Conventions for environments:
To make sure this process and domains are easy to remember for everyone in the team, we always use the same domain patterns.
For this reason, we have registered 2 domains for our internal use as staging and development domain:
(the ones used here are just examples)
*.stagingdomain.at (for example — for staging)
*.devdomain.at (for example — development)
Examples:
So every domain that ends in “devdomain.at” is a development domain.
And every domain that ends in “stagingdomain.at” is a staging domain.
Now let’s get started with setting up your servers and gitlab to deploy your PHP projects.
Make sure that you have SSH access to the environment servers and you have the credentials.
Prepare server login
SSH Key for login exists
If you have a server with login via ssh key enabled, we should be fine, and you can use the public part of the key in the next steps in the GitLab-ci variables.
SSH Key doesn’t exist
If we either don’t have an ssh key for login or have a server accessible via password, we would like to do the deployment using an ssh key.
So let’s generate one: (you have to do this for all of the servers above if they are on different access accounts)
Create a new ssh key for every environment: (unless they are accessible with the same account anyway)
Run the following command on your local bash:
ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "deploy@{PROJECT_AND_ENVIRONMENT_URL}"
You will now be asked:
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/user/.ssh/id_rsa):
We will use “ .{/PROJECT}_deploy " for now.
(replace {PROJECT} with your project name, of course)
(this will save two files in your current directory “{PROJECT}_deploy” (private key part — saved on the server in next step) and “{PROJECT}_deploy.pub” (public part — used as GitLab CI variable)
I would recommend using a name that lets you easily find and delete it afterward.
(NEVER accept the default name because it will overwrite your current ssh key, which you might use in GitLab, …)
It will then ask you for a password. ALWAYS leave this field blank!!
Now upload ssh key to server:
Now that we have generated an ssh key, we are ready to tell our server to accept this SSH Key in the future.
We do this by rerunning the following command in your local bash:
ssh-copy-id -i ./{PROJECT}_deploy {SERVER_SSH_USER}@{SERVER_SSH_HOST} -p{PORT}
Now your ssh key should have been copied to the server, and you can access the server by calling the following URL and not having to enter a password at all.
(to test this, you have to copy the two files into your ~/.ssh directory)
ssh {SERVER_SSH_USER}@{SERVER_SSH_HOST} -p{PORT}
Prepare folder structure
As a convention, we always save laravel API projects into an api subfolder on the server.
This folder then contains the 2 test environments (development, staging) on the dev server (to save server instances), and we will put the project api folder directly on the production server. (for security reasons, this will be its own folder.)
So here is the folder structure for our projects:
Testing Server:
// our php project folders
- api
--- development
------- current (contains the project)
------- shared
--- staging
------- current (contains the project)
------- shared
// other project folders (frontend, ...)
- frontend
- additional_clients
Production Server:
// our php project folders
- api
--- current (contains the project)
--- shared
// other project folders (frontend, ...)
- frontend
- additional_clients
Sidenote:
As you can see, we put the environments into a folder called api. The reason for that is, that we also sometimes host other clients (static react /vue applications) on the same server. If you only have the PHP application, there is no need for that and you can just put the curent and shared folders in the root dir.
Deployment of laravel
To deploy our laravel applications, we use the package:
https://github.com/lorisleiva/laravel-deployer
It will take care of zero-downtime deployments and handle all the details for us.
We can use the following blueprint for our
Add gitlab-ci file to your projects.
Now all that is left is to create a gitlab-ci file and configure it.
Let’s get started with the ci file.
Create the following file in the root of your git project and call it
gitlab-ci.yml :
image: lorisleiva/laravel-docker:7.4 # the number here resembles the php version, so you might have to adjust it to 8.0, ... ## templates .init_ssh: &init_ssh |
mkdir -p ~/.ssh
chmod 700 ~/.ssh
[[ -f /.dockerenv ]] && echo -e "Host *
\tStrictHostKeyChecking no
" > ~/.ssh/config
.change_file_permissions: &change_file_permissions |
find . -type f -not -path "./vendor/*" -exec chmod 664 {} \;
find . -type d -not -path "./vendor/*" -exec chmod 775 {} \;
### the stages we go through stages:
- build
- test
- deploy ## prepare composer:
stage: build
cache:
key: ${CI_COMMIT_REF_SLUG}-composer
paths:
- vendor/
script:
- *init_ssh
- composer install --prefer-dist --no-ansi --no-interaction --no-progress --no-scripts
only:
- master
- production
- development ## DEPLOYMENT
stage: deploy
script:
- eval $(ssh-agent -s) && echo "$SSH_PRIVATE_KEY" | tr -d '\r' | ssh-add - > /dev/null
- *init_ssh
- *change_file_permissions
- php artisan deploy {MY_DOMAIN}.devserver.at -s upload
environment:
name: development
url:
only:
- development deploy_development:stage: deployscript:- eval $(ssh-agent -s) && echo "$SSH_PRIVATE_KEY" | tr -d '\r' | ssh-add - > /dev/null- *init_ssh- *change_file_permissions- php artisan deploy {MY_DOMAIN}.devserver.at -s uploadenvironment:name: developmenturl: https://{MY_DOMAIN}. devserver.atonly:- development
stage: deploy
script:
- eval $(ssh-agent -s) && echo "$SSH_PRIVATE_KEY" | tr -d '\r' | ssh-add - > /dev/null
- *init_ssh
- *change_file_permissions
- php artisan deploy {MY_DOMAIN}.stagingserver.at -s upload
environment:
name: staging
url:
only:
- master deploy_staging:stage: deployscript:- eval $(ssh-agent -s) && echo "$SSH_PRIVATE_KEY" | tr -d '\r' | ssh-add - > /dev/null- *init_ssh- *change_file_permissions- php artisan deploy {MY_DOMAIN}.stagingserver.at -s uploadenvironment:name: stagingurl: https://{MY_DOMAIN}. stagingserver.atonly:- master
stage: deploy
script:
- eval $(ssh-agent -s) && echo "$SSH_PRIVATE_KEY" | tr -d '\r' | ssh-add - > /dev/null
- *init_ssh
- *change_file_permissions
- php artisan deploy {MY_DOMAIN} -s upload
environment:
name: production
url:
only:
- production deploy_production:stage: deployscript:- eval $(ssh-agent -s) && echo "$SSH_PRIVATE_KEY" | tr -d '\r' | ssh-add - > /dev/null- *init_ssh- *change_file_permissions- php artisan deploy {MY_DOMAIN} -s uploadenvironment:name: productionurl: https://{MY_DOMAIN} only:- production
Add credentials to CI/CD Deployment variables.
Already everything is set up, and we are ready to set our credentials in GitLab ci.
To do this, open your GitLab interface and go to your repository.
Create different environments in GitLab Operations:
Environments let us monitor each of our environments' deployment status and define the same CI/CD Variable name with different values for different environments.
You can find your environments in your repository in the left menu under:
Operations -> Environments
No, go ahead and add new environments for each of the environments:
(You can find the New environment button on the top right on the environments overview)
development
master
production
Just enter the environment name and the dedicated URL, which can be used to test it later.
(this will add a button to access the correct environment in the browser easily)
Now add the following variables:
On the left menu, you need to go to Settings -> CI/CD -> Variables .
Now add a protected variable SSH_PRIVATE_KEY for all of the environments and select the correct environment scope from the list.
tipp: if you click on the “environment scope” dropdown, it will only show you the selected value by default. You have the little “x” to clear the selection and then you see all your created environments in the list — no idea, why they did it like that, but it is confusing if you don’t know.
As a value, use the content of the private key file:
cat ./{PROJECT}_deploy
It should look like this:
Run Pipeline and enjoy
Now everything should be ready, and you can try out your awesome new deployment process.
Just merge some changes into the branch you want to deploy:
development
staging
production
Gitlab Pipeline with PHPunti and code style checking
Well, that’s it. Everything should work fine now and be ready for perfect zero-downtime deployments and an awesome workflow, but I got more for you ;)
Let’s take it to the next level and add automated quality assurance into the pipeline like code style check and PHPUnit.
A working gitlab Laravel pipeline with PHPUnit, code style, and more
Just wow!
Thank you very much for taking the time to read this.
If you went this far down, I would really appreciate your comment and input.
How are you guys doing it?
I will post more about DevOps, deployment, coding (especially react, flutter and laravel) in the future, so follow me to read more ;) | https://medium.com/@simonauer/deploy-php-laravel-applications-using-gitlab-ci-cd-cbd7cb2c6a2e | ['Simon Auer'] | 2020-12-01 16:28:04.214000+00:00 | ['Deployment', 'Gitlab', 'Gitlab Ci', 'PHP', 'Laravel'] |
The Time is Now for Voice-Activated Content | According to new data from Edison Research, more than 53 million Americans now own a smart speaker (Amazon Echo, Google Home, et al). That is an increase of 14 million people in one year (36%), making smart speakers and voice assistants one of the fastest-adopted consumer technologies in history.
(tune in for Edison’s unveiling of their new research on smart audio)
For frame of reference, approximately 31 million Americans currently read a newspaper each weekday. And while newspaper readership has been on the decline for quite some time, even at its absolute apex circa 1973, 63 million Americans read a paper daily.
Thus, today, right now, the number of people routinely using a smart speaker in the USA is within shouting distance of the number of people who consumed a daily newspaper in this country….ever.
There’s a lot of talk about the rise of voice search and voice-enabled content, but if anything there’s not enough talk, given the size of audience and present/future capabilities of these technologies.
Can You Hear Me Now?
Which is why I’m so excited to announce that Convince & Convert is now an official agency partner of Voicify, the world’s first Voice Experience Platform.
Voicify allows our strategy team to conceptualize and craft winning voice-activated content for Amazon and Google devices with minimized hassles and expense. We are already building out multiple proofs of concept for clients and will be showcasing more voice content case studies and examples here at the Convince & Convert site.
Why Voice?
Here are some other statistics to explain why we are going hard into voice content development for our clients:
50% of all searches will be voice searches by 202072% of people who own smart speakers say the devices are part of their daily routinesIn the past year, smart speaker users who own two or more devices moved from 38% to 52%.
72% of people who own smart speakers say the devices are part of their daily routines
In the past year, smart speaker users who own two or more devices moved from 38% to 52%
In addition to freestanding smart speakers, Amazon and Google are hard at work embedding voice content technology into a huge array of other devices, including vehicles, Bose speakers, Sonos speakers, clock radios, the Chrome browser, and many, many more. We will be surrounded by voice interfaces, and SOON.
Business Executives Are Embracing Voice
A recent survey of business decision makers by Adobe found that 91% are preparing to make significant investments in voice, and 44% plan to release a voice app in 2019.
Adobe suggests that much of voice app development will enable commerce. Not a surprise, given their huge foothold in e-commerce and related fields. And today, their research shows that most voice programs are being funded by the mobile app or Internet of Things departments in major brands.
But here at Convince & Convert, we believe voice can just as easily be a major part of a different corner of the enterprise: content marketing.
There are two elements with which every brand and business must contend in terms of the convergence of content and voice.
1. Why Voice Needs to Be Part of Your Content Marketing Program: Consumer Engagement
First is the opportunity to drive increased customer engagement using voice-activated content. The reality is that consumers are using websites less overall, and relying more on social media, user-generated content, and third-party information aggregators.
Presenting compelling and Youtility-oriented voice-activated content to consumers opens an all-new avenue for engagement. It’s an opportunity that eschews the expensive and often clunky website, as well as the social media playgrounds that increasingly require ad budgets to reach customers.
Done right, voice-activated content is the easiest content for consumers to access, period. Easier than a mobile app (look ma, no hands!). Easier than a mobile website. Easier than email. Easier than video. Today, in this first phase of voice content strategy and development, much of what’s out there in the Alexa Skills and Google Actions directories are just okay; the same way the first websites (some of which I built) were just okay, and the same way the first mobile apps were just okay.
In conjunction with Voicify, we aim to help our clients create truly useful, helpful, interesting content in these platforms. And as the technology (and process of Skills/Action discovery) improves, I believe a voice-activated content strategy and corresponding program will become non-optional for B2C and B2B brands.
2. Why Voice Needs to Be Part of Your Content Marketing Program: Voice Search and the Land Rush
The second reason voice is a big part of where we’re headed is the growing importance of voice-driven search engine optimization. With half of all searches being voice searches by next year, what Google/Alexa/Siri/Cortana recommend to the searcher will be a huge driver of business.
Today, when you do a Google search, you get approximately 10 options on the first page, plus some multi-media options, and maybe some reviews as well. It of course is best to be first on a search engine results page, but if you’re on page one somewhere you’re in pretty good shape. But with voice search there is ONE and ONLY ONE winner. Alexa isn’t going to give you 10 options. You get one. In the world of voice search you win, or you’re invisible.
How do you win? Voice-activated content on Amazon and Google devices is served up using an “invocation phrase.” It works like this: “Alexa, give me some digital marketing tips.” Alexa’s first stop in assisting the human is to look to their own Alexa Skills Store (this is true for Google Assistant, Cortana and will be true for Samsung Bixby as well). When it finds a skill that can supply an answer it recommends the skill to its user. “Jay, it looks like Convince & Convert can answer your question, do you want to enable the skill?”
Amazon allows for multiple invocation phrases. Thus, more than one brand could have “digital marketing tips.” If that were the case and no owner was specified in the query, Amazon will choose the app based on information matches in the “CanFulfillIntent” data stored in the app (which is metadata and invisible to the user), consumer reviews, and usage levels. Thus, app quality has a material impact on exposure (just like with most content and SEO).
Like typing an address into a URL bar for websites, there is a direct invocation model as well. For instance, if you say: “Alexa, ask Oracle for a digital marketing tip,” then Oracle’s voice app will launch. This is an incredibly important concept for brands to understand as they will be in charge of awareness in this channel, and how they are “invoked” using what phrases.
Makes sense, right? But here’s the really important part: Google doesn’t allow multiple invocation phrases. Thus, Google, which sees voice content and voice search as so important as to be nearly existential to their future in a post “webpage” world, is creating a voice content gold rush. Not dissimilar from domain name squatting, there can be only one “digital marketing tips” on Google, and the clock is ticking.
What Kind of Content Should You Create for Voice?
Just like early websites and early mobile apps, the use cases for voice-activated content are constantly evolving and being discovered. But today, consumers are primarily using smart speakers for questions and answers, music, weather, etc.
Thus, for 2019, most of the voice-activated content we’ll create for clients will be rooted in information, helpfulness, and Youtility. As consumers get more comfortable with using smart speakers for more complex, API-driven interactions, we’ll add layers of specificity and nuance to what we’re doing with voice-activated content.
And while voice-activated buying is at the bottom of the list in terms of smart speaker functions, research from Voicebot and Voicify suggest that 26% of smart speaker owners have made at least one purchase on these devices. Using the Edison Research number of 53 million American owners, you’d get a pool of nearly 14 million Americans that have bought something via smart speaker already. Not massive, but certainly not insignificant.
Google’s own research shows that consumers are quite enthusiastic about receiving content from brands via these devices, especially when that content is viewed as useful in one or more ways. They found that 52% of smart speaker owners want information about deals, sales, and promotions. 48% want personalized information and tips. And 42% would like information about upcoming events, or activities.
One of the developments that will help dictate use cases for voice-activated content is the growing prevalence of screens on smart speaker devices. The first and second-generation appliances were audio-only. Consequently, a large share of smart speakers in homes and offices today lack a visual interface. However, the new Google Home Hub and Amazon’s Echo Show 5 are full-featured, with lovely video displays, solid speakers, and touch screens, priced at under $100.
Thus, we expect the next wave of smart speakers bought by consumers to be primarily multi-modal (audio + visuals + video), opening up many more opportunities for engaging content marketing, and interactive experiences including commerce.
The Choice of Voice
I’ve been in digital marketing since 1993. I have seen this movie before, when it was called “website.” When it was called “email.” When it was called “mobile app.” When it was called “SEO & SEM.” And when it was called “social media.”
Voice is next, and it’s now. It’s not going to replace anything. I hate pronouncements that X is going to “kill” Y. Because it never does. 31 million people — including me — still read a newspaper every day. So voice isn’t going to make your website unnecessary, or put Facebook out of business.
But the numbers don’t lie. Voice is easy to use, and it’s effective. And B2B and B2C consumers LOVE it. The train is accelerating. It’s time to jump on. We’re here to help, if you’d like. | https://medium.com/convince-and-convert/the-time-is-now-for-voice-activated-content-ecc06932f595 | ['Jay Baer'] | 2019-07-03 14:58:14.047000+00:00 | ['Voice Search', 'SEO', 'Amazon Echo', 'Voice Assistant', 'Digital Marketing'] |
Hegelian Recognition amidst Political Polarization | Isolation, the theme of 2020, has been plaguing us since late March in America. Indeed, it is often difficult for us to strike a balance between our intrinsic human need for social activities and caution for safety. It’s easy for us to retreat into our internet enclave. As we become more involved digitally as a member of the society online filtered by various forms of medium, real interpersonal interaction loses its significance for us. Not only is the quarantine life itself disruptive to a fulfilling human life, but political polarization fueled by isolation also intensifies amidst the chaos. What we lack is concrete mutual recognition between humans as equals.
A quote from Adorno in his famous essay Society came to my mind:
“Where people think they are closest to things, as with television, delivered into their very living room, nearness is itself mediated through social distance, through great concentration of power.”
Quarantine makes us more self-reflective and self-aware but accelerates the transition of our social presence online.
But real interaction between human beings forms the basis of mutual recognition, which is critical for a fulfilling human life. This intellectual tradition of recognition dates back to the beginning of the 19th century, where Hegel builds upon Fichte’s work and sketches out the journey to absolute knowledge in the Phenomenology of the Spirit. The Phenomenology proceeds in stages, in which spirit comes to know itself through various forms of self-assertion that start from mere sense-certainty.
Though it is a daunting work as a whole, many parts of Hegel’s Phenomenology is extremely vivid in its image and rich in content. We locate ourselves at the beginning of the emergence of self-consciousness, where Hegel describes individual men as beings equipped with desires, and capable of actions.
What is so significant about self-consciousness?
While consciousness is merely a unitary awareness of an environment I am presented with through a synthesis of my senses, self-consciousness is an awareness of that consciousness. The second-order of awareness posit my own consciousness as an object, and simultaneously from the lens of self-consciousness as a subject.
I = I, Subject = Object: Unity.
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash
“With self-consciousness, then, we have therefore entered the native realm of truth” — Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit
While I peer into myself, I create distance within myself, in which the second-order consciousness steps back and evaluates a claim(my claim) to consciousness. The realization of my own unity, “I am myself” gives me special status, as different from other external objects I perceive: being conscious of myself is vastly different from being conscious of other external objects.
With this realization, then, my consciousness of the external world also becomes different, since I can call this consciousness of the external world my external world, or a world in my own particular perspective, as opposed to a more simple consciousness of no perspective. All knowledge becomes self-knowledge. But in an important respect, while the consciousness before the realization of self-consciousness seems to be an impartial absolute picture of the world, self-consciousness after the realization of unity is alienated from the external world. I withdraw from the external world. Objects are not just objects per se anymore, they are objects for me.
A critical issue arises in this movement of the self. My realization of my own identity/unity is merely abstract. Although I regard this world as my world, I have retreated into my own consciousness to examine my own identity/unity. Although I exist as being in the world and encounter with real objects, I have not proved my truth in relation to these objects I encounter.
Abstractly, I am certain of myself as the absolute, in the sense that I am certain of myself as the truth of my own perspective of external things I am conscious of. This self-certainty is not real. Hegel believes that the self-certain consciousness needs to define its relationship with the external world not just as abstract certainty in the mind, but as real certainty, through desires and action. That is the fundamental drive of the self-consciousness. This process for such the unity of subject and object within each self-consciousness is called desire for Hegel.
Desire
“Self-consciousness is Desire in general” — Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit
How do I get knowledge of myself?
I am not sure what sort of thing I am in the beginning of my realization of my unity. There is this sort of emptiness while I peer inside myself, but not so when I look to the external world, and identify myself as opposed to objects in the external world.
Desire for Hegel is different from the concept of desire we are familiar with now. Instead of the psychological verb of desire that must associate itself with some object of desire as the end, the end of desire is just desire itself for Hegel. The act of desiring, directed toward the external world, is in a sense natural to unitary self-consciousness, for that is the way we must prove our self-certainty in reality.
Recall the duality of self-consciousness: we are extremely anxious about our alienated existence, anxious of our abstract self-certainty, and we want to actualize that which is abstract. Desire has nothing to do with what the object of desire is. It simply doesn’t matter. Because the point of desiring is to prove something essential about ourselves, that transcends our preference for some particular food, or our particular aesthetic about some particular good. Hegel would say that animals also have desire, such as desire for food from hunger; but animals are not self-conscious, so their desires are in such a manner much more rudimentary.
Desire as Negation
To prove myself as the absolute, I embark in my violent conquest of the external world to prove my absoluteness. In negating objects in the external world, I show myself that that object is indeed for me, dependent on me, while I exist as a self-consciousness that is for myself and independent. That’s the difference. This is a deeper drive within me that seeks to make objects conform to my will to affirm my self-identity.
However, as I negate an object to prove my self-certainty, my desire surfaces again after the act, and I seek another object to negate, as if I am trapped in an endless cycle of desire. After the act of negation, I am back to being uncertain about my own absoluteness, I constantly need objects to negate in order to constantly prove my self-certainty.
It is critical that the Hegelian desire’s end is not the object, but desire itself. I am trying to prove something about myself through negation of external objects. But although the object of my desire is not the point, its existence is nonetheless still essential as the object of the desire, or else the desire to negate will never be satisfied. But as soon as other objects exist through the lens of my consciousness, I am compelled to negate it again, and again, and again.
Indeed, the story shows that the self-consciousness is never satisfied in such an effort to prove the absoluteness of myself. If I am trapped in this perpetual state of desire to posit an object, then negating it, then positing an object all over again, my self-certainty is not independent at all. In a significant sense, my identity is dependent on other objects. This cycle of unabating desires of negation is deeply unsatisfying to the self-conscious human being.
Hegel thinks what self-consciousness really desires is recognition
“Self-consciousness achieves its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness” — Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit
A fulfilled self-conscious being requires the recognition of other self-consciousnesses. Hegel’s concept of a spirit is an advanced, satisfied self-consciousness that transcends its individuality and places itself in a community of self-conscious beings. Indeed, the process from unabating negation to recognition with another human being is described as a difficult and violent path.
Before we get anywhere close to recognition, Hegel first describes a life and death struggle between two self-conscious beings who both seek to negate the other to prove their own self-certainty. Fighting is essentially an expression of one’s autonomy, and Hegel thinks that my identity is so crucial to my existence as a human being that I am willing to even risk my life. Either someone wins, the other dies, or someone wins, the other step back from the cliff of death and submits to be a slave. But recognition is not achieved by anyone in this asymmetrical master-slave relation, because while the slave obviously receives no recognition, the slave’s recognition of the master’s superiority is not the worthy type of recognition the master truly desires.
Recognition can only be achieved in a society of equals, a society where rights of every member of the society are recognized, and opinions of every member of the society are respected. The link between recognition and our self-identity is crucial, for my conceptions of who I am is significantly reflected through how members of society treat me as an autonomous, free being, worthy of respect. While we require posited objects as ‘food’ for us to negate to prove our self-certainty, but with recognition the self exists only in its relation to another self, capable of reflection. We are comfortable only within the community of mutually recognizing beings. This is Hegel’s conception of a completed Spirit.
“I that is a We and the We that is I” — Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit
Language, Isolation
Within this community of mutually recognizing individuals, language is utilized as a medium of communication through which each one of us exhibits our inner self to the external world, and display our individuality for other self-consciousness. Self-consciousness originally exists as a duality of the subject and an object, with my own awareness of my own consciousness in the privacy of my own mind.
Our self-consciousness can exist for others only through language. Though language is a public enterprise, that is, it must be understood by intersubjective standard, each one of us make ourselves comprehensible to the other. For society to function, we communicate towards one another to achieve certain goals in life, be it a community goal, or be it to discover something about myself, to understand my own self-consciousness better.
This is how I perceive my truth in community life: my self is a relation that relates myself to other-selves. Periods of prolonged isolation during present times without communication with other recognizing selves causes me to reflect more and more within my own consciousness. Without much interaction with other people, I retreat within myself, often hiding behind screens that present my image in a distorting way toward my friends and families.
Our lack of communication with each other as mutually recognizing human beings is problematic, especially during the year of quarantine. Of course, our activities online obviously still use language as the most basic medium, but such activities are always filtered through high order mediums, such as social media. We might present ourselves with posts consisted of one or two sentences, a picture by the beach, or a video of my dog. It is my conviction that these higher-order mediums are lacking in an important dimension. Our use of language within these higher-order mediums becomes more directed, more focused, and more resolute. They are in general more expressions based, and more reaction based.
But this isn’t a particularly optimistic development. There is much less opportunity for communication in the form of rational discussions of which the exchange of information depends.
Through online mediums, other people are reduced to forms such as users, or characters, as opposed to equal self-consciousness that is capable of comprehension and reflection. Indeed, in taking us to a global online community of users and characters, we are ever more anxious of proving our own self-certainty. We are overwhelmed with a diverse multitude of foreignness that frightens us.
We thus develop a critical need for identity that reflects a deep lack of self-certainty. The need for identity emerges from a lack of communication; our self-image is not reflected through other mutually recognizing agents in the community, but through flashy news headlines, short tweets that are simply insufficient for meaningful discussion that must take place for a fulfilling human life within the social world.
Indeed, isolation makes us more reflective of our own thoughts. An isolated individual, sans communication, becomes more intensely aware of his own consciousness, also becomes more eager to prove its own self-certainty. The desire to prove my own self-certainty without the condition of mutual recognition regresses into the relentless cycle of negation.
Another Dimension:
Our intake of knowledge of the world becomes restrictively online is also a source of such individual frustration that causes our desire for blind negation. This is the old problem of confirmation bias that works disastrously in concert with the current toxic media landscape. Unconsciously, we desire things that confirm our beliefs, and such articles feed our perceptions that “I am right”, which I thought is essentially a self-fulling prophecy. Bias, and more prevalently, omissions, cause our world-view to be incomplete and thus cause us to be ignorant.
A Two-Fold Negation
I think that is the essence of political polarization, which is a combination of a lack of communication between mutually recognizing self-consciousnesses and cycles of radical confirmation bias.
In Hegelian terms, this resembles a really bad infinity of negation. We are moved to prove our self-certainty with so much emotion and violence. Not only do we negate what we perceive to be the foreign ‘other’, be it another identity group, or another political affiliation, our desire to consume that which confirms us is also a kind of negation. This is negations in two distinct, but deeply related dimensions.
Self-righteousness and moral superiority has become the method for us to protect our fragile ego. Interactions online between opposing sides turns bitter, becomes moralizing, and reduces to expressions of hatred of the other side. We lose sight of the other side as beings worthy of recognition and seek to discredit in efforts to negate the other side as untrue to prove our own absoluteness. We not only become alienated as a group only as opposed to the other group, but also become alienated as unsatisfied individuals.
Mutual Recognition
It isn’t easy for anyone to step back to examine himself in an impartial manner. To improve our situation, however, it is also not enough to negatively criticize the media, the party, or the government.
As a start, we should focus on establishing inclusive platforms that facilitate and encourage more effective forms of communication. Instead of focusing on speed of information, or first-impression appeal, we should prioritize the quality of communication. As self-consciousnesses seeking to understand each other, such a medium of quality communication must incentivize the exchange of ideas in a thoughtful manner among equals.
The fact that we are autonomous individuals must not be a restrictive condition that limits our willingness to recognize something foreign to us. It should rather open us to possibilities beyond our private capabilities. Autonomy is not simply an autonomy in my self-centered identity. We should strive to for autonomy in deliberation, in taking control of our own judgments, which pertains to giving serious thoughts to topics worthy of consideration rather than fitting a topic within some preexisting categories in our mind. | https://medium.com/discourse/hegelian-recognition-amidst-political-polarization-420406a57979 | ['Feihu Yan', 'Tiger'] | 2020-07-23 00:38:39.663000+00:00 | ['Isolation', 'Language', 'Quarantine', 'Politics', 'Philosophy'] |
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