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Stop and ask yourself again. | For some weeks now, questions about my dream and future ambition keep popping up at every organizations or companies I go to, in search of an industrial training placement. All this time, I began drowning myself in thoughts about what I really want to do and I am excited, to pen down my vision for a better world, which aspect I want to work on and what I want to achieve.
At least this is what I feel like at the moment and hope it would be a guide for my career, each time I reread.
I am a 400 level student, at Obafemi Awolowo University, studying Urban and Regional Planning. Although, Urban and Regional Planning was never my plan to begin with, I always wanted to become a Medical Doctor, because everyone told me I don’t get scared of blood. I applied for Microbiology at Obafemi Awolowo University, to avoid the high competitiveness of Medicine and Surgery, in terms of Admission. Surprisingly, I was offered admission to study Urban and Regional Planning instead. My dad encouraged me and at this time. I had no better admission offer, and considering the fact that my peers were already in Tertiary Institution. I agreed.
Whilst at the University, I started building skills and engaging in social activities that were directed towards leadership, environmental actions, community development and branding. I had a lot of things going on at every point, creating opportunities for youths, that I was almost everywhere. As time goes on, I realized I need to structure my career goal and get the right perspective of my dream. In March 2018, I got a placement for my first industry training at the Nigerian Defence Academy, Department of Geography, Remote Sensing and Cartography Laboratory. During this period, I learnt Geography Information Software (GIS) and Digital Mapping. They have the facility and technology, and it was at my disposal. It made me appreciate my course of study and I realized there’s so much I can do to help humanity, with the use of this yet to be tapped technology in Nigeria.
GIS is a tool which helps provide real time information about community interactions, business analysis, physical development, environmental condition, social economic characteristics and other geographical data-based information. The creation of GIS software, through the use of thematic map coloring, geographic patterns are visualize, that may not otherwise be seen in the raw data. Hence, developmental decisions and policies of the future will be data driven. I am prompted to further my studies in this area, and become an expert in geospatial analysis and technology. Learn from companies like Esri, to develop the needed skills and technical know-how to drive the change and impact, in Nigeria.
I want to use my skills set (project management, planning and networking, softwares proficiency), coupled with my academic experience, to create a sustainable enterprise, which would be driven by both experience and scientific knowledge. I hope to build an enterprise that will transform Nigeria’s local systems, creating real time analysis and consultation services and at the same time empower Nigeria’s government system, especially education. Most of Nigeria’s tertiary institutions are not equipped with this expertise and cannot transfer the knowledge of such to students. (As i only got the chance to know more about this, when I was at the Nigerian Defence Academy) Unlike other, I was privileged to learn this in indepth, because of my short stint at Nigerian Defense Academy. | https://medium.com/@barakatbidemi96/stop-and-ask-yourself-again-28a70aaa387c | ['Barakat Bidemi'] | 2019-01-20 03:05:16.222000+00:00 | ['Innovation In Education', 'Opportunity', 'GIS', 'Student Goal', 'Education Technology'] |
Building a real-time user action counting system for ads | Del Bao, Software engineer, Ads Infrastructure
Guodong Han and Jian Fang, Software engineers, Serving System
The Pinterest ads team’s mission is to provide the best experience for both Pinners and advertisers. Our ads system is a real-time bidding system that delivers targeted ads based on a variety of attributes. One of the major behavioral attributes is user action counts, the count for a Pinner’s past clicks, impressions and other actions on ads. An important part of user action counts is frequency control, which sets a maximum number of times an ad is shown to a Pinner (impression counts over a period of time enforce this limit).
Because our system is real-time, we have to serve user action counts immediately upon request. That’s why we built Aperture, an in-house data storage and online events tracking service that achieves the ads user action counting requirements. In this post, we’ll explain Aperture and our rationale for a central service.
User action counting problem
Use cases
Frequency control
Frequency control manages the delivery of ads to Pinners. By controlling the frequency, an advertiser can either prevent overexposure of the same ads or lift brand awareness (i.e. a brand’s increase in customer or audience perception). This use case requires several user impression counts for promoted Pins (ads) at various time ranges in real-time.
The frequency of an ad is defined as the number of times it’s viewed by a Pinner in a given timeframe. The action is an impression, and the time window can be one, seven or 30 days.
Fatigue model
Fatigue happens when a Pinner becomes tired of viewing the same ad. This usually has negative impact on CTR (click-through rate). Our ads system has a training pipeline for the fatigue model for pCTR (predictive CTR). At the request time, several user counting features are fetched for the user fatigue model. A Pinner’s fatigue is measured at different campaign levels. Our campaign structure has four levels:
Advertisers: the account Campaigns: houses of ad groups Ad groups: container of Promoted Pins Promoted Pins: ads
The required actions are impressions and clicks. First, our ads serving system fetches a Pinner’s past engagement counts over a time range for a list of ads candidates at four campaign levels. Then, the counting features are fed to fatigue models for CTR prediction.
Query pattern
We generalize the query pattern from these use cases as counts queried on a couple of dimensions. Each dimension has finite and discrete values. Each count is on every possible combination of dimension values. A query example is:
What is the Pinner’s impression count of promoted Pins 1,2,3 for the last week?
In this example, action (impression), time range (last seven days), promoted Pins (1,2,3) are dimensions in the query. A dimension is required if a count query request must provide one or more values for it.
The current dimensions we track for user action counts include:
Action : click and impression are the two most widely used actions. The system is also extensible to any actions, like a saving a Pin.
: click and impression are the two most widely used actions. The system is also extensible to any actions, like a saving a Pin. View type : view type is a term for the type of Pinner’s landing page. The majority of them are home feed, search and related Pins. An ads request is issued for a Pinner while the page is loading. Most of our use cases care either the action counts of the requested view type or across all view types. In the latter case, no view type is specified.
: view type is a term for the type of Pinner’s landing page. The majority of them are home feed, search and related Pins. An ads request is issued for a Pinner while the page is loading. Most of our use cases care either the action counts of the requested view type or across all view types. In the latter case, no view type is specified. Time range : counts are supported on arbitrary days, hours or minutes.
: counts are supported on arbitrary days, hours or minutes. Entity dimensions: a user action event on promoted Pins happens at all four levels. For example, when a Pinner clicks on an ad, the counts for the promoted Pin, its ad group, campaign and advertiser are all incremented respectively. Each entity level is an individual dimension.
User action counts request flow
When a Pinner loads a page of a view type on Pinterest, an ad request with user info is sent from the web server to the ads system in order to fill the ads spots (i.e. an opportunity to display an ad). The system will retrieve ads candidates from our inventory and subsequently determine which ads among the candidates to put in the designated spots. This behavior is called ad insertion.
As a Pinner interacts with promoted Pins, these actions are tracked by calling a tracking endpoint from the front-end. The server then logs the event to Kafka. A Kafka consumer will consume the messages and write the action events to a data store (Aperture). Ads backend servers request user action counts from Aperture after candidate retrieval.
Two approaches
User action counts are computed by tallying the number of events per-user. We consider two approaches to bridge the gap between the counts and the raw events.
Approach 1: client-side events counting
Ads servers reach out to the data store to fetch raw events.
The business components run ad-hoc logic to compute counts.
Approach 2: independent counting service
The event data store has a counting layer to serve counts.
The service exposes a set of generic counting APIs.
The table below compares the pros and cons of two approaches in detail.
Since the counting service solution surpasses client-side counting for most criteria, we went with an independent counting service approach.
Other challenges
Counting is based on the deduplicated events data for two reasons:
The ads logging system has no guarantee of delivering the event message exactly once.
The business logic requires the same action of a Pinner on a promoted Pin within a time range be counted only once. For example, an impression of a Pinner for the same insertion is only counted once within a day.
This requires the counting service to track raw events in order to dedup them. This also requires the counting computation to happen at the serving time, not at event ingestion time.
Moreover, there are various counting cases for different dimensions and time ranges. Pre-computing counts at ingestion time for all cases isn’t extensible. The service needs to have a flexible query interface for various counting cases.
The SLA for the counting service should be less than 8ms’s P99 latency for scanning and filtering users’ raw events with 200k qps at peak time.
Aperture as the counting service
We leverage Aperture, a service we built in-house. Compared with other data store services, Aperture is designed for time series data storage and online events tracking and serving. It supports low-latency events appending, deduplication, filtering and aggregation. Under the hood, the service uses RocksDB as the storage engine, and is powered by Helix-enabled Rocksplicator for cluster management, recovery and replication. We aim to open-source Aperture in later this year, and how it compares to other systems will be revealed then (our goal for this post is to explain its technology for solving the ads counting problem).
Storage schema
Aperture implements data storage schema and serving functions for time series event data at the user level. It abstracts a single event as a byte array with a predefined length. The event can be an ID or list of fields. Logically, a record is a key-value pair of a user and all events of the user in the past. As RocksDB retrieves and stores at the record level, storing all events of a user as a single record incurs high cost for the time range queries. Ideally, only events of the queried time range are supposed to be fetched from the disk.
In order to optimize query performance, Aperture bucketizes user events into separate records.
{ Key -> [event_id, …, event_id], ... Key -> [event_id, …, event_id] } Key = [User Id] + [Time Bucket Type] + [Time Bucket Id] Time Bucket Types: D(Day), H(Hour), M(Minute)
Specifically, all events falling into the same time range (represented by the time bucket ID) will go to one record. Thus, the RocksDB key is [User Id] + [Time Bucket Type] + [Time Bucket Id] . When Aperture receives an event, it computes bucket IDs under the required types (day, hour and/or minute), and then writes back these three records, which is appended to the DB with the customized RocksDB’s merge operator.
Query language
Aperture’s aggregation API has SQL-like semantics. Here’s a table for the comparison
Note: because time range isn’t a dimension in the event, the query language doesn’t support multiple time ranges. A single aggregation request can only support one time range.
Event schema
Aperture represents an event as a byte array, and is oblivious to the dimensions of events. It’s the client’s responsibility to define the event schema. For ads use cases, an event is a list of dimensions laid out one after another. Aperture’s aggregation API allows bitmask in the query to denote the corresponding bytes as the dimensions the operators apply on.
Every time a promoted Pin is inserted to a Pinboard, the ads system generates a unique insertion ID to identify it. An event is thus identified by the insertion ID, action and viewtype. Insertion ID is the additional dimension. Aperture dedups the event based on the full event bytes.
Client request
On the client-side, we ensure counts for all use cases are fetched in a single place. This way, we can manage the number of requests to Aperture.
We issue the requests to Aperture after the candidate retrieval, because:
Count consumers reside after the candidate retrieval phase.
We get a list of promoted Pin candidates after retrieval. We request counts only for these Pin candidates instead of all Pins the Pinner has engaged with. This reduces memory footprint and the bandwidth to the downstream servers.
We fill up a nested map for time range, entity type, entity ID and counts, and pass it to the downstream.
Conclusion
In order to deliver relevant, useful ads that match a Pinner’s interests, it’s important to accurately count the actions a user takes on promoted Pins. Our ads system leverages Aperture’s time series storage power and aggregation APIs for user action counting. We’re looking forward to onboarding more use cases, and sharing this technology with the open-source community in the future.
Acknowledgements: Huge thanks to Liquan Pei, Zack Drach, Caijie Zhang, Scott Zou, Hongjie Bai, Jinru He, Yining Wang and Bo Liu for the design and implementation advise. | https://medium.com/pinterest-engineering/building-a-real-time-user-action-counting-system-for-ads-88a60d9c9a | ['Pinterest Engineering'] | 2018-07-13 20:27:00.051000+00:00 | ['Adtech', 'Ads', 'Rocksdb', 'Infrastructure', 'Engineering'] |
Wash Out Anger and Grief | Critical to health and well-being are diet and exercise, but also emotional housekeeping and the development of resiliency. When emotions such as anger or grief go unexpressed, they impact physical as well as mental health. I have seen this in my own healing journey, as well as working with many clients on these issues.
Start by acknowledging where you are. So often we can be afraid of showing openly things deemed as “negative” emotions or expressions. Or conversely, some seem resigned to being “an angry person”, “bitter” or “depressed.” Rather than consider appropriate ways of processing and expressing these emotions, they are frequently ignored or suppressed. When not dealt with, they end up “coming out sideways” flaring up inappropriately (displaced intensity, location or audience). As Pema Chodron said, “Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.”
A good way to “take stock” and start processing the emotion and desensitize triggers is to name them. Specifically, use a journal and list them. Perhaps tapping (EFT) or doing a bit of breathwork first to be in a calm, neutral state.
There are a number of effective approaches that assist without considering detail or specificity of triggers, such as energy or breathwork. I recommend these as well. However, many people find clarity and benefit from this exercise. Depending on the intensity of the emotions being worked with, and your experience and comfort level, it can be helpful to “bookend” the exercise by checking in with someone before and after.
As hurt and grief are often hidden under anger, I recommend working with anger first. Physical exercise and dance are great for working that energy out but for this writing exercise, you can warm up by listing things you don’t admire, or are “pet peeves.” You can do a list for yourself, one for family/friends, and one for work/life. These are not stories or full accounts, but rather themes or events you need to heal from to lessen your sensitivity and/or reactivity.
The purpose of this inventory is not to spend time contemplating them or exacerbating your annoyance, but simply to quickly brainstorm and list for a sense of what you are releasing and lightening yourself of and perhaps what may need to be addressed further.
You can take on as little or as much at a time as you’re comfortable with, given your developing tools and support. The important part is to allow yourself the time to identify, process and release these emotions. Thus, avoiding the unpleasant side effects of neglect and “stockpiling” that can wreak havoc on your health and relationships.
The act of creating the lists is, in itself, a ‘purge’ that benefits you as you follow through on your intention to fully release it. I like to add a couple more steps to complete the process by connecting back to the subconscious mind. After you feel a sense of completeness with the list at this time, prepare a place you can safely burn it. If that is not possible, or you simply prefer, you can also rip it up. But before physically destroying and discarding it, you can mentally and energetically release it with some calm (seated or lying down, eyes closed) inner reflection, deep breathing and visualization. I like the image of leaves floating down a stream, each one carrying a grievance or hurt (or anything to be released), the sound of the water soothing and carrying me into the next moment. Some prefer imagining balloons of different colors floating up and away, or raking leaves into a pile and watching them burn…whatever visualization you prefer.
When you feel complete with that releasing process, end by destroying the list and to the degree that you can, the weight of what it represents. You can also imagine more of the emotional charge washing away each time you shower or bathe. This isn’t about releasing things you care about but instead coming from a healed place beyond anger and grief and lessening the intensity along the way. Some wounds may be deep enough that it isn’t fully resolved in one process, but it’s possible to make progress each time and create more space for peace and joy.
Some like to set intentions for what will fill the space created and use visualization or other creative processes to “call in” harmony, love, happiness, calm, gratitude and fulfillment.
Just remember to honor yourself for all that you do to care for yourself and nurture your ability to thrive. | https://medium.com/@vedaprajvalan/wash-out-anger-and-grief-d612f661dbb8 | ['Veda Prajvalan'] | 2020-12-27 05:03:00.663000+00:00 | ['Anger', 'Letting Go', 'Releasing', 'Emotional Wellbeing', 'Grief'] |
Words | Hiraeth (n.)
Coming from Welsh origin, the first word I am going to write about on this site is Hiraeth. We have all felt a sense of longing in our lives, whether it was for company or for something a little more specific. Sometimes, while sipping on a cup of coffee in the morning, I find myself feeling lost. The same feeling of longing, but for a place I don’t belong.
Hiraeth, by definition, describes a sense of homesickness or nostalgia for a place that was never yours. This word has come to be one of my favorites, as it captures my exact emotions on days where I cannot describe my feelings in the English language.
Personally, I am biracial and growing up I found myself craving a sense of belonging. I felt that I didn’t belong in either race group that I was born into. Hiraeth sums up the loneliness that conjured up in my heart while gazing upon each culture I couldn't fit into.
One day I hope to find my home, a place where I can truly belong, but I am certain I will still crave for a home that never was. | https://medium.com/@decalcomania/words-3f2f6921bd12 | [] | 2020-12-18 05:47:59.608000+00:00 | ['Identity', 'Vocabulary', 'Words', 'Hiraeth', 'Biracial'] |
How I Got Back To My First Love: Reading | thecapriproject | I’ve been reading books for as long as I could remember
My childhood was comprised of book fairs, library visits, and bookshelves at home filled towards the back. I was reading books from children’s fantasy to dystopian and YA fiction. I never had my feet planted on the ground growing up because I was up in the clouds dreaming of other worlds I’ve only read about.
In primary school, once the bell has rung to let us out of class, I would head to the library. While waiting to be picked up, I would pick out a book and sit nicely like the quiet child I used to be. Most of the time, I would finish the book before I was picked up. Other times, I would check the book out and finish it in the car before I reached my house.
For the longest time, all I knew was that I loved to read. I wanted to give to the world what books had given me. A space to escape my reality and step into a world of imagination. My friends in school knew me as a writer. I would be multitasking, writing down notes while also reading books in class. I remember my chemistry teacher coming by my desk and closed my book because I was ‘distracted’.
Here’s How I Got Back Into Reading:
Pick out your favorite book that you used to love to read
A book I never get bored of reading is The Fault In Our Stars. Every time I pick this book up, there’s always something new that I notice. There are two ways we read books: readers internalize the words we read, while writers analyze the words. John Green might not be everyone’s author they look up to, but I knew I wanted to write YA fiction as my genre.
John Green became my inspiration because he was able to grab your attention with such beautiful words, I wanted to be like him. I sped through the book quite fast, because it was a book I knew I wouldn’t get tired of reading. The last time I picked it up was in my final year of university. I wanted to push myself to get used to reading again, so I would be motivated to put more effort into my final year.
Start by making a system
Read a book for 15 minutes a day. Take it slow and easy just to get the pages turning. Here’s who inspired me of making a system: Rowena Tsai. If you don’t know who Rowena is, she’s a lifestyle and productivity content creator based in NYC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK-sZjuXA6A
A system is a journey, Rowena stated. It’s been ingrained in our minds that we need goals to strive for, but how do we get the motion going in order to achieve those goals?
“It is your commitment to the process that will determine your progress”
Though I’ve taken her advice in a different direction, I knew I needed a system to map out the habits I want to retain. In the book she referenced, Atomic Habits, James Clear said, “When you fall in love with the process, rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy. A system can be successful in many different forms, not just the one you first ambitioned.”
I was happy I spent even 5 minutes trying to get myself to read, let alone 15 minutes a day. It starts as simple as that, you just need to take that first step.
Challenge yourself to reach a goal
The way Rowena differs between a system and a goal follows the quote, “It’s about the journey, not the destination.” A goal is the destination you want to get to. If creating a daily routine is difficult, I understand because I know I struggle with habitually following my routine every day. Another way is to then create a goal with no deadline. I followed this method to finish Disney CEO Bob Iger’s memoir, The Ride of a Lifetime, before the end of December.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MHv1sKAtfg
My challenge was reading 10 pages a day because I had about 100 pages left. It didn’t have to be daily, but I knew I wanted to finish the autobiography before the end of December. The challenge then turned to see if I could finish a chapter every day, which I succeeded in doing.
It was the first autobiography that I bought for myself, but not the first I’ve read. The first autobiography I read was Obama’s A Promise of Change. In his 15 years running Disney, Bob Iger acquired Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 20th Century Fox. They are both fearless, brilliant, and compassionate leaders that I strive to follow.
Understand that it’s okay to put a book down
https://www.instagram.com/p/B5dD5dzgDsO/?utm_source=ig_embed
It took me a while to finally pick up the Raymond Carver collection I bought at an independent bookstore in Bristol called The Last Bookshop. They sell books for £3 each, but and they offer a 4-for-£10 deal. It was a collection of short stories, so you’d think I’d be quick to read it.
It was a lucky find because I’ve always wanted to get into Carver ever since I found this one quote from the movie Stuck In Love (2012): “I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone’s heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark.”
I wanted to analyze his writing, so I went about it quite slow to identify his style. However, it did end up becoming boring and long-winded. I got through 15 stories from a total of 22 before finally putting it down and said that was enough. I chose to put down the book, despite not finishing it, and I was happy to walk away from it.
Choose a book you would be interested in
I shared my love for YA fiction and traveling with my friend Addie, who is an avid reader as well. She brought up the book Just One Day, which sounded so familiar to me. I kept mistaking it for the 2011 Anne Hathaway film with Jim Sturgess. Which it was not. However, I knew I’ve seen the book before because it was hidden away in one of my bookshelves. After reading Bob Iger’s autobiography, I was quite eager to read another book. I hyped up myself with the promise of sweet heartbreak, and boy did that book deliver.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CGeo1lCAd5y/?utm_source=ig_embed
18-year-old American girl Allyson goes on a European tour before she goes off to college. She meets a 20-year-old Dutch guy named Willem who invites her on a trip to Paris. Together, they spend one fateful day, and… It’s a story about self-discovery and travel and love, which was a novel that was right up my alley.
I started reading that night, so I got to half of the book before I continued devouring it the next day. The thrill of not putting a book down because of my desire to get to the next page was an adrenaline rush I have long forgotten. So, thank you, Addie, for always motivating me and for your help reigniting my love for reading. She runs a bookstagram account @eleanorandbooks where she posts her favorite quotes from her beloved books, so check it out!
This is my story as a fellow reader, and future published author
I studied for an English Literature degree, despite never having experience with it in high school. I’ve never read classics such as Shakespeare, or Dickens, I felt like such a fraud. And when reading books became an obligation, for some reason, I was very discouraged. It became quite a problem as I was never able to fully comprehend the books I was writing about because I never finished reading. I could count the number with my fingers on how many books I actually finished in university.
For the longest time, I was quite disappointed in myself. It felt like I coasted, and I was taking my own dream for granted. It took me an entire year since graduating from university in 2019 that I regained my passion for reading. People have been picking up more books during the pandemic than they’ve ever had. I knew if I wanted to get back into reading, this was the time to do it. I had to be able to show up for myself and the dream I’ve fought for my entire life. I’m still in the early stages of getting back to reading, but I am proud of myself for the effort I’ve put in now. | https://medium.com/@rileyzander/how-i-got-back-to-my-first-love-reading-thecapriproject-1e8815933daa | ['Riley Zander'] | 2020-12-16 13:12:04.695000+00:00 | ['Passion', 'Reading', 'Books', 'Reading Books'] |
LSTM, GRU and Attention Block Basics | How Language discovered itself — ML techniques in NLP
Way back in history, when neural nets became common, there was the neural network language model, based on basic neural networks. These failed, however, due to the curse of dimensionality. The challenge with language is that it is rarely repetitive, and the same information can be portrayed in myriad ways — structure and syntax matter. It is impossible to use traditional neural nets since they can’t learn long-distance dependencies over multiple words. To work around this, n-gram word sequences began to be analysed.
Then-gram sequence came to follow the math as below
The probability of a sequence of words can be obtained from the probability of each word given the context of words preceding it, using Bayes’ theorem
P(w1,w2,…,wt−1,wt)=P(w1)P(w2|w1)P(w3|w1,w2)…P(wt|w1,w2,…wt−1).
Probabilistic language models approximate P(wt|w1,w2,…wt−1) using a fixed context of size n−1 , i.e. using P(wt|wt−n+1,…wt−1) , as in n-grams.
However, the traditional n-grams did not solve the problem of having deep memory or retaining a summary of underlying context. This led to series of NN’s, called Recurrent neural networks (RNNs), a kind of architecture which can remember things over time.
RNN
The RNN learns a representation of context that summarizes the past word sequence in a way that preserves information predictive of the future. This learned summarization would keep higher-level abstract summaries of more remote text, and a more detailed summary of very recent words.
Compare the RNN structure on the right to the neural net on the left. The connections between the hidden units allow the RNN to carry over a memory.
We can think of an RNN as a dynamic system with one (or multiple) sets of hidden units which feed into themselves. The network’s graph would then have self-loops. We train the RNN by UNROLLING the RNN’s graph by explicitly representing the units at all time steps. The weights and biases are shared between all time steps. In other architectures of the RNN, weights and biases may be calculated differently.
In an RNN language model, each word is represented as an indicator vector, The model predicts a distribution, and we can train it with cross-entropy loss, typically with forward and backpropagation algos as usual. This model can learn long-distance dependencies. When we generate from the model (i.e. compute samples from its distribution over sentences), the outputs feed back in to the network as inputs.
A teacher forcing is an effective strategy for training recurrent neural networks — in this case, model (actual or expected) output from a prior time step (Yt-1)is taken as an input in the next time step X(t).
A practical issue during the training of RNN is the vanishing or exploding gradient issue. For an example, say a typical sentence length is 20 words. This means there’s a gap of 20 time steps between the time the RNN sees a relevant word and when it needs the word. The derivatives need to travel over this entire pathway, leading to signal attenuation or explosion. (see example below)
vanishing or exploding gradients
There are some ways to work around this —
by gradient clipping (clip gradients over a certain range — gradients are biased, but they don’t blow up) ReLU activation function. The hidden units are a kind of memory. Therefore, their default behavior should be to keep their previous value — meaning the function at each time step should be close to the identity function. A non linear activation function will move the value away from the identity value. A ReLU activation, initialising all the weight matrices to the identity matrix, will solve this by range-binding the values. reverse the input sequence. This way, there’s only one time step between the first word of the input and the first word of the output. The network can first learn short-term dependencies between early words in the sentence, and then long-term dependencies between later words.
But then, we’re better off redesigning the architecture, since the exploding/vanishing problem is a conceptual problem with RNN’s. Enter LSTM’s.
LSTM
The LSTM is based on the idea that a network’s activations are its short-term memory and its weights are its long-term memory. The LSTM architecture retains short-term memory for a long time. Think of this as memory cells which have controllers saying when to store or forget information. The LSTM replaces each single unit in an RNN by a memory block. The data feeding into the LSTM gates are the input at the current time step and the hidden state of the previous time step. They are processed by three fully-connected layers with a sigmoid activation function to compute the values of the input, forget. and output gates. As a result, values of the three gates are in the range of (0,1)(0,1).
LSTM
LSTMs are explicitly designed to avoid the long-term dependency problem. There are two key elements —
“Cell state” which works like a conveyor belt runs straight down the entire chain, easy for information to flow along without changes.
“Gates” which control or decide what kind of information could go or throw away from the cell state.
The forget gate decides what to forget — Take the example of a language model trying to predict the next word based on all the previous ones. In such a problem, the cell state might include the gender of the present subject, so that the correct pronouns can be used. When we see a new subject, we want to forget the gender of the old subject.
The input gate, decides what new info we want to store in the gate. First, a sigmoid layer decides the values we will update. Next, a tanh layer creates a vector of new candidate values that could be added to the state.
The update state drops the information about the old subject’s gender and add the new information, as we decided in the previous steps.
But LSTM’s do have an intrinsic problem. The hidden memory unit is difficult to control, and is computationally very expensive to calculate four different states. What is we could compress the LSTM and make it simpler, and provide more control over the entire network states without the hidden transmission layer? That led to the GRU.
GRU
GRU — an improvement over the LSTM
The GRU is similar to the LSTM but with only two gates and less parameters.
The “update gate” determines how much of previous memory to be kept.
The “reset gate” determines how to combine the new input with the previous memory.
Comparison of the LSTM abd GRU gating mechanisms using logic gates
Attention Block Basics | https://medium.com/@chiranthancv95/lstm-gru-and-attention-block-basics-d58227db0557 | ['Cv Chiranthan'] | 2020-12-03 18:30:22.435000+00:00 | ['Naturallanguageprocessing', 'Deep Learning', 'Rnn', 'Attention', 'Lstm'] |
Recipe 245: The Best Getaway | Recipe 245: The Best Getaway
This AirBnB was exactly what we needed
This is one of the many recipes that Aaron and I want to share with you. We are overjoyed for you to come with us on our journey as we put together different concoctions and laugh together (all while hoping to not burn our house down). Please enjoy these recipes as much as we have. We welcome you to a small, but intentional, part of our lives.
If you would like to read the post that accompanies this recipe, check it out here. | https://medium.com/cooking-with-sarah/recipe-245-the-best-getaway-dbe0e7feb68c | ['Sarah Charles'] | 2020-12-05 22:02:37.697000+00:00 | ['Recipe', 'Marriage', 'Airbnb', 'Cooking', 'Louisville'] |
The Little Things that make life. It felt unfair. Illogical. Meaningless… | It felt unfair. Illogical. Meaningless. What a waste!
I felt all of those things and I didn’t know why. The realization struck me much later. That it wasn’t unfair or illogical or meaningless or a waste. It had to hurt me. It had to be the way it did.
All these experiences sometimes are lost on me. I feel utterly devastated and emotional when certain life-changing scenarios come my way. Did I cry? Yes. Did I feel betrayed? Yes. Did I make a fuss about it? Yes.
But I also fought for the things I truly loved. Fiercely and ferociously. It was always like that. Too many people are consumed with all the big things that they forget that the little things that are there matter too.
Little things like having clean drinking water. Beautiful flowers. Having a family. Someone who cares. A balloon. All these little things make up all the great things in life.
So as I was sitting beside the window, thinking about the good and the bad times, I thought to myself “was it worth it?” “Was it really necessary for it to happen to me?” All of these questions consumed my mind.
Lost. Criticized.
I kept beating myself up thinking I could have done better. I could have played things differently. I could have kept fighting. But no! Suddenly I stopped myself from these never-ending thoughts. I told myself that it had to happen because it was meant to.
As days went by, I realized that if it didn’t happen I wouldn’t have become the woman I am today. I am strong and confident more than ever. I finally told myself that the reason why my heart had to break is that it was time for me to be strong.
Often we fail to realize that that event that occurs in our lives are opportunities for us to grow. Life lessons are the universe’s way to make our lives interesting. Believe me when I say this that my life has gotten better because of the experiences that shaped me!
“Don’t beat yourself up for not knowing the answers. You don’t always have to know who you are. You don’t have to have the big picture or know where you’re heading. Sometimes, it’s enough just to know what you’re going to do next.” ― Sophie Kinsella, The Undomestic Goddess
The moment I realized what I am capable of I knew I was meant for greater things. I listened to my instincts. I listened to advise. I did what I thought was best for me at the time.
The important thing to keep in mind is that we all have to face certain situations beyond our control. Sometimes it can be overwhelming. We might feel outraged. But the things that seem unfair are only fair and the ones that feel illogical are in fact logical. We will never understand why it happened the way it did. We need to accept the fact that whatever might be the case it is for our own good.
It won't seem easy at first but if you settle your mind and tell it that the answers will come in time. It will. I promise you that it gets easier with time. You heal. You grow. You accomplish.
So don’t worry if it feels like it was meaningless. It probably was. It probably wasn’t. Calm yourself because you are on your quest towards greatness. Pain is inevitable but what you learn from it becomes meaningful in the end.
Author Bio
Monalisa is a lifestyle blogger and an Influencer. She has helped a lot of people through her articles on self-improvement. She loves reading books and exploring new places. She believes that your mind is the greatest tool you will ever need and it continues to be her secret to success. She also has a YouTube channel for her readers where she discusses life and all its lessons. You can follow her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for her lifestyle updates | https://byrslf.co/that-crazy-thing-that-happened-1eecb4f58d4a | ['Monalisa Roy'] | 2020-07-31 07:38:41.509000+00:00 | ['Meaning Of Life', 'Beyourself', 'Live', 'Love', 'Storytelling'] |
The 2D & 3D live graph monitoring system for Wireless Vibration Sensor using Python | We are stepping forward core development which monitors the Wireless Vibration sensor data and plot on the graph in 2D & 3D axis using python
In this blogtut, We are going to plot Live streaming graph which helps us to monitor the data of wireless vibration sensor after a certain interval of time.
Hardware Used
Software
Python
XCTU — Digi Mesh Software
Python Packages
Matplotlib
Serial
Mpl_toolkits
Matplotlib animation
About Wireless Vibration Sensor
The dual power backup mode Wireless Vibration sensor has the capability to monitor the real-time parameters of vibration sensed from many high tech machines and can be used in various different applications. You can also use the sensor with 2AA batteries which allows the Wireless sensor to transmit 500,000 parameter transmission at a time. We can also transmit the data to the gateway device for 10 years maximum with 2AA battery backup by following some certain interval conditions.
Application
In this application, we are plotting the two dimensional(2D) and three-dimensional(3D) graph by fetching the RMS(in X, Y, Z axis) values from the sensor wirelessly. The graph plotting the values continuously after a certain interval of time. The live streaming on 2D and 3D has various uses but for the basic start, we have used this sensor with the industrial machines to sense the vibration parameters at 2D as well as a 3D axis.
Wireless and Serial Communication
To fetch the parameters we are using the Xbee coordinator which receives the values of Wireless Vibration Sensor through wireless communication.
Install Python
To install the python we just have to go the link and install the version as per your requirement. After Installing the python
Click on Command prompt
Install the Pyserial, Matplotlib, Numpy packages, all the packages will be used in this project
After installing all the packages we are going to connect the Xbee coordinator and with the help of the reference link, we will adjust the parameters of the Wireless Vibration Sensor to fetch the byte array from the device.
About Code
After the Adjustment, we will use the serial code which helps us to manipulate the byte array which is mentioned in the manual of the sensor and share the parameters as per the requirement.
Import the Serial package
import serial
Mention the serial port and baud rate through which you want to read the Byte Array.
seru = serial.Serial('COM6', 115200)
If the serial port is true then we will continuously read the byte array from the Wireless Vibration sensor through xbee coordinator connected serially to laptop port
while True:
s = seru.read(54)
Note: In this sensor, we are fetching 54 bytes in one go which is mentioned in the manual you can mention the byte array which is given in per the sensor manual
Going through some certain manipulation we were able to manipulate the data as per the requirements
print('Sensor Number: '+str(s[16]))
print('Firmware No: '+str(s[17]))
rms_x = (((s[24]*65536)+(s[25]*256)+s[26])& 0xffff)/100
rms_y = (((s[27]*65536)+(s[28]*256)+s[29])& 0xffff)/100
rms_z = (((s[30]*65536)+(s[31]*256)+s[32])& 0xffff)/100
print('RMS X axis: '+(str(rms_x))+' mg')
print('RMS Y axis: '+(str(rms_y))+' mg')
print('RMS z axis: '+(str(rms_z))+' mg')
max_x = (((s[33]* 65536)+(s[34]*256)+s[35])& 0xffff)/100
max_y = (((s[36]*65536)+(s[37]*256)+s[38])& 0xffff)/100
max_z = (((s[39]*65536)+(s[40]*256)+s[41])& 0xffff)/100
print('Max Value X axis: '+(str(max_x))+' mg')
print('Max Value Y axis: '+(str(max_y))+' mg')
print('Max Value Z axis: '+(str(max_z))+' mg')
min_x = (((s[42]*65536)+(s[43]*256)+s[44])& 0xffff)/100
min_y = (((s[45]*65536)+(s[46]*256)+s[47])& 0xffff)/100
min_z = (((s[48]*65536)+(s[49]*256)+s[50])& 0xffff)/100
print('Min Value X axis: '+(str(min_x))+' mg')
print('Min Value Y axis: '+(str(min_y))+' mg')
print('Min Value Z axis: '+(str(min_z))+' mg')
ctemp = (((s[51]*256)+s[52])& 0xffff)
battery = ((s[18]*256)+s[19])
voltage = 0.00322*battery
print('Temperature in Celcius: '+(str(ctemp)))
print('ADC Value: '+(str(battery)))
print('Battrey Voltage: '+(str(voltage)))
Sensor Output
Going through the image we will be able to monitor the sensor parameters from the python shell.
2D and 3D live Graph Plotting
for 2D and 3D graph plotting we have installed the package called Numpy and Matplotlib which plays a significant role in creating the plot
For plotting the graph basically, we will be using matplotlib and to continue streaming the data for which we will be using the Animation function within the matplotlib
Importing matplotlib library
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.animation as animation
Create the function of serial code for wireless vibration sensor and return the value values which you want to display in graph plot from the functions
Create a figure for Plotting
fig = plt.figure()
ax1 = fig.add_subplot(1,1,1)
Assign the values globally and append the Vibration sensor function values with another function which helps to animate and plot the graph
rmsX,rmsY,rmsZ = vib_sense();
xs.append(dt.datetime.now().strftime('%H:%M:%S.%f'))
ys.append(rmsX)
y2.append(rmsY)
y3.append(rmsZ)
Limit the Sensor data axis notation
xs = xs[-50:]
ys = ys[-50:]
y2 = y2[-50:]
y3 = y3[-50:]
Mention the commands which help you to Plot the graph in different styles
ax1.clear()
ax1.plot(xs, ys, label='RMS X', marker='o')
ax1.plot(xs, y2, label='RMS Y',marker='o')
ax1.plot(xs, y3, label='RMS Z',marker='o')
Initializing the animation function will help to animate the sensor data on plotting the graph
ani = animation.FuncAnimation(fig, animate, fargs=(xs, ys, y2, y3), interval=500)
plt.show()
Note: The only thing which is different between plotting 3D graph is that we have to use the numpy.array which has grid values which are all of the same types and has been indexed by a tuple function, you can also learn about from reference Link. And a figure for plotting will be mentioned as
ax = fig.add_subplot(111, projection='3d')
for the 3D graphing we will use the numpy.array function in which we will create the plotting function accordingly which represent the data the in wireframe style or scatter style
def update_lines(num):
#calling sensor function
rmsX,rmsY,rmsZ = vib_sense()
#Creating Numpy array and appending the values
vib_x= np.array(rmsX)
x.append(vib_x)
vib_y= np.array(rmsY)
y.append(vib_y)
vib_z= np.array(rmsZ)
z.append(vib_z)
print(x)
print(y)
print(z)
ax = fig.add_subplot(111, projection='3d')
ax.clear()
#Limit the Graph
ax.set_xlim3d(0, 100)
ax.set_ylim3d(0, 100)
ax.set_zlim3d(0, 100)
#for line graph
graph = ax.plot3D(x,y,z,color='orange',marker='o')
#For Scatter
# graph = ax.scatter3D(x,y,z,color='orange',marker='o')
return graph
Output
For 2D Axis
For 3 D axis
Code
For 2D Axis
For 3D Axis
For Serial Code to Monitor Wireless Vibration Sensor data
Credits | https://medium.com/@varuldcube100/the-2d-3d-live-graph-monitoring-system-for-wireless-vibration-sensor-using-python-b20aa4888644 | ['Varul Jain'] | 2019-04-02 08:15:47.262000+00:00 | ['Industry 4 0', 'IoT', 'Matplotlib', 'Python', 'Industry'] |
Amal Totkay | A growth mindset is very essential in daily life If you want to succeed in this world. I want to emphasize the following 5 tips that are useful for a developing mindset
1.Stop seeking approval.
2.View challenges as opportunities
3.Self-talk
you have to know first what you are, and what you want to do
4. Place effort before talent
5.Learn from other people’s mistakes
Reflection on these Totkay:
I found these tips from the online course provided by Amal. I learned how to find myself first then to put effort and never say that I am not able to do this because nothing is impossible. My favorite tip is self-talk. Seeking the challenges as opportunities to learn something from everything. We just have to take the first step towards something that we want to do by self-reflection than hardworking in that field will ensure a growth mindset | https://medium.com/@muhammad-shahbaz165/amal-totkay-8d6e541190f3 | ['Muhammad Shahbaz Qadir'] | 2020-12-25 18:12:38.379000+00:00 | ['Growth Mindset', 'Blogging', 'Amal Totay', 'Self Esteem'] |
5 Eclectic Approaches to Corporate Diversity and Inclusion | Continuing on in my research into how companies are approaching societal profit, I came across an encouraging number of initiatives by American corporations that took of all different shapes, sizes and degrees.
In particular, many of the programs I came across were dated in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in particular. In this time period, many companies produced diversity-focused advertising campaigns, made donations (typically $500k to $1 million) to BLM-related philanthropic causes, reiterated their diversity and inclusion policies, touted their D&I executives, and produced D&I reports. Yet some approaches went beyond this common set, standing out for their uniqueness.
Here is a summary of several of the most interesting instances I found of companies taking novel approaches to innovating in their pursuit of racial and gender-based societal profit, from both equality and equity-based perspectives.
Microsoft — Diversity and Inclusions Efforts of the World’s Most Valuable Corporation
Microsoft is arguably the world’s most valuable company, and is a company injected with the corporate ethos of one of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs, who plowed $37 billion of his own money into his namesake charity. Given its wealth of resources, global footprint, and ability to exert influence as a corporate role model, Microsoft is also uniquely positioned to make a highly substantive impact on the norms, values, and reality of society at-large.
From my experiences working for the software giant in the 2010s, I saw firsthand how Microsoft had come a long way from its portrayal in stories from days as the corporate bully of early Silicon Valley. In this millennium, Microsoft has made and continues to make clear commitments to growing its societal profits in addition to its dollar profit. Of all the D&I news I found, I came away with the feeling that Microsoft’s efforts are the most noteworthy for their scope and specificity, and can serve as an excellent case study into the strategy and tactics of how a large corporation can pursue societal profit. Furthermore, the fact that the world’s most successful company by stock price terms values societal profit is a ringing repudiation of the Milton Friedman doctrine, which urges the leverage of every dollar a company has access to in order to return the maximum profits possible to its investors.
In the wake of the racial tragedies of 2020, Microsoft’s expanded D&I efforts were detailed in a letter from CEO Satya Nadella, which began by calling out its immediate increase in its investment into its own diversity and inclusion efforts by $150 million over the next five years. This expands Microsoft’s investment into D&I efforts by another 50% on top of its previously reported $300 million commitment of 2018. On a related tangent, Apple and Walmart each also announced commitments, to the tune of $100 million each for the creation of D&I research centers and other efforts.
Microsoft’s new $150 million investment is revealed throughout the rest of the letter to stand on top of close to $1 billion in other commitments to other, external efforts, which are broken down into the following three pillars of action:
Raising leadership diversity:
Rolling out a required D&I training, which includes coverage of the specific experiences of the Black and African American community.
This idea of actually immersing people in the experiences and shoes of others to deepen the training is particularly interesting. This addition could be an innovative way to establish connections to affected communities and build new, two-way streets of structured interaction, discussion, and learning that wouldn’t otherwise exist.
Doubling the number of Black and African American managers and leaders (Satya commented that Microsoft’s D&I efforts would expand to Hispanic and Latinx over the next five years).
For context, Microsoft’s current Black and African American leadership rate sits at ~2.7% (of ~4.5% company-wide). This initiative also includes specific efforts to plan structured career pathways, such as from mid-level management to director, and director to general manager. When paired with Microsoft’s commitment to expand the diversity of its talent and supplier pipelines (covered below), the expansion in leadership may hopefully create a virtuous cycle in normalizing the presence of Black and African Americans in all areas of the company’s workforce and operations, which could help Microsoft (and the broader tech industry the company is a leader within) ultimately align company workforce participation rates closer to the Black American labor participation rate of 12.3% as of 2016, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Increasing the D&I component of senior leader compensation/promotional decisions, as well as assigning leaders coaching aimed to help them grow their performance against D&I goals.
This follows a rising trend of expanding executive compensation from profits/growth to D&I performance outcomes, and is phenomenal to see growing in adoption. Microsoft’s addition of D&I coaching may be a luxury affordable by its high profit margins, but the purpose (padding added executive requirements with key support in figuring out how to achieve their new performance goals) may also be able to be accomplished by other means for other businesses which cannot afford coaches for all relevant stakeholders.
Supporting Black and African American businesses:
Doubling the number of Black and African American-owned suppliers that Microsoft works with, as well as increasing its investment into these suppliers by $500M. As part of these efforts, Microsoft elaborated that it would also ensure minority business were represented in incoming RFPs, adjust diversity weights in the selection process, and even evaluate the D&I efforts within it top 100 suppliers as part of the RFP process.
The last detail of this particular strategy is a fascinating and indeed bold extension of the influence of Microsoft’s D&I commitments into the operations of other companies it works with. While the argument for over-reach may be made here, it should be considered that the free market works both ways and that this is a prime example of a free-market mechanism. Given that Microsoft is not only a seller but a powerful customer as well, it should be afforded the same right as end-customers to decide who to buy from, and free to wield its influence according to its own internal decision-making criteria. It’s easy to see how this type of RFP weighting is easily translatable to other areas of societal profit, such as L’Oreal’s RFP requirements of suppliers to support its own efforts to achieve its Zero deforestation goal.
Doubling Microsoft cashflows invested through Black and African American-owned financial institutions, furthermore committing $100 million in investments into minority-run financial institutions and $50 million for Black and African American small businesses. Microsoft will also increase its number of Black and African American owned partners by 20% (partners are companies that sell, service, or otherwise leverage Microsoft products in their own core business models), as well as investing $73 million in financial support for partners.
Satya points out actions such as these represent another vehicle in which Microsoft can extend its influence as a large buyer into other participants in the industries it buys from, such as incentivizing investors considering minority-owned financial businesses.
In fact, after Netflix announced that it would deploy $100 million of its cash stockpile into Black financial institutions, Bloomberg found that stocks of multiple Black-owned financial institutions immediately popped, underscoring the real-world impact of these corporate D&I efforts.
Both Broadway Financial and Carver Bankcorp listed above have retained their D&I share price pop through today
Tackling the talent pipeline issue at its root:
Committing $50 million into criminal justice reform, increasing the reach of its STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) education and training programs in K-12 and college institutions, skills training programs for adults seeking new jobs, and $5 million in grants for non-profits empowering skills training programs in global communities of color.
Working with partners to provide more affordable devices and access in urban communities, and supporting non-profit organizations led by people of color via technology cost credits and grants.
In another article, Microsoft explained how some of its efforts and technologies were deployed into efforts to reform the criminal justice system, including:
Developing tools to allow researchers, NGOs and governments to better study racial sentencing disparities, and also inform the decisions courts make in criminal cases involving minorities, such as when meting out so-called “Legal Financial Obligations” (i.e. fines, costs, restitution from criminal cases), and what level of these obligations is truly fair and just.
Providing software and expertise to facilitate surveys that listen to community members’ feedback on how they perceive the criminal justice system, in order to fuel reform efforts.
Leveraging virtual reality in order to help inmates simulate scenarios of re-entering society after release.
Microsoft’s efforts here round out a third group of Black and African Americans, seeking to impact the lives of not only people working for or selling to Microsoft, but also people in the innumerable communities that Microsoft’s overall corporate footprint touches.
Microsoft’s D&I efforts were so bold, in fact that the Trump administration’s Department of Labor sent Microsoft a letter investigating into whether its practices might be found to be reverse discrimination (see Microsoft’s response).
US Department of Labor investigates Microsoft’s D&I efforts to double the Black and African American makeup in its leadership ranks
For more insights, check out Microsoft’s 2019 Annual Diversity and Inclusion Report.
Yelp — Highlighting Black-Owned Business to End-Customers
Beyond investments of money and recruiting lies an interesting new approach, which centers on the idea of empowering customers to see how their own dollars can support Black and African American-owned businesses.
After the death of George Floyd, Yelp not only made donations to BLM-related efforts, but also put its product teams to work innovating to support the minority community in any other ways it could. In the end, the Yelp team rolled out an option that would allow Black-owned businesses to add a badge to their profile to identify their Black ownership and allow customers to decide to spend their own dollars in support of Black-owned businesses. DoorDash and Shopify also followed in Yelp’s footsteps, releasing similar Black-owned business flags in their user experiences.
Yelp’s Black-owned business badge
Soon after its initial release, Yelp followed up with a second feature aimed at addressing racial bias by alerting users of businesses that are accused of racist behavior, informed by media reports.
Yelp’s racist behavior warning
This approach to D&I innovation demonstrated by Yelp belongs to an emerging new class of D&I efforts: those that go beyond the more widely adopted but less integrated approaches of throwing donation money at D&I or even rolling out a standard D&I training risk being relegated to a “check the box” activity: done whenever PR pressure mounts or an issue occurs, but with little follow-up otherwise.
Yelp took a bold step to internalize the importance of D&I into a company’s culture by diverting resources (its product team at that, rather than free cashflows or one hour for training) that could otherwise be utilized in more direct profit-driving workstreams and also weaving the initiative into the company’s core product, where changes attain a high level of visibility and create lasting implications.
Buffer — Creating Full Transparency in Compensation
In one example that occurred long before 2020, Buffer demonstrated how transparency can be a tool for equality by removing the shadows in which bias and discrimination can hide. Even in the D&I Reports that I found I didn’t find this level of transparency; most, if they touched on pay comparisons, referred to high-level findings, such as whether pay was or was not equal, or rolled up pay gap percentages.
In 2013, the CEO of Buffer published a spreadsheet that revealed the salaries of all of its employees, along with the formulas and supporting logic which determined each salary rate. The disclosure was an outcome based squarely on Buffer’s core values and fell in with other value-driven actions, such as an open book policy for Buffer’s revenues and user numbers, as well as company-wide access to all emails, which was inspired by Stripe’s open email policy.
Buffer’s example of radical compensation transparency may be risky, given that some employees may not wish for their income to be public knowledge, and the act of volunteering information that is not legally required is anathema to companies in highly competitive industries. Yet, it is this high degree of transparency that is precisely what is so innovative and can be effective at discouraging discrimination, or at the least offering hard data to facilitate objective discussions about potential discrimination or unfair treatment between employees on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, and even company role/seniority/level.
Years later in 2017, Buffer continued building on its core values by sharing its profitability figures and creating an employee profit-sharing pool, as well as carve-outs for charitable donations. Buffer pointed to examples from other companies offering employee profit-sharing plans including Basecamp, Mailchimp, and Southwest Airlines.
Airbnb — Protecting Customers From Discrimination
With the rise of the gig economy, technology marketplaces have found themselves at the center of complaints of discrimination, such as suppliers declining service to minority groups. Gig economy companies such as Uber have responded with a variety of means to combat racism, such as anti-discrimination policies and training for corporate employees and gig workers, specialized customer support, D&I recruiting/leadership targets and goal-based compensation tie-ins, and others.
And while Uber’s approach in particular is certainly notable given its goals to doubling Black leadership rates and continue pressing its executive compensation tie-in commitments, I found Airbnb’s approach to addressing D&I to be another interesting study for pushing the envelop of D&I a bit further than other marketplace companies.
First, Airbnb grounds its anti-discrimination work in a specialized team (which is not novel to the industry approach). What is novel (or is at least marketed well) is that Airbnb clearly takes pains to ground this team’s work with expert input from and collaboration with relevant organizations across a diversity of racial and ethnic focuses. Trying to tackle the D&I problem internally is noble; but trying to tackle the problem with help enlisted from organizations who have been on the front lines of the topic for much, much longer than a company has been in operations is both admirable and intelligent.
One particular project from its anti-discrimination team, called Operation Lighthouse leverages a 3rd party to categorize the perceptions of guests and hosts by race, based on inputs like name and profile picture, with the goal of identifying bias decision-making on the platform, which can be used as data to inform future decisions by Airbnb anti-discrimination teams.
For instance, one decision that Airbnb took was to change its reservation flow to prevent customer profile pictures from being shown to suppliers before bookings are confirmed, to reduce visual bias. Also, as a result of its anti-discrimination research, Airbnb reports that it has removed 1.3 million suppliers from its platform due to bias-based behavior.
It will be interesting to keep tabs on Airbnb’s expert-informed partnership to see what other innovations in D&I they think up.
Notably, news from Bloomberg indicated that Airbnb was considering dual-listing on the Long Term Stock Exchange, underscoring Airbnb’s commitment to social responsibility.
Ideas from LinkedIn for Cultivating Diversity and Inclusion
Lastly, I came across an imaginative article published on LinkedIn, which covered 50+ ideas for cultivating corporate diversity. Here were several that I found particularly interesting:
Ensure that office supply needs are included that cover all employee needs, such as including tampons in restrooms. Consider surveying employees to determine the best mix of supplies to provide. Create a Diversity and Inclusion Slack channel or other communication vehicle to create a dedicated space and help instill discussions in this vein as a normal value in company culture. Bring expertise and experiences into your organization by inviting a D&I speaker to touch on important topics in a guest speaker session with your team, including leadership. Encourage employees to politely point out interruptions during meetings, in order to heighten awareness and encourage a socially-accountable evolution in the communication patterns of employees (such as males) who tend to speak over and discourage others from sharing their own opinions. Also, consider using a round robin technique to encourage people who don’t normally volunteer to speak in meetings — or consider implementing a follow up process that provides the opportunity for people who didn’t get a chance to speak to be able to add their 2 cents. Hang a poster in highly visible area of offices (or on the walls behind leadership members’ home offices during the age of WFH) that highlight the D&I policies and initiatives that your company runs to maximize the chances that employees are made aware of your company’s D&I efforts, and once more — to normalize thinking about D&I every day.
Stay tuned for part 3 to the Evolving American Capitalism essay series, as well as one similar to this exploring innovations in planet sustainability. | https://medium.com/@incipiagabe/5-eclectic-approaches-to-corporate-diversity-and-inclusion-c34b1c1a0544 | ['Gabe Kwakyi'] | 2020-11-12 22:52:43.274000+00:00 | ['Diversity', 'Social Responsibility', 'Diversity And Inclusion', 'Esg', 'Diversity In Tech'] |
15 Exciting Things To Do In The Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico in 2021 | 15 Exciting Things To Do In The Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico in 2021 TropiQ Trips Feb 2·11 min read
15 Exciting Things To Do In The Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico in 2021
by Anja Phillips | Family Vacation, Honeymoon, Mexico, Vacation | 0 comments
The Yucatán Peninsula separates the Gulf of Mexico from the Caribbean Sea, encompassing 3 Mexican states, Yucatan, Quintana Roo, and Campeche, plus portions of Belize and Guatemala. It is known for its tropical rainforests, vibrant colonial cities, as well as its being the home of the ancient Maya people. Whether you are searching for beautiful white-sand beaches to relax on or seeking out thrilling adventure, there is nowhere quite like the Yucatan Peninsula. No wonder people from all over the globe head to Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula every year. Check out our 15 exciting things to do in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico!
15 Exciting Things to Do in Yucatan, Mexico
1. Chichen Itza
Probably the epitome of Maya architecture, in its 12th-century heyday Chichén Itzá was a sacred and ceremonial place, and a trading hub. In a site full of wonders and intriguing accounts of Maya customs, the ball court is impressive. In this vast, stone-walled space open to the sky, Maya men played a game of life or death. It’s believed that the captain of the victorious team would be sacrificed to the gods. Don’t miss the Temple of the Warriors, a long platform of intricately carved columns. Some are intact, others crumbling.
Other Mayan sites include Ek Balam, noted for well-preserved sculptures, and Uxmal, with its intricate carved facades.
2. Cenote Ik-Kil
Most people visiting the historical Chitzen Itza pyramids during a Mexico tour also make a stop at the stunning Ik Kil cenote. It is just a short 10-minute drive from the pyramids and the perfect place to cool off in its refreshing deep blue water.
The Ik Kil cenote backdrop is beautiful with a wide opening into the sky, a stairwell leading down to it and lush jungle vines winding all around it. Make sure to go super early if you want to beat the crowds.
3. Izamal
Izamal is a small, charming, and beautiful colonial town in the center of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. It is about 1 hour east of Merida. The town has a magical and peaceful atmosphere, and the cobblestone streets are lined with historic colonial buildings painted in a beautiful and eye-catching mustard yellow color.
In the center of town is the eye-catching Convento de San Antonio de Padua. Built in 1561 on the site of a destroyed Maya temple, it is one of the oldest Catholic monasteries in the Americas and its outdoor atrium is the second largest in the world (after the Vatican). Izamal is an official Mexican Pueblo Mágico, Magical Town.
Photo by journey.app
4. Merida
To fully experience the culture and history of the peninsula, go to Merida, the capital of the Yucatan state. With an interesting mix of Mayan and colonial culture, the city is encircled by ancient temples, crumbling ruins, sacred cenotes, and colorful mansions.
Flanked by gorgeous, pastel-colored buildings and the historic city cathedral, the Plaza Grande is one of the most attractive plazas in Merida. The plaza is also often a hive of activity — which is all part of its charm. Witness the daily Mexican flag raising and lowering ceremony, explore the bustling craft market on Sundays, and enjoy the animated live music performances held here almost every night.
Make sure to check out the brightly woven hammocks. Hammock weaving has been a tradition on the peninsula for more than 700 years.
Lovingly nicknamed ‘the White City’ after its iconic whitewashed buildings, Merida is a must among the things to do in the Yucatan Peninsula and one of the highlights of Mexico.
5. Las Coloradas
Mexico is replete with incredible scenic wonders, but few sights are as unique and breathtaking as the pink lakes in Quintana Roo.
Known locally as Las Coloradas (“blush red”), the cotton-candy-colored lakes attract tourists from all across the world. The lakes are pink due to the abundance of red and pink marine life including red algae, brine shrimp, and plankton — all of which thrive in water with high salt content. The man-made lakes are extremely shallow, and the marine life becomes highly concentrated as the saltwater evaporates. Las Coloradas has been a salt mining community for thousands of years, going back to the ancient Maya.
If you find yourself visiting the Yucatan peninsula, add Las Coloradas to your list of things to do.
6. Isla Holbox
Holbox Island is a small piece of heaven on earth on the Yucatan Peninsula, northwest of Cancun, Mexico. Only 26 miles long and one mile wide, the island is comprised of 22 miles of white and coral sand beach. It is separated from the mainland coast of Mexico by a shallow lagoon which gives sanctuary to thousands of flamingos, pelicans, and other exotic birds and creatures.
During the months of June and September, you cannot miss the biggest congregation of whale sharks that come to measure up to 50 feet in length. Its docility allows you to swim on the side of these giants for an unforgettable experience.
The island is a 40-minute ferry ride off the northern coast of the Yucatan peninsula that Cancun calls home. Isla Holbox is intimate, romantic, and definitely wild. Here people don’t drive cars, they use golf carts and beach cruisers.
7. Valladolid
Yucatán’s third-largest city is famous for its quiet streets and sun-splashed pastel walls. The provincial town makes a great hub for visits to Río Lagartos, Chichén Itzá, Ek’ Balam, and a number of nearby cenotes.
Valladolid resides at that magic point where there’s plenty to do, yet it still feels small, manageable, and affordable. Go into the colonial city built atop ancient grounds to view the colorful architecture including the San Gervasio Church.
Make sure to try some of the great eats at the restaurants situated throughout the area.
8. Coba Ruins
Visit the Coba Ruins with the highest pyramid in Mexico. It is one of the few Mayan pyramids you can still climb and is 138 feet tall with 120 stone steps.
Coba is different from the other archaeological big sites in Yucatan. It is situated by four natural lakes, which is a rare sight in the Yucatan. Furthermore, it is not as excavated nor reconstructed as Chichen Itza or Tulum. Coba still has a number of big structures covered with the growth of the jungle, making it a wild place that truly triggers your imagination. It is not overrun with tourists and if you’re early you might be all by yourself with only birds, monkeys, and the dense jungle to accompany you.
Coba is a short drive from Playa del Carmen.
9. Cozumel Island
I loved exploring Cozumel by rental car (jeep) so definitely recommend you include it in your list of top things to do in the Yucatan.
Cozumel is the largest island in the Mexican Caribbean. It is an authentic paradise in the middle of the sea with white beaches, beautiful sunsets, and world-famous for its coral reefs. Cozumel is a destination of adventure and relaxation. Go here to snorkel and scuba dive or simply hike through the luscious green jungle areas.
The city of San Miguel has a laid-back vibe, and there are stunning stretches of untouched nature to be found along the eastern and southern shores.
The island can be reached by ferry from Playa del Carmen.
Photo by Caleb George
10. Akumal Beach
If you’re infatuated with sea turtles, make your way to Akumal Beach to swim in the shallow waters where three different varieties of sea turtles live. White sand beaches, palm trees, and awesome snorkeling await! You can literally snorkel right off the beach without a guide or need to look very far.
Beware: The small bay at Akumal has a sandy bottom comprised of very fine sand. It gets stirred up as the day goes on, cutting visibility significantly. When the tour groups start arriving in the mid-morning, the bottom can get stirred up very quickly. Try getting there early.
Akumal is about half-way between Playa del Carmen and Tulum.
11. Xel-Há Park
Discover one of the best theme parks in the Riviera Maya: Xel-Há.
Enjoy a one-of-a-kind experience where snorkel, food, and beverages are included. There is something special for every taste. Immerse yourself in amazing cenotes, lagoons, and an inlet. Enjoy a spa, water zip-lines, slides, high jumps, and many other activities that you will only find at Xel-Há.
The park is part of Xcaret Experiencias Group which also owns the Xplor Park, Xcaret Park, and Xenses Park.
12. Mayan Ruins of Tulum
You can’t visit Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula without seeing the Mayan Ruins of Tulum. They are considered by many as the most beautiful of the Mayan Ruins sites around Cancun and part of most Mexico guided tours.
The 13th-century, walled Mayan archaeological site at Tulum National Park overlooks the Caribbean Sea. Tulum was built to be a fortress. It incorporates the clifftop Castillo, built as a watchtower, and the Templo de las Pinturas, with a partially restored mural.
The ruins of Tulum are located 100 miles to the south of Playa del Carmen.
13. Tulum
If you need to relax for a day or two, visit Tulum for sunbathing and yoga on the beach. Tulum’s spectacular coastline — with all its confectioner-sugar sands, cobalt water, and balmy breezes — makes it one of the top beaches in Mexico. There’s also excellent cave and cavern diving, fun cenotes, and a variety of lodgings and restaurants to fit every budget.
Tulum is the fastest-growing vacation destination in the area.
Photo by Spencer Watson
14. Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve
Don’t miss the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve, ‘the place where the sky is born’. It is massive, covering over 2,000 square miles, from tropical forests inland to coral reefs offshore. The tropical forests are home to charismatic mammals such as Jaguar, Puma, Ocelot, and Central American Tapir. The property also provides habitat for a large number of resident and migratory bird species. There is a great diversity of marine life, including the West Indian Manatee, four species of nesting marine turtles, and hundreds of fish species.
Explore this pristine slice of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula by boating through spectacular inlets, on snorkeling trips, birdwatching tours, or via guided hikes deep into the wilderness.
15. Bacalar Lagoon
Last but not least: Include a visit to the Bacalar Lagoon on your list of things to do in the Yucatan. Also known as “The lagoon of the 7 colors” this is one of the most beautiful places in the region.
Bacalar is an amazing lake in the southern tip of Quintana Roo State. It is called the lagoon of seven colors because of the white sandy bottom that gives the effect of having so many shades of blue. This is a freshwater lake feed by underground cenotes, but it does look like the ocean. The lake is about 34 miles from tip to tip and 1.2 miles at its widest point. This size makes it a huge place to visit and explore.
The town of Bacalar was declared a Pueblo Magico since it is such a unique place. Bacalar Lagoon is also the second-largest natural body of fresh water in Mexico and without question should be on your list of places to visit in the Yucatan Peninsula.
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Conclusion:
The Yucatan Peninsula is one of the most culturally and ecologically rich regions in the world. A vast variety of flora and fauna can be found in the biosphere reserves, the lakes, and the coral reefs. At the same time, Mexico’s Mayan culture is present in the many archeological sites waiting to be explored.
From the stunning landscape to the vibrant culture, the Yucatan has a little something for everyone.
If you are interested in planning a trip to the Yucatan Peninsula, contact us today to get started! Let’s plan your family vacation, romantic getaway, or honeymoon, in Mexico. Check out our sample tours or ask us for one of our self-drive tours or our customized tours, at no additional cost.
Want to explore more? Check out neighboring Belize, or any of our other awesome destinations in Central America: Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua.
Have you been to the Yucatan Peninsula? What was one of your favorite things to do?
Let us know in the comments.
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MEXICO — 9 days
Magic of Mexico
Visit colonial cities
See the highlights of Chiapas
Explore famous Maya temples
Add a beach extension
MEXICO — 7 days
Passport to Mexico
Visit one of the biggest pyramids
Explore beautiful colonial Puebla
Admire famous Maya temples
Enjoy lively Merida
MEXICO — 8 days
Best of Yucatan Adventure
Explore Maya ruins
Enjoy beautiful colonial Valladolid
Swim in cenotes (natural sinkholes)
Relax at the Caribbean Sea in Tulum
MEXICO — 8 days
Honeymoon on Isla Holbox
Romantic beach vacation
Stay in a virgin tourist destination
Enjoy an intimate & wild island
Relax in a suite with jacuzzi & sea view
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Let’s talk | https://medium.com/@tropiqtrips/15-exciting-things-to-do-in-the-yucatan-peninsula-of-mexico-in-2021-c251c15d2ce9 | ['Tropiq Trips'] | 2021-02-02 18:59:02.871000+00:00 | ['Vacation', 'Family Travel', 'Travel Tips', 'Mexico', 'Mexico Travel'] |
How to Do a Good Code Review? | As a code reviewer, you have the power to approve any code, and along with that comes the responsibility to make sure that the code is in good condition. In this article, we will go through a listing of questions and points that could help code reviewers focus on what matters during a code review.
Credit: Ebenezar John Paul
If you are reading this article, you might find the following article helpful
Here are some of the questions that you can ask yourself when reviewing a changelist (pull request)
Design related aspects of code under review
Is the code well-designed? Does the code demonstrate low coupling and high cohesion? Should the code be moved elsewhere? Does the code interact well with the existing code and features? Functionality-wise, does the code do what the developer intends to do? Is the code written well-enough for both end-users and future developers to maintain and extend upon? Is the code too generic and over-engineered? Are there any edge cases, i.e., concurrency, deadlocks, or race conditions? Is the code relating to the web layer, business logic, and database in their appropriate layers? For backend development, do the endpoints return Data Transfer Objects (DTOs) or the business model (Entity)?
Carefully review any dependency changes in code
I do not suggest that you re-invent the wheel and avoid dependencies all-together however, I do strongly recommend that you think twice before adding a dependency to your codebase.
The future of open source projects is not in our hands, and their trajectory could affect products that rely on them.
For example, if a dependency is not maintained anymore and there are security or other types of vulnerabilities then you are stuck with it. Depending on the dependency, a majority of times it is really complex to remove or replace a dependency from a production system without affecting the users.
Another example, the more the dependencies the higher the maintenance of the product and this is because upgrading dependencies is a bumpy ride and depend on quite a few factors
How outdated the dependencies are?
Are there any breaking changes in dependency versions?
Are there official migration guides?
Is the dependency being forked to accommodate the product’s custom needs?
All of the above decides how complex, and expensive the upgrade process is going to be and how would it affect your customer base.
Develop an approval process for new dependency requests and define which team will own the dependency and maintan it regularly.
Here are some of the questions you can ask yourself as a code reviewer
Can the addition of the new dependency be justified? What are the pros and cons of these new dependencies? What other transitive dependencies are being pulled via this new dependency, and will there be any conflicts with existing dependencies? When upgrading/dropping an existing dependency, are we confident there will be no runtime exceptions directly from code or indirectly? Is the project active and maintained? How many open issues are there? What is the test/code coverage? How many active contributors are there? How old is the project, and are there any alternatives?
Avoid forking and changing libraries at all cost
Forking and changing an open-source library should never be an option, and that’s because it is too expensive to keep the forked version of the library in sync with the original.
The biggest challenge with forking a library is keeping the fork in-sync with the original library as it evolves over time.
Let’s say, you forked Project A and added a bunch of code to support your product’s needs. Fast-forward a few months and years down the road, Project A has moved on from when you forked it and there are a bunch of new versions and you would like to upgrade Project A. The challenge is to make sure that your custom code works with all future versions of Project A, without breaking anything. It’s almost always a bumpy ride. Good luck.
If you must fork, then make sure to keep your fork as minimum as possible and do your ultimate best to contribute back your changes to the original codebase.
Is the code forking an open-source library? Can the fork be justified? Why are we forking? Is it worth it? What alternative options do we have instead of forking? Are the original code and forked/changed code on separated commits?
Watch out for tech debt during the code review
Tech debt is almost always the result of a quick and dirty approach of coding a fix or feature due to time constraints.
Technical debt (also known as design debt[1] or code debt, but can be also related to other technical endeavors) is a concept in software development that reflects the implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing an easy (limited) solution now instead of using a better approach that would take longer. — Wikipedia
It might be difficult to avoid tech debt for new companies that do not have the financial and technical resources available to them and this is the phase where a huge volume of tech debt is added to the codebase because, the objective is to get a product that works in the market, not built a perfect product.
Tech Debt, Credit: Dilbert by Scott Adams
There is no excuse for adding tech debt to an established product that has a healthy customer base, financial and technical resources. Such companies should focus on addressing the tech debt that was added in the earlier stages of product instead of adding new tech debt.
Do the new changes degrade the qualify of the existing code? Do the new changes make a method/class candidate for refactoring? Does the changelist (pull request) introduce tech/code debt? Are there any duplicate blocks of code that could be made reusable?
Tests
During the code review, tests are probably the one area of the pull request (changelist) that would get skimmed through or ignored. Simply because a test is passing it does not mean that it is a valid test.
Are the tests correct? Do they fail when the code is broken? Do the tests cover all branches (execution paths) and instructions in the code? Are the tests independent of each other? Are the tests easy to understand and maintain? Does this feature need to be tested under load to make sure that it scales well and that there are no memory leaks?
Adding dead code
Sometimes the developer will say, well, we don’t need this block of code now but, maybe we will need it in the future. Or, a developer would make a method so generic with the hope that it covers future requirements.
Let’s cross that bridge when we get there. Don’t add dead code and hope that it resurrect in the future.
Such dead code should not be approved because there is a very high chance that the code is never used in the future or it won’t be bullet-proof enough to accommodate future needs.
Credit: Oliver Widder
Is it the right time to add this functionality? Does the code address only the acceptance criteria and nothing more or less?
Easy To Read and Maintain
Sometimes developers write super complex code for something straightforward because it makes us feel good. This is usually the case with junior or new developers.
Complexity-wise, is the code as a whole or, in part, challenging to read and understand? Is the code easy to maintain and extend? Is the code easy to test?
Naming and documentation is hard
Let’s admit it, naming is very hard and that’s why it needs the code reviewer's attention.
Credit: CommitStrip.com
The questions you should ask yourself as a code reviewer
Do the names easily communicate what the item is or does? Are the code comments easy to understand? Is the code over-commented or not commented at all? Is the comment necessary? Can a complex piece of code be refactored instead of adding comments? Are the code comments meaningful and gives more information than the actual code? Are all the documentation, i.e., test, build, release relating to the code change updated?
Not all the questions might be relevant for your specific case, feel free to pick those that matter the most. | https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-do-a-good-code-review-c2cab4ef32bf | ['Rafiullah Hamedy'] | 2020-08-25 03:29:03.036000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Java', 'JavaScript', 'Software Development', 'Technology'] |
The Rights of Mother Earth: A Nation Grants Legal Personhood To Nature | Nature as a legal subject
In 2009, Bolivia created a new constitution that did something unprecedented. It not only recognized political autonomy and expanded rights to the country’s 36 Indigenous communities, transforming Bolivia into a ‘plurinational state.’ But Bolivia also included environmental conservation as a core constitutional principle of its government.
The radical statement — catching the attention of environmentalists around the world when the news got out — comes in Article 342:
“it is the duty of the State and of the population to conserve, protect, and use natural resources and biodiversity sus tainably and to preserve environmental balance”
And in article 383, it specifically includes the protection of biodiversity and threatened species:
“The State will establish partial or total, temporary or permanent restrictions on the extractive uses of biodiversity resources. These measures will target the needs of preservation, conservation, recovery, and restoration of biodiversity that is at risk of extinction. Illegal keeping, handling, and trafficking of species will be penalized.”
One might ask: why is this so radical?
The United States passed the Endangered Species Act in 1973. And other countries around the world have passed laws protecting wildlife and biodiversity. Not to mention international treaties like the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
But unlike Bolivia, environmental laws around the rest of the world are not written into the very constitution of a nation.
As the environmental historian, Ursula K. Heise writes,
“That the conservation of biodiversity and endangered species is mentioned at all in Bolivia’s constitution, much less highlighted as an explicit part of the state’s tasks and duties, is astonishing in comparison with the constitutions of most nations in North America or Europe, which one would scour in vain for any reference to such issues.”
Bolivian girl with baby Llama in Isla Del Sol, Bolivia. Photo by Alex Azabache on Unsplash
The Law of the Rights of Mother Earth
If this wasn’t already radical enough, a year later in 2010, Bolivia passed the Law of the Rights of Mother Earth (Ley de derechos de la Madre Tierra).
In this new law, “Mother Earth” was defined as a legal person. In doing so, Bolivia’s Law of the Rights of Mother Earth enshrines the Earth as sacred in national law.
A fascinating aspect of this law is that it not only uses modern legal language to grant the Earth the rights of personhood, and therefore the obligations of government and the people to protect la Madre Tierra. But underlying this act is a deeper philosophy of human-environment relationships rooted in an Indigenous Andean concept, sumak kawsay, translated into Spanish as Buen Vivir, meaning “Living Well” in English.
As the journalist Oliver Balch explains it, the concept of Buen Vivir or ‘living well’ is:
“Rooted in the cosmovisión (or worldview) of the Quechua peoples of the Andes, sumak kawsay — or buen vivir, to give it its Spanish name — [and] describes a way of doing things that is community-centric, ecologically-balanced and culturally-sensitive”
To understand the Earth as a legal person within the worldview of Buen Vivir, is to view the Earth, not as a separate individual being ‘out there,’ but as an extension of our own, larger body, where human beings are simply members of the wider community. Or phrased another way, as the ecophilosopher David Abram says: “We are many sets of eyes staring out at each other from the same living body”
An interesting thing about the Bolivian Law of the Rights of Mother Earth is that it doesn’t simply reject a Western worldview that views nature as separate from, and often subordinate to humans. After all, it uses the modern legal language of the Enlightenment to grant legal personhood to Earth.
But by establishing Earth as a legal subject, the law expands our all-too-human notions of community, and therefore who we should include as citizens in that community. As the Law states in article 3, Mother Earth is,
“the dynamic, living system made up of the indivisible community of all life systems and living beings, interrelated, interdependent, and complementary, which share a common destiny. Mother Earth is considered sacred from the perspective of the cosmologies of original indigenous peasant nations and peoples” | https://medium.com/thewildones/the-rights-of-mother-earth-a-nation-grants-legal-personhood-to-nature-8494ccd7cebb | ['Gavin Lamb'] | 2020-11-20 02:47:30.002000+00:00 | ['History', 'Law', 'Environment', 'Conservation', 'Nature'] |
Os desafios parentais de ‘True Mothers’, por Naomi Kawase | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://oitobits.pt/os-desafios-parentais-de-true-mothers-por-naomi-kawase-1358b35f86e1 | ['Ivo Nunes'] | 2020-12-27 21:45:15.045000+00:00 | ['Film', 'Film Reviews', 'Análise', 'Naomi Kawase', 'True Mothers'] |
Sharath Siddanur | This Indian Entrepreneur Flipped the Marketing in Online Gambling Industry | The Best way to predict the future is to invent it — Sharath Siddanur who believes the same, is a well-known Indian entrepreneur today. Sharath tells that he never thought about that he would become an Indian entrepreneur at a gambling market of SEO & Digital marketing. Just as time went on, he dedicated towards development of self through experience. He values learning through experience, reading, by traveling, seeing new place and meeting new people.
All this began after drop out from collage, while the he started his career at International call center then, he and his friends from Bangalore, India get together for a startup, As the season goes he started predicting his future by inventing it which required a great dedication, hard work, nevertheless smart work. He had to see a lot of trouble in the meantime.
Sharath named his organization as Shachpro Technologies Pvt Ltd. Today Sharath’s name has been taken abroad in the country. Sharath says that even today he keeps learning something.
Sharath has his own team building web applications, portals, customizing profile websites, handling celebrity social media accounts (Domestic | International clients), SEO, Digital Marketing, SMM, Google knowledge graph, press release, and rich content writing. He has established himself as a force to be reckoned. With a vast knowledge in field of digital marketing by providing valuable services to startups and established business organizations to have a strong digital presence, which paved way for smooth overall progress. | https://medium.com/@keshavaraya/sharath-siddanur-this-indian-entrepreneur-flipped-the-marketing-in-online-gambling-industry-c63ac06f37ad | ['Keshava Raya'] | 2020-12-11 06:31:07.122000+00:00 | ['SEO', 'Entrepreneur', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Indian Entrepreneurs', 'Celebrity'] |
AddSkill Hackathon Experience | Last week I attended a hackathon organized by AddSkill which was focused on frontend development. The objective was to create a Grammarly clone and host it on Heroku.
Approach
Since most of the requirements for this project was heavily relied on JavaScript, I tried to complete the html and CSS part quickly.
As for JavaScript, I tried to use some of the advanced concept that was taught at AddSkill. I used built-in events and created custom events for handling user interaction and used async/await and built-in Promise function to make API calls and improve applications performance.
The trickiest part of the requirements was to create a highlighted dropdown menu for every error in the file. Using custom html elements for every errors seemed to be the best choice. Defining a custom element and using it made the code cleaner.
Conclusion
I was able to build the web application meeting all the requirements within seven hours. I probably learnt more in seven hours of the hackathon than I would have in days of self study.
Special thanks to the whole team of AddSkill for organizing this hackathon and helping every single participant throughout this process. | https://medium.com/@rawatrajput7/addskill-hackathon-experience-b0490bfa6589 | [] | 2020-12-12 14:29:46.877000+00:00 | ['Experience', 'Hackathons'] |
Philips Hue Lily outdoor spotlight review: The perfect highlight for your outdoor landscaping | Philips Hue Lily outdoor spotlight review: The perfect highlight for your outdoor landscaping Seneca Nov 12, 2020·3 min read
Is your garden ready for its close-up? The Philips Hue Lily—a companion product to the Hue Calla pathway light we reviewed in December—consists of three color-changing smart LED spotlights that you can mount on stakes or attach to walls.
Deploy them in your garden and they’ll provide sophisticated lighting accents for your landscaping. But if your trees and shrubs look subpar in the daylight, the Hue Lily will really make them look shabby at night. The lights themselves, as you would expect from the $280 price tag (add-on spots cost $80 each), are first-rate luminaires.
The cylindrical enclosures are fabricated from black aluminum with glass lenses, and their IP65 rating indicates that they are entirely weatherproof: Protected from water jets (from up to a 6.3mm nozzle, such as a sprinkler system), and totally protected from dust.
Updated October 20, 2020 to report that Signify has instituted a voluntary recall of certain Philips Hue Calla power supplies due to possible safety concerns. You'll find the details in this news story.
[ Further reading: The best LED smart bulbs ] Signify Wiring the Philips Hue Lily spotlights is as easy as screwing two barrel connectors together.
You’ll need to plug a sealed inline power supply into an outdoor outlet, and then connect a second cable to that using a bayonet-style fitting. Philips provides two T-shaped electrical connectors that give you lots of cable-routing flexibility. You can buy extension cables if you want longer runs between each light, or if your outdoor outlet is far from where you want to deploy the lights.
Pretty, if not powerful light Michael Brown / IDG The color and brightness of each spotlight can be programmed independently.
The dimmable LEDs inside produce up to 600 lumens (equivalent to a 49-watt incandescent bulb), and each one can be controlled independently using the Hue app.
That independence goes beyond being able to turn them on and off, too; you can set each light to produce either white light (in color temperatures ranging from a warm 2,000 Kelvin to a very cool 6,500K), or any of 16 million colors using the respective color wheels in the app.
In addition to that, you can call up predefined lighting scenes, based on color and brightness, or you can edit these and create your own from scratch. As with all Philips Hue products, this one is based on ZigBee wireless technology, so you’ll need to connect a Hue Bridge to your router if you don’t already have one (the bridge, which is not included, sells for about $50 on Amazon). Each bridge can support up to 50 Hue lights.
Hue Routines, meanwhile, allow you to create sequences of lighting events based on the day of the week and the time of day. I created a routine I called “Backyard at night,” for example, that turns the Philips Hue Calla bollard-style pathway light to a scene called “bright” to light up my walkway, and the three Philips Hue Lily spotlights to a scene called “Savannah sunset” to bathe a Japanese maple and a couple of large shrubs in a warm white light. This routine comes on automatically at sunset and turns off and sunrise.
Mentioned in this article Philips Hue Calla pathway light extension MSRP $89.95Learn moreon Philips Lighting If you have a smart speaker, you can control any of the Hue lights with Alexa or Google Assistant voice commands. To conserve energy, I typically tell Alexa to turn off the Hue lights when I go to bed. But it’s nice not having to remember to turn on any lights when I go outside at night.
Installing one of the new Hue Outdoor sensors would be an even better solution if you want illumination only while you’re outside (or if you want movement to trigger lights to come on to dissuade burglars from hanging around). That sensor can also trigger Hue lights inside your home to turn on in response to motion outside of it.
Signify (formerly Philips Lighting) expects its Philips Hue lighting products to fetch a pretty penny; so far, they have consistently delivered the type of high-quality product and premium experience that justifies the price tag. The Philips Hue Lily is no exception.
Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details. | https://medium.com/@seneca34610895/philips-hue-lily-outdoor-spotlight-review-the-perfect-highlight-for-your-outdoor-landscaping-3814fd4a5d4a | [] | 2020-11-12 21:04:24.064000+00:00 | ['Home Tech', 'Mobile', 'Cutting', 'Deals'] |
What is Hoisting in JavaScript? | What is Hoisting in JavaScript?
Find out what hoisting in JavaScript means, with examples of code to help explain it all
One of JavaScript’s many quirks is something known as hoisting.
Now if you are new to coding in JavaScript, it’s quite likely that you’re not writing your code perfectly just yet. So because of this, it’s highly likely that your hoisting isn’t perfect either. 😉
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But what is hoisting?
Basically, when JavaScript compiles all of your code, all variable declarations using var are lifted to the top of their functional/local scope (if declared inside a function) or to the top of their global scope (if declared outside of a function) regardless of where the actual declaration has been made. This is what we mean by “hoisting”. Now bear in mind, this notion of ‘hoisting’ doesn’t literally happen in your code, but is rather something that happens figuratively, and relates to how the JavaScript compiler reads through your code. Hopefully that makes sense to you. Either way, continue reading and just bear in mind that when we think of “hoisting” we can visually imagine that whatever is being hoisted is being moved to the top, but in theory, no code is literally moving around.
Functions declarations are also hoisted, but these go to the very top, so will sit above all of the variable declarations.
Enough talk, let’s show you some basic examples of code to demonstrate the impact of hoisting.
If we were to write the following in our global scope:
console.log(myName);
var myName = ‘Sunil’;
Pop quiz! What do you think the console.log will output?
1. Uncaught ReferenceError: myName is not defined
2. Sunil
3. undefined
It turns out that this third option is actually the correct answer.
As we mentioned earlier, variables get moved to the top of their scope when your JavaScript compiles at runtime (which — if we exclude the use of NodeJS — at a very basic level simply means as your webpage is loading). However, a key thing to note is that the only thing that gets moved to the top is the variable declarations , not the actual value given to the variable.
Just to clarify what we mean, if we had a chunk of code and let’s say that on Line 10, we had var myName = 'Sunil' , when the JavaScript gets compiled, var myName would get moved to the top of its scope, whilst myName = 'Sunil' would stay on Line 10 (or possibly now Line 11 if var myName were hoisted up onto Line 1).
Let’s look at the same block of code from earlier, but look at how the JavaScript compiler will output the code at runtime:
var myName;
console.log(myName);
myName = ‘Sunil’;
This is why the console.log is able to output ‘undefined’, because it recognises that the variable myName exists, but myName hasn’t been given a value until the third line.
By the way…
We have named our variable myName instead of simply name as the ‘window’ object in the browser already has a name property. If we were to test this in a browser, any variables created in the global scope actually end up being part of the ‘window’ object. Therefore, creating var name = 'Sunil'; is the same as doing window.name = 'Sunil'; and therefore, creating var name = ‘Sunil'; can also be referenced by typing window.name .
So as window.name already exists (for your interest, window.name simply returns an empty string — at least in Chrome Dev Tools anyway), we don’t really get the proper sense of how hoisting works. We, therefore, chose to use myName instead! Don’t worry if that just went over your head, hoisting is like that!
And as we climb back out of that rabbit hole…
We also briefly mentioned earlier that functions are also hoisted to the top (right at the top, above where the variable declarations are hoisted).
So if we look at the following example:
function hey() {
console.log('hey ' + myName);
};
hey();
var myName = 'Sunil';
The hey() function call will return undefined still, because really the JavaScript interpreter to compiling to the following at run time:
function hey() {
console.log('hey ' + myName);
};
var myName;
hey();
myName = 'Sunil';
So by the time the function gets called, it knows that there is a variable called myName , but the variable has not been given a value. There are a couple of variants to this, which occur when using variable expressions of IIFE’s (click here if you want to read an earlier article on IIFEs) but trying to get a mental grip on all of this at once is not ideal, so I’ll leave you to research hoisting with respect to function expressions and IIFE’s by yourself.
Having said that, everything else mentioned above should help you to get a better understanding of how hoisting works.
The concept of hoisting is the reason why you may sometimes come across other people’s code where variables are declared right at the top, and then are given values later. These people are simply trying to make their code closely resemble how the interpreter will compile it in order to help them minimise any possible errors.
But what about Let and Const?
They’re also hoisted — in fact, var , let , const , function and class declarations are hoisted — what we have to remember though is that the concept of hosting is not a literal process (ie, the declarations themselves do not move to the top of the file — it is simply a process of the JavaScript compiler reading them first in order to create space in memory for them).
The difference between var , let and const declarations is their initialisation — in plain terms this simply means the value they are given to begin with.
Instances of var and let can be initialised without a value, while const will throw a Reference error if you try to declare one without assigning it a value at the same time. So const myName = 'Sunil' would work, but const myName; myName = 'Sunil'; would not. With var and let , you can try to use a var value before it has been assigned and it would return undefined . However, if you did the same with let you would receive a Reference Error .
So is there any difference between var, let and const in terms of hoisting?
Yes, if you create a var at the top level (global level), it would create a property on the global object — in the case of a browser, this is likely to be the window object. So creating var myName = 'Sunil'; can also be referenced by calling window.myName .
However, if you wrote let newName = 'Sunny'; this would not be accessible in the global window object — therefore, you would not be able to use window.newName as a reference to 'Sunny' .
The following issue is also fundamental to your understanding of how hoisting can affect your codebase.
Declarations made with var can be accessed from outside of their initial scope, whereas declarations made with let and const are not.
As we can see in the below example, declarations made with var return undefined whereas those made with let and const return errors (credit to gvlachos for raising and writing the following):
console.log(‘1a’, myName1); // undefined
if (1) {
console.log(‘1b’, myName1); // undefined
var myName1 = ‘Sunil’;
} console.log('2a', myName2); // error: myName2 is not defined
if (1) {
console.log('2b', myName2); // undefined
let myName2 = 'Sunil';
} console.log('3a', myName3); // error: myName3 is not defined
if (1) {
console.log('3b', myName3); // undefined
const myName3 = 'Sunil';
}
And there we have it!
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Article updated on March 28th, 2019 in order to further explain hoisting in terms of let and const and also to fix typos in the article where I had referenced ‘name’ instead of ‘myName’. This article was updated again on September 22nd, 2019 as there was a mistake in one of the code blocks with regard to the use of let. An additional piece of text was added to explain that the concept of ‘hoisting’ is indeed a concept, and not a literal process. | https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/https-medium-com-javascript-in-plain-english-what-is-hoisting-in-javascript-a63c1b2267a1 | ['Sunil Sandhu'] | 2020-10-18 09:48:44.936000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Front End Development', 'Web Development', 'JavaScript', 'Coding'] |
A guide to knowing the types of bikes | The bike segmentation is based on a survey of the products of six bike manufacturing companies: Kendall, Scott, Giant, Turk and Especialize and several other brands. Because these companies have a wide variety of products, so a wider range of products can be found in them. Producer companies name their products according to the needs of the global market and name them in the main categories. These designations can be slightly different in the production companies and in different countries or a bicycle produced by one of the companies. It can be divided into two categories, for example, both the urban bike category and the tourist bike category. Or again, for example in the mountain bike section, a bike can be found both in Al Montaine and Andrew! Because the uses of some of the styles of bikes are close together and this will inevitably happen. However, in this tutorial we tried to introduce the most complete category of bikes along with the image of the bike and its style of use.
Mountain bicycle
Cross country Cross country
Sport Sport
Trail Trail
Al Montaine All mountain
/ Andrew Enduro
Downhill Dunnell
Fat bikes
Urban Bike
Urban Urban Bike
Hybrid
Fitness Fitness
Folding folding bike
Tourist bike
Touring Touring
Road bike
RACE RACE
Endurance Road
CYCLOCROSS CYCLE CROSS
TRIATHLON Triple and Triple Time
Bike Track / TRACK
Demo Bike
Jump / dirt jump
Bmx bmx
Trial
Electric Bicycle
Electric / Electric
Mountain bicycle
As the mountain bike name suggests, this style of bike is designed for dirt roads. But the work does not end there, and the mountain bike is divided into seven categories that differentiate each one from the other, so knowing them is crucial to choosing or buying a bike. Here’s a look at the seven styles along with their images.
Some sort of mountain bike segmentation is based on the design and type of auxiliary used, including Hard Tail and Full Suspension bikes. Hard Tail are usually referred to as bicycles that have only one auxiliary or no auxiliary.
Full Suspension Cycles are called bicycles that also have a rear wheel assist. These bikes have a dual frame, with a triangular section at the front of the bike and another at the rear of the bike.
Hard Tail Bike with Full Suspension
Now you might be wondering what the difference is between Hard Tail and Full Suspension bikes? In fact, this is the style of cycling to determine which one is best for you! If you are not a professional cyclist, buying a Full Suspension bike will only cost you extra money, as it has a rear-wheel drive assist. In such circumstances, the use of Hard Tail bikes is advantageous. Full Suspension bikes are mostly used for landing on mountain roads to relieve much of the pressure on the handlebars and wheels via the second rear-wheel-drive assist.
Cross Country Bike Types
Learn the basics of mountain bikes. There is a general principle. The way you go at the bottom of this chart is to design bicycles that are less pedestrianized and scrollier. At the top of this table is a cross-country bike designed for greater pedaling and less rugged track navigation, and at the bottom of this table is a dual-wheel bike that is designed only for very difficult and steep downhill trails. A Simple Way To Determine How Mountain Bikes Get Their Front-Aid Play Games This method can help you easily identify what category of bikes you are in before you look at the manufacturer’s catalog or website. has it. For example, a cross-country bike is 10 or 11cm in front of the bike, and a 20cm front-wheel drive bike for the Dunhill bike, designed for very rough downhill routes. So pay attention to the sheaths used. Apart from that, the accessories in each category are different. At first glance it might be a bit difficult to identify the style of a bike, but playing with the help of the front seat is a good criterion.
The amount of play in the forearm (front help) is 10 or 11 cm
Rear Assist: In some models it has rear assist and in others it does not (depends on the choice of rider or bike and race track)
This style of mountain bike is the most popular style in mountain bike which is divided into two categories of professional and non-professional. The non-professional style is known as the Sport Mountain, sport xc, or similar names, which we will introduce later. In this style: The Cross Country bike model is designed for professional racing and you need to spend at least $ 2,000 to buy a good model, which will be very expensive for our rial currency in Iran, apart from a proper bike. A professional cyclist. And it’s not a good option to start cycling or biking in the city. So this model is for professionals only.
Mountain Bike / Sport Sport
In fact, this style of bike is a cross country bike designed and manufactured for the general public and not for professional racing. It can be said that this is the most original mountain bike style. This is the style that the original mountain bike was formed with and is now complete but still the closest style to the classic mountain bike models. In this model, like a cross-country bike, a 10- or 11-centimeter front suspension is used. It is rarely used in the “middle-range” so it is less of a mountain suspension sport than a Full Suspension bike and is used only in the front suspension of the suspension bike. Some manufacturers separate the style from the Cross Country bike and introduce it as the Sport Mountain, Sport xc, and in a separate style. However, some manufacturers of the bike classify this bike as a cross-country or non-professional cross-country mountain bike, but at a lower level than cross-country racing bikes. In the way that the accessories and frames used in this style of bike are used in the medium and lower range of the bike, which in turn will bring a lower price to the consumer, this does not mean, in any way, that this style of bike Poor quality! And vice versa they will be very high quality, in this section we will not focus on the quality of the bike and the quality of the bike in the guide to the bike.
In the past, these two styles of bikes were one, but with each specialization the two styles were separated from the mountain bike.
Who’s useful: This style of mountain bike has the most spectrum of enthusiasts. In fact, it is very suitable for those who want to go hiking or for those who prefer to bike in the forest parks or in the mountainous cities. Not designed for the city. In most models of this style, the space on the bike body is designed for the connection of the bracket and the socket, so this bike can be one of the options for traveling by bicycle, although not specifically designed for this purpose.
CYCLING MAGAZINE | https://medium.com/@sibsabz171717/a-guide-to-knowing-the-types-of-bikes-c3c94c87815a | [] | 2019-11-14 13:39:16.627000+00:00 | ['Cycling'] |
How to Configure Single Page Routing with Svelte and Express.js | How to Configure Single Page Routing with Svelte and Express.js
Learn how to avoid ‘page not found’ errors when using client-side-routing and hot reload
Photo by Oliver Roos on Unsplash
This tutorial is for anyone who creates single-page-apps and wants to know how to configure routing properly on the server side. It will use Svelte as the framework, but the techniques here will work for any app using client side routing.
The Problem
Client-side routing solutions like svelte-routing work great, but they will break if you try to refresh your page when using them, and this means that it’s impossible to use hot reloading. This is because all routing logic is performed on the client, and when you initially load a page, say localhost:5000/home , the client code isn’t yet loaded. This means that your browser will attempt to find the file home.html at localhost:5000 but it won’t be there, because it’s a single page app. It only has index.html .
Here’s an example.
The code above creates a simple Svelte app and uses svelte-routing as the routing solution. It then creates a Route for the Home component and a link to navigate for it. The Home component only returns a p tag that says ‘Hello, this is the homepage’.
When I load up this app, I see the root page.
And when I click Home , I am routed to the Home page.
The problem arises when I attempt to navigate to localhost:5000/home directly, or when I refresh the page. If I do that, I’ll see a blank page, or a Not Found error.
The Solution
To solve this problem, we need a way of intercepting the HTTP calls to localhost:5000 and then redirecting them all back to index.html . When we do this, the server will return the root page, which will load all of our code, and then the routing will kick into action and display the home page.
We can do this by creating an express server to serve our app, so let’s do that.
First, install express, by running npm i express and then create a file, server.js at the root of your project. Add the following boilerplate to create the server.
var express = require('express')
var app = express() app.listen(3000, () => {
console.log("App listening on port 3000")
})
Now, we need to do two things. We need to configure a static directory which will tell express where it can find our html & js files. Then we need to intercept all http calls and route them back to index.html.
The static directory for Svelte will be the public directory because that’s where all of the built files are placed. This is standard so will probably be the same for other frameworks, but obviously make sure you check.
To define a static folder in express, we do this:
app.use(express.static('public'))
So add that to server.js
var express = require('express')
var app = express() app.use(express.static('public')) app.listen(3000, () => {
console.log("App listening on port 3000")
})
Now, if you run your server with node server.js , you should actually see your application loaded in the browser. However, we still haven’t solved the problem.
Now we need to re-write all http calls to index.html . This is straightforward, and looks like the following.
app.get('*', (req, res) => {
res.sendFile(__dirname + "/public/index.html")
})
The asterisk character intercepts all calls, and then we tell the server to return the index.html file from the public folder. We use __dirname to get the fully qualified path.
If you run your server now, you should be able to navigate directly to localhost:5000/home . There is still one problem, though.
Hot Reloading
One of the benefits of this was that it would enable hot reloading. However, now that we aren’t using Svelte’s npm run dev to run our app, we aren’t getting the benefit of that. Currently, we’d need to stop the server, compile the app and restart it again to make hot-reloading work. This is a pain to do manually, but we can automate it relatively easily.
There’s a nice little npm package called concurrently . The last step of our process is to install this with npm i concurrently and then create a script in our package.json to run both our server and our hot-reloading. Here’s how that looks for svelte (it will be almost identical for other frameworks).
"scripts": {
"build": "rollup -c",
"dev": "rollup -c -w",
"start": "sirv public",
"serve": "concurrently \"node server.js\" \"npm run dev\" "
}, | https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/how-to-configure-page-routing-with-svelte-and-express-js-ab5a4e0ad12f | ['Lee Mcgowan'] | 2020-09-19 14:34:39.838000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Expressjs', 'Svelte', 'Programming', 'Web Development'] |
La cumbia de la molicie | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/el-circulo/la-cumbia-de-la-molicie-69ae894ba0a8 | ['Samuel Cracia'] | 2020-11-02 08:35:16.460000+00:00 | ['Oaxaca', 'Poesia', 'Español', 'El Circulo'] |
Thundra Re:cap 2018 | 2018 was the year of Serverless. It is not just the new hot trend that only technology geeks are talking about. In terms of general adoption and popularity, even enterprise organizations are starting to seriously look into and implement serverless platforms as a standard approach to building applications.
Check out the chart on the left hand side to see how Google searches for “serverless” jumped in 2018. Serverless reached sufficient maturity in 2018 to enable people to migrate their existing systems to serverless or start new projects using serverless architectures. Expect to see even a bigger jump in adoption in 2019.
2018 was a big year for Thundra as well. We started off the year as a small intrapreneurship project within OpsGenie . Perhaps our biggest news all year was that in October 2018, Thundra officially spun off and became an independent company — Thundra, Inc. This has allowed us to truly focus on Thundra’s development and Thundra go-to-market efforts without any distraction.
Now, as we start off 2019, we have 13 invaluable team members and are actively hiring to expand the team. Thundra now supports way more than just Java. We also support Node.js, Python, and Golang for AWS Lambda. Let’s take a look through what made 2018 unforgettable for Thundra.
Thundra grows up: From Private Beta to Public Beta to General Availability
Let’s take a closer look at the product updates we made last year.
January 2018: Private Beta Release
In January, we started off the year offering a private beta with a platform that which could only monitor Java AWS Lambda functions at the beginning of this year. We had a great reception from users! But, we quickly understood that we needed more than just support for Java in order to make Thundra more broadly useful.
March 2018: Public Beta Release
On March 23rd, Thundra moved from private to public beta, which included basic support for Node.js, Python, and Go in additional to our already-existing Java support. We received great feedback from our community, which we used to plan our roadmap for the rest of the year, improve our libraries, and add new capabilities to Thundra.
October 2018: General Availability and Company Launch
On October 23rd, Thundra officially released its fully supported, General Availability product. Our launch announced advanced and deep support for Node.js applications and expanded support for Python applications, including automated instrumentation capabilities for both languages. We also added OpenTracing compatibility!
November 2018: Lambda Layer support and a call-out at the AWS re:Invent keynote!
As you can imagine for a company focused on supporting AWS Lambda users, AWS re:Invent was a hugely important event for us. We announced our support for the new Lamba Layers and Runtime API, which was highlighted in the Thursday keynote.
Just as exciting (for Thundra), Thundra was called out as a Lambda Layers launch partner! Mike Melason of the New Stack even wrote an article covering the news.
Support for Lambda Layers is a really important, time-saving, new feature for anyone building Lambda applications. When combined with our automated wrapping and instrumentation capabilities, adding monitoring becomes extremely low-effort. For example, all you need to do is add the Thundra Layer to your Lambda function to quickly see that, for example, your queries to a DynamoDB table cause your functions to run longer than they should.
With all these improvements (and more), you can now automatically trace Lambda functions with no code change and start solving errors, inefficiencies, slow-downs in just a couple of minutes. We also added many more capabilities to our agents that I haven’t mentioned here. I recommend checking out our documentation for Java, Node.js, Python and Go to learn more.
Analyze your serverless applications somewhere else with Thundra’s integrations
This year we also put great importance in building integrations with popular tools, allowing users to visualize and query the data we produce in the platform of their choice.
Splunk Integration
We understood that this option is especially important for our enterprise customers who frequently ask for on-premises solutions. Splunk was a great choice for integration partner because it’s so popular with enterprise organizations for visualization and alerting. With Thundra’s integration, customers don’t need to pass their data throughout our system. It goes directly from their AWS accounts into their Splunk instances to be analyzed alongside all their other enterprise data.
We released our Splunk integration at the end of July as the first organization to bring full serverless observability into Splunk. You can fill out the form here to start analyzing your own AWS Lambda data inside your own Splunk instance.
Honeycomb Integration
We released our second integration in November! This time, we choose to partner with Honeycomb. Similar to the Splunk integration, the serverless monitoring data that Thundra gathers flows into your Honeycomb account without passing through Thundra’s servers. Our integration with Honeycomb is special because Honeycomb is unsurpassed at complex tracing visualizations and querying, enabling users to dive deeply into metrics and performance data. When combined with Thundra’s rich AWS Lambda datasets, our users can quickly answer very complex questions they cannot answer using other tools, including Thundra’s own!. If you haven’t yet watched it, I recommend you check out the webinar that we recently hosted with Christine Yen, CPO at Honeycomb. Then, try it yourself with a free integration trial! Get your trial by filling out our sign-up form here.
Thundra, partnered up!
This year, we established partnerships that we are very proud of. Of course, we are partners with Splunk (Technology Alliance Partner) and Honeycomb. In addition to those partnerships, Thundra achieved APN Advanced Technology Partner status by AWS, which we announced along with Lambda Layers support at AWS re:Invent. By passing AWS’s rigorous technical and architectural review process, we can now provide additional confidence to AWS Lambda users that Thundra both understands their serverless monitoring needs *and* has built a solid architectural and technical solution on top of AWS to reliably and securely support them — in development and in production.
Events galore!
2018 was the year where we made our first public appearances. In October, we sponsored Splunk .conf in Orlando, FL. We showed off the capabilities of our Splunk integration and Splunk App, which is available for free on Splunkbase. We received very positive feedback about our capabilities for monitoring serverless applications, on the depth of our Java support, and the fact that it was actually available as a completely on-premise solution.
Obviously, AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas was a remarkable experience for us. We had a constant stream of traffic to the booth, earned our moment on the keynote stages as launch partners for AWS Lambda Layers, and had numerous visitors who were impressed at what they could learn from their AWS Lambda environment beyond what they normally got with Cloudwatch logs.
We attended other events as well! Serkan, our CTO, presented at Oracle One to discuss Thundra’s capabilities and how it can be used to gather monitoring data from Oracle Fn. Doğuşcan, our technical marketing engineer, spoke at Serverless Computing London and shared our internal ideas for anomaly detection in serverless applications.
A curated 2018 list: The best of Thundra and some others as well.
Knowledge is meaningful only if it is shared with someone else. We do this with regular contributions to our blog. You can browse the entire blog all by yourself, or you can check out the top 3 blogs that acquired the most views in 2018:
If you want to read something from the serverless community but not from us, I recommend the following:
What’s next? Onto 2019!
And here we are now — leaving 2018 behind. I am not going to give anything away but rest assured we have plenty of exciting plans for 2019. . Thundra will continue to grow in capability and functionality. We are hiring NOW to add to the team. Look for us at AWS and serverless events! Sign up for our newsletter to stay in touch with us. Play with our demo environment, get your free account, and don’t hesitate to contact us with your requests. I wish you all a very serverless 2019! | https://medium.com/thundra/thundra-re-cap-2018-f0521371dbb | ['Emrah Şamdan'] | 2019-01-10 08:02:18.093000+00:00 | ['Observability', 'AWS Lambda', 'Serverless', 'Debugging', 'Monitoring'] |
It’s Time To Ignore Caitlyn Jenner | It’s true that Jenner was a culturally significant figure in the recent tidal wave of trans visibility, but taking up space is not in and of itself radical.
A t home in her gleaming estate mere days after the Trump administration rescinded guidelines on protecting transgender youth, Caitlyn Jenner donned a pastel-pink blouse and addressed thousands of threatened children who feared for their safety. Her message? “You’re winning.”
No, seriously.
Jenner went on to chide Attorney General (for now) Jeff Sessions by calling him insecure and intimating he was a bully, and closed with a request for the President of the United States to personally call her, “one Republican to another.” It was a terrifically lukewarm bit of armchair advocacy from the woman Glamour heralded as a “Trans Champion” less than two years ago — but even this anemic, self-aggrandizing speech was more than her community had come to expect.
To put it bluntly: It’s time to start ignoring Caitlyn Jenner instead of treating her like a trans icon.
While it’s true that Jenner was a culturally significant figure in the recent tidal wave of trans visibility, simply taking up space is not — in and of itself — an especially radical act when you’re a white woman with an eight- or nine-figure net worth. The amount of influence which Jenner wields is staggering, but she has yet to use it in any meaningful way, while trans activists and community builders living far below her level of privilege toil every day, doing the real work.
What has Jenner done since coming out? Well, she won a Teen Choice Award for Social Media Queen in 2015 and nabbed a gig as the face of H&M Sport last March. She was one of last year’s Time 100, and in June 2016 she became the first trans woman to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated. She also posted a video on behalf of Donald Trump during the Republican primaries, noting that she used the women’s bathroom in Trump Tower and “nobody got molested.” We’ll come back to that.
Jenner also began her own reality TV franchise that shed light on her transition, though the show was canceled after its second season. Looking back on I Am Cait charitably, its largest contributions to the general discourse may have been the segments in which other trans women called Jenner out on her privileged bullshit. This became apparent in season 2, when Jenner embarked on a prolonged bus trip with “friends” such as Jennifer Boylan and Kate Bornstein.
I Am Cait’s largest contributions to the general discourse may have been the segments in which other trans women called Jenner out on her privileged bullshit.
While her companions may have been controversial figures in the trans community, Jenner was another beast entirely. In one infamous clip, Jenner asserted that then-candidate Trump “would be very good for women’s issues…I don’t think he’s out there to destroy women or take things away or any of that kind of stuff.” Boylan put it best when she exclaimed, “Kill me now,” and left the room.
Those segments highlighted one broad truth: how woefully out of touch Jenner was with regards to intersectional feminism in general and transgender rights in particular. I Am Cait professed to share the story of how Jenner would conquer the steep learning curve: After a lifetime spent steeping in different kinds of privilege, Jenner would be confronted with reality. The only problem is that nothing ever really got through to Jenner, even after witnessing the deeply personal and nuanced discussions Boylan and Bornstein had with one another and meeting with myriad community activists to confront complicated and often painful lives Jenner never had to live.
Jenner still calls herself a Republican due in large part to her class status: As a fabulously wealthy woman in the entertainment industry, she is protected by such a buffer of royalty checks and media attention that she has little to worry about personally. This fundamentally affects her political judgment and enables her to separate economic conservatism from social conservatism — she can claim to support her community while not understanding the systems of oppression that keep trans people disproportionately in poverty.
Simply put, Jenner is Trump’s useful fool.
To be fair, she’s far from the only one. YouTuber Blaire White has made a career out of being a conventionally attractive white trans woman who parrots right-wing talking points in videos with titles like “Transgender Children? NO.” and “Racism Against Whites.” I myself once attended a support group alongside a trans woman who was relatively wealthy; after I shared some anxiety I was feeling due to financial insecurity, she proceeded to tell me a story about the tax loopholes she exploited to keep herself in a lower income bracket.
Conservative trans women are rare, but they’re real, and radically disconnected from their community’s struggles. Jenner is merely a high-profile example of this cluelessness, but as we approach two full years since her coming-out on 20/20, that worldview becomes exponentially more toxic coming from a woman who claims to be a transgender role model. Perhaps if Jenner had made any visible effort to actually set up meetings with Trump, elevated the voices of trans activists like Mariah Lopez and Kat Blaque, or divulged the names of the Republican lawmakers she met with last September (the better to pressure them on trans issues), she might be worthy of being taken seriously. The fact that she hasn’t even tweeted since posting a limp video supporting Bono’s ONE Campaign for International Women’s Day proves she isn’t.
Simply put, Jenner is Trump’s useful fool.
A month and a half ago, Jenner tweeted out a different message: “Republicans need help understanding LGBTQ issues and I’m here to help!” If this is “help,” Cait, spare us. Were Jenner ill-informed — but silent — I might be less disgusted. But visibility is a dangerous weapon, and when Jenner does speak, she can do real damage to what credibility and legitimacy trans women have accumulated in Western culture.
When Jenner vapidly joked that the hardest part of being a woman is “figuring out what to wear” during an interview with Buzzfeed, everyone took her seriously — because, well, that’s an awfully Caitlyn Jenner thing to say, isn’t it? Thus did TERFs who found ample new fuel for their torches as they howled about “he-shes” and “men appropriating womanhood.” I fear that every new Jenner interview will add five years to Germaine Greer’s hateful lifespan.
If Jenner had ever shown a single sign of learning from her repeated mistakes and misconceptions, the trans community wouldn’t be tearing out our collective hair wishing she’d just go away and stop making us all look bad. As “TS Madison” Hinton said in a video reacting to Jenner’s “call me” message — “sit your phony ass down.” She isn’t just embarrassing — her ubiquitous visibility and ignorant rhetoric is actively damaging; she doesn’t understand her siblings and can’t properly advocate for us. I say that Caitlyn Jenner has shown us she can’t be trusted to learn or know better, so it’s high time she abdicated the spotlight and let the rest of us get to work. | https://medium.com/the-establishment/its-time-to-ignore-caitlyn-jenner-e12a275c2b71 | ['Sam Riedel'] | 2017-03-30 14:34:15.862000+00:00 | ['Transgender', 'LGBTQ', 'Caitlyn Jenner', 'Trump', 'Society Politics'] |
Where is home (if not with me?) | We have plenty of time.
I turned away from him as he carried a basket load of laundry up the stairs. His heavy feet stomping each stair as though he was climbing the dark side of a mountain into battle. I sighed and fought the thoughts that hoped he missed a step. Those words made my blood boil! In his world time waits for him, and in reality, time screws us over again and again and like idiots, we repeat the same patterns. Him, rolling his eyes and insisting that time is his mistress, and me in the corner agreeing through gritted teeth and silent smiles.
He reached the top of the stairs safely and smiled back at me, his smile was always so warm and kind. Like a portal, always throws me back in time, stuck in memories thinking of the days gone by, the days when he was- well he wasn’t much different than he is today. He still kisses me when he wakes up in the morning, he still makes breakfast and falls asleep on my breasts. He is still him, so maybe it’s me.
I nod and smile and continue packing up the last few boxes for the moving van. In a few minutes, the truck will arrive and go before us to a land flowing with milk and honey. Well, maybe not so, but it better be for I am moving my whole life in search of something new, something exciting, something absolutely life-changing. That’s what I tell myself, but in truth, we’re moving to the other side of the country because he got a nice new job and what better way to celebrate ten years of marriage than to wrap up the past, pack up the present, and thrust into the future! His words, not mine. In a few hours, we will be aboard a sixteen-hour flight and so this new land must have milk, honey and everything nice- my life depends on it.
They have come and gone. As the driver carried the last box out of the house, I closed the door behind him and turned back to see the empty beige coloured walls of the house. Without furniture and paintings and bookshelves and everything that made this a home, it looks like the inside of an eggshell. Standing there, I remember those words again and my feet could no longer carry me, so I let myself fall to the ground, staring at what was once a room of many colours. I realised how much I hate these beige walls, I remember when we first viewed it, I loved the space but wanted to change the colours, I wanted each room to be its own unique space, I wanted to make this palace my playground. ‘There’s plenty of time to do that’, he said. Five years down the line, here I am staring at the same ugly beige walls. This opened the floodgates of every time I heard those words.
When our friends travelled the world during our college days, ‘We have plenty of time’, he said.
Yet this trip to our Neverland is the farthest I’ve been from home.
When we had dated for 4 years, and we began to speak of marriage, ‘We have plenty of time’, he said. My father died long before I walked down the aisle 3 years later.
When I thought about having kids, ‘We have plenty of time’, he said. And now- well time may be his mistress but she has been ever so cruel to me.
I could feel the tears burn and fill my eyes, tilting my head up I held them there, there’s no time for tears, not here, not now. I held my eyes shut, holding them until the tears returned to where they came from. He was standing before me when I opened them, ‘I’m ready’, he said with a grin, stretching his hand out to lift me off the floor. Moments later, the doorbell rang, it was the taxi driver. It would be the last time I would hear that melody, the last time I would see these walls. There I was, leaving just as I had arrived, with nothing- if not less.
He led me out the door and into the car. Waiting in the back seat, I watched as he lifted our boxes and loaded them up into the trunk. The way his muscles flexed beneath his shirt, the way his body moved. I closed my eyes at the familiar sight, smiling and remembering every time my hands rubbed against those arms, every time my body leaned into his allowing him to lift me into himself. Interrupted by the driver’s voice, I opened my eyes. It was time to wrap up the past and sit in my present. Two hours late for a six-hour ride.
I lost the first couple of hours. I can’t for the life of me remember what I was thinking of as I stared blankly out the windows. I remember thinking about how fast the trees were moving, and how it made me feel like I was going back in time but nothing past that. The sound of his voice brought me back to him. He held my hand and repeated what he said but still, I could not quite understand. I looked up and caught the driver’s eye in the mirror. He was looking at me, also waiting for a response.
‘You are going to love our new home’, he said for the last time.
‘Yes, yes. I will’, I said and smiled squeezing the hand that was holding mine.
He turned away immediately, satisfied with my response. I looked up and again staring into the driver’s eyes, he saw my smile fall and fade away almost as quickly as it appeared.
I returned my gaze to its safe space, staring out the window, and I thought? Where is home? The house I grew up in? The house we shared as roommates in college? The house where we said our vows? The house we lost time in? Or the one with the ugly beige walls?
I wonder where home was to him. The one where his mother died, the one where he broke my heart? The one where we are going to? Or the one with the ugly beige walls?
What if I remove myself from the narrative, what if I didn’t make it to this new house with him, will it still be home? If the walls were beige as before, and all our old furniture and pictures were put up. If all was the same but for the postcode, would it still be home? Where is home? Where is his home, if not with me? I wish I didn’t know the answer to this, but like all things, time revealed this to me.
Two hours to our final destination, the driver asked a question. In hindsight, this was an absolute point.
‘Sir, shall we keep to the highway?
I looked at him, also waiting for his response. He went on about how the inner roads were smaller and darker but everyone avoided them and so should be faster. Then he looked at me and said, ‘We have plenty of time- we’ll make it’.
About an hour later, there was a loud bang, and then the car began to crawl and finally it came to a stop. In the middle of this lonely inner road, the worst had happened. A flat tyre. We got out of the car and waited and watched as the driver scrambled to fix his spare tyre as quickly as he could.
We both walked a few yards from the car and I let out a deep sigh.
‘It’s not my fault’, he said quietly.
‘I didn’t say it was’, I replied, rolling my eyes, avoiding his gaze.
‘But you think it is, don’t you?
‘You have no idea what I think. Drop it’, I said sternly.
‘Because, you never speak to me! We have spent the last 5 hours in silence!’
I looked at him, ‘Yes, this is your fault?’
And honestly, I was fine until he raised his voice and I just lost it. I could no longer hear every word that he said but I was determined for my voice to be louder. I didn’t even notice the driver who had fixed his tyre and was now staring at us in shock.
‘If you didn’t waste all that time-’
I didn’t let the words drop out of his mouth. I had heard enough. ‘If I had not wasted time?! We had no time! I didn’t waste any time, you wasted our entire lives!’, I shouted back at him.
He was dumbstruck. I could see in his warm eyes that my words hurt, and I would have taken it back if it wasn’t the truth.
‘You wasted your life’, he said quietly and returned to the car.
For a moment, I could not lift my feet to move from the spot where I stood. Finally, I walked to the car in silence. Raising my head up, holding those tears in because this was not the time or place. Again in silence, we finished our trip, arriving at the airport just as our plane took off.
Standing outside the airport, surrounded by a crowd, I felt so small, so alone, so broken.
I stood still as he rolled his box forward into the building. He took a few steps before he realised that I wasn’t next to him. When he did notice, he stopped and looked back, he stared at me, for the first time, knowing my thoughts without hearing my words, for the first time, seeing the tears that formed in my eyes roll down my cheeks.
I smiled silently as I often did. He did nothing, allowing his tears to fall too.
I turned back taking nothing, as I came with nothing, and entered the car that brought us. I sat in and could not take my eyes away from its safe space, out the window, looking at my husband, my home. Where is home, if not with him?
As we drove out of sight, the driver said, ‘I’m sorry you missed your flight’.
In tears, with a broken heart, I said, ‘We were never going to make it’. | https://medium.com/@just_marve/where-is-home-if-not-with-me-e68052135336 | ['Marve Micheal'] | 2021-09-13 12:25:50.093000+00:00 | ['Marriage', 'Sad', 'Fiction', 'Black Writers', 'Drama'] |
How I was Saved | People always talk of a ‘Come to Jesus’ moment. This is mine.
I came to the hard truth that I’ve never truly had a relationship with Jesus. I was always under the illusion that your relationship with Jesus is relative to your relationship with Church. It is not. It is deeply personal. Below is my story, that I’ve been prompted to share with a wider audience. He wants my story to effect and save others.
This past weekend I went on an expedition called Man Camp with my church, Crossroads. Prior to the initial sign up I set my alarm for 5:50 AM so that I might get signed up and go, but like a boy I delayed my awake time a half hour after the sign ups and signed up for the wait list. Looking back on this I think God intended for me to instead be on this specific trip, with the Wolf Pack I was assigned to. What happened this past weekend was amazing, liberating and life changing!
I went into the experience only expecting to meet some guys and get to know some new people. What I got instead was a walloping from Christ. He absolutely singled me out and he let me know he was all in if I was as well.
Thus my journey began on finding someone from M*A*S*H* to talk to. The M*A*S*H* group was a group of prayer warriors, there specifically for people to reach out to. I searched out, only to see them continuously redeeming other souls and hearing “now is not the time”. So I kept walking from our camp site to the barn, back and forth. Finally I was staring into our fire and thought “If I continue down the path I’m on, this is what waits for me”. I walked back up to the Barn, continuing my search.
After the end of an event I saw Michael walking away from the side Barn doors and introduced myself. Michael grabbed Steve and we talked. I opened up to these two strangers about my problems with Lust addiction and how I always heard Glenn Beck say that “these are other men’s daughters, would you want some other man to treat your daughter like this” which always hit me hard because I have a daughter of my own. That I’ve tried for years to beat this on my own, only to be sucked back in.
We talked some more and they helped me hear what God wanted me to say and so we prayed. In that prayer I asked for Jesus’s help in combating the addiction. I asked him to save me. This was beyond powerful and drove me to tears. I cannot be more thankful to Michael and Steve, they truly are warriors for Christ.
The most powerful moment came later that night, when my group was sharing during our Challenge Coin time. It can only be described as the most epic 2 hour campfire talk ever. We all opened up, and prayed together. Most of all, I opened up completely to these 11 strangers and laid all of this out for them as well. I had already shared earlier that I had been saved, this was me describing to them what I’ve been saved from. My Wolf Pack surrounded me, laid hands on me and prayed over me. I was absolutely driven to tears of joy.
While handing out our coins our group leader gave each of us a word of encouragement. To me he said “Darren, I think you know what you need to do”. Some may have seen this as underwhelming, but it was the most powerful thing he could have said to me. It was like Jesus was screaming at me, telling me to just listen to Him.
After arriving home on Sunday I had some time to reflect on everything that happened. I was still pretty overwhelmed by the whole thing and I was thinking on what I’d always heard Glenn Beck say and at that moment I heard “Those are God’s daughters”. This was a powerful revelation that brought me to my knees and to tears.
I am absolutely beyond grateful for these men and this experience. I’m excited to have been saved and continue on from THAT point to live for Jesus. I cannot wait to see what He has planned. | https://medium.com/founder-s-keepers/how-i-was-saved-d70a930fd289 | ['Darren Hertenstein'] | 2015-03-30 14:44:04.431000+00:00 | ['Christianity', 'Jesus', 'Saved'] |
How To Parse Data Using Python and Selenium | Setup
For this setup, we need to install a Python package and ChromeDriver. Also, make sure you have Python installed on your machine. I’m using macOS. You can quickly check which version of Python you’re running by using the following command.
python --version
In my case, I’m running Python version 3.8.8. Now, run the following command in your terminal. Here we are using pip (package installer for Python) to install the package.
pip install selenium
After installing Selenium, we need to install the ChromeDriver. I’m using Homebrew to install the driver.
brew install chromedriver
Here are some basic troubleshooting steps for macOS if you’re facing any problems with the driver.
Troubleshooting
Chromedriver cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified.
open /opt/homebrew/Caskroom/chromedriver
First, open the chromedriver folder in the finder. After that, right-click on the chromedriver file and select open. It should fix the problem.
2. This version of ChromeDriver only supports Chrome version # Current browser version is # with binary path.
We need to make sure the version of ChromeDriver and Chrome browser are the same.
brew upgrade --cask chromedriver
Brilliant, we are done with the initial setup. Now you can download the Python script from GitHub. Let’s break down the individual ingredients of the web_scraper.py file.
web_scraper.py
First, we added a headless option. Then we initialize a Chrome webdirver with the option. Now, we navigate the URL along with the page number. After that, we extract all the elements from the page using the find_elements_by_class_name method, and finally, we loop through all the elements and extract a single element using the find_element_by_class_name method. Now, we can increment the page number by one and repeat the same process until no data is left to parse. You can read all the available WebDriver API from here.
If you don’t provide the headless option, it will open a chrome browser and run the rest of the code. If that’s your desired behavior, remove lines 23, 24, and modify line 25 like below. | https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-parse-data-using-python-and-selenium-907a95239ee0 | ['Mahbub Zaman'] | 2021-09-13 14:37:55.555000+00:00 | ['Selenium', 'Programming', 'Python', 'Software Engineering', 'Data Science'] |
Anti Bar chart, Bar chart Club | Inspiration, knowledge, and anything about data science by Make-AI
Follow | https://medium.com/make-ai-data-stories/anti-bar-chart-bar-chart-club-56a2275b08aa | ['Benedict Aryo'] | 2019-08-21 06:14:06.328000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Bar Chart', 'Data Visualization', 'Exploratory Data Analysis', 'Visualization'] |
Welcome To Nightingale | Welcome To Nightingale
Introducing the Data Visualization Society’s new publication
We are so excited to announce Nightingale: the new journal of the Data Visualization Society (DVS)! Created in partnership with Medium, we’ll publish the best articles on current issues in data visualization for professionals and a general audience.
Nightingale will bring you high-quality articles each day covering many of the applications of data visualization — including education, entertainment, history, sports, best practices, new techniques, and any other form of visual information design we find compelling. We’ll host interviews with thought leaders and interesting people from the DVS community and beyond. Like all adventurers, we want to explore the unexplored, to look to the past and dream of the future. It’s exciting!
Why is it called Nightingale?
We named the new publication after Florence Nightingale (1820–1910), a pioneering British social reformer and nurse who innovated the Nightingale rose chart. Florence Nightingale was a passionate statistician and the first woman to be voted into the Royal Statistical Society.
Florence Nightingale, photo by Henry Hering, late 1856–7, ©National Portrait Gallery, London
While Nightingale’s name is commonplace, her contribution to data visualization remains less well known outside of the data visualization community. By publishing under her name, it helps us to keep an expansive view of what data visualization can be and continues our focus on broadening our practice and worldview.
Our desire for exploring the art and science of information design can be seen in the multifaceted nature of data visualization. Our work sits at the intersection of visual design, information design, data science, communication theory, and statistics; yet it is applied across science, business, healthcare, education, and art.
While the word Nightingale may not conjure up bar charts on the first utterance, it provides an element of poetry to inspire our audience to dig a little deeper. What better way to celebrate her legacy than to build the core of our publication’s identity on such a beautiful name and amazing life?
For more about Florence Nightingale, here are a few follow-up articles exploring Florence’s data visualization work in detail. Each one is amazing:
Partnering with Medium supports our mission in two big ways:
First, by partnering with Medium, our articles get premium promotion through Medium’s content-sharing algorithms and channels. This allows us to support the Data Visualization Society’s mission to “support the growth, refinement, and expansion of data visualization knowledge regardless of the expertise level of our members” by getting our members more exposure.
Secondly, finding a way to compensate our writers, editors, and illustrators has been important for our team. That’s why we’re pleased to announce that, starting July 15th, our partnership with Medium will allow Nightingale to pay all our writers, editors, and illustrators.
The financial support from Medium will also allow us to hire a managing editor to build a larger readership and help our writers create their best content. Since everyone involved with the publication will be compensated for their efforts, it allows us to raise the standards of what we’ll publish.
All articles previously published with the DVS Medium publication will not change. They will remain exactly the same.
How to get involved as a writer or editor:
If you are interested in writing for us, just drop any of the editors (listed below) a message or email us: [email protected]
If you are interested in applying for the job of Managing Editor, the job position is here! (GoogleDoc)
If you are a member of our Slack community, feel free to join #dvs-writers to hang out with the other writers!
to hang out with the other writers! For more information on what we look for in our articles, check this out:
Join the Data Visualization Society!
Joining the Data Visualization Society is very easy! Follow this link, fill out an optional survey, then you’ll be added to our Slack community and email lists!
Notes for our Data Visualization Society Members:
W the Data Visualization Society was founded, Medium was the platform that the co-founders used to communicate with the new group. The rapid growth of our community made Slack a valuable resource for conversation, iteration, and instant feedback, while the Medium publication evolved into a space to amplify the voices of our members. The publication and group were initially synonymous, but as both channels became more established, we noticed a shift occurring. In an effort to continue elevating those voices, we reached out to Medium to see if we could make it something more.
Why has idea evangelism become our focus?
We always intended the DVS Medium publication to become a first-class publication to share the incredible wealth of knowledge from our community. When we discovered that many of our conversations on Slack were slowly being hidden by Slack’s free workspace limitation, we chose to temporarily use our Medium publication to store and distill those conversations. As this was never our main objective, nor the best platform to do this, we are now exploring alternative methods for this.
This allows Nightingale to focus on what DVS member Sarah Eisele-Dyrli calls “idea evangelism”. By providing a greater reach and audience for the ideas and voices of our members, it increases their recognition, which in turn leads to new opportunities.
What is the relationship between the DVS Slack and Nightingale?
We’ll certainly still have articles that summarize topics and discussions from the DVS Slack community, and ideas from our Slack community will inspire or be quoted in Nightingale articles. Each article is required to give credit to other members for their ideas, as we feature in our writer’s guide.
It’s also important to note that Nightingale is also only one avenue for our members to express themselves. Other avenues for supporting members in their professional development are being discussed and will be announced by other DVS committees.
How does Nightingale further the DVS Mission if it is inside of Medium’s paywall?
We understand that free and open access to information and resources is important to any community, not just ours. Medium only promotes content that is behind its paywall, but we will continue to offer our content free to members of the DVS community. Here’s how:
Three ways DVS members can view Nightingale content for free:
We’ll share links in our Slack community that allow DVS members to bypass the paywall.
A spreadsheet (Gdoc) will be provided to members with links for free access to all articles.
We regularly send out DVS emails with links to the free version of the articles directly to your inbox (if you signed up for the email list).
While we understand that having to bypass Medium’s paywall with special links is not a perfect solution, it allows us to gain the benefits of our partnership while still offering free access to Nightingale for all DVS members.
DVS membership is currently free. If you are an educator and want to share our content with your students, getting them to join the Data Visualization Society would allow them to access not only the whole Nightingale archive but also the opportunity to be involved in a vibrant, growing community.
Where does the money go?
Starting on July 15th, 2019, we will pay the writers for every article we publish. We will hire a managing editor to run the daily business of the publication, and our editors will also be paid a small monthly fee. Our publisher, Elijah Meeks, and I (editor-in-chief, Jason Forrest), will not receive any payment. The DVS will also allocate 15% of the funds from the partnership towards building and expanding other aspects of our society, such as mentorship programs, events, and ongoing costs.
What if this whole Medium thing doesn’t work out?
Our contract with Medium runs for six months, which we view as a “test and learn” phase. If we find that the relationship isn’t working for either party, we can change our approach. While we want Nightingale articles to remain on Medium, there are not any contractual obstacles if we move in a different direction at the end of this period. Medium puts copyright in the hands of the writers, so any concerns about who owns the content should not be connected to our Medium partnership.
We will also host a retrospective in four months to collect feedback from members and evaluate what’s working and what’s not. If you are interested in joining such a group, please contact the editors.
Please tell us what you think!
We love to hear from our readers in any way they feel appropriate. Our entire editorial team is passionate about promoting new voices, new ideas, finding new avenues to advance our work, and recognizing our membership. If you have an idea to share, then please do so. We’re here for you! | https://medium.com/nightingale/welcome-to-nightingale-1089f0e73a00 | ['Jason Forrest'] | 2019-07-15 14:04:30.625000+00:00 | ['Design', 'Data Visualization', 'Dvsintro', 'Data Science', 'Data'] |
Fiber-riched food to reduce belly fat | Belly fat impacts our self-confidence and it is also harmful to our health. It makes you feel embarrassed and uncomfortable in many places. It also increases the risk of heart disease, blood pressure, diabetes, among others. Some changes in your diet and exercise can help you to cut down belly fat. Include some fiber-filled food in your diet to lose your weight. It helps to increase your feeling of fullness without adding calories. So, here are some fiber-filled food which will help you to reduce belly fat.
Bananas
Bananas are loaded with antioxidants, potassium, fiber, and nutrients. Bananas are also packed with energy-giving carbohydrates. It keeps you full for a long which helps to lose weight and gives other benefits for your health. Many peoples think eating bananas will make you fat.
Spinach
Spinach is also rich in healthy antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals. It is also low in calories and it is an excellent source of dietary fibers that’s why it is good for losing weight. It is also good for boosting immunity and improving metabolism. You can also prefer some other green leafy vegetables it will help you for losing weight and protect you from heart diseases and high blood pressure.
Carrots
Carrots are a good source of nutrients and it is low in calories. Carrots are one of root vegetable and it has a large amount of Vitamin K, Vitamin B6, and antioxidants. It is a delicious way to lose weight and it is also good for our eye health. We can also eat it as a salad.
Oatmeal
If you are aiming to lose weight oatmeal is the best option to start your day. You can include oatmeal in your diet as your daily breakfast. Oatmeal is packed with fiber and helps to make you full for a long time. Oatmeal also contains protein without the sugar content. Oatmeal also helps to lower the risk of heart disease and improves our digestive system. | https://medium.com/@anonymousnb12/fiber-riched-food-to-reduce-belly-fat-c61cbc6ec76d | ['Shubham Gupta'] | 2019-05-06 10:32:42.235000+00:00 | ['Diet', 'Health Foods', 'Health', 'Belly Fat', 'Lose Weight'] |
HBO Max Going to Roku is the Next Step to Dominance | We were told Netflix would never fail. Why would it? People love watch endless hours of television and Netflix was able to provide it at a price cheaper than cable. But now we live in a world where the big players in the media game knew they can take down Netflix. We’re seeing Disney do this and now WarnerMedia will accomplish the same with HBOMax.
Many doubted HBOMax between the high price and the unclear brand identity at first. Now it’s looked at as a must-have as people are staying inside more. WarnerMedia is pushing all of its movies straight to the platform in 2021 and people find the content refreshing as Netflix grows stale. Content is king, but distribution is the next most important item. The biggest issue with HBO Max once it got popular was that it was hard for people to use it. People were getting creative with watching it on their TV’s and computers, but now there’s no flexibility thanks to the recent deal with Roku. Starting this week, HBO Max will now be able to be viewed by both Roku and Amazon Fire TV users.
People are inherently lazy, but also want to be in the know with what’s hot on TV. There’s been lots of buzz around “The Undoing” and “Industry”, but when people can’t just log on to their smart TV’s and watch, they’ll give up. With HBO Max available the same way Netflix is to so many viewers, HBO Max has the edge thanks to its stronger library and higher quality of relevance. All great empires fall. It’s time for major media companies like Disney and WarnerMedia to reclaim their thrones. | https://medium.com/@bloombudfox/hbo-max-going-to-roku-is-the-next-step-to-dominance-fec44dad8aea | ['Doctor Stock Doc'] | 2020-12-17 03:03:03.091000+00:00 | ['Disney', 'Warnermedia', 'Content', 'Hbomax', 'Streaming'] |
UN chief urges world leaders to declare ‘climate emergency’ | UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said world leaders should declare states of ‘climate emergency’ in their countries to spur action to avoid catastrophic global warming.
Antonio Guterres made the call in his opening remarks at a climate summit on Saturday.
More than 70 world leaders are due to address the one-day virtual gathering aimed at building momentum for much steeper cuts in planet-warming emissions on the fifth anniversary of the 2015 Paris climate accord, reports Reuters.
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https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/fus/v-ideo-Dhabi-lequipe-fr-04.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/fus/v-ideo-Dhabi-lequipe-fr-05.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/abu/v-ideo-GP-von-Abu-rtl-01.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/abu/v-ideo-GP-von-Abu-rtl-02.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/abu/v-ideo-GP-von-Abu-rtl-03.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/abu/v-ideo-GP-von-Abu-rtl-04.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/abu/v-ideo-GP-von-Abu-rtl-05.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/abu/Gp-v-Abu-sky-tv8-01.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/abu/Gp-v-Abu-sky-tv8-02.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/abu/Gp-v-Abu-sky-tv8-03.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/abu/Gp-v-Abu-sky-tv8-04.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/abu/Gp-v-Abu-sky-tv8-05.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/abu/v-ideo-Dhabi-lequipe-fr-01.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/abu/v-ideo-Dhabi-lequipe-fr-02.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/abu/v-ideo-Dhabi-lequipe-fr-03.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/abu/v-ideo-Dhabi-lequipe-fr-04.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/abu/v-ideo-Dhabi-lequipe-fr-05.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-t-v-p201.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-t-v-p202.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-t-v-p203.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-t-v-p204.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-t-v-p205.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-s-v-d-f1.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-s-v-d-f2.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-s-v-d-f3.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-s-v-d-f4.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-s-v-d-f5.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/muw/video-t-v-p201.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/muw/video-t-v-p202.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/muw/video-t-v-p203.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/muw/video-t-v-p204.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/muw/video-t-v-p205.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/muw/video-s-v-d-f1.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/muw/video-s-v-d-f2.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/muw/video-s-v-d-f3.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/muw/video-s-v-d-f4.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/muw/video-s-v-d-f5.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/muw/video-ps-v-ut-eridivise-liv-nl1.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/muw/video-ps-v-ut-eridivise-liv-nl1.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/muw/video-ps-v-ut-eridivise-liv-nl1.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/muw/video-ps-v-ut-eridivise-liv-nl1.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/muw/video-ps-v-ut-eridivise-liv-nl1.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/muw/videos-Crystal-v-Tottenham-kk01.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/muw/videos-Crystal-v-Tottenham-kk01.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/muw/videos-Crystal-v-Tottenham-kk01.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/muw/videos-Crystal-v-Tottenham-kk01.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/muw/videos-Crystal-v-Tottenham-kk01.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/muw/video-c-v-pool-01.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/muw/video-c-v-pool-01.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/muw/video-c-v-pool-01.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/muw/video-c-v-pool-01.html
https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/muw/video-c-v-pool-01.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-ps-v-ut-eridivise-liv-nl1.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-ps-v-ut-eridivise-liv-nl1.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-ps-v-ut-eridivise-liv-nl1.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-ps-v-ut-eridivise-liv-nl1.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-ps-v-ut-eridivise-liv-nl1.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/videos-Crystal-v-Tottenham-kk01.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/videos-Crystal-v-Tottenham-kk01.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/videos-Crystal-v-Tottenham-kk01.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/videos-Crystal-v-Tottenham-kk01.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/videos-Crystal-v-Tottenham-kk01.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-c-v-pool-01.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-c-v-pool-01.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-c-v-pool-01.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-c-v-pool-01.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-c-v-pool-01.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/frz/video-t-v-k-fr1.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/frz/video-t-v-k-fr2.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/frz/video-t-v-k-fr3.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/frz/video-t-v-c-fra201.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/frz/video-t-v-c-fra202.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/frz/video-t-v-c-fra203.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/frz/video-t-v-g-fr001.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/frz/video-t-v-g-fr002.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/frz/video-t-v-g-fr003.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/frz/video-t-v-e-fraz1.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/frz/video-t-v-e-fraz2.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/frz/video-t-v-e-fraz3.html
“Can anybody still deny that we are facing a dramatic emergency?” Guterres said via video. “That is why today, I call on all leaders worldwide to declare a State of Climate Emergency in their countries until carbon neutrality is reached.”
Guterres said that economic recovery packages launched in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic represented an opportunity to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon future — but warned this was not happening fast enough.
“So far, the members of the G20 are spending 50 per cent more in their stimulus and rescue packages on sectors linked to fossil fuel production and consumption, than on low-carbon energy,” Guterres said.
“This is unacceptable. The trillions of dollars needed for COVID recovery is money that we are borrowing from future generations,” he said. “We cannot use these resources to lock in policies that burden future generations with a mountain of debt on a broken planet.”
On Friday, summit co-host Britain announced it would pledge to end direct government support for overseas fossil fuel projects at the summit, aiming to spur similar moves by other countries to accelerate a shift to cleaner energy.
Diplomats are watching summit speeches for any signs of significantly stronger climate pledges from countries including China, which surprised many observers by announcing a goal to become carbon neutral by 2060 in September, India and Japan. | https://medium.com/@moneys/un-chief-urges-world-leaders-to-declare-climate-emergency-cef6e7314a | [] | 2020-12-13 13:02:38.226000+00:00 | ['News', 'Climate', 'Health', 'Covid 19', 'UN'] |
Creating Elasticsearch Analyzers Programmatically | Implementation
Dependencies
Elasticsearch should be added in the classpath in the dependencies , you can see a gradle.kts version as follows:
implementation(“org.elasticsearch:elasticsearch:7.8.1”)
Tokenizer
Components in an Elasticsearch Analyzer are created for each analyze request. For this reason, instead of components themselves, analyzers are composed with the factories that are responsible for instantiation of these components.
Below you can see how a Tokenizer factory is created as an anonymous object.
Character Filters
Similar to the TokenizerFactory, we create an array of CharFilterFactory objects. In the example below, you can see how such an array is created and a factory for HTMLStripCharFilter is added.
Token Filters
Similar to Character Filters, an array of TokenFilterFactory objects have to be created for the custom analyzer. In the code below, you can see how factories for Lowercase Filter, Stopword Filter and Synonyms Filter are created.
For Stopwords and Synonyms, please note that we are hardcoding stopword and synonym dictionaries in the filters.
Combining them Altogether
Once we have the tokenizer and filter factories created, we can combine them to create our custom analyzer as follows:
Calling the Analyzer
After creating the analyzer, you can see how it can be used to decompose text into tokens.
Internally analyzer components work similar to a responsibility chain and each token is passed to the next component in the chain. At each increment (incrementToken()) the next token is extracted and consumed by the analyzer chain. At the end of the chain, a set of attributes have already been set by the analyzer chain. In the example above we are extracting the CharTermAttribute (i.e: text of the token) and adding in our result list. Also it’s possible to extract other information like position info etc. from the tokens.
When all the tokens are consumed, we are ready to return our analyzed token list.
Below you can see an example analyzer call within a unit test:
Summary
In this post, we discussed how Elasticsearch/Lucene analyzers can be implemented programmatically without deploying an Elasticsearch cluster. On this purpose, we manually configured a Tokenizer, a set of CharFilterFactory and TokenFilter instances to create an analyzer and exposed text analysis as a method. You can find the full source code in this github repo. | https://medium.com/dev-genius/creating-elasticsearch-analyzers-programmatically-b37fff196ee3 | ['Ibrahim Tasyurt'] | 2020-12-28 17:17:49.016000+00:00 | ['Elasticsearch', 'Lucene', 'Text Analysis'] |
My New Year’s Resolutions For Everyone Else | My New Year’s Resolutions For Everyone Else
Resolve to heed these in 2020
Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash
I’ve made a lot of resolutions and broken them, so why bother? For this year, here are resolutions for all the rest of you.
1. If you start a sentence with “I don’t know how to tell you this” or “I don’t know how to say this,” you’ll end there, both for reasons of morality and accuracy.
2. You will not buzz me into your apartment for half a second so that I end up bouncing off the second door and having to go back and re-buzz. If you do this twice in a row, you’ll move to a castle with a giant door knocker and a pair of ogres to open and close it.
3. You will not use the phrase “the space” in any hiring attempt, unless you work for Elon Musk or NASA. If you’re in publishing and your ad says you need “someone who’s written articles in the [XYZ] space,” and you don’t realize you can just delete “the” and “space” and write “articles about XYZ,” you’ll quit immediately and be replaced by me.
4. You will not post a “cover” of a cool song on YouTube and then it turns out that it’s actually a “drum cover” in which you’re drumming to a record with your thumb and a Sharpie.
5. If I introduce you to your future spouse, you will give me 15 percent of the value of all the wedding gifts, plus pay for airfare to and from the wedding and any future baby showers.
6. You will only put one scary health post about your parents on Facebook per month because it’s depressing. Posts about your pets’ health are ok because they’re cuter.
7. If you have a party and it’s in Brooklyn, you must specify on the invite exactly how many subway stops it is from Manhattan. If it’s a birthday party for yourself and you’re over 20, you have to acknowledge you’re too old for that and have an open bar as a tradeoff for everyone coming to Brooklyn.
8. If you open a coffee shop, grocery store, or clothing shop, you will install an accessible public bathroom. Otherwise you have to go to the McDonald’s on the corner to breastfeed like you tell everybody else.
Photo by Andrea Davis on Unsplash
9. If you don’t acknowledge the sheer narcissism of this list, you can’t be my friend. | https://medium.com/slackjaw/my-new-years-resolutions-for-everyone-else-ca44e082d232 | ['Caren Lissner'] | 2020-01-01 14:46:01.416000+00:00 | ['Humor', 'New Year', 'New Years Resolutions', 'Life', 'Satire'] |
The Cold Truth About What Online Courses Do and Don’t Give You | “I’ve completed x, y, and z courses from [Coursera, edX, etc.], but I’m still not receiving interviews. And when I get called in, I don’t get called back.”
Feels like we’re hearing this time and time again. It will resonate exponentially more with you if you’re undergoing a career transition. Reading forums and posts like this inevitably yield anxiety and confusion. As if taking this risk wasn’t already ridden with anxiety, right? Your mountainous efforts to break into the tech world now seem stupid. But those efforts are not wasted, and your negative affects are most definitely valid. It is understandable to feel, and you cannot beat yourself up when you feel that way. The reason being is that the majority are not recognizing — or, at least, speaking about — the true importance of what these courses are really doing.
Ben Stiller gif by funnyjunk.com on giphy.com
Online courses provide the keys and foundational knowledge. Online courses don’t guarantee the door opening to a job or full comprehension. Might come as a shock since some people of today’s world expect things to just happen to them. As if hard work wasn’t a thing (a scoff is heard in the distance). While I’m at it, here’s some more ice with that blizzard… | https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/the-cold-truth-about-what-online-courses-do-and-dont-give-you-d32f9e985975 | ['Mo Kaiser'] | 2019-12-12 03:48:54.671000+00:00 | ['Course', 'Reading', 'Knowledge', 'Online', 'Education'] |
My Dad Chose Me Over My Abusive Mother. But It Was Too Late. | My Dad Chose Me Over My Abusive Mother. But It Was Too Late.
I waited twenty-six years for this moment. But it wasn’t what I hoped it to be.
Image by Pixabay on Pexels
I never had a close relationship with my father, but I always thought of him as the “kind parent.” Unlike my mother, he was laid back and funny. His rules were relaxed and he seldom shouted. Although we didn’t always see eye to eye, he wasn’t the aggressor. He clearly favoured my sisters over me and seldom gave me attention. But I was tolerant of this because at least he wasn’t as bad as my mother.
My mother was a volatile woman and most likely a narcissist. She had low self-esteem yet at the same believed she was special. She often said she was more intelligent than most people and attributed any conflicts in her friendships to jealousy.
She took zero responsibility for the negative emotions she felt as a result of her low self-esteem. She often believed she was an exception to the rules and could act out without consequences. She would fly into uncontrollable rages that were frightening. Her interpersonal problems with other parents impacted my social life at school. She had the same problems with relatives, which made it hard for me to fit into my extended family.
My mother said many cruel things to me that will stay with me for the rest of my life. She often did this in front of my father, who said nothing. I reasoned this was okay because he was the nicer parent. He didn’t shout. He didn’t insult my character. So I accepted this way of life because at least he wasn’t as bad as my mother.
My father would put the responsibility on me to calm her down. Often this meant me apologising. It was a lot of pressure, but I did it for him because he was nicer than my mom. He was also very childlike, so I felt the urge to protect him from my mother’s rage and forgive him for never standing up for me because at least he wasn’t as bad as my mother.
My mother’s abuse wasn’t just psychological. She also allowed me to be abused by family members. She avoided the blame by saying she had told my father about it but he was the one insisting we must still visit the relatives.
This caused a rift in my already difficult relationship with my father. It also created an inner conflict, because one of these relatives used to beat him when he was a child. I reasoned that perhaps my father was still scared of them. So I endured the abuse to be brave for him because at least he wasn’t as bad as my mother.
My teenage years were difficult in terms of having a relationship with my father. I never spent time with him and we hardly spoke. My role was to be my mother’s therapist. If I didn’t fulfil this role, it would be a rare occasion when my father would speak to me. He would explain my mother’s moods were impacting the family and would ask me to fix it. And I would. And then it would go back to us not interacting much as I was serving my purpose. But it was okay because at least he wasn’t as bad as my mother.
As I grew older I realised the dynamics in my family were not okay. I also realised I had been abused, not only by my mother directly but in the way I was never protected from other relatives. I found out that she had not been telling my father about this. She was the reason it was allowed to continue.
When my father heard this, I hoped he would wake up and realise exactly who my mother was. As always, he was fiercely loyal to her. I believe he was a victim of her abuse too and he was very dependent on her. I felt disappointed and let down, but I let it slide because at least he wasn’t as bad as my mother.
But then I grew into an adult. My mother couldn’t control me as easily now. My sisters were also older, and she had the same problem with them. This proved difficult for her, and her usual manipulation wasn’t working. As a result, she would fly into more rages. I wasn’t there to fix things as I had moved out and was living my own life. This meant my father was fully experiencing what I had been going through my entire childhood.
If things were going well, my mother had to engineer a crisis. This pattern was present my whole childhood, but it got worse when I left home. Her children were doing well in the adult world, she and my father were financially secure, and it wasn’t enough for her. So she created crisis situations. The worst one was when she went missing and my father found her having an affair with a man she barely knew and refused to come back home.
I supported my father through this. I would speak to my mother on his behalf and endure her verbal abuse. I felt he should have been the one to handle it, but I reasoned it was okay because at least he wasn’t as bad as my mother. I finally told him everything, and my dream came true. He woke up and seemed to understand.
My mother had walked out on the whole family, saying “I’ve done my bit. I’ve raised my kids. I’m doing something for me now.” My father was the only parent I had left so I was grateful for him.
Things seemed to be going well between my father and me, but then I didn’t hear from him for a few days. He turned up at my flat and I thought he was visiting me due to not getting in touch for a while. Little did I know, I was about to have the most difficult conversation of my entire life.
He revealed to me that he hadn’t been in touch with me as my mother had moved back in and they were getting back together. I was crushed. I started to sob and he responded with “I didn’t come here to make you cry!” as if my reaction was an inconvenience. I reminded him of all the things I had told him. I reminded him of all the things he had witnessed her do. It was as if he couldn’t hear me and I was in one of those nightmares where you are screaming in a crowded room but no one is paying any attention.
Pouring your heart out to someone and pleading with them to listen to you is so painful. My body physically hurt trying to make him see sense. I finally had no mental or physical energy from carrying the entire conversation. The last thing I said was “you always choose other people over me.” He acted as if he had no idea what I was talking about. He left and I cut contact with him shortly after because although he wasn’t as bad as my mother, he wasn’t much better. | https://medium.com/home-sweet-home/my-dad-chose-me-over-my-abusive-mother-but-it-was-too-late-b6d8fd2eb43a | ['Laura Fox'] | 2020-08-26 11:04:55.744000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'Prompt', 'This Happened To Me', 'Child Abuse', 'Family'] |
What Is Your Ideal Life? | Did anyone ask you this question before? If you ever had to define your ideal life what would it be like and who do you want to be around.
At some point, everyone has imagined what they want or what they wouldn’t want as a part of their routine in bits and pieces. You’ve always gone about having this thought and forgetting about it. And trust me, the problem is not wanting the best of what we can; but it lies in forgetting about what we want.
Routines are so set that you tend to get comfortable in your own rut. Not necessarily it is your favourite way of living your life, but you tend to make peace with yourself that this is what it is, and nothing more can be achieved or changed.
What if whatever you have always dreamt of comes true! By whatever I literally mean whatever… Just imagine!!!! Your favourite destination travel, a nice big villa, healthy family and you surrounded by amazing friends, partying whenever you feel like, taking a break and flying to the most favourite holiday destination whenever you want to. Not being bound by duties officially, and most of all working on your passion project. How easy and fun life would have been. The thought of it only makes you feel happy right?!
But just because we stop reliving this dream again and again in our minds and hearts we tend to forget about it. A dream should become a guiding force that doesn’t put you to rest until you are where you have always wanted to be. I think we have started settling for too little and that’s where the problem lies.
As Steve Jobs says “Never Settle” keep going until you find what you want.
What you deserve will find its way towards you only when you make an effort to walk towards it. Energy attracts energy. Without you putting in an equal amount of effort you wouldn’t get the results that you desire.
Dream about your ideal life and one day you will live it for real, keep working towards it. You already know what needs to be done, let's start putting it to action. | https://medium.com/@silentlynoisy/what-is-your-ideal-life-266b2f0bd828 | ['Silently Noisy'] | 2021-07-04 07:58:10.459000+00:00 | ['Ideal Life', 'Focus', 'Live', 'Dreaming', 'Dreams'] |
Scottish Minister Visits local Veterans | Ayrshire Veterans Breakfast Club enjoyed a welcomed visit from the Scottish Veteran Minister Mr Graeme Dey MSP and North Ayrshire Provost Ian Clarkson as part of the Scottish Government Veterans consultation.
Ayrshire Veterans in Saltcoats
This is extremely important work raising awareness of the Unforgotten Forces programme.
Decorated Veteran Suzanne Fernando, who served with the Royal Military Police said: “The Melbourne Cafe, Saltcoats opened there doors specially for the visit. We had a great turn out and everyone had a lovely morning filled with tea, cakes and banter! Our Veteran Breakfast Club meet every Monday morning in the Melbourne Cafe and all are welcome. Numerous veterans have settled or are settling across Ayrshire after completing service or on discharge, and whilst most of us do not experience serious problems some do. This can be made worse by isolation and the availability of drugs and alcohol. As recently reported although Service in the Armed Forces is a positive and rewarding experience for the majority of those who serve, research indicates that Armed forces personnel and veterans can, like others, experience mental health problems like myself.
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can affect all walks of life, members of the Armed Forces are frequently exposed to distressing sights and experiences on deployment, research has found that rates of PTSD are higher within regular members of the Armed Forces. More concerning are the statistics relating to alcohol misuse, the impact of deployment on the mental health of members of the Reserve Forces, and the suicide rates amongst young early Service leavers.
One of the main reasons for setting up our Ayrshire Veteran Breakfast Club was to assist our veterans and to help them no matter what age, or need, should it be health, welfare, finance or other there are people to help. We are a Community Organisation who are here to support Veterans and Serving Members of H.M Forces. It is run "BY Veterans FOR Veterans" NOT "by veterans for the few". We are all volunteers simply wishing to integrate our lonely veterans back into society again. Our ethos is mutual support, it works because we all have a similar humour & outlook, & the social life we now enjoy is like our service days with the element of a family feeling again.
Breakfast Clubs are completely FREE…. And will always remain free! There are no fees or subs and we're NOT here to make money for any organisation/business.
We believe that the commitment of our Forces and their families deserves our lifelong support. So we provide practical, emotional and financial support to anyone who is serving or has ever served and their families. Whenever you need us, we’ll do whatever we can to help. Over 2,000 veterans in Scotland contacted Legion Scotland last year looking for a befriender to help them combat loneliness and isolation. Vveterans of all ages and backgrounds can encounter a range of challenges upon leaving the Armed Forces including isolation, unemployment and housing issues. Service makes a massive difference to the general wellbeing of our fellow veterans. Some members of the ex-service community have had no interaction for months, even years and it is heart breaking. Everybody needs to talk, to socialise. I struggled with depression upon leaving the services and being diagnosed with cervical cancer so I loathe the idea of someone having to go through a similar situation.
We often visit our veterans at home who are now alone and many of whom have no one else to talk to. Since establising our breakfast club we have been able to provide advice and signpost them to vital support services and other military charities which has had a long lasting positive change on their lives.
Veterans are in need of support. Our breakfast club is simple but highly effective. We know that many of our members have felt isolated, depressed, suicidal and lonely after leaving the military and having someone to talk to, share a laugh with and confide in really has made a huge difference to their lives.
We now enjoy social events, day trips, comradeship events, clubs, sports, parades and remembrance services together and whether they left service yesterday or 50 years ago – everyone is welcome. Being able to speak to Mr Dey directly about what support is being provided in Scotland to assist the significant number of ex-service personnel, was a wonderful opportunity.”
Find your nearest veteran breakfast club here: https://www.afvbc.net/
All service veterans (If you can cope with the banter), who turn up will be made welcome.
Ayrshire Club: https://www.facebook.com/groups/804615282982632/
Following the launch of the UK-wide Strategy ‘For Our Veterans’; the Minister has been widely consulting with the veteran community. The strategy sets out the vision, principles and aims which will drive support for veterans in the future. The Ayrshire Veterans Breakfast Club is a regular place to provide direct support and referrals to other agencies. The ministerial visit provided an opportunity for veterans to discuss their experiences past and present, and the impact it has had on their lives.
Mr Dey said: “Scotland has a long and very proud military tradition. Our Armed Forces and Veterans Community are assets to our society and I want to ensure that their service is properly acknowledged and that they are well supported and looked after. I am pleased to have been able to join in the Veterans Breakfast this morning.”
Unforgotten Forces is a partnership between 15 leading organisations which will deliver a range of new services and enhancements in areas including advice, access to healthcare, social isolation, respite, along with creative activities and events for those in care settings.
For more information go to: https://www.poppyscotland.org.uk/get-help/unforgotten-forces/ | https://medium.com/@suzannefernando/scottish-minister-visits-local-veterans-91b4b4c6dedc | ['Suzanne Fernando'] | 2019-02-03 15:39:16.085000+00:00 | ['Veterans', 'Minister', 'Government', 'Scotland', 'Parliament'] |
Top Revenue Drivers for Local Food Producers | Local Orbit supports 12,000 buyers and suppliers across North America who do business in 85 local markets. As our CTO Andy Bass has written, “Local Orbit generates millions of transactions on a daily basis, across all aspects of the order to cash process — from selecting suppliers, to managing products, to placing orders, tracking the delivery process, and so on. Each of these activities contains tiny pieces of information, that when taken together as a collection, add up to valuable insight to industry trends and customer habits.”
Understanding the data they create helps businesses make better decisions and, ultimately, transform and sustain local supply chains. We’ll be sharing high-level insights from our network on a regular basis to help people understand what’s happening in this growing space.
Top Revenue Drivers for Food Producers across the Local Orbit Network — May-July 2016
Whole animals — grass-fed cows, heritage breed hogs, and pastured chickens — were the top-selling items across the country in the past 90 days, driven by markets in the Northeastern US and Canada.
When you break down sales by region, they get more diverse. Strawberries, asparagus, and peaches drove the most revenue to farmers in the Western US and Canada. Pastured eggs, lettuce mixes, and artisan bread topped the list in the Midwest.
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Map icons by Clockwise, Creative Stall, Yair Cohen, Franc, Jarem Frye and Christopher Scott from thenounproject.com | https://medium.com/localorbit-fieldnotes/top-revenue-drivers-for-local-food-producers-1dd9a3c9d8a3 | ['Erika Block'] | 2016-08-17 13:01:04.535000+00:00 | ['Local Food', 'Farmers', 'New Food Economy', 'Data Visualization', 'Agriculture'] |
Unmanned technologies for 4 million hectares of Ukrainian lands, or how Ukraine blows Elon Musk’s mind | Robotics is entering our lives by leaps and bounds and today it is involved in absolutely different areas like agriculture, energy, construction, the oil and gas industry, geodesy, and topography. Drone.ua is one of the leaders in the Ukrainian unmanned technology market and a partner of GTInvest on the high-tech market. Along with their inventions, the company supplies airborne devices to Ukraine from international manufacturers. It collaborates with the largest agricultural holdings in Ukraine: Kernel, MHP, Astarta, as well as international corporations Syngenta AG, BAYER, Monsanto, and others. The founder of the company, Valery Yakovenko, spoke in an interview with Alexey Prokhorenko about how a hobby turns into a large-scale business, and how his first $200 earnings became the starting point for solutions that have never been used in the Ukrainian market before.
- Valery, tell us, what makes your business unique for the Ukrainian market?
- In 2013, when my partner Fevzi Ametov and I founded our startup. Everyone around was making money on ordinary aerial photography. And we tried to use the drone where no one had tried it on yet. Actually, this is our basic premise — the use of drones in non-standard scenarios. The most promising area turned out to be agriculture, and we began to try to adapt the drone to the activities of farmers. This is how the technology of remote sensing of the earth showed up, when a drone, using a special camera, scans the field and gathers all the information on a single map. The devices monitor the condition of crops, soil fertility, helps process crops from pests from the air. And today our technologies are used on 4 million hectares of sown areas in Ukraine
- Has the ongoing crisis affected your business and customer relations?
- During the intensified quarantine measures, our business processes did not suffer tangible losses, because our business is dedicated to working with big business and government agencies. The mentioned enterprises have not stopped operations. At the same time, we have strengthened our activity in several business associations to promptly respond to changes in the legal framework in terms of requirements for enterprises operating during the quarantine period. And we’ve managed to avoid our company to be restricted to function, although there had been such attempts. Of course, had our work been stopped, our company would have suffered some losses. In general, I regard the crisis as a fruitful time in terms of gaining new clients, when a lot of companies rethinking their business processes, striving to streamline and reduce the impact of the human factor.
- What is happening in the robotics market now and what are the main trends for 2021?
Our highest-growing core segment is the industrial applications of robotics technologies. We expect the market to grow twice in the worst-case scenario and three times in the optimistic outlook. Robotic systems will soon make life much easier for people in numerous areas. For example, our new development is a mini-farm FarmBot, based on open source technologies. The modular system is equipped with a mechanical “arm” that sows seeds and irrigates plants. The intelligent system is also capable of recognizing and clearing weeds. This solution allows growing over three dozen crops. A person just has to harvest. This is an open technology, everyone can create and modify their robots, find other adaptations for robotic farmers. Ukraine is a very promising market for creating and implementing new technologies.
- How much heavier or easier has it become to hold the lead in the market?
- In 2020, it became easier for us to run business thanks to successful reforms in Ukrainian customs. We have witnessed the virtually complete removal of counterfeit products in our segment. As for the development process, no one interrupts our flight. Also, Drone.ua has taken on an important social mission. We cooperate with police and rescue teams providing equipment for specific operations. For example, aerial surveys help to more accurately estimate the scale of a natural disaster or conduct search operations. And special underwater drones are able to search for dangerous objects at the bottom of water bodies.
- What should a client pay attention to when ordering your services?
- When communicating with our clients, we emphasize our expertise and experience that our team has in a wide variety of industries. For example, we have a lab, where we can perform a detailed soil analysis after the drone has collected all the data on the areas of heterogeneity of the fields. In other words, we offer businesses a comprehensive solution to the issue. Thus, an agronomist, using a light copter, can receive comprehensive information from a height of 200–300 meters (650–1000 ft.) within 5–10 minutes about the state of crops, the presence or absence of problems, and their magnitude. Thanks to Drone.ua, agricultural companies are already analyzing agro areas and demo fields, where hybrid crops, various micro-fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides, and growth regulators are tested. Aerial data provide an estimate of the crop condition after the use of various agents, calculate sprouts, evaluate yield and post-harvest results.
- What is the most non-typical project you had?
A non-typical project is a lifestyle for us, so there are plenty of examples. Once we were tasked to map more than 120 thousand hectares in a month and a half. Another challenge was to classify the huge sown areas across Ukraine in the middle of the season, predicting the number of hectares sown with different crops and the yield in several regions. But we had successfully passed these challenges, and it was a kind of a signal: we are moving in the right direction. Our services are used on all continents, even on expeditions of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Antarctica.
- How long does it take to estimate a new project and to fully implement it?
- Sometimes the whole process takes a few hours, and other times we establish cooperation with large corporations for several years. Everything is very individual and depends on the scale and complexity of the project.
- What technological novelties do you use in your business?
- We follow the trends in business automation and actively apply them in practice. I’m talking about using a CRM system to track processes or contacts. We use satellite technology for remote sensing of the earth to prioritize the work of agricultural teams. And in our analytics processes, we use our analytical models and neural networks to automate the processes of object recognition and element counting in the fields.
- How have eco-trends affected your business niche?
- One of the fastest-growing areas of our work is the development of the market for sprayer drones, which are the most efficient ways to apply fertilizers with significant savings in pesticides. For customers, this is not only cheaper than using heavy equipment but also more efficient, since the passage of heavy equipment across the field very often spoils 2–4% of the crop.
In general, today drones are used to study the melting of polar ice, with their help they determine the migration routes of animals, detect unauthorized dumps, fight poachers, identify violations of environmental laws, determine the level of pollution, as well as the impact of various contaminants on the global environmental situation.
- How does global warming affect business?
- In terms of agronomy, climate change has a direct impact on our clients’ businesses: some regions are becoming drier, the seasonality of work is changing, planting and harvesting times are shifting. Accordingly, this is also reflected in our business. We optimize our services and equipment, change the algorithms of actions to help our clients not only save their yields but also increase it.
- What are your rules of life that help you develop?
- To develop successfully, we have defined three basic rules for ourselves. First and foremost: nothing is impossible, because everything that once was fantastic is the reality today.
Second: to move onward! The lack of movement and progress is already considered a lag. And the third rule: we are constantly learning. If we learn something new every day in our field, if we explore it, the results will not be long in coming.
- The whole world is fighting for better service, what attention do you pay to this issue?
- Given the specifics of our business, a high-quality approach to serving our customers is the key to long-term relationships. However, our business initially implies a deep immersion in the client’s business, otherwise, we simply won’t be able to solve the tasks set for ourselves. This approach also entails a high level of service.
- What IT solutions do you use in your company?
Our entire business is based on IT solutions, and our credo is to automate all processes in the company: from CRM to neural networks and optimize the services themselves.
- What are your company’s plans? How do you see yourself in a few years?
- I will answer philosophically. Tomorrow will be the day when we will achieve another success, and in 5 years we will certainly achieve our goals and be ready for the next ones. The history of our company already shows consistent growth, we never stop at what has been achieved. So, at the dawn of the crisis, we realized: we have to do something radically new. After all, when the economy collapses, the paying capacity of the target audience shrinks, and therefore it is not worth focusing on a business that already exists. But new opportunities come along for an innovative approach because everyone in the market starts looking for an alternative to their classical established processes. Now our company occupies several floors in the office centre. In our first six months we created drones in my kitchen and today we have exported equipment and services to 40 countries around the world.
We have chosen the path of growth and are steadily following it. Today we cannot know exactly what the market will be, because the field of robotics is very dynamic, and many factors from outside often influence the service. One thing I can say for sure — this is the future, and it will be incredible! | https://medium.com/@prokhorenko-alexey/unmanned-technologies-for-4-million-hectares-of-ukrainian-lands-or-how-ukraine-blows-elon-musks-ae7854a68388 | ['Prokhorenko Alexey'] | 2020-12-08 15:06:20.830000+00:00 | ['Ukraine', 'Investing', 'Business', 'Gtinvest', 'Drones'] |
Social Media in Schools | New Jersey has recently passed a bill requiring social media to be taught in middle schools. The social media curriculum will include topics such as responsible use of social media, cyber safety and security, and potential negatives consequences of inappropriate use.
The bill has been passed in an effort to combat cyber bullying and to educate young people on best practices and appropriate usage of various social networks. With a greater number of social media platforms more accessible now than ever before, young people are much more able to make a social impact online without realizing (or caring about) the consequences of their actions.
Not only can youngsters use their phones to send text messages to their friends, but they can also use a myriad of mobile apps to connect instantly with their classmates and peers. Many teens, instead of sending a text, are simply tweeting at their friends, sending them a Facebook message or Direct Message over Twitter, or a photo/video message via Instagram Direct. Using these social media platforms to connect with friends can be as easy, if not easier, than texting.
The discussion of social media in schools raises three important concerns:
Who will be responsible for choosing the curriculum included in this new social media education?
Young people are using social media regularly (in many cases, on a daily basis). If teens and adolescents are going to be spending a significant amount of time online, it stands to reason that they should be well educated on how to conduct themselves appropriately while they do so. However, the passing of this bill has brought up some debate over who should be doing the teaching. Many people believe schoolteachers should play a role in educating young people on the proper use of social media. Others feel that the task of teaching teens how to conduct themselves online is the parents’ responsibility. Personally, I think the teens are already much more knowledgeable about the latest social media platforms than their parents or teachers do. Since teachers and parents are collectively using social media much less frequently and much differently than younger users, how much value would there be in the curriculum that the teachers and/or the parents produce?
Will a focus on teaching social media draw focus away from other important school subjects?
Middle school is a crucial period of development for students to learn how to be independent, how to manage their time, and how to be responsible for multiple projects at once. Adding a whole new curriculum of social media instruction could potentially drive students to spend a disproportionate amount of time on social media “studies” as compared to their other traditional school subjects, such as reading and math. Also, will social media classes become an elective option similar to a band/orchestra class or foreign language? And if so, might students lose interest in these extra-curricular activities simply to spend more time online?
How could a state-mandated school curriculum possibly keep up with the rapidly changing nature of social media?
The most popular social media networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) have only been around for about ten years, and a number of others have been around for even less time. This means that even the people who have been on these social platforms since their inception have only had a decade or less of experience using them. This lack of experienced users, combined with the ever-changing nature of social media, could make it quite difficult for any person or group of people to come up with a general, all-encompassing curriculum surrounding best practices on social media that can easily remain up to date. How often would the curriculum need to be revised to include the latest social platform or most recent viral online incident?
At this point, it seems a bit early to tell how the introduction of social media education will play out in schools. However, the passing of the bill (among other things) is a clear indicator that social media is here to stay, and people need to pay attention to it. Many organizations (corporations, non-profits, etc.) are requiring their employees and team members to go through social media training, illustrating how to professionally represent their organization on the Internet. Many companies also have elected to establish a social media department to manage the company’s online presence.
It’s safe to say that social media is going to play a significant role in how both seasoned professionals and young people interact, and the time to start getting educated about social media is now.
What do you think? Should social media be taught in schools? If you found this discussion interesting, I’d love it if you clicked “Recommend!” | https://medium.com/an-education/social-media-in-schools-e964d85b60d4 | ['Brian Funicelli'] | 2015-02-28 03:46:07.679000+00:00 | ['Education', 'School', 'Social Media'] |
How to create charts in android | PART 1 | Bar Chart | Pie Chart | Radar Chart | MP Android Chart | Android Studio | Java | How to create charts in android | Bar Chart | Pie Chart | Radar Chart | MP Android Chart | Android Studio | Java. In this tutorial, we’re going to implement a bar chart, a pie chart, and a radar chart using MP android chart in android.
What is Chart?
A chart is a graphical representation of data, in which “the data is represented by symbols, such as bars in a bar chart, lines in a line chart, or slices in a pie chart”. A chart can represent tabular numeric data, functions, or some kind of quality structure and provides different info.
Why use Chart?
The main functions of a chart are to display data and invite further exploration of a topic. Charts are used in situations where a simple table won’t adequately demonstrate important relationships or patterns between data points.
Android Charts Example (PART 1)
Gradle Setup
in build.gradle Project file:
repositories { maven { url ‘https://jitpack.io' } }
in build.gradle App file:
dependencies { implementation ‘com.github.PhilJay:MPAndroidChart:v3.1.0’ }
Main Activity Setup
in the main activity XML file, we add three buttons for the Bar, Pie, and Radar charts with a definition.
<?xml version=”1.0" encoding=”utf-8"?> <LinearLayout xmlns:android=”http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" xmlns:app=”http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto" xmlns:tools=”http://schemas.android.com/tools" android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”match_parent” android:padding=”20dp” android:orientation=”vertical” tools:context=”.MainActivity”> <TextView android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:text=”@string/bar_chart_text” android:textColor=”@color/black” android:layout_gravity=”center_horizontal” android:layout_marginBottom=”8dp”/> <Button android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:id=”@+id/barChatButton” android:backgroundTint=”@color/purple_500" android:textColor=”@color/white” android:text=”@string/bar_chart”/> <TextView android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:text=”@string/pie_chart_text” android:textColor=”@color/black” android:layout_gravity=”center_horizontal” android:layout_marginBottom=”8dp” android:layout_marginTop=”20dp”/> <Button android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:id=”@+id/pieChatButton” android:backgroundTint=”@color/purple_500" android:textColor=”@color/white” android:text=”@string/pie_chart”/> <TextView android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:text=”@string/radar_chart_text” android:textColor=”@color/black” android:layout_gravity=”center_horizontal” android:layout_marginBottom=”8dp” android:layout_marginTop=”20dp”/> <Button android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:id=”@+id/radarChatButton” android:backgroundTint=”@color/purple_500" android:textColor=”@color/white” android:text=”@string/radar_chart”/> </LinearLayout>
now in the main activity java file, set onClickListener in the buttons to the Bar, Pie, and Radar activities.
public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity { @Override protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.activity_main); findViewById(R.id.barChatButton).setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() { @Override public void onClick(View view) { startActivity(new Intent(getApplicationContext(), BarChartActivity.class)); } }); findViewById(R.id.pieChatButton).setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() { @Override public void onClick(View view) { startActivity(new Intent(getApplicationContext(), PieChartActivity.class)); } }); findViewById(R.id.radarChatButton).setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() { @Override public void onClick(View view) { startActivity(new Intent(getApplicationContext(), RadarChartActivity.class)); } }); } }
the output of the main activity:
Bar chart Activity
apply the bar chart in the XML file
<?xml version=”1.0" encoding=”utf-8"?> <androidx.core.widget.NestedScrollView xmlns:android=”http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" xmlns:tools=”http://schemas.android.com/tools" android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”match_parent” android:gravity=”center” android:padding=”20dp” tools:context=”.BarChartActivity”> <LinearLayout android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”match_parent” android:layout_marginBottom=”20dp” android:orientation=”vertical”> <com.github.mikephil.charting.charts.BarChart android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”400dp” android:id=”@+id/barChart” android:layout_marginBottom=”20dp”/> <LinearLayout android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginBottom=”20dp” android:orientation=”vertical”> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginBottom=”10dp” android:text=”Bar Chart Example” android:textColor=”@color/black” android:textSize=”20sp” android:textStyle=”bold” /> <RelativeLayout android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginTop=”20dp”> <ImageView android:id=”@+id/input” android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_centerVertical=”true” android:layout_marginStart=”10dp” android:src=”@drawable/green” /> <LinearLayout android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_toEndOf=”@+id/input” android:orientation=”vertical”> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginStart=”16dp” android:text=”Entry year” android:textSize=”11sp” /> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginStart=”16dp” android:gravity=”center” android:text=”2010" android:textAlignment=”center” android:textColor=”@color/black” android:textSize=”15sp” android:textStyle=”bold” /> </LinearLayout> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_alignParentEnd=”true” android:layout_centerVertical=”true” android:layout_marginEnd=”10dp” android:text=”Entries: 350" android:textColor=”@color/black” android:textSize=”16sp” android:textStyle=”bold” /> </RelativeLayout> <RelativeLayout android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginTop=”10dp”> <ImageView android:id=”@+id/input1" android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_centerVertical=”true” android:layout_marginStart=”10dp” android:src=”@drawable/yellow” /> <LinearLayout android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_toEndOf=”@+id/input1" android:orientation=”vertical”> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginStart=”16dp” android:text=”Entry year” android:textSize=”11sp” /> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginStart=”16dp” android:gravity=”center” android:text=”2011" android:textAlignment=”center” android:textColor=”@color/black” android:textSize=”15sp” android:textStyle=”bold” /> </LinearLayout> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_alignParentEnd=”true” android:layout_centerVertical=”true” android:layout_marginEnd=”10dp” android:text=”Entries: 475" android:textColor=”@color/black” android:textSize=”16sp” android:textStyle=”bold” /> </RelativeLayout> <RelativeLayout android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginTop=”10dp”> <ImageView android:id=”@+id/input2" android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_centerVertical=”true” android:layout_marginStart=”10dp” android:src=”@drawable/redish” /> <LinearLayout android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_toEndOf=”@+id/input2" android:orientation=”vertical”> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginStart=”16dp” android:text=”Entry year” android:textSize=”11sp” /> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginStart=”16dp” android:gravity=”center” android:text=”2012" android:textAlignment=”center” android:textColor=”@color/black” android:textSize=”15sp” android:textStyle=”bold” /> </LinearLayout> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_alignParentEnd=”true” android:layout_centerVertical=”true” android:layout_marginEnd=”10dp” android:text=”Entries: 570" android:textColor=”@color/black” android:textSize=”16sp” android:textStyle=”bold” /> </RelativeLayout> <RelativeLayout android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginTop=”10dp”> <ImageView android:id=”@+id/input3" android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_centerVertical=”true” android:layout_marginStart=”10dp” android:src=”@drawable/blue” /> <LinearLayout android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_toEndOf=”@+id/input3" android:orientation=”vertical”> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginStart=”16dp” android:text=”Entry year” android:textSize=”11sp” /> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginStart=”16dp” android:gravity=”center” android:text=”2013" android:textAlignment=”center” android:textColor=”@color/black” android:textSize=”15sp” android:textStyle=”bold” /> </LinearLayout> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_alignParentEnd=”true” android:layout_centerVertical=”true” android:layout_marginEnd=”10dp” android:text=”Entries: 650" android:textColor=”@color/black” android:textSize=”16sp” android:textStyle=”bold” /> </RelativeLayout> <RelativeLayout android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginTop=”10dp”> <ImageView android:id=”@+id/input5" android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_centerVertical=”true” android:layout_marginStart=”10dp” android:src=”@drawable/green” /> <LinearLayout android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_toEndOf=”@+id/input5" android:orientation=”vertical”> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginStart=”16dp” android:text=”Entry year” android:textSize=”11sp” /> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginStart=”16dp” android:gravity=”center” android:text=”2014" android:textAlignment=”center” android:textColor=”@color/black” android:textSize=”15sp” android:textStyle=”bold” /> </LinearLayout> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_alignParentEnd=”true” android:layout_centerVertical=”true” android:layout_marginEnd=”10dp” android:text=”Entries: 211" android:textColor=”@color/black” android:textSize=”16sp” android:textStyle=”bold” /> </RelativeLayout> <RelativeLayout android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginTop=”10dp”> <ImageView android:id=”@+id/input6" android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_centerVertical=”true” android:layout_marginStart=”10dp” android:src=”@drawable/yellow” /> <LinearLayout android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_toEndOf=”@+id/input6" android:orientation=”vertical”> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginStart=”16dp” android:text=”Entry year” android:textSize=”11sp” /> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginStart=”16dp” android:gravity=”center” android:text=”2015" android:textAlignment=”center” android:textColor=”@color/black” android:textSize=”15sp” android:textStyle=”bold” /> </LinearLayout> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_alignParentEnd=”true” android:layout_centerVertical=”true” android:layout_marginEnd=”10dp” android:text=”Entries: 855" android:textColor=”@color/black” android:textSize=”16sp” android:textStyle=”bold” /> </RelativeLayout> <RelativeLayout android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginTop=”10dp”> <ImageView android:id=”@+id/input7" android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_centerVertical=”true” android:layout_marginStart=”10dp” android:src=”@drawable/redish” /> <LinearLayout android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_toEndOf=”@+id/input7" android:orientation=”vertical”> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginStart=”16dp” android:text=”Entry year” android:textSize=”11sp” /> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginStart=”16dp” android:gravity=”center” android:text=”2016" android:textAlignment=”center” android:textColor=”@color/black” android:textSize=”15sp” android:textStyle=”bold” /> </LinearLayout> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_alignParentEnd=”true” android:layout_centerVertical=”true” android:layout_marginEnd=”10dp” android:text=”Entries: 360" android:textColor=”@color/black” android:textSize=”16sp” android:textStyle=”bold” /> </RelativeLayout> <RelativeLayout android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginTop=”10dp”> <ImageView android:id=”@+id/input8" android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_centerVertical=”true” android:layout_marginStart=”10dp” android:src=”@drawable/blue” /> <LinearLayout android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_toEndOf=”@+id/input8" android:orientation=”vertical”> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginStart=”16dp” android:text=”Entry year” android:textSize=”11sp” /> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginStart=”16dp” android:gravity=”center” android:text=”2017" android:textAlignment=”center” android:textColor=”@color/black” android:textSize=”15sp” android:textStyle=”bold” /> </LinearLayout> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_alignParentEnd=”true” android:layout_centerVertical=”true” android:layout_marginEnd=”10dp” android:text=”Entries: 660" android:textColor=”@color/black” android:textSize=”16sp” android:textStyle=”bold” /> </RelativeLayout> </LinearLayout> </LinearLayout> </androidx.core.widget.NestedScrollView>
now calls the bar chart and adds the data to the bar chart.
public class BarChartActivity extends AppCompatActivity { @Override protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.activity_bar_chart); setTitle(“Bar Chart”); getSupportActionBar().setDisplayHomeAsUpEnabled(true); BarChart barChart = findViewById(R.id.barChart); ArrayList<BarEntry> entries = new ArrayList<>(); entries.add(new BarEntry(2010,350)); entries.add(new BarEntry(2011,475)); entries.add(new BarEntry(2012,570)); entries.add(new BarEntry(2013,650)); entries.add(new BarEntry(2014,211)); entries.add(new BarEntry(2015,855)); entries.add(new BarEntry(2016,360)); entries.add(new BarEntry(2017,660)); BarDataSet barDataSet = new BarDataSet(entries, “Entries”); barDataSet.setColors(ColorTemplate.MATERIAL_COLORS); barDataSet.setValueTextColor(Color.BLACK); barDataSet.setValueTextSize(16f); BarData barData = new BarData(barDataSet); barChart.setFitBars(true); barChart.setData(barData); barChart.getDescription().setText(“Custom Bar Chart Example”); barChart.animateY(2000); } }
the output of the bar chart activity:
Pie chart activity
apply the pie chart in the XML file
<?xml version=”1.0" encoding=”utf-8"?> <androidx.core.widget.NestedScrollView xmlns:android=”http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" xmlns:tools=”http://schemas.android.com/tools" android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”match_parent” android:gravity=”center” android:padding=”20dp” tools:context=”.PieChartActivity”> <LinearLayout android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”match_parent” android:layout_marginBottom=”20dp” android:orientation=”vertical”> <com.github.mikephil.charting.charts.PieChart android:id=”@+id/pieChart” android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”450dp” android:layout_marginBottom=”10dp” /> <LinearLayout android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginBottom=”20dp” android:orientation=”vertical”> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginBottom=”10dp” android:text=”Pie Chart Example” android:textColor=”@color/black” android:textSize=”20sp” android:textStyle=”bold” /> <RelativeLayout android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginTop=”20dp”> <ImageView android:id=”@+id/input” android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_centerVertical=”true” android:layout_marginStart=”10dp” android:src=”@drawable/green” /> <LinearLayout android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_toEndOf=”@+id/input” android:orientation=”vertical”> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginStart=”16dp” android:text=”Entry year” android:textSize=”11sp” /> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginStart=”16dp” android:gravity=”center” android:text=”2012" android:textAlignment=”center” android:textColor=”@color/black” android:textSize=”15sp” android:textStyle=”bold” /> </LinearLayout> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_alignParentEnd=”true” android:layout_centerVertical=”true” android:layout_marginEnd=”10dp” android:text=”Entries: 200" android:textColor=”@color/black” android:textSize=”16sp” android:textStyle=”bold” /> </RelativeLayout> <RelativeLayout android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginTop=”10dp”> <ImageView android:id=”@+id/input1" android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_centerVertical=”true” android:layout_marginStart=”10dp” android:src=”@drawable/yellow” /> <LinearLayout android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_toEndOf=”@+id/input1" android:orientation=”vertical”> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginStart=”16dp” android:text=”Entry year” android:textSize=”11sp” /> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginStart=”16dp” android:gravity=”center” android:text=”2013" android:textAlignment=”center” android:textColor=”@color/black” android:textSize=”15sp” android:textStyle=”bold” /> </LinearLayout> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_alignParentEnd=”true” android:layout_centerVertical=”true” android:layout_marginEnd=”10dp” android:text=”Entries: 350" android:textColor=”@color/black” android:textSize=”16sp” android:textStyle=”bold” /> </RelativeLayout> <RelativeLayout android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginTop=”10dp”> <ImageView android:id=”@+id/input2" android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_centerVertical=”true” android:layout_marginStart=”10dp” android:src=”@drawable/redish” /> <LinearLayout android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_toEndOf=”@+id/input2" android:orientation=”vertical”> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginStart=”16dp” android:text=”Entry year” android:textSize=”11sp” /> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginStart=”16dp” android:gravity=”center” android:text=”2014" android:textAlignment=”center” android:textColor=”@color/black” android:textSize=”15sp” android:textStyle=”bold” /> </LinearLayout> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_alignParentEnd=”true” android:layout_centerVertical=”true” android:layout_marginEnd=”10dp” android:text=”Entries: 480" android:textColor=”@color/black” android:textSize=”16sp” android:textStyle=”bold” /> </RelativeLayout> <RelativeLayout android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginTop=”10dp”> <ImageView android:id=”@+id/input3" android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_centerVertical=”true” android:layout_marginStart=”10dp” android:src=”@drawable/blue” /> <LinearLayout android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_toEndOf=”@+id/input3" android:orientation=”vertical”> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginStart=”16dp” android:text=”Entry year” android:textSize=”11sp” /> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginStart=”16dp” android:gravity=”center” android:text=”2015" android:textAlignment=”center” android:textColor=”@color/black” android:textSize=”15sp” android:textStyle=”bold” /> </LinearLayout> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_alignParentEnd=”true” android:layout_centerVertical=”true” android:layout_marginEnd=”10dp” android:text=”Entries: 120" android:textColor=”@color/black” android:textSize=”16sp” android:textStyle=”bold” /> </RelativeLayout> <RelativeLayout android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginTop=”10dp”> <ImageView android:id=”@+id/input5" android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_centerVertical=”true” android:layout_marginStart=”10dp” android:src=”@drawable/green” /> <LinearLayout android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_toEndOf=”@+id/input5" android:orientation=”vertical”> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginStart=”16dp” android:text=”Entry year” android:textSize=”11sp” /> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginStart=”16dp” android:gravity=”center” android:text=”2016" android:textAlignment=”center” android:textColor=”@color/black” android:textSize=”15sp” android:textStyle=”bold” /> </LinearLayout> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_alignParentEnd=”true” android:layout_centerVertical=”true” android:layout_marginEnd=”10dp” android:text=”Entries: 260" android:textColor=”@color/black” android:textSize=”16sp” android:textStyle=”bold” /> </RelativeLayout> </LinearLayout> </LinearLayout> </androidx.core.widget.NestedScrollView>
now call the pie chart and add the data to it.
public class PieChartActivity extends AppCompatActivity { @Override protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.activity_pie_chart); setTitle(“Pie Chart”); PieChart pieChart = findViewById(R.id.pieChart); ArrayList<PieEntry> entries = new ArrayList<>(); entries.add(new PieEntry(200,2012)); entries.add(new PieEntry(350,2013)); entries.add(new PieEntry(480,2014)); entries.add(new PieEntry(120,2015)); entries.add(new PieEntry(260,2016)); PieDataSet pieDataSet = new PieDataSet(entries, “Entries”); pieDataSet.setColors(ColorTemplate.MATERIAL_COLORS); pieDataSet.setValueTextColor(Color.BLACK); pieDataSet.setValueTextSize(16f); PieData pieData = new PieData(pieDataSet); pieChart.setData(pieData); pieChart.getDescription().setEnabled(false); pieChart.setCenterText(“Entries”); pieChart.animate(); } }
the output of the pie chart activity:
Radar chart activity
add the radar chart in the XML file
<?xml version=”1.0" encoding=”utf-8"?> <androidx.core.widget.NestedScrollView xmlns:android=”http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" xmlns:tools=”http://schemas.android.com/tools" android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”match_parent” android:padding=”20dp” android:gravity=”center” tools:context=”.RadarChartActivity”> <LinearLayout android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”match_parent” android:layout_marginBottom=”20dp” android:orientation=”vertical”> <com.github.mikephil.charting.charts.RadarChart android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”400dp” android:id=”@+id/radarChart” android:layout_marginBottom=”20dp”/> <LinearLayout android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginBottom=”20dp” android:orientation=”vertical”> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginBottom=”10dp” android:text=”Radar Chart Example” android:textColor=”@color/black” android:textSize=”20sp” android:textStyle=”bold” /> <RelativeLayout android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginTop=”20dp”> <ImageView android:id=”@+id/input” android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_centerVertical=”true” android:layout_marginStart=”10dp” android:src=”@drawable/red” /> <LinearLayout android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_toEndOf=”@+id/input” android:orientation=”vertical”> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginStart=”16dp” android:text=”Entry No” android:textSize=”11sp” /> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginStart=”16dp” android:gravity=”center” android:text=”1" android:textAlignment=”center” android:textColor=”@color/black” android:textSize=”15sp” android:textStyle=”bold” /> </LinearLayout> </RelativeLayout> <RelativeLayout android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginTop=”10dp”> <ImageView android:id=”@+id/input1" android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_centerVertical=”true” android:layout_marginStart=”10dp” android:src=”@drawable/black” /> <LinearLayout android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_toEndOf=”@+id/input1" android:orientation=”vertical”> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginStart=”16dp” android:text=”Entry No” android:textSize=”11sp” /> <TextView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_marginStart=”16dp” android:gravity=”center” android:text=”2" android:textAlignment=”center” android:textColor=”@color/black” android:textSize=”15sp” android:textStyle=”bold” /> </LinearLayout> </RelativeLayout> </LinearLayout> </LinearLayout> </androidx.core.widget.NestedScrollView>
now, call the radar chart and add two entries.
public class RadarChartActivity extends AppCompatActivity { @Override protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.activity_radar_chart); setTitle(“Radar Chart”); RadarChart radarChart = findViewById(R.id.radarChart); //entry 1 ArrayList<RadarEntry> entries = new ArrayList<>(); entries.add(new RadarEntry(220)); entries.add(new RadarEntry(330)); entries.add(new RadarEntry(440)); entries.add(new RadarEntry(550)); entries.add(new RadarEntry(660)); entries.add(new RadarEntry(210)); entries.add(new RadarEntry(350)); entries.add(new RadarEntry(120)); RadarDataSet radarDataSet = new RadarDataSet(entries,”Entry 1"); radarDataSet.setColor(Color.RED); radarDataSet.setLineWidth(2f); radarDataSet.setValueTextColor(Color.RED); radarDataSet.setValueTextSize(14f); //entry 2 ArrayList<RadarEntry> entries2 = new ArrayList<>(); entries2.add(new RadarEntry(120)); entries2.add(new RadarEntry(310)); entries2.add(new RadarEntry(340)); entries2.add(new RadarEntry(450)); entries2.add(new RadarEntry(560)); entries2.add(new RadarEntry(310)); entries2.add(new RadarEntry(650)); entries2.add(new RadarEntry(320)); RadarDataSet radarDataSet2 = new RadarDataSet(entries2,”Entry 2"); radarDataSet2.setColor(Color.BLUE); radarDataSet2.setLineWidth(2f); radarDataSet2.setValueTextColor(Color.BLUE); radarDataSet2.setValueTextSize(14f); //set the data RadarData radarData = new RadarData(); radarData.addDataSet(radarDataSet); radarData.addDataSet(radarDataSet2); String[] labels = {“2010”,”2011",”2012",”2013",”2014",”2015",”2016",”2017"}; XAxis xAxis = radarChart.getXAxis(); xAxis.setValueFormatter(new IndexAxisValueFormatter(labels)); radarChart.getDescription().setText(“Custom Radar Chart Example”); radarChart.setData(radarData); } }
the output of the radar chart activity:
Result
If you have any queries, you can mail me at [email protected] | https://medium.com/@androidapps-development-blogs/how-to-create-charts-in-android-part-1-bar-chart-pie-chart-radar-chart-mp-android-chart-9c313e17068e | ['Golap Gunjan Barman'] | 2020-12-25 09:44:20.569000+00:00 | ['Android App Development', 'Android', 'AndroidDev', 'Charts', 'Mpandroidchart'] |
Confinement | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/illumination/confinement-f15962101b7d | ['Patrick M. Ohana'] | 2020-12-17 15:18:51.573000+00:00 | ['Illumination', 'Haiku', 'AI', 'Confinement', 'Poetry'] |
Knight’s Teaching Nuggets # 2: Apply the Red Queen Hypothesis | Knight’s Teaching Nuggets # 2: Apply the Red Queen Hypothesis
The Red Queen is a fictional character from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. The Red Queen explains to Alice that her world works differently: “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
The Red Queen hypothesis was coined in evolutionary biology to explain that a species must adapt and evolve not just for reproductive advantage, but also for survival because competing organisms also are evolving.
Exemplary teachers must be able to engage young minds with an artfully distributed diet of intellectual gems in both old and new modalities. In teaching, just like in life, we must accept that change is inevitable. Then prepare for it and embrace it with gusto! | https://medium.com/everything-shortform/knights-teaching-nuggets-2-apply-the-red-queen-hypothesis-fbd4772e5467 | ['James Knight'] | 2020-12-12 16:59:48.706000+00:00 | ['Evolution', 'Education', 'Teaching', 'Advice', 'Lessons Learned'] |
Sat Upon my Heart, an Incubus | The word ‘nightmare’ is derived from Viking folklore where ‘mara’ spirits bring bad dreams in the night and sit on the chests of the dreamers. This ‘night mara’ was probably confused with a ‘night mare’ and here Fuseli explores the linguistic mix-up, personifying both versions.
Misunderstood in its day, this represents the first time that the subconscious world of dreams is used as a direct inspiration for visual art — preceding the Surrealists by nearly two centuries. The only precedents could be paintings showing the religious visions of saints and works by Hieronymus Bosch.
Fuseli’s distinctive dark Romantic style is well showcased here and in his later variations of the theme. The Romantic movement itself was to come about as a reaction to the Enlightenment, developing out of a ‘re-discovery’ of the power of feelings, poetic inspiration, dreams, imaginings and the ultimate truth of the emotional response.
As with the Enlightenment in France, Romanticism in Britain began primarily as a literary and philosophical movement. Reflecting this, Fuseli illustrated scenes from the plays of Shakespeare and the Greek Myths. He had first visited England 1765 when he met fellow artist William Blake, becoming a friend and an acknowledged influence upon the younger artist.
After touring Europe, Fuseli returned to England where he became an associate of the Royal Academy and was then influenced by the figurative style that Blake had developed. The works of these two artists bear many similarities.
Fuseli wrote of his vivid fever dreams, often featuring combinations of erotic and frightening ingredients and in some interpretations it’s suggested that the goblin represents his primal desire for one of the several women he became infatuated with before meeting and marrying, Sophia Rawlins, who had been his model.
Interestingly, both he and Blake were associates of Mary Wollstonecraft, the educational reformist and women’s rights activist. Fuseli had painted her portrait, and reportedly had rejected her amorous advances! Notably, her daughter, Mary Shelley, authored of one of the great Gothic novels, Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818.
Perhaps the work of Fuseli had exerted an influence, as it would on the imaginative fiction of many Gothic horror writers to come, including Edgar Allan Poe, who refers to The Nightmare in his novel of 1839, The Fall of the House of Usher:
an irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and, at length, there sat upon my heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm
The Nightmare made its public debut in 1782 at the annual exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts in London where it met a mixed reaction. It’s erotic subtext and morbid associations with the demonic and diseased fascinated many who saw it and it gradually insinuated itself into the public imagination.
another version of ‘The Nightmare’ painted by Henry Fuseli c.1790 [view license]
Fuseli painted several variations to meet demand, other artists also copied it. It was reproduced as a popular engraving, often printed and hand-coloured, becoming so reconisable that it developed into a satirical ‘meme’ of the early Nineteenth-Century, used to make comments on current affairs and political figures…
A widely circulated engraving by Thomas Burke was accompanied by a poetic vignette by, father of Charles, Erasmus Darwin: | https://medium.com/signifier/sat-upon-my-heart-an-incubus-fb946d3c80e | ['Remy Dean'] | 2020-11-01 00:51:29.480000+00:00 | ['Art History', 'Painting', 'Gothic', 'History', 'Art'] |
April — Media Digest. Books | Books
The New York Trilogy — Paul Auster
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Three post-modern detective stories about fortuity, coincidences, obsession, and much more.
Each novel starts as a classic detective case but it soon moves to focus on the themes from above and how the main character gets lost in them: the mystery is no longer the subject and it’s replaced by the human mind. And that’s what makes this book great.
Science — Ewan McEwan
A collection of speeches and articles from Ewan McEwan talking about literature and science. It’s the perfect book to keep on the drawer and read a few pages every day and I think I will buy more books from this series.
Guns Germs and Steel — Jared Diamond
Currently reading
From Wikipedia: “A transdisciplinary book [that] attempts to explain why Eurasian and North African civilizations have survived and conquered others, while arguing against the idea that Eurasian hegemony is due to any form of Eurasian intellectual, moral, or inherent genetic superiority.”
A mind-opening book, often compared to Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari but really, there is no comparison. | https://medium.com/@Ranx/april-media-digest-24e999fc81f3 | ['Francesco Puppo'] | 2020-05-01 11:58:47.400000+00:00 | ['Cinema', 'Books', 'Movies', 'Reading', 'TV Shows'] |
The in-depth understandings of myself | At the beginning of such an archetype survey, I was a bit suspicious. Can such a small test offer me the big results of telling me who I am? After these 28 questions constituting all different features about understanding my own personality, I started to realize the trueness of this survey. This survey was not only telling me the significant results but also showing me the direction based on my own advantages and disadvantages of personality.
The result of my own archetype was The Rockstar, which is the overlap of my first advantage — innovation, and the second advantage — passion. Really?! Am I innovative and passionate about life? I didn’t even always feel myself being like that!
Based on that, I am seen as an enthusiastic person of making new ideas. Also, I am a person living under the spotlight since I will be the one getting noticed by the public with a high possibility. Also, I am kind of a funny person who likes to make some interesting jokes with people even though sometimes these jokes are very common or even boring. Lastly, I love to take risks on different things based on the current project or business. To be different from others, I like to break the rules and make something radically new instead of following the old rules. These are my archetypes.
From my own perspective, I feel the result was still honest enough to tell me something solid about me. In my daily life, I also sometimes feel the strong impressions people have about me to my lifestyle and working style. Once upon a time when I was having a group project with another 2 students during my postgraduate study, my work was always distant and different from my classmates and even be seen as irrelevant to the project topic. I was scolded and despised by them many times, and this even caused me to get depression. After this survey results, I feel empathy from the result because it tells me exactly the same thing about how I feel about myself.
In the future, I will be more confident in myself and my personal differences from others. I’m unorthodox, sometimes crazy but this is who I am!! No one should judge me at all because of my unregularity. The world is beautiful because of the difference! In my career, I will also keep being innovative and independent of my own creative inspirations instead of highly reliant on others’ viewpoints about me. Likewise, I believe my passion and hearty feelings in my future life can impress other people and acquire their assistance if necessary.
Hi! Thanks for reading! This is Zeyun! An unusual and even a crazy girl!
@sallyhogshead @howtofascinate @joannetombrakos | https://medium.com/@zw2953/the-in-depth-understandings-of-myself-2c610e8f27ae | [] | 2021-06-08 22:58:13.820000+00:00 | ['Personality', 'Surveys', 'Different'] |
Bee #GratefulFor Pollinators! | Photo: Did you know pollinators are responsible for more than 75% of what we eat? Coffee, chocolate, and pretty much all of the ingredients needed for pumpkin pie rely on pollinators so show them some love today!
When most people think about pollinators, they imagine graceful butterflies, or a busy and buzzy honey bee, pollinating crops and flowers to bring the pollen back to their hives and create honey. But pollinators include more than honey bees, as there are all different types of bees, bats, birds, and bugs that specialize in pollinating the plants native to their homes or ecosystems. In fact, some native plants and pollinators have a co-dependent relationship — meaning that one cannot exist without the other!
For example, birds like the i’iwi have long, curved beaks, perfect for drinking the nectar from flowers in places like Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge in Hawaii. As they move from flower to flower, they pollinate the plants.
Photo: I’iwi or scarlet Hawaiian honeycreeper. Photo credit: Megan Nagel/USFWS
Pollinators not only keep plants healthy and growing, but they are also indicators of healthy habitats because they are so sensitive to threats like the changing climate, habitat loss, environmental toxins, and invasive species. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service works to ensure the future of fish, wildlife and their habitat and the National Wildlife Refuge System creates refuges dedicated to their conservation.
“Refuges are important for pollinators because they protect relatively undisturbed, natural habitats that provide the critical resources, such as food, nesting and overwintering sites required by pollinators, said Regional Refuge Biologist Joe Engler. “Pollination is critical for the existence of healthy plant populations which in turn provide the fruits and seeds eaten by the many species of wildlife that refuges were established to protect. The pollinators themselves, both adults and larvae, are also a food source for wildlife.”
Because pollinators play an important role in keeping refuges healthy, and are facing so many threats, refuge biologists in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Pacific Region with the assistance of the USGS Native Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab, and the USDA ARS Bee Biology & Systematics Laboratory are studying bees on refuges in Idaho, Oregon and Washington.
Photo: Bombus nevadensis on Steens Mountain thistle. Photo credit: USFWS
This study currently focuses on conducting inventories of the primary bee species on 11 national wildlife refuges in the Pacific Northwest. With over 800 species of bees occurring in this region, once completed, this study will tell what types of bees are living on the refuges, what types of habitats they prefer, and provide important data and specimens for research and educational purposes. This study is leading the way for the Service to better understand the role that pollinators play in keeping refuges healthy, but also how refuges support bee populations. The information that results from this study will help refuge managers improve bee habitat and populations as needed.
“Because different types of bees have different requirements for their food, nesting and overwintering sites, each refuge plays a unique role in supporting the wide diversity of bees found in the Pacific Northwest,” said Engler.
Photo: Bombus vosnesenskii or calignosus on checkermallow. Photo credit: USFWS
Studies like this are vital as there is growing evidence that pollinators are in decline world-wide. In the United States, four species of bumble bees are known to be in decline and considered vulnerable to extinction. This includes the western bumble bee (Bombus occidentalis), which was once considered to be one of the most abundant bumble bees in the Western United States, and Franklin’s bumble bee (Bombus franklini), a species restricted to southern Oregon and northern California which hasn’t been found since 2006. Within Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, the Xerces Society’s Red List of at-risk to endangered pollinators includes five species of butterflies and 19 species of bees; the Xerces Society is an organization of national and international scope dedicated to the conservation of invertebrates. In Hawaii, one butterfly and 26 bees are considered at-risk, including the Blackburn’s sphinx moth which is federally listed as endangered in Hawaii.
Photo: Arctic skipper on Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge. Photo credit: USFWS
Bees and other pollinators, through their pollination activities, are critical for the production of over 100 food crops world-wide, and over 75% of all plant species depend on them for pollination.
“For a relatively unknown and often maligned group of insects, it is sobering to think that almost all life on this planet, including humans, depends on these industrious creatures,” said Engler. “They are intricately involved in helping weave and maintain the foundation of human existence as we know it.”
Learn more about pollinators and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service by clicking here. | https://medium.com/usfwspacificnw/bee-gratefulfor-pollinators-5105f1a4df31 | ['Usfws Columbia Pacific Northwest Region'] | 2020-11-26 15:42:28.198000+00:00 | ['Thanksgiving', 'Gratefulfor', 'Pollinators', 'Conservation', 'Wildlife'] |
5 เทคนิคการออมเงินสุดปัง... ปีใหม่แล้วมาเริ่มใหม่กัน! | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/kbtg-life/5-%E0%B9%80%E0%B8%97%E0%B8%84%E0%B8%99%E0%B8%B4%E0%B8%84%E0%B8%AD%E0%B8%AD%E0%B8%A1%E0%B9%80%E0%B8%87%E0%B8%B4%E0%B8%99%E0%B8%AA%E0%B8%B8%E0%B8%94%E0%B8%9B%E0%B8%B1%E0%B8%87-%E0%B8%9B%E0%B8%B5%E0%B9%83%E0%B8%AB%E0%B8%A1%E0%B9%88%E0%B9%81%E0%B8%A5%E0%B9%89%E0%B8%A7%E0%B8%A1%E0%B8%B2%E0%B9%80%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%B4%E0%B9%88%E0%B8%A1%E0%B9%83%E0%B8%AB%E0%B8%A1%E0%B9%88%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%B1%E0%B8%99-9df498fbd785 | ['Saratory - ซาร าม เร', 'องเล า'] | 2020-12-24 10:33:56.970000+00:00 | ['Finance', 'Tips', 'Lifestyle', 'Saving', 'New Year'] |
The Abyss | A poem about poverty & anxiety.
Photo by Valentin Lacoste on Unsplash
My heels on the edge.
My back to the abyss.
My heart thrums,
aware.
One push, one misstep,
and you’re down there.
At the bottom, in the cold,
trapped.
The fear freezes me;
sinking into my center,
settling into my core.
Yet there’s something unreal about it.
Maybe I already fell into the dark?
And I only imagine
I’m still aboveground.
That must be it.
That’s why I can see your backs from here
circled around the abyss.
Your hands held out to balance you
like tightrope walkers.
Your dirty heels hanging over the edge;
Gum on the bottom of your tennis shoes. | https://medium.com/the-avalanche-movement/the-abyss-b08d9820065b | ['K.B. Bailey'] | 2020-12-20 05:35:45.777000+00:00 | ['Poem', 'Anxiety', 'Free Verse', 'Poverty', 'Poetry On Medium'] |
The ‘Ownership Tragedy’ | We can only flourish in a healthy and safe society. (T-shirt Flourish Gaia)
The ‘Ownership Tragedy’
The ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ has a destructive brother
The Tragedy of the Commons states that no one will take care of collectively shared, or unowned property. We may take too much out, and so spoil it for all others. Yet, the opposite is also true. It is equally damaging for everyone when everything is privately owned. Let me explain.
The Corona epidemic shows the limitations of ownership fixation.
The spreading of the Corona virus, especially in the USA, makes one thing very clear: individual healthcare is a rotten way to confront a collective crisis. A right wing anti-collective healthcare talking point is: “Why should I pay for someone else’s sickness?” Well, there are many reasons for that, and the virus makes them visible. The viral disease is a collective threat for society as a whole. To treat it we need to see society as one organism, made up of many cells (people). The more individual cells get sick, the more the whole system gets sick. We already see that in the Wall Street panic starting to happen. When sick cells don’t get help from others, they’ll get sicker and infect more.
Before we dive right in, disclaimer for the anxious right wingers: no, I’m not a socialist nor communist and, I’m not even a Dem. If you read that anyway into this article, check up your other infection here.
Who should pay for this? The rail company, you in higher tickets, or the government? (okay, is you in higher taxes) (picture royalty free of Iranian metro being cleaned)
Why the Ownership Tragedy makes us all suffer.
The more people act in time in order to prevent themselves and others getting the disease, the less easy the disease will spread. We know, because of poverty, many people often wait too long to visit a doctor out of fear for costs they can’t bear. They also might continue working as long as they can while being sick, because they can’t afford missing pay. Thus there’s high risks they’ll infect even more people. The insane amount of individualization of all health & income responsibility leads therefor to actions that will endanger the whole system. What kind of healthcare would help to protect us all in cases of a collective disease? A system which would make it as safe as possible to consult a doctor or stay at home for two weeks without going bankrupt. You need healthcare and a government that treats this as a collective threat and responsibility. Everything is interconnected, and interdependent. Already we hear if China can’t deliver medicines because of a quarantine, then the whole of the US will have medicine shortages in days. A healthy China can deliver, a sick China can’t. (Also a friendly China helps more than an enemy) Those who only think in power or profits for themselves are thus out of their wits when the sickness of another affects themselves. Everyone who can’t work, can’t show up for work, not only will suffer personal consequences, they’ll also damage the whole economy when there’s too many of them. With the same logic, perhaps now we can see, that all talents not reaching full potential are also a loss for a nation as a whole. Hence what goes for healthcare, goes for education, for the infrastructure, etc. And, as people in Sydney will confirm: clean air. A healthy environment. It should all be freely accessible. The ‘each for himself, everyone else is (potentially) competition’ concept damages as much as the ‘tragedy of the commons’. Too many people have learned: ‘don’t give a shit about others’. When action of everyone is needed, the contribution of the self serving types is often counterproductive. Like sports coaches know, the team must come before attempts to gain personal glory. The talking point that ‘only what is owned will get protection’, falters in the face of an immaterial collective interconnection. It doesn’t stop a virus. The Tragedy of the Commons is back, but now as the Tragedy of Having Been Fed a Flawed Solution* to the Tragedy for centuries.
Decades of demanding smaller taxes and smaller government has a price. The fear of misuse of power has led to failing power. Too few saw it’s not power, nor size that is the issue, but the intention of an organization. Because of this, a weakened government now falters in the face of a collective drama. And that is not even addressing the quality of staff that runs that government. Such a government can’t enact clear enough collective steps with the whole in mind. Hell, it can’t even see, let alone admit, that fundamental convictions are hindering good solutions.
*) Hence this whole ordeal is also a lesson for us all. What country, what system best saves the most people, and suffers the least economically?
How ownership limits scope of caring.
Historically we should propose, the Tragedy of the Commons was a solution, mixed with a kind of a coupe. That last bit isn’t shared enough. The privatization of common lands also started a rise in income inequality, because the powerful now obtained more land, and could set more rules. They invented Ownership Exclusivity. And as many poor didn’t have enough left to live from, they started to work for the rich. Many got paid a little bit to little so people had to sell their land. Labour contracts are nothing short of imposed servitude. This same privatization trick led to the disastrous US healthcare system. Ownership doesn’t mean improved care for what is owned. More realistically it means: ‘we only offer access to those with money.’ Here the British do better, by having a collective healthcare. People don’t fear going to the doctor in Britain over financial reasons.
From lack of care to full blown corruption
The Ownership Tragedy has created an ownership obsession that is as sickening as the Tragedy of the Commons. Many large corporations frantically focus on what they can possess of collective goods for self enrichment, like Nestlé with drinking water. And the next thing is: they don’t care about what is owned by others. Pollution, collapse of systems doesn’t stop at borders. The big corporations (ha, I first misspelled ‘conporations’, which makes sense too) collectively invest in not being responsible for what they don’t own. That goes from their own waste, toxic air, all the way to whatever happens to others. They’ll use their money and power to get enough laborers and infrastructure, but not to heal the collective. We’ve seen Coal mines bribe politicians, to give us ‘clean coal’. That is what happens to all of us, when we’re only in it for ourselves, only care about what we own, only focus on getting to own more, believe the lie, that what is owned, will be taken well taken care off, while way way too many lack a safety net, for when things go wrong. So, yes even these coal mine owners needed a safety net, to stop their polluting practices.
Native Americans have a better understanding of the interaction between individual growth and that of the community. The sickness of their collective poverty and genocide history leads to many depressed individuals.
We can only save us all, when we accept we’re all in the same boat.
The massive drop of the stock exchange is based on the fear of the economy grinding to a halt. The very rich will lose a few millions. But the weak in society will be hurt much more. The ‘Ownership Tragedy’ may lead to many fragile people losing their job or life. “Sorry, when clients stay at home, we don’t need you at work.” Many of the sick, or those send home to prevent getting sick, will get into debts because they can’t go to work. Many can’t afford any new doctors bills, or medicines. Many may be kicked onto the streets, because they can’t pay the bills, when not at work. And all those victims, will also cost the big companies, who so cling to the ownership exclusivity, enormous amounts of money. They’ll lose workers, consumers, clients. They’ll want money, like the banks in 2008 to stay upright. In fact, perhaps they should learn and see, that if society as a whole isn’t helped upright, they too will suffer anyway. But this idiotic, favor the powerful system, will once again, save the big companies, punish the poor and thus hollow out the shoulders these corporations all rest on: the middle class and low paid workers.
In ancient China, the most important task of the government was to maintain a grain storage, so that in times of shortages of food, everyone would have something to eat. If done privately, we get preppers willing to shoot trespassers, and many victims. The best defense against hunger, against viruses and against pollution and climate disasters is to have a collective safety net that includes everyone. The best society has people investing in the whole, surpassing the tragedy of the commons. The best society shares and it has enough people willing to help save it, in times of need. And when people don’t need to fear being bankrupted because of a disaster, they can also afford help everyone else at their own expense.
We are not leaders to be in power, but to be in service of the whole.
Idea for a different tax approach.
We must stop beating around the bush. The Ownership Tragedy is as destructive as the Tragedy of the Commons. But how to make companies care for people not in their direct sphere of influence? How to share without resorting to enforced communism? These questions are currently essential.
I wonder, might new tax systems help? For companies: the more healthy your society around all of your property is, the less taxes you pay (Yes, Apple that includes the factories in China). Poor people get more help in troubled or broken down communities (Flint?) when they show they act for the benefit of their community through action. Thus everyone has an incentive to invest in the neighborhood. The bigger your wallet, the bigger the circle this counts for and the cleaner and healthier we want it. The more your negative actions impact others, the bigger the fines you can get. Hence poor people in already dirty neighborhoods pay less anyway. They need the safety net and investments to get them back up on top. And the healthier, better educated, better infrastructure they create with a clean environment, the more money they’ll generate for the economy, the stronger the safety nets for everyone and the more taxes they’ll need to pay too. Because happy individuals can only be happy in a happy healthy body.
That was my solution. Many more might be possible and or needed. Let’s start with addressing the Ownership Tragedy, and see what solutions and approaches where best help solve the Corona virus crisis. And let’s learn from that, in how we solve the climate crisis and our collapsing eco-systems, which are most fundamental major victims of the Ownership Tragedy. | https://medium.com/the-gentle-revolution/the-ownership-tragedy-1c81267686d4 | ['Floris Koot'] | 2020-04-12 16:48:39.132000+00:00 | ['Social Justice', 'Tragedy Of The Commons', 'Corona', 'Virus', 'Politics For Tomorrow'] |
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DISCLAIMER: This article contains affiliate links. | https://medium.com/@streetgm/how-to-make-more-than-500-monthly-as-an-affiliate-marketer-f63a516313fd | ['Street Gm'] | 2020-12-26 04:08:41.688000+00:00 | ['Affiliate Marketing', 'Affiliate Marketing Tips', 'Affiliate Programs', 'Affiliate', 'Affiliate Network'] |
Feeling Satisfaction from Modest Growth | Low quantity and high quality in my early days on Medium
Photo by Bogomil Mihaylov on Unsplash
I’m still pretty new here on Medium, and so far I’m enjoying my time. I do not have unlimited free time to spend on the platform, but writing, reading, and interacting with the community has been rewarding.
In terms of readership, my growth here has been modest — no crazy stories of gaining ten thousand followers and 2 million reads in the first month on Medium. I won’t throw around numbers, because it’s really silly, and I don’t actually want to quantify things.
I mean, let’s be serious: I write mostly about France, and I’m not an uplifting, feel good writer. I can’t expect big numbers!
But I’m finding a few people who are interested in my ideas, and are willing to hear me out and exchange. Even in small quantities, that is precious, meaning it is high quality.
So while I won’t be earning loads of money on this platform, I’m doing work that is meaningful to me, and the biggest growth I expect is in my own writing!
And maybe this is my take away: what a world we’d live in if modest growth was a reason for satisfaction and celebration! Someone let the investment bankers know that. In the meantime, I’m raising my cup to you — cheers! | https://medium.com/@frankiefaunet/feeling-satisfaction-from-modest-growth-dbd28189af28 | ['Frankie Faunet'] | 2020-12-26 15:02:54.283000+00:00 | ['France', 'Growth', 'Writing', 'Quality', 'Meaning'] |
Consejos que no has escuchado para diferenciarte de otros diseñadores con tu portafolio. | UX Case Studies - UX Collective
Cases studies from professionals and students who decide to share their process with the world. We believe designers… | https://medium.com/@breinermora/consejos-que-no-has-escuchado-para-diferenciarte-de-otros-dise%C3%B1adores-con-tu-portafolio-2aa03bb11ff7 | ['Breiner Mora'] | 2021-02-17 05:17:49.838000+00:00 | ['UX Design', 'Design', 'Portafolio', 'UX', 'Portfolio'] |
Distribute Candies to People — LeetCode | This problem is classified as a LeetCode easy:
LeetCode #1103
“Pretty” solution thanks to https://carbon.now.sh
The solution above is pretty simple. All you have to do is keep a counter (candy_counter)and increment it each time you distribute a candy. I created a list and set all of the values to 0. Each index represents a person. As we iterate through the list, we add candy_counter + 1, and then after that, we increment candy_counter.
Here’s the submission report for the above code:
Faster than 75%
The source code is located here and my socials are located here.
Don’t hesitate to reach out! | https://medium.com/@roodsoren/distribute-candies-to-people-leetcode-c0e0c48838fa | ['Soren Rood'] | 2020-12-21 23:45:52.253000+00:00 | ['Computer Science', 'Computer Science Student', 'Leetcode', 'Data Structures', 'Algorithms'] |
Smartphone Device Uses CRISPR to Check for COVID | Quick, portable, and ultrasensitive-a new smartphone test for COVID-19 checks all the boxes needed to get a handle on pandemic control efforts. This is a departure from the lab-based RT-PCR assays that detect viral genomic material in nose or throat swabs that currently represent the gold standard.
The study, published in Science Advances, details how scientists leveraged CRISPR technology to develop the new point-of-care diagnostic device. “This test addresses the critical needs for a rapid, ultrasensitive COVID-19 diagnosis along with effective large-scale screening efforts,” said author Tony Hu, from Tulane University School of Medicine.
This innovation uses CRISPR/Cas12a to enhance the signal from viral RNA after stimulation by a laser diode that sits within a smartphone-based readout device. Results are produced in as little as 15 minutes. In the study, the device was found to be more sensitive than the RT-PCR reference assay. Unlike its lab-based counterpart, the device saved time by doing away with the RNA isolation step. It was also able to sensitively detect SARS-CoV-2 in saliva, which could mean an end to nasal swabs that can be uncomfortable for some patients.
The device joins an ever-growing list of CRISPR-based diagnostic technologies that have emerged in recent years. CRISPR’s remarkable ability to edit and cleave DNA makes it particularly well-suited for its application in diagnosing viral, bacterial, and even non-infectious diseases such as cancer. Several diagnostic tests that use the Cas12 and Cas13 CRISPR enzymes have already been put to the test as COVID-19 tests. Promisingly, these CRISPR diagnostic systems require readily-available reagents and can be used in paper-based lateral flow assays (similar to over-the-counter pregnancy tests), slashing both laboratory and patient costs significantly.
“Our development can quickly identify patients who have the virus, which is required to help address the ongoing threat to public health worldwide,” commented Hu.
Ultimately, the true value of the technology lies in how easy it is to use. “The sensitivity and simplicity of this test, its straightforward sample collection procedure, and the inexpensive nature of the readout device should permit the rapid translation of this approach to COVID-19 testing efforts once we obtain FDA approval,” Hu says.
Sources: Science Advances, Tulane University, | https://medium.com/the-reading-frame/smartphone-device-uses-crispr-to-check-for-covid-b069afd9eb88 | ['Tara Fernandez'] | 2020-12-23 20:33:43.375000+00:00 | ['Innovation', 'CRISPR', 'Covid 19', 'Technology', 'Smartphones'] |
Do you believe design should be a public good? | After having been at Code for America for two years, attended a dozen Brigade MeetUps, and led design research for the Talent Initiative, I increasingly receive inquiries about how to concretely make the leap into designing for social impact.
The idea of finding work that will have a positive impact in this world is something that many people are searching for — whether you have an established career or are simply trying to gain more experience. The path to getting there, however, might seem, at best, ambiguous and, to many, out of reach.
I’ve met a lot of people with really great jobs who still find themselves leaving the office searching for more meaning in their work. In those conversations, they tell me that they wish they could find opportunities that would allow them to tackle complex systemic issues such as homelessness, access to healthcare and improving systems to support foster children and social workers.
These jobs exist out there, but can feel unattainable without the right connections or the right words to enter into a Google search box.
I’ve spent some time tracking my advice for people looking to transition, since my job now involves helping talented people find amazing jobs in public interest technology — and more specifically in government!
I want to help you make the leap into public interest tech
All it takes is for you to meet one person who can widen your network and create ripple effects that open doors for countless opportunities. So how can you meet that one person?
I met my people by attending a lot of San Francisco Design Week events when I first moved here
Actually get a job in public interest technology
Networks and connections are important when looking for a new opportunity, but plenty of people still get jobs by just applying the traditional route. Daniella did! Here are a couple great job boards for you to find your next move:
Attend events
You might already attend plenty of events, but maybe not in the field you’re looking to work in. Since the range of fields is quite large, the best advice I can give is to follow your favourite organizations on Twitter and browse MeetUp.
To give you a sense of what you might find, here are some of my favourites:
Reach out
We’re a very friendly and welcoming bunch! We’re also all (for the most part) hiring, or know someone who is hiring. DM us on Twitter or LinkedIn to chat.
Don’t have Twitter? No worries, my colleagues and I are also piloting office hours, and we’re happy to speak to folks. Sign up here.
Be patient, this is an emerging field
There are plenty of opportunities out there! If you don’t spot the right one, keep checking back as a lot of interesting roles are being created. Some of these new opportunities are in the public sector as more and more cities are creating dedicated digital service teams, and some are newly emerging civic tech startups.
Pay it forward
There is no shortage of eager minds and problems for us to solve. Find ways to support others, and make space for those who might not traditionally have a seat at the table. | https://medium.com/code-for-america/do-you-believe-design-should-be-a-public-good-99709a67b415 | ['Monique Baena-Tan'] | 2017-07-31 17:36:29.178000+00:00 | ['Civictech', 'Government', 'UX Design', 'Tech Design', 'Hiring'] |
Umoja: Unity!. Habari Gani? Umoja! | “Taking the Torch”
Habari Gani?! Umoja!
“Taking the Torch” is a creative campaign lead by myself and my peers (mostly millennials) to take the torch and keep this intergenerational tradition’s fire burning (controlled). I believe in the purpose our elders crafted for Kwanzaa decades ago, but like everything, it needs some collective love and evolution. This weeklong expression from Culture Dream Lab is the beginning stages of something beautiful and Powerful! The goal is to further politicize Kwanzaa, bring new cultural expressions, and build a stronger narrative that Kwanzaa principles are practiced all year. I hope this will inspire a generation of leaders to take the torch deeper into the tunnel and emerge transformed.
What does Umoja/Unity mean to me? What doesnt resonate? Below are some reflections:
What it is:
My brother Malik A. Willoughby reminded me of who I am a few years ago through his Kemetic Yoga practice and African philosophy of “ubuntu”. “I am” only because “we are.” “I love you because I am you.” This isn't your so called “Hotep” knowledge which is grounded in violent patriarchy or disillusioned black history. This is a practice to connect with one another, to connect with our ancestors, and most importantly, to connect deeper with ourselves.
Unity is more like a fractal. It is villages (rural and concrete jungles) adjecent to each other. Unity is the flock sharing the responsibility of leadership.
It is geograpic location hence the breakdown of the word community. commune — unity.
Pan African dream of a united liberated continent of Africa.
It is being that 1 of 2 black folks in the room and instantly have telepathic conversations and care for each other.
Unity is the red black and green. It is the liberation flag. Our people may interpret it differently like all symbols, but to me, this flag represents safety for our bodies. In a sea of Biden and Trump signs, confederate and union flags, the red/black/green liberation flag Is the green book. It is a home that I would feel like the underground railroad.
Organizations and movements like Black Lives Matter, Movement for Black Lives, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Cooperation Jackson, Southerners On New Ground, The Maroon Arts Group, bail funds across the country and the many other local and national organizations around world.
2. What it is not:
I struggled with this idea of racial unity because we are not a monolith or a hegemonic blackness where we share one identity. Our unity requires more imagination. It requires more connection that isn't just our common denominator of melanin, but a shared loved for all our people (not including those who consciously side with the ruling class oppressors).
Isolated movement moments and connecting around dead, black bodies. Yes, we unite to fight against US and world colonialism and imperialism, but our broken black bodies are not the unifier. It is our collective grief and struggle for a new world.
Unity has been used as a form of control in black communities, especially against women, poor/working class people, non binary and queer folks, the voices of children, and men who are committed to liberation for all peoples, not just for a few black men. This is not Umoja!
Unity is not infinite.
Bless,
Ekundayo Igeleke
#kwanzaa #kwanzaa2020 #Umoja #TakingTheTorch #CultureDreamLab | https://medium.com/@culturedreamlab/umoja-passing-the-torch-4535b58d4d83 | ['Culture Dream Lab'] | 2020-12-27 20:18:41.371000+00:00 | ['Creative', 'Umoja', 'Culture', 'Black', 'Kwanzaa'] |
If You’re Not Doing These 5 Things Every Single Day You’re Living Your Entire Life Wrong | If You’re Not Doing These 5 Things Every Single Day You’re Living Your Entire Life Wrong
Look, I’ve been there
But now I’m here.
But where is “here" exactly?
I’ll tell you.
But first, some back story.
I used to suck. Then I read some books and watched some TED talks and ran a marathon.
Now I’m fucking awesome and I tell people how to live their lives.
I’m probably better than you.
Unless you’re Elon Musk. In which case we’re equals (Hey, Elon! Let’s hang out and get some pho).
Everything I do, say, eat, think, breathe is carefully calibrated for maximal optimization and optimal maximization. If you want to increase your productivity, creativity, and optimaximizationality, you need to be doing these 5 things.
1. Read This Article
Give it a lot of claps and comments. Share it on you social media.
2. Write 100 Medium Articles a day
That’s right. A day.
When you wake up. On the toilet. In the shower. In the car. At work. At lunch. On a date
3. Wake Up At 4am
So you can get an early start on the 100 articles
4. Run a Marathon
And then write a Medium article about it
5. Call Your Mother
While running the marathon.
She just wants to hear your voice. | https://medium.com/@m-julian22/if-youre-not-doing-these-5-things-every-single-day-you-re-living-your-entire-life-wrong-20ced871f3b2 | ['M Julian'] | 2020-12-24 06:40:54.324000+00:00 | ['Satire', 'Self Improvement', 'Optimization', 'Elon Musk', 'Productivity'] |
A Simple Guide to Handle Imbalanced Classification: A step-by-step approach | Imbalanced class classification is basically when there is unequal distribution in the target classes. In this article, I am outlining a high-level approach to tackle these imbalance problem when we want to identify the minority class.
Select an evaluation metric to best represent the desired solution Choose suitable algorithms to work on imbalance data Tune hyperparameters to improve performance
If you are not interested in reading this whole article, you can simply refer my notebook containing most of these methods!!
Okay, Let’s get into details:
SELECT AN EVALUATION METRIC: This is the most important step in solving a problem, especially in imbalanced classification, before even thinking or trying any algorithm. The metric is the measuring stick by which all models are evaluated and compared. The choice of the wrong metric can mean choosing the wrong algorithm. Remember, in a real world imbalanced classification problems, classification accuracy is not the right metric in most of the cases.
Problems where we want to predict Class Probabilities :
In case probabilities are to be used directly, a good metric might be the Brier Score and the Brier Skill score. Alternatively, we may want to map the prediction probabilities to crisp class labels via a user-selected threshold. For this, we can choose a measure to summarise the model performance across all the possible thresholds.
Recall that for binary imbalanced classification tasks, the majority class is normal, called the “negative class“, and the minority class is the exception, called the “positive class“.
If positive class is most important (for example HIV identification), then the precision-recall curve and area under curve (PRC, AUC) can be used. This will optimize both precision and recall across all thresholds.
Alternately, if both classes are equally important(Fraud detection), the ROC Curve and area under curve (ROC, AUC) can be used. This will maximize the true positive rate and minimize the false positive rate .
: In case probabilities are to be used directly, a good metric might be the Brier Score and the Brier Skill score. Alternatively, we may want to map the prediction probabilities to crisp class labels via a user-selected threshold. For this, we can choose a measure to summarise the model performance across all the possible thresholds. Recall that for binary imbalanced classification tasks, the majority class is normal, called the “negative class“, and the minority class is the exception, called the “positive class“. If positive class is most important (for example HIV identification), then the precision-recall curve and area under curve (PRC, AUC) can be used. Alternately, if both classes are equally important(Fraud detection), the ROC Curve and area under curve (ROC, AUC) can be used. This will . Problems where we want to predict Class Labels:
a. Classification accuracy : only when majority class is less than 80%
b. G-Mean metric: in severely skewed data
c. F1, F2, F0.5 measures: depending on which class is more costly(important) : F1: if both are equally important, F2: if false negatives are more costly; F0.5: if false positives are more costly.
Here is the summary of how you can choose a right eval metric for your problem.
Summary of selecting a metric for Imbalanced classification. Image Source: MachineLearningMastery
For scoring parameters details, read: scikit-learn scoring parameters
2. SELECT A SUITABLE ALGORITHM:
Comparison of different Classifier algorithms on Imbalanced data(data source: DataMasked); y_axis: ROC_AUC_score
Remember, the basic idea is same here. We use cross-validation scores (using the chosen evaluation metric) to select from our candidate standard ML algorithms. However, in imbalanced classification, we need to do a little bit more work on these standard ML algorithms and/or appropriate sampling since we may not get the desired goal(good recall etc.) due to the skewed data. I am outlining the most often used techniques for creating imbalanced candidate algorithms:
(Algorithm centric) Cost-sensitive algorithms: Most often, this approach alone gives the desired results through focusing on minimising the misclassification cost. The main idea behind this approach is: since, the default classifier algorithm gives equal weight to the cost of correct and incorrect classification; so, custom specifying the costs for minority and majority class should tackle the predictions.
These include: changing prediction probabilities threshold (tackles the class costs after the training) and class reweighing (tackles the class costs during the training itself).
For example: In a fraud detection problem(0.7% minority class ratio), reducing the prediction probabilities from a default 0.5 to 0.2(that means, if prediction prob < 0.2, clf will assign it as the minority class) would give better results.
Note, for finding he optimum thresholds, we can choose a no of methods, a few of them are max(Gmeans), max(fpr*(1-tpr)) etc. for class weights, we can choose cross validation methods to choose optimum. different algorithms such as LR, GBM, XGBoost have different methods of setting the class weights. You should read first about the setting these weight parameters before assigning any random values as it can slow down the training/CV process.
Most often, this approach alone gives the desired results through focusing on minimising the misclassification cost. The main idea behind this approach is: since, the default classifier algorithm gives equal weight to the cost of correct and incorrect classification; so, custom specifying the costs for minority and majority class should tackle the predictions. These include: (tackles the class costs after the training) and (tackles the class costs during the training itself). For example: In a fraud detection problem(0.7% minority class ratio), reducing the prediction probabilities from a default 0.5 to 0.2(that means, if prediction prob < 0.2, clf will assign it as the minority class) would give better results. Note, for finding he optimum thresholds, we can choose a no of methods, a few of them are max(Gmeans), max(fpr*(1-tpr)) etc. for class weights, we can choose cross validation methods to choose optimum. different algorithms such as LR, GBM, XGBoost have different methods of setting the class weights. You should read first about the setting these weight parameters before assigning any random values as it can slow down the training/CV process. (Data centric) Resampling methods: Sometimes reworking the algorithms as cost-sensitive alone does not provide with the desired results. Also, in order to do sampling for training, we sometimes need these resampling methods to make the data more balanced for the minority class. There are a bunch of techniques used for this:
— Data Oversampling : Data oversampling involves duplicating examples of the minority class or synthesising new examples from the minority class from existing examples. These include: Random Oversampling, SMOTE (with different variations such as borderline SMOTE, KNN SMOTE, SVM SMOTE etc.) , ADASYN etc.
— Data Undersampling : Undersampling involves deleting examples from the majority class, such as randomly or using an algorithm to carefully choose which examples to delete. These include: Near Miss, Tomek links, Edited Nearest Neighbors, Random Undersampling etc
— Combination: popular examples: SMOTE and Tomek Links, SMOTE and Random Undersampling
Caution : Oversampling the minority can lead to model overfitting, since it will introduce duplicate instances, drawing from a pool of instances that is already small. Similarly, undersampling the majority can end up leaving out important instances that provide important differences between the two classes. Also, resampling methods use the nearest neighbor algorithm internally, so it is best to normalise and scale the data before applying these methods. Also, these methods do not work best with ensemble of trees so, avoid using them with these models.
Sometimes reworking the algorithms as cost-sensitive alone does not provide with the desired results. Also, in order to do sampling for training, we sometimes need these resampling methods to make the data more balanced for the minority class. There are a bunch of techniques used for this: — : Data oversampling involves duplicating examples of the minority class or synthesising new examples from the minority class from existing examples. These include: Random Oversampling, SMOTE (with different variations such as borderline SMOTE, KNN SMOTE, SVM SMOTE etc.) , ADASYN etc. — : Undersampling involves deleting examples from the majority class, such as randomly or using an algorithm to carefully choose which examples to delete. These include: Near Miss, Tomek links, Edited Nearest Neighbors, Random Undersampling etc — popular examples: SMOTE and Tomek Links, SMOTE and Random Undersampling : Oversampling the minority can lead to model overfitting, since it will introduce duplicate instances, drawing from a pool of instances that is already small. Similarly, undersampling the majority can end up leaving out important instances that provide important differences between the two classes. Also, There are a bunch of other approaches such as: outlier/anomaly detection(one-class classification) for dataset where there is a severe skewness; and probability tuning algorithms(where prediction probabilities can be calibrated/tuned to evaluate the model)
A summary of selecting a suitable algorithm. Note that the order can be flexible as opposed to shown by sequential downward arrows in different algorithms. Image Source: MachineLearningMastery
Note: While these approaches outline the methods to work the models towards the desired goal, one should always apply these methods to a number of candidate algorithms (for example: LR, BoostedTress, SVM etc.) and select the best performing algorithm by using the cross-validation methods(for example: RepeatedStratifiedKFold usually works best with the imbalanced data)with the score parameter set as the evaluation metric. Of course, for comparison you must have a baseline model (which can be achieved by a simple dummy classifier
3. Hyperparameter Tuning: Most common techniques to tune the model hyperparameters are:
Grid Search
Random Search
Once, we have some idea of what algorithms may work best on our dataset, we can choose the top 5–10 algorithms and use the above techniques to tune their respective hyperparameters.
There may be some standard machine learning algorithms that perform well, but do not perform as well when used with data sampling or probability calibration. These algorithms could be tuned in concert with their imbalanced-classification augmentations to see if better performance can be achieved.
Additionally, there may be imbalanced-classification algorithms, such as a data sampling method that results in a dramatic lift in performance for one or more algorithms. These algorithms themselves may provide an interesting basis for further tuning to see if additional lifts in performance can be achieved.
Conclusion/Rule of Thumb
whenever using a machine learning algorithm, evaluation metrics for the model have to be chosen cautiously: we must use the metrics that gives us the best overview of how well our model is doing with regards to our goals.
resampling methods can be used but have to be thought carefully: they should not be used as stand alone solutions but have to be coupled with a rework of the problem to serve a specific goal
methods can be used but have to be thought carefully: reworking the problem itself is often the best way to tackle an imbalanced classes problem: the classifier and the decision rule have to be set with respect to a well chosen goal that can be, for example, optimizing the cost
I hope, this article helps in defining a high level structure to tackle an imbalanced classification problems. If you have suggestions/doubts, let me know in the comments!! | https://medium.com/the-innovation/a-simple-guide-to-handle-imbalanced-classification-a-step-by-step-approach-a808160e707b | ['Neha Mangal'] | 2020-09-13 17:55:27.123000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Imbalanced Class', 'Classification'] |
New features of macOS Big Sur | macOS Big Sur brings a refined new design, powerful controls, and intuitive customization options to the most advanced desktop operating system in the world.
macOS Big Sur — Apple next-generation Macintosh operating system
At #WWDC2020 on June 22, Apple previewed next-generation macOS Big Sur (Veriosn 11.0) the successor to macOS 10.15 Catalina.
Big Sur comes with the brand new design which also includes the biggest Safari update ever and powerful enhancements to Messages, Maps, and privacy.
It is named after the coastal region of Big Sur in the Central Coast of California.
System Requirements
Before jumping into the features of Big Sur, here is the list of a supported system that can be upgraded to macOS Big Sur.
MacBook (2015 or newer)
MacBook Air (2013 or newer)
MacBook Pro (Late 2013 or newer)
Mac mini (2014 or newer)
iMac (2014 or newer)
iMac Pro (2017)
Mac Pro (2013 or newer)
Big Sur is a major upgrade with several features and enhancements that users can take advantage of.
The following are the list of features and enhancements that Apple highlighted during #WWDC20 keynote.
Key Features and Enhancements
Refined User Interface
Until macOS Catalina, Apple has inconsistency between its Mobile OS and Desktop OS. With the help of macOS Big Sur, Apply has finally addressed that issue and fill that gap by implementing major UI changes. | https://medium.com/flawless-app-stories/new-features-of-macos-big-sur-5e3fd848ac6f | ['Milan Panchal'] | 2020-06-25 02:01:01.538000+00:00 | ['Macos', 'Apple', 'WWDC', 'iOS', 'Big Sur'] |
The Temperature on Mars | The Temperature on Mars
A Poem
Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash
I have a case of sky fever
I want my head up in the stars
I want the winds to take my worries
and freeze them out on Mars
© Samantha Lazar 2019 | https://medium.com/sky-collection/the-temperature-on-mars-3ad3b00b1c8f | ['Samantha Lazar'] | 2019-12-19 04:53:21.787000+00:00 | ['Poetry'] |
What are the tips to be successful on IQ Option and earn a huge amount of money? | What are the tips to be successful on IQ Option and earn a huge amount of money? Pari khunt Apr 4, 2020·1 min read
Here are some Useful Tips to Stop losing in any binary options trading.
Don’t Get Emotional- it’s hard to control your emotions when money is concerned. emotions lead to rash decisions, which in turn leads to more losses.
2. Take Some Break-
Take a break, be it for a few hours or for a day. Take as much time as you need to clear your head and to properly evaluate the next time you plan to enter the market.
3. Accept Inevitable losses- Even highly successful traders who have an 80% win-rate lose that 20 % of deals.
4. Stay updated- Educate yourself- Turn your unprofitable trades into a valuable experience. Better yet — spend time practicing risk-free with your Practice Account.
Following Binary option Trading platforms Provide Free Demo Accounts.
5.Set Daily trading Limit -You may want to set a limit on your daily trading volume or to reinvest only a small percentage of your profit. | https://medium.com/@parikhunt1996/what-are-the-tips-to-be-successful-on-iq-option-and-earn-a-huge-amount-of-money-2b8425cafb9b | ['Pari Khunt'] | 2020-04-04 11:39:58.282000+00:00 | ['Earn Money Online', 'Binary Options', 'Iq Option', 'Binary Trading Software', 'Earn Money From Home'] |
Tutorial: ASP.NET Core First Console Application | Steps 1 ASP.NET Core — Environment Setup
To use ASP.NET Core in your application, the following must be installed in your system:
Microsoft Visual Studio 2019 Community (Download VS2019)
Step 2 New Project
Once you have installed the Visual Studio 2019, you can start building a new ASP.NET Core Console Application.
Open VS2019
On the start page, choose Create a new project.
On the Create a New Project dialog box, you will see the following different templates for Web projects. Now select the Console App (.NET Core) template with C#:
In the Configure your new project dialog, enter HelloWorldConsoleApp in the Project name box and select you location where it will save. Then choose Create.
Now, you can see your new project is created and opened.
Step 3 Run Project
Let us run this application, you can do that by pressing Ctrl+F5 or Click on Play button on top.
Reference Code: static void Main(string[] args) { Console.WriteLine(“Hello World!”); }
A console window opens with the text “Hello World!” printed on the screen and some Visual Studio debug information.
Press any key to close the console window.
Step 4 Enhance the application
Enhance the application to prompt the name which you entered and display it along with the date and time.
Console.WriteLine is use for output and Console.ReadLine is use for input. So let’s use both combination and Enhance our app.
In Program.cs replace the contents of the Main method, which is the line that calls Console.WriteLine, with the following code:
Reference Code: static void Main(string[] args) { Console.WriteLine(“Hello!”); Console.WriteLine(“
Who are you there?”); Console.WriteLine(“
waiting…for your good name.”); var name = Console.ReadLine(); var date = DateTime.Now; Console.WriteLine($”
Hello, {name}, on {date:d} at {date:t}!”); Console.Write(“
Press any key to exit…”); Console.ReadKey(true); }
Now, Again Run Application by pressing Ctrl+F5 or Click on Play button on top.
Respond to the prompt by entering a name and pressing the Enter key.
key. Press any key to close the console window. | https://medium.com/@patelalpeshn/tutorial-asp-net-core-first-console-application-138e9782e923 | ['Alpesh Patel'] | 2021-04-01 12:16:08.622000+00:00 | ['Dotnet Core', 'Dotnet', 'Aspnetcore'] |
So You Want to Know Why They Ghosted You | So You Want to Know Why They Ghosted You
Photo by Tandem X Visuals on Unsplash
I have a bit of a confession to make. I’m a chronic ghoster, and I’ve been this way my entire life. In fact, I’ve been ghosting people for so long, I was genuinely taken aback the first time I heard someone talk about it out loud using actual words.
My first reaction was to be surprised that enough other people did this for there to be a known term for it. My second was to feel like a horrible person because, while I now make an honest effort not to ghost unless it’s truly warranted, it’s unlikely I’ll ever stop doing it altogether. It’s too damned effective at putting a stop to connections you genuinely don’t want in your life anymore, and that — unfortunately — makes it addictive.
The bad news is I know I’m far from alone on that front, so if you’re one of the many people who really hate ghosting, your troubles aren’t going to be over anytime soon. The good news is ghosting often has a lot more to do with the ghost than it does the ghosted. Most of us ghosts are weird, damaged individuals with social graces that are stunted at best, so it probably wasn’t about you.
However, I do understand the burning desire to know why on earth anyone would purposefully ghost another person in the first place. I can’t speak for every ghoster out there, but I can tell you some of the reasons I’ve done it to someone in the past myself. The following are among the examples that come immediately to mind.
They have garbage communication skills and genuinely didn’t want to hurt your feelings.
I get how dumb that sounds, considering how hurtful ghosting is deemed to be, but this is a genuine reason I’ve ghosted people in the past. It was probably the most common reason I did it when I was really young and hadn’t yet overcome my crippling childhood shyness.
I’m the kind of person who really hates lying, so I was never good at pretending I didn’t want to know someone anymore because of some imagined shortcoming of my own. (“It’s not you, it’s me.”) But I was also pretty sure there wasn’t a non-hurtful way to tell someone I’m not attracted to them, they’re too clingy, I don’t feel a connection, or anything else along those lines.
My solution was usually to do nothing, stop engaging with the person — sometimes a little at a time and sometimes all at once — and assume they’d move on without a second thought. It felt kinder than telling them outright I didn’t really like them, somehow. But it also never occurred to me that the other person might genuinely like me and care (or notice) that I wasn’t part of their life anymore. My bad.
Photo by Matt Mariannelli on Unsplash
They legitimately forgot they had something going on with you.
Sometimes people genuinely bite off more than they can chew socially. Lord knows I certainly used to back before I was a boring, old married lady. I also used to be the type of person who had trouble saying “no” often enough so I’d have more time and energy to give to people I genuinely liked.
I’m not proud of it, but I’ve definitely had my moments where I couldn’t remember who the hell someone was or how they wound up with my number. Other times, I’d maybe miss a message somewhere or forget to get back to someone in a timely enough manner. Sometimes so much time went by that I was genuinely embarrassed by my own lack of follow-through, assumed it was way too late to respond, and I just decided not to.
I haven’t been single in a long time at this point, but I can’t imagine keeping up has gotten any easier with all these apps and platforms people use to meet people these days. I picture a lot of ghosting going on for many different reasons, including actual forgetfulness. I can’t imagine thinking it’s worth having a long, unnecessary closure convo when I’d maybe only gone out with someone once, or perhaps never even made it that far.
They’re afraid you won’t walk away quietly.
I was never huge on ghosting people I was dating unless we’d barely spent any time together. Historically speaking, I’ve been very likely to do it as a quick and dirty way to end a friendship, especially if it’s someone I’m not going to run into offline in my everyday life.
Sometimes things reach a point where I want to cut ties with someone for my own reasons, but they’re clingy enough that I’m sure they’ll be dramatic about it. I’ve had it happen before, and it wasn’t pretty. Usually, just the thought of an actual discussion, under those circumstances, makes me want to crawl into a hole and sleep for a month, so I give in to the temptation to take the easy way out instead. I hit a few buttons, and that’s all it takes to effectively erase that connection. Out of sight, out of mind.
I used to be a lot more casual about doing this because I couldn’t honestly picture the other person caring all that much, especially if they didn’t know me outside of the internet. After all, I’ve been unceremoniously unfriended or ghosted online myself plenty of times, and it didn’t bother me that much. Some of the people I’ve ghosted were apparently very hurt and took it incredibly personally, though, so it’s now a pretty rare occurrence.
You’ve already refused to take “no” for an answer.
A few years ago, I had a Facebook acquaintance I knew through my husband. The guy was an aspiring author, so when he self-published his first novel and asked if my husband and I would help promote it, I offered to read it and publish some professional-level reviews in a few places. Naturally, he was thrilled and very grateful. He also turned out to be one of those people that eventually makes you sorry for showing the least little bit of generosity.
When he published other novels in the future, he expected me to read and promote the books for free just like before, and he got pretty snippy with me when I told him, sorry, but I wouldn’t be able to because of time constraints. Now, when I tell someone “no, sorry” I expect them to tell me “OK, thanks anyway” and move along, not argue back and forth with me as to why they think they’re entitled to my assistance anyway.
If someone tells you in no uncertain terms that you’re out of line and you keep at it anyway, don’t be surprised when they ghost you.
So, I told the guy my “no” was final and ghosted further attempts to get in touch after that. He tried again enough additional times for me to be embarrassed for him. Then, finally, he got the message and went his own way. The lesson here is there’s a big difference between being persistent and being a pest. If someone tells you in no uncertain terms that you’re out of line and you keep at it anyway, don’t be surprised when they ghost you.
Photo by Dmitry Schemelev on Unsplash
They’re depressed or otherwise struggling mentally.
I’ve struggled with clinical depression ever since I was a child. It’s pretty well under control these days, but that wasn’t always the case. I’ve had long periods in my life that found me really struggling. If you have, as well, then you don’t need to be told that people often withdraw completely from most (or all) of the people in their lives when their mental health hits the skids.
I’ve ghosted a lot of people over the years because I was too depressed to function, especially socially. Some of them have been friends, while others were romantic interests. In some cases, I was vaguely aware that I was hurting the other person, but severe depression doesn’t leave much room to care about that sort of thing.
By the time I crawled out the other side and could see the light of day again, I was just so embarrassed by the way I’d just shrugged people off. I didn’t know what to say to them, especially since I was sure they thought I was a horrible person and wouldn’t understand what I’d been going through. So, again, I elected to say nothing.
They’re jerks who couldn’t care less.
This one doesn’t apply to me, but suffice it to say I’ve seen this in action enough times to know. Some people who ghost other people don’t have a good excuse. They know precisely what they’re doing when they end a relationship with someone by ceasing all communication and dropping off the face of the planet, and they don’t care. Some are even jerky enough to want to keep tabs on you after the ghosting so they can enjoy watching you cry over them.
A failure to respond is a response in its own way.
If you’re dealing with someone like this, don’t give them another thought. You’re never going to figure out why they did what they did because the chances are pretty good they don’t even know themselves. Forget about the good times you think you had. The real them is the version you see right now — the version who doesn’t care enough to respond to your texts or consider your feelings. I know it hurts, but try to take comfort in the fact that you dodged a bullet.
Being ghosted is never easy, even when you do understand the reasons behind it. It can make you feel discarded and unimportant, especially if you thought you’d made a meaningful connection with the ghost in your life, but that’s life. Not every relationship is going to end with the closure you’re looking for. In those cases, it’s better to accept that a failure to respond is a response in its own way and focus your attention on people who can return your interest. You’ll eventually be glad you did. | https://medium.com/illumination-curated/so-you-want-to-know-why-they-ghosted-you-624ad6b68dba | ['Shannon Hilson'] | 2020-12-20 18:51:10.999000+00:00 | ['Dating', 'Life Lessons', 'People', 'Relationships', 'Love'] |
Want to be a 360 video storyteller? Start here | Want to be a 360 video storyteller? Start here
From tutorials to lessons learned, we’ll get you headed in the right direction
The art of 360 video storytelling is evolving, captivating and still pretty hard to do well. But if you’re starting from scratch our award-winning 360 team has some ideas of where to look.
Happy shooting, and let us know what you learn in the comments or on Twitter. | https://medium.com/creative-lab/want-to-be-a-360-video-storyteller-start-here-c80ce17d85b | ['Creative Lab'] | 2018-01-05 05:30:35.699000+00:00 | ['Virtual Reality', 'VR', 'Augmented Reality', '360 Video', 'Journalism'] |
CyberPeace Institute Calls for Accountability of Intrusion as a Service Sector | Marietje Schaake, President of the CyberPeace Institute argues that commercially available hacking, intrusion and exfiltration systems are making cyberspace unstable and unsafe for the people connected to it.
The CyberPeace Institute joins leading civil society organizations and UN Special Rapporteur David Kaye in opposing intrusion as a service (IaaS), given its deeply harmful impact on achieving peace in cyberspace. The updated EU laws are a step in the right direction but fall short of addressing the systematic problems we identify.
We express grave concern with the impact on vulnerable populations and individuals that are often the prime targets of systems designed, marketed and sold to cause harm.
Without stronger prevention and accountability, this sector will grow further out of control. A moratorium can bridge the time between now and the moment rules are adopted to protect people from the escalation and proliferation of IaaS technologies.
Short of laws and international agreements limiting the development and trade in hacking and surveillance systems, corporates are now battling it out in court. When it comes to where company liability should lie for companies that sell intrusion as a service, WhatsApp was recently joined by Google, Microsoft and others in ensuring NSO Group and other companies do not operate with immunity and thus impunity.
The harms of intrusion as a service have global, public interest reverberations. Particularly vulnerable populations including human rights defenders, journalists and dissidents are targeted.
There are both human rights and security concerns to be addressed, including the proliferation which is widespread and leads to a lack of control and oversight of the most aggressive technological systems.
Commercially available hacking, intrusion and exfiltration systems are making cyberspace less stable and the people connected to it unsafe. Prevention of harms and accountability of those responsible for facilitating human rights abuses are long overdue.
***
The CyberPeace Institute is an independent, non-profit organization with the mission to enhance the stability of cyberspace. It does so by supporting vulnerable communities, analysing attacks collaboratively, and advancing responsible behaviour in cyberspace.
Web|Twitter|Facebook|LinkedIn | https://medium.com/the-cyber-peace-institute/cyberpeace-institute-calls-for-accountability-of-intrusion-as-a-service-sector-c1c5597864c3 | ['The Cyberpeace Institute'] | 2021-01-22 16:26:06.060000+00:00 | ['Cyberspace', 'Iaas', 'Cybersecurity', 'Cyber Peace', 'Hacking'] |
Dominate Your Niche, Podcast Episode with @iamDrWill | I had another chance to be on the Dr. Will Show Podcast! Will Deyamport, III, Ed.D & I dig into my journey to becoming a teacher → edtech integrationist, coach, speaker, author… the power of developing relationships & modeling… helping teachers in the current climate… & more!
Here are some timestamps to highlights from the episode: | https://medium.com/@staceyroshan/dominate-your-niche-podcast-episode-with-iamdrwill-567b1e2e98ba | ['Stacey Roshan'] | 2020-12-22 22:31:58.669000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Edtech', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Education'] |
The Bizarre Tale of Two Anagrams | On 25th July 1610, Galileo discovered that ‘Saturn has two moons’ and that they moved in unison with it. Still and sure of his unsubstantiated theory, Galileo wanted to reach out to Kepler for his opinion while still being secretive from the Church. Therefore, he sent Kepler a letter in a coded description of his latest discovery.
smaismrmilmepoetaleumibunenugttauiras
Which when rearranged forms: ltissimum planetam tergeminum observavi
English translation: I have observed the most distant planet (Saturn) to have a triple form.
Now, it was Kepler’s onus to decrypt. Kepler was a born riddle solver and after much hard work deciphered Galileo’s string of characters as:
Salve umbistineum geminatum Martia proles
Be greeted, double knob, children of Mars
In other words, Kepler deduced from the latter that, ‘Mars has two moons’.
Of course, Galileo’s message had nothing to do with Mars, but this bizarre coincidence resulted in Kepler deducing that Mars has two moons, which in fact is true! | https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/the-bizarre-tale-of-two-anagrams-f68a8ee7930a | ['Kamna Kabir'] | 2020-08-04 15:43:15.543000+00:00 | ['Trivia', 'Science', 'Coincidence', 'History', 'Astronomy'] |
Day 21–25: Q1 Project Week | I looked nothing like this at any time during Q1 project
The first quarter project week was honestly a blast. Lots of long days and evenings, tons of research and reading, sprinkled in with some coding. Overall it was a really cool experience and I’m grateful to have gone through it.
Although I know it’s nowhere near perfect, I’m pretty excited about the “final” version of my game as well. It was really excited to build something I am proud of, even with my limited and fledgling skills, and then actually be able to host it online so others can play it. It’s hosted here on Github Pages, which I’ve never used before but seems to be working out really well so far.
Here’s the start screen! | https://medium.com/the-road-to-code/day-21-25-q1-project-week-5605b3ec744b | ['Dylan Thorwaldson'] | 2017-11-16 22:11:29.460000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Software Development', 'Github', 'Coding', 'Learning To Code'] |
Does Susan Collins have the courage to caucus with Democrats? | “Mitch McConnell has been my friend and colleague for decades. I am proud of the work that I have done with him and the Republican Party. But the people of Maine continue to elect me as a moderate. And the best way to act as a moderate, and in my constituents’ best interests is to join my colleague, Angus King, in switching my party affiliation to “Independent” and caucusing with Democrats.”
This is the sort of statement that Susan Collins should make if she wishes to multiply her power in the Senate and act with integrity by switching caucuses. There are staggeringly good reasons for Collins to do so.
Caucusing with Democrats would empower Collins to do the following:
1. Be the deciding vote on many bills and judicial and cabinet nominees, and thereby gain tremendous power in the Senate.
As a Republican, Collins has a certain amount of power to dissent against Mitch McConnell’s agenda. She has defied him with some laudable votes in the past. She saved Obamacare by voting against its the “skinny repeal.” She voted to end U.S. participation in the ongoing genocide in Yemen. And contrary to the GOP’s preposterous reputation of being committed to fair trade, Collins and Olympia Snowe were the only Republican Senators to defy McConnell (and president Obama) by voting against an unpopular trade agreement with Colombia. More recently, Collins was the only Republican who voted against appointing Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court in the 11th hour of an election year. The remainder of the caucus acted with breathtaking hypocrisy by appointing her.
But Collins’s contributions to decency as a Republican have largely been limited to such attempts at harm reduction. She has had limited ability to help Democrats pass legislation that she likes for one obvious reason: If McConnell does not like a bill, he simply does not bring it to the floor. And if a good bill never reaches the Senate floor, Collins cannot vote on it and help pass it.
This has made it very difficult for a minority-Democratic Senate to help fight climate change, protect women’s reproductive rights, or save public sector workers’ from ruin amidst our ongoing Covid recession. These are all issues that Collins cares, at least somewhat, about. As the 50th or 51st Democratic vote — should Democrats win at least one runoff election in Georgia this January — Collins could help pass any Democrat-sponsored bill that she favors. With McConnell in charge, she generally cannot do so — because such bills will never see the Senate floor.
As the 50th Democratic caucus member, moreover, Collins could, effectively, exercise veto power against any straight party-line bill. As the 51st vote, she could act in tandem with conservative Senator Democrat Joe Manchin (of West Virginia) to do so.
Collins could hence help pass any bill, or approve any judicial or cabinet nominee that she likes — while having incredible power to veto those which she dislikes.
For this reason alone, Collins would see an incredible advantage — and little disadvantage — in caucusing with Democrats.
2. Benefit from a great deal.
Collins surely understands Senator Charles Schumer’s desire for her to caucus with Democrats. She could easily parlay this desire into a great deal for herself. Collins would gain party leadership positions and benefit from Democratic sponsorship of generous projects for Maine’s economy if she switches caucuses. Whatever the wonky details, switching parties would obviously redound to Collins’ and Mainers’ benefit.
3. Save her legacy from the taint of McConnell’s leadership.
It is demonstrable by now that McConnell will leave an ignominious legacy. He has effectively stolen a Supreme Court seat, along with many seats on the federal judiciary. He has led the U.S.’s radical and unique opposition to protecting the planet, by opposing the Paris Climate Agreement. He has helped to ensure that the U.S.’s health care system will remain dysfunctional, cruel, and unfair for years. McConnell, in short, may be a brilliant wielder of power; but if history is ever recorded truthfully, his other legacy will be as one of the great villains of American, if not world, history — a wrecker of democracy and perhaps habitable life on earth. Collins should not want to be remembered as one of McConnell’s critical enablers.
4. Ensure her seat for a lifetime.
Democrats launched a vigorous, but ultimately failed effort to unseat Collins in 2020. Conservatives can spin this how they like. But the context that Collins was re-elected in suggest that Mainers re-elected her because they view her as a moderate.
Look at the rest of the country. There is not a single other deep blue state in which a Republican hold a Senate seat. Look at the rest of New England. Although each state in the region is deep blue, Republicans hold three governorships in it — in Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire — principally because New Englanders view these Republican governors as legitimate moderates.
New Englanders uniquely like and elect Republicans whom they view as moderates. That is why before she voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, Collins was perennially one of America’s most liked Senators. (This is in stark contrast to McConnell, who is usually America’s dead-last least popular senator.)
Indeed, largely because of her Kavanaugh vote, Collins temporarily became our least popular Senator, displacing McConnell. And it is possibly mostly due to Collins’s opposition to Coney Barrett’s appointment that Collins saved her career, and won re-election rather comfortably in a deep blue state.
Rightly or wrongly, Mainers view Collins as a true moderate, who will act independently of McConnell’s agenda. But she can only effectively do so in the Democratic caucus, free from the fetters of McConnell’s leadership. If she does, and flips the U.S. Senate blue, she will be deeply admired by Democrats and Independents in Maine, and probably ensure a lifetime’s worth of reelections there.
5. Allow the next elected president to select future Supreme Court justices.
Collins was clear. She wanted the winner of the 2020 presidential election to select Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s successor on the U.S. Supreme Court (although if we are honest, her rhetoric went further than her actions).
The seat, nevertheless, has been stolen and the damage has already been done. And we should only expect a new McConnell-led Republican majority to do further harm by blocking all of Biden’s future nominees to the Court — even if Biden nominates moderates like Merrick Garland, as Obama did.
Collins may want Biden to do his Constitutional duty and nominate justices to fill the courts. But he may not be able to do so if McConnell holds a Senate majority. If Collins truly wants to allow Biden to fill the Courts with his judicial nominees (and thereby fulfill her Constitutional duty), she must take action to stop McConnell’s obstruction. She can only do so by caucusing with Democrats.
Fear of the right?
As I ponder the possibility of Collins’s switching allegiances, I can viscerally understand her best possible reason for not doing so: fear of the extreme right. Trump, McConnell, right wing media, and ten thousand MAGA-hatted bullies will likely scream bloody murder — and perhaps even commit it — if Collins takes courage and switches caucuses.
But being a Republican moderate in America, today, means having the courage to stand up to world-historical villains, Trump and McConnell.
The planet demands it, democracy demands it, decency demands it — as do the people of Maine who are likely to be crushed by austerity if McConnell retains power.
The choice is clear for Susan Collins. She must switch caucuses, or she is no moderate. | https://medium.com/@erikmears/does-susan-collins-have-the-courage-to-caucus-with-democrats-8ec2f1fbfe62 | ['Erik Mears'] | 2020-11-11 15:48:10.915000+00:00 | ['Mitch Mcconnell', 'Supreme Court', 'Us Senate', 'Susan Collins', 'Climate Change'] |
Machine Learning in Action in Finance: Using Graphical Lasso to Identify Trading Pairs in International Stock ETFs | TL;DR: In this post, I will try to tackle the problem of identifying a portfolio of correlated stocks, which is generally the first and most important step of pairs trading strategies. The approach takes advantage of the graphical lasso algorithm, which has proved itself a powerful machine learning solution to many practical problems such as identifying co-varying brain regions, social media network analysis, etc. This is the first in the tutorial series on this topic and focuses on one of its applications; my second post addresses the beautiful theory behind it in gory details, and future posts will demonstrate how the algorithm brings surprising marketing insights. So follow me and stay tuned.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
The world of equity investing is alluring and many of us with technical skills have wished to break into it. Yet, squandering our time sifting through the fundamentals of the universe of stocks in, say, SP500 alone is in itself overly dull and menial for the creative minds.
Fortunately, with knowledge in coding and interest in machine learning, you are more than well-equipped to make some buzz in the field of quantitative investing. Below, I will illustrate how to, as the first step to create your own trading strategy, identify among international stock ETF tickers meaningful pairs and clusters to create a portfolio, using a powerful machine learning algorithm called graphical lasso, which will make the first and most important step towards building your own Pairs Trading strategy.
Throughout the tutorial, I will keep the details to the minimally and meaningfully viable to get you started quickly, and you are free to explore more possibilities with this algorithm.
Buckle up and let us hit the road!
Photo by Diego Jimenez on Unsplash
Brief Intro to Graphical Lasso
Remember the regression method called lasso, used to induce a sparse solution to your regression problem by adding an L1 regularization term? Graphical lasso is its extension to the world of graphs.
Instead of estimating coefficients for independent variables in regression problems, graphical lasso estimates the precision (inverse covariance) matrix of your data. Thus, instead of driving many of the coefficients to 0 as in lasso regression, it pushes many values in the matrix to 0.
Why ‘graphical’? Because the precision matrix can be shown to correspond uniquely to an undirected graph(more on this in later sections).
In other words, the goal of graphical lasso is to induce from your data an undirected graph with sparse connections. This fact will come handy later when we try to illustrate the ETF graph and identify possible clusters.
For a more mathematically concrete treatment of the algorithm, please refer to my second article in this series, which analyzes the algorithm step by step.
Data Preparation
In this experiment, let us use the daily closing prices of the tickers. We will use historical data provided by Yahoo Finance. For example, to download the historical data for ticker QQQ to your local machine, you can navigate to https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/QQQ/history?p=QQQ, select the date range, and then click on ‘Download’. In our experiment, let us say we are particularly curious about certain countries and retrieve data for the following country ETFs:
#Setting up the mapping from ticker to country
etfs = {"EWJ":"Japan","EWZ":"Brazil",
"FXI":"China","EWY":"South Korea",
"EWT":"Taiwan","EWH":"Hong Kong",
"EWC":"Canada","EWG":"Germany",
"EWU":"United Kingdom","EWA":"Australia",
"EWW":"Mexico","EWL":"Switzerland",
"EWP":"Spain","EWQ":"France",
"EIDO":"Indonesia","ERUS":"Russia",
"EWS":"Singapore","EWM":"Malaysia",
"EZA":"South Africa","THD":"Thailand",
"ECH":"Chile","EWI":"Italy",
"TUR":"Turkey","EPOL":"Poland",
"EPHE":"Philippines","EWD":"Sweden",
"EWN":"Netherlands","EPU":"Peru",
"ENZL":"New Zealand","EIS":"Israel",
"EWO":"Austria","EIRL":"Ireland","EWK":"Belgium"}
Then we do a little housekeeping to streamline the data format for ease of later processing:
symbols, names = np.array(sorted(etfs.items())).T
Now, you should have downloaded the data files for those country ETFs. The next step is to collate them into one big data file where columns are the ticker names like ‘’EWK’ as above in the sorted order, rows being dates in temporal order. You could do this either using a simple Python script or some other favorite tools of yours.
Let us read in the collated file into a Pandas dataframe:
#Read in series of daily closing prices
#The file 'input.csv' uses the tickers above as columns, and dates #as index in df
df = pd.read_csv("input.csv", index_col='Date')
Data Processing
There is one thing we need to take care of before applying the algorithm:
#Convert price series to log return series
df = np.log1p(df.pct_change()).iloc[1:]
The line of code transforms the time series of daily closing prices into a series of log returns. Note that this step is not mandatory, but generally is a good practice in this context. It can be argued as below:
While stock prices are not normally distributed, log returns aren’t either, but are closer to normality than prices. And applied mathematicians love normality because it relieves so much pain when throwing at the data different analysis tools/algorithms, most of which assuming data normality to function meaningfully.
The bottom line: learn to love Gauss and acquire a taste for his distribution, and do whatever you can to uncover it in your data.
The Core
Now we are ready to apply the algorithm:
#Calling Glasso algorithm
edge_model = covariance.GraphicalLassoCV(cv=10)
df /= df.std(axis=0)
edge_model.fit(df)
#the precision(inverse covariance) matrix that we want
p = edge_model.precision_
Here we leverage the sklearn package in Python for its handy implementation of graphical lasso. Note how I retrieve the resulting precision (inverse covariance) matrix, which is our focus here. The reason we go for the precision (inverse covariance) matrix, instead of the covariance matrix, is what sets graphical lasso apart from other boring algorithms and makes the topic of my next article. For now, it suffices to say that:
(1) Yes, most people do covariance analysis, but that might be because that’s all they know. Now that you have heard of the inverse covariance, please use it to your advantage from now on.
(2) A precision matrix can uniquely define an un-directed graph: the value of its cell (i,j), if equal to 0, means conditional independence between variables i and j, and if non-zero, means the degree of conditional (in)dependence; and these dependence relations map to an un-directed graph such that there is no link between two vertices if they are conditionally independent.
With that said, let us take a look at what it looks like using Seaborn:
sns.heatmap(p)
And we get:
X- and Y- labels follow the sorted order of ETFs
It looks nice but does not actually tell us much yet. The power of graphical lasso lies in its ability to learn the precision matrix and then to map the matrix to a graph.
So let us do that:
#prepare the matrix for network illustration
p = pd.DataFrame(p, columns=cols, index=cols)
links = p.stack().reset_index()
links.columns = ['var1', 'var2','value']
links=links.loc[ (abs(links['value']) > 0.17) & (links['var1'] != links['var2']) ]
#build the graph using networkx lib
G=nx.from_pandas_edgelist(links,'var1','var2', create_using=nx.Graph())
pos = nx.spring_layout(G, k=0.2*1/np.sqrt(len(G.nodes())), iterations=20)
plt.figure(3, figsize=(30, 30))
nx.draw(G, pos=pos)
nx.draw_networkx_labels(G, pos=pos)
plt.show()
The code snippet above converts the precision matrix to a graph and uses the Networkx package in Python to draw it. I have tried to make the nodes as sparse as possible so that the node labels do not overlap, but it is still not quite satisfactory. Try and see it yourself.
To solve that problem, let us do one more step and export the graph into Gephi :
nx.write_gexf(G, 'graph.gexf')
Open the file in Gephi and adjust its layout, and we have the following interesting clustering of the country ETFs:
Clustering: order out of chaos
Naively, you can treat the three clusters as three separate portfolios and go on to figure out the hedge ratios among each of them. Or better still, you might want to try adding the edge weights and illustrating the bond strengths between nodes, and further split the mega-cluster into smaller ones based on that information. Feel free to add in more data and more stock tickers, play around the code and get started on your own research.
The clustering layout is amusing to gaze at. It matches geography quite well, which is not surprising given that geographically clustered countries tend to form closely knit common markets and tend to have roughly co-variate stock markets. Equally interesting is how the East Asian market connects to the European cluster by way of Singapore first, then Australia and Canada. I am in no position to analyze deeper into the connections and will leave it now to amuse or bemuse the curious readers.
Photo by Christine Roy on Unsplash
Please do bear in mind the clusters will change as the world evolves and countries incessantly befriend or unfriend each other. Such is expected of any trading algorithm to account for the paradigm shifts in the world.
Do your own experiments and make this your first step towards building your own trading algorithm. Stay tuned for more on this and other interesting topics on machine learning, finance and many more.
Note from Towards Data Science’s editors: While we allow independent authors to publish articles in accordance with our rules and guidelines, we do not endorse each author’s contribution. You should not rely on an author’s works without seeking professional advice. See our Reader Terms for details. | https://towardsdatascience.com/machine-learning-in-action-in-finance-using-graphical-lasso-to-identify-trading-pairs-in-fa00d29c71a7 | ['Jason X. Yang'] | 2020-09-22 18:08:30.379000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Stock Market', 'Data Visualization', 'Trading'] |
What is Machine Learning? | What is Machine Learning?
Learn what is machine learning, how it works, and its importance in five minutes
Last updated on October 8, 2020
Who should read this article?
Anyone curious who wants a straightforward and accurate overview of what machine learning is, about how it works, and its importance. We go through each of the pertinent questions raised above by slicing technical definitions from machine learning pioneers and industry leaders to present you with a basic, simplistic introduction to the fantastic, scientific field of machine learning.
A glossary of terms can be found at the bottom of the article, along with a small set of resources for further learning, references, and disclosures.
What is machine learning?
Computer Scientist and machine learning pioneer Tom M. Mitchell Portrayed | Source: Machine Learning, McGraw Hill, 1997, Tom M. Mitchell [2]
The scientific field of machine learning (ML) is a branch of artificial intelligence, as defined by Computer Scientist and machine learning pioneer [1] Tom M. Mitchell: “Machine learning is the study of computer algorithms that allow computer programs to automatically improve through experience [2].”
An algorithm can be thought of as a set of rules/instructions that a computer programmer specifies, which a computer can process. Simply put, machine learning algorithms learn by experience, similar to how humans do. For example, after having seen multiple examples of an object, a compute-employing machine learning algorithm can become able to recognize that object in new, previously unseen scenarios.
How does machine learning work?
How does machine learning work? ~ Yann LeCun, Head of Facebook AI Research | Source: Youtube [3]
In the video above [3], Head of Facebook AI Research, Yann LeCun, simply explains how machine learning works with easy to follow examples. Machine learning utilizes various techniques to intelligently handle large and complex amounts of information to make decisions and/or predictions.
In practice, the patterns that a computer (machine learning system) learns can be very complicated and difficult to explain. Consider searching for dog images on Google search — as seen in the image below, Google is incredibly good at bringing relevant results, yet how does Google search achieve this task? In simple terms, Google search first gets a large number of examples (image dataset) of photos labeled “dog” — then the computer (machine learning system) looks for patterns of pixels and patterns of colors that help it guess (predict) if the image queried it is indeed a dog.
Query on Google Search for “dog” | Source: Google Search
At first, Google’s computer makes a random guess of what patterns are reasonable to identify a dog's image. If it makes a mistake, then a set of adjustments are made for the computer to get it right. In the end, such collection of patterns learned by a large computer system modeled after the human brain (deep neural network), that once is trained, can correctly identify and bring accurate results of dog images on Google search, along with anything else that you could think of — such process is called the training phase of a machine learning system.
Machine learning system looking for patterns between dog and cat images [5]
Imagine that you were in charge of building a machine learning prediction system to try and identify images between dogs and cats. As we explained above, the first step would be to gather a large number of labeled images with “dog” for dogs and “cat” for cats. Second, we would train the computer to look for patterns on the images to identify dogs and cats, respectively.
Trained machine learning system capable of identifying cats or dogs. [5]
Once the machine learning model has been trained [7], we can throw at it (input) different images to see if it can correctly identify dogs and cats. As seen in the image above, a trained machine learning model can (most of the time) correctly identify such queries.
Why is machine learning important?
“Just as electricity transformed almost everything 100 years ago, today I actually have a hard time thinking of an industry that I don’t think AI will transform in the next several years.” ~ Andrew Ng | Source: Stanford Business Graduate School [4]
Machine learning its incredibly important nowadays. First, because it can solve complicated real-world problems in a scalable way, second, because it has disrupted a variety of industries within the past decade [9], and continues to do so in the future, as more and more industry leaders and researchers are specializing in machine learning, along taking what they have learned to continue with their research and/or develop machine learning tools to impact their own fields positively. Third, artificial intelligence has the potential to incrementally add 16% or around $ 13 trillion to the US economy by 2030 [18]. The rate in which machine learning is causing positive impact is already surprisingly impressive [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16], which have been successful thanks to the dramatic change in data storage and computing processing power [17] — as more people are increasingly becoming involved, we can only expect it to continue with this route and continue to cause amazing progress in different fields [6].
Acknowledgments:
The author would like to thank Anthony Platanios, Doctoral Researcher with the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University, for constructive criticism, along with editorial comments in preparation of this article.
DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not represent the views of Carnegie Mellon University, nor other companies (directly or indirectly) associated with the author(s). These writings do not intend to be final products, yet rather a reflection of current thinking, along with being a catalyst for discussion and improvement.
You can find me on My website, Medium, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or through my SEO company. | https://medium.com/towards-artificial-intelligence/what-is-machine-learning-ml-b58162f97ec7 | ['Roberto Iriondo'] | 2020-10-09 18:46:14.345000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning Course', 'What Is Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Machine Learning', 'What Is Ml'] |
Adding Space Between the Cells of a UITableView | Photo by Tim Hüfner on Unsplash
Exordium
Thank you for stopping by the Rusty Nail Software dev blog! In this post, I will be showing you how to create a UITableView that has spacing between the cells. I came across this design as I was recently working on a client’s application. I wanted to get away from the basic table view look and use something tailored more toward the UI/UX of the client’s app. For those who work as freelance software developers — versatility in design is essential because not every client wants the same thing.
To accomplish a clean table view design with spacing between the cells; you must work with sections rather than rows. Let’s get into how to create a custom UITableView with spacing and clean design. This post assumes that you have previous experience with Swift, Xcode, and UITableViews .
You can find the source code to this post on GitHub. Be sure to start with the ‘start’ branch of the repo.
What Is Already Set Up
If you open the project and run it on a device or simulator, you will see the current UI layout. I have set up a basic restaurant review application, all done programmatically, and we’ll be working with the fictional burger shack of Rusty Nail. The first view controller you see is the RestaurantReviewsViewController class. There are two classes in the View group; one for a custom UITableViewCell and one for a custom UIView . In the current state of the app, you can see the UIView in action, as this is the orange circle that holds the restaurant logo.
Back to the RestaurantReviewsViewController . First, I’ve stored a custom struct called Review that holds three properties; the writer of the review, the restaurant receiving the review, and the review’s text. There is also a method named setupView that sets up the UI elements of the view, and a method named applyAutoConstraints which activates the constraints for said UI elements.
Furthermore, in the viewDidLoad method, the view’s background color is set, and the setupView method gets called. Lastly, you will see a section marked Extensions and a method that makes a UIView circled.
Now that we’ve gone through the current code of the main view controller let’s build that table view. If you want to take a look at the other code provided in the project, take your time and get to know how it all works together. Briefly, the RestaurantReviewCell is a custom table view cell that contains two labels; one for the name of the person reviewing the restaurant and one for the review.
Configuring the Table View
To start, initialize the data array with some reviews. In this case, I’ve used characters from the show Bob’s Burgers. The data is initialized in the setupView method.
data = [
Review(writer: “Calvin”, receiver: “Rusty Nail Burgers”, reviewText: “Okay burgers. Okay tenant. Would like to see them pay rent on time.”),
Review(writer: “Felix”, receiver: “Rusty Nail Burgers”, reviewText: “Though my brother isn’t a fan of Bob’s cooking, I can’t find a better burger on the wharf.”),
Review(writer: “Teddy”, receiver: “Rusty Nail Burgers”, reviewText: “I’m here everyday. Couldn’t ask for a better hangout spot.”),
Review(writer: “Mickey”, receiver: “Rusty Nail Burgers”, reviewText: “Hey Bob! Thanks for feeding me during that heist. I will definitely be back to visit.”),
Review(writer: “Marshmellow”, receiver: “Rusty Nail Burgers”, reviewText: “Hey Bob.”),
Review(writer: “Rudy”, receiver: “Rusty Nail Burgers”, reviewText: “My dad drops me off here every once in a while. I like to sit in the back corner and enjoy my food.”),
]
Next, set the delegate and dataSource of the reviewTableView . I will conform to UITableViewDelegate and UITableViewDataSource protocols in the section marked Extensions — though you can do this directly off the RestaurantReviewsViewController class. Add the following to the setupView method after reviewTableView is initialized:
reviewTableView.delegate = self
reviewTableView.dataSource = self
The setupview method should now look like this:
func setupView() {
data = [
Review(writer: “Calvin”, receiver: “Rusty Nail Burgers”, reviewText: “Okay burgers. Okay tenant. Would like to see them pay rent on time.”),
Review(writer: “Felix”, receiver: “Rusty Nail Burgers”, reviewText: “Though my brother isn’t a fan of Bob’s cooking, I can’t find a better burger on the wharf.”),
Review(writer: “Teddy”, receiver: “Rusty Nail Burgers”, reviewText: “I’m here everyday. Couldn’t ask for a better hangout spot.”),
Review(writer: “Mickey”, receiver: “Rusty Nail Burgers”, reviewText: “Hey Bob! Thanks for feeding me during that heist. I will definitely be back to visit.”),
Review(writer: “Marshmellow”, receiver: “Rusty Nail Burgers”, reviewText: “Hey Bob.”),
Review(writer: “Rudy”, receiver: “Rusty Nail Burgers”, reviewText: “My dad drops me off here every once in a while. I like to sit in the back corner and enjoy my food.”),
]
restaurantImageViewBackground = RestaurantImageViewBackground()
view.addSubview(restaurantImageViewBackground)
restaurantImageView = UIImageView(image: UIImage(named: “cheese-burger”))
restaurantImageView.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false
restaurantImageViewBackground.addSubview(restaurantImageView)
restaurantNameLabel = UILabel()
restaurantNameLabel.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false
restaurantNameLabel.text = “Rusty Nail Burgers”
restaurantNameLabel.font = UIFont.boldSystemFont(ofSize: 28)
restaurantNameLabel.textColor = .black
view.addSubview(restaurantNameLabel)
starStackView = UIStackView()
starStackView.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false
starStackView.alignment = .center
starStackView.axis = .horizontal
starStackView.spacing = 5
for _ in 0…5 {
let starView = UIImageView(image: UIImage(systemName: “star.fill”))
starView.frame = CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: 40, height: 40)
starView.tintColor = .black
starStackView.addArrangedSubview(starView)
}
view.addSubview(starStackView)
reviewTableView = UITableView()
reviewTableView.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false
reviewTableView.delegate = self
reviewTableView.dataSource = self
view.addSubview(reviewTableView)
applyAutoConstraints()
}
The UITableViewDataSource is set up like any other table view. We return one row in each section and configure the cells based on our custom RestaurantReviewCell class. Before setting up the cell, register the UITableViewCell class used with the table view. Add the following to UITableView setup:
reviewTableView.register(RestaurantReviewCell.self, forCellReuseIdentifier: “reviewCell”)
To set up the cell, add the following to the cellForRowAt method:
func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UITableViewCell {
// 1
let cell = tableView.dequeueReusableCell(withIdentifier: “reviewCell”, for: indexPath) as! RestaurantReviewCell
// 2
if let writer = data[indexPath.section].writer {
cell.reviewerLabel.text = “\(writer) said:”
}
if let reviewText = data[indexPath.section].reviewText {
cell.reviewLabel.text = “\(reviewText)”
}
// 3
return cell
}
Here’s what that does:
1. Dequeue the cell, using the `reviewCell` identifier and the `RestaurantReviewCell` class.
2. Pull the data, based on the section being displayed. First, unwrap the value of the `writer` property of our data source (remember that this is of the type `Review`). Then, unwrap the value of `reviewText`.
3. Return the cell.
UI Work with the Table View
Next, in the `UITableViewDelegate`, set the number of sections of the table view to the `count` of the array `data` to create the number of sections needed to display the correct amount of data.
func numberOfSections(in tableView: UITableView) -> Int {
return data.count
}
Set the height of the rows to 140 (this can be changed according to your use case).
func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, heightForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> CGFloat {
return 140
}
Now, to add the spacing to the cells, we must create a view for each section’s header. Call the `viewForHeaderInSection` method, and add the following:
func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, viewForHeaderInSection section: Int) -> UIView? {
// 1
let headerView = UIView()
// 2
headerView.backgroundColor = view.backgroundColor
// 3
return headerView
}
Here is the breakdown of what was just added:
1. Create the header view as a `UIView`.
2. Set the background color of the header to the view controller’s `view.backgroundColor` property. (This creates a design effect that makes the header look transparent).
3. Return the `headerView` to set the header for each section of the table view.
This produces a basic spacing between the cells. The height of the header can be set as followed:
func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, heightForHeaderInSection section: Int) -> CGFloat {
return 20
}
The UITableViewDelegate and UITableViewDataSource should look like this:
extension RestaurantReviewsViewController: UITableViewDelegate {
func numberOfSections(in tableView: UITableView) -> Int {
return data.count
}
func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, heightForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> CGFloat {
return 140
} func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, viewForHeaderInSection section: Int) -> UIView? {
let headerView = UIView()
headerView.backgroundColor = view.backgroundColor
return headerView
}
func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, heightForHeaderInSection section: Int) -> CGFloat {
return 20
}
} extension RestaurantReviewsViewController: UITableViewDataSource {
func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, numberOfRowsInSection section: Int) -> Int {
return 1
}
func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UITableViewCell {
let cell = tableView.dequeueReusableCell(withIdentifier: “reviewCell”, for: indexPath) as! RestaurantReviewCell
if let writer = data[indexPath.section].writer {
cell.reviewerLabel.text = “\(writer) said:”
}
if let reviewText = data[indexPath.section].reviewText {
cell.reviewLabel.text = “\(reviewText)”
}
return cell
}
}
Finishing Up
Earlier I mentioned a ‘clean’ design. Right now, each cell’s design looks like a basic UITableViewCell ; a white rectangle. To add to the ‘cleanliness’ of the design, change the leadingAnchor and trailingAnchor to push the table view sides 20 points away from each side of the view:
reviewTableView.leadingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: view.leadingAnchor, constant: 20),
reviewTableView.trailingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: view.trailingAnchor, constant: -20),
The cells are still basic white rectangles, even though the RestaurantReviewCell has its layer.cornerRadius set to 20. This is because the table view’s background color is white. To fix this, we must remove the background color of the table view, which is currently white. Remove the background of the table view by setting the backgroundColor property of the table view to .clear .
reviewTableView.backgroundColor = .clear
Finally, since this is a basic list, tapping the cells is useless and doesn’t add to the user experience. To disable tapping on the table view, set the allowsSelection property to false .
reviewTableView.allowsSelection = false
Closing Notes
Thanks for stopping by Rusty Nail Software and reading one of our blog posts! If you’d like to get in touch with me, you can find me on Twitter and LinkedIn. If you and your team are looking for a dependable iOS Developer, let’s talk about your project. Feel free to get in touch on social media, or via email. You can also read more of my writings on my blog. | https://andrewlundydev.medium.com/adding-space-between-the-cells-of-a-uitableview-590a0cfd2e22 | ['Andrew Lundy'] | 2020-10-19 06:36:26.873000+00:00 | ['iOS App Development', 'iOS', 'Swift Programming', 'App Development', 'Software Engineering'] |
What Is The Difference Between Hydraulic And Mechanical Shearing Machines | What Is The Difference Between Hydraulic And Mechanical Shearing Machines Sissizhang Aug 24·7 min read
Basic Knowledge
According to different transmission methods, the shearing machines are divided into mechanical transmission type and hydraulic transmission type. Shearing machines with a cutting thickness of less than 10mm are mostly mechanically driven, and those with a cutting thickness of more than 10mm are mostly hydraulically driven.
According to the orientation of the upper blade to the lower blade, the shearing machine can be divided into flat blade shearing and oblique blade shearing. When cutting with a flat blade, the sheet material touches the full length of the upper and lower cutting edges together, resulting in large shearing force, high power consumption, and large oscillation. However, the cutting quality is better, and the cut sheet is relatively straight without distortion. The transmission method of the flat-blade shearing machine is mostly mechanical transmission, which is mostly used for small shearing machines and thin plate cutting. Oblique blade cutting is a method of gradual shearing, so the instantaneous shearing scale is smaller than the width of the sheet. The cutting quality of the oblique blade is not as good as that of the flat blade, and there is distortion and deformation. However, the cutting force and energy consumption are smaller than flat-blade cutting, so it is used in large and medium-sized shearing machines.
The shear is divided into the linear type and swing type according to the movement method of its knife holder. The straight-line structure is relatively simple (it looks like a guillotine gate, so it is also called a guillotine shearing machine), and it is convenient to manufacture. The blade has a rectangular cross-section and all four sides can be used as blades, so it is more durable. The knife holder of the swing beam shear moves around a fixed point during cutting. The advantage is that the conflict and wear between the upper and lower cutting blades are small, the blade deformation is small, and the cutting accuracy is high. However, the swing tool post accepts positive and negative alternating torque during the cutting process, so the width of the tool post cannot be too large. Therefore, the pendulum structure is mainly used for shears with a plate thickness greater than 6mm and a plate width not greater than 4000mm.
Working Principle of Hydraulic Shearing Machines
After cutting, the shearing machine should be able to ensure the straightness and parallelism requirements of the cutting surface of the sheared sheet and minimize the distortion of the sheet to obtain high-quality workpieces. The upper blade of the shearing machine is fixed on the knife holder, and the lower blade is fixed on the workbench. There is a supporting ball installed on the workbench to prevent the sheet from being scratched when sliding on it. The back gauge is used for positioning the plate, and the position is adjusted by the motor. The pressing cylinder is used to compress the sheet to prevent the sheet from moving during cutting. The guardrail is a safety device to prevent work-related accidents. The return journey generally relies on nitrogen, which is fast and has little impact.
Working Principle of Mechanical Shearing Machines
The motor drives the flywheel shaft through the belt, and then drives the eccentric shaft through the clutch and gear reduction system, and then drives the upper tool post through the connecting rod to make it reciprocate up and down to perform cutting work. The cam at the left end of the eccentric drives the plunger of the pressing oil tank to return the pressure to the pressing foot and press the sheet before cutting. When returning, the presser foot is returned by spring force.
Precision Control Effect of Hydraulic Shearing Machines
The hydraulic shearing machine is a new type of shearing machine that is different from the ordinary shearing machine. Because of the numerical control, its operation is more streamlined, and the efficiency of the workers is further improved. Numerical control hydraulic shearing machine refers to the technology that realizes the motion control of one shearing machine or multiple shearing machines with digital instructions composed of numbers, characters, and symbols. CNC hydraulic shears generally use general-purpose or special-purpose computers to achieve digital program control, which usually controls mechanical quantities such as position, angle, and speed, and switches related to the direction of mechanical energy flow. The production of CNC hydraulic shearing machines relies on the emergence of data carriers and binary data operations.
Precision Control Effect of Mechanical Shearing Machines
For a long time, the technical improvement of mechanical shearing machines has been slow. Although some companies have made improvements to the adjustment of the blade gap of the mechanical shearing machine and achieved rapid adjustment, it still does more harm than good. It is easy to damage the machine tool and it will be eliminated in a short time. The mechanical shearing machine adopts a resistance key type clutch structure and an open gear transmission and adopts more advanced electrical appliances (footswitch, manual switch) for operation, low noise, easy operation, and maintenance. It adopts an all-steel welded structure, simple structure, easy operation, beautiful appearance, and low energy consumption.
Advantages And Disadvantages of Hydraulic Shearing Machine
1. Advantages
The cutting force is large and the hydraulic overload protection reduces the damage to the machine tool.
Equipped with electric back gauge, digital display, convenient and quick.
The knife-edge gap can be adjusted quickly, saving time and labor.
When cutting the plate, the cutting of the plate is completed, and the upper knife frame automatically rises, which is not slower than the mechanical shearing machine.
The integral steel plate welded structure has good strength, rigidity, and vibration resistance. The two cylinders are fixed on the left and right columns. The working table is equipped with auxiliary knife holders to facilitate the micro-adjustment of the blade. The working table is also equipped with a feeding ball and is easy to operate.
The stepless adjustment mechanism of blade gap adjustment can meet the cutting needs of different plate thicknesses and materials.
The blade can be cut with four cutting edges, which prolongs the service life of the blade.
The upper tool rest adopts an inwardly inclined structure, which is convenient for blanking and improves the precision of the parts.
Adjusting the cutting stroke can not only improve the processing efficiency but also realize the segmented cutting function.
The number of cuts can be pre-set and automatically counted, which reduces the complicated inventory work.
The use of an advanced integrated hydraulic system reduces pipeline installation and ensures a high degree of reliability and safety in the operation of the machine tool.
The hydraulic pressure material mechanism is adopted. After the oil is supplied by a number of material pressure oil cylinders installed on the front support plate of the frame, the material pressure head is pressed down after overcoming the tension of the tension spring to compress the sheet material. After the shearing is completed, it is reset by the pulling force of the tension spring. The size of the pressing force increases with the increase of the thickness of the sheared plate
2. Disadvantages
When cutting full mouth, the speed is slightly slower
High price
Advantages And Disadvantages of Mechanical Shearing Machine
1. Advantages
Fast cutting speed
Good price
Easy maintenance
Two kinds of cast iron casting and steel plate welding, using pedal type, connected by pull rod and spring, work smoothly. Generally used in hardware, electrical appliances, color tiles, and sheet cutting. Suitable for cold sheet metal and cold cutting.
2. Disadvantages | https://medium.com/@sissizhang66/what-is-the-difference-between-hydraulic-and-mechanical-shearing-machines-e467bf06c1b7 | [] | 2021-08-26 03:10:32.790000+00:00 | ['Cutting', 'Shearing Machine', 'Cutting Tools'] |
How to upload External Image URL Directly into S3 Bucket using python | Today we will try to understand how we can Upload Any External Image URL Directly into S3 Bucket using python
See below Flow diagram for the same.
For implementing this functionality we required below Python Components / Libraries.
pymysql boto3 urllib3 urllib.parse import urlparse requests
Note : Please indent python code properly in your editor.
Follow below steps to implement this functionality in your application
Step 1:
Define your AWS Credentials in Constants
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID = ‘XXXXXXXXXX’
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY = ‘XXXXXXXXXX’
AWS_BUCKET_NAME = ‘XXXXXXXXXX’
AWS_REGION_CODE = ‘XXXXXXXXXX’
AWS_SIGNATURE_VERSION = ‘XXXXXXXXXX’
Step 2:
Create Main python function
readUploadFileOnS3Bucket(‘http://www.abc.com/abc.jpg’)
Step 3:
Now we will create new function for validating Image URL In my case i have created “validateURL(url)” function which will validate is image URL valid or not.
def validateURL(url):
isImgValid = 0
http = urllib3.PoolManager()
r = http.request(‘GET’, url)
if(r.status == 200):
isImgValid = 1
return isImgValid
Step 4:
Through below function we will read the image and upload it on S3 Bucket . my function name is “readUploadFileOnS3Bucket(file_url):”
def readUploadFileOnS3Bucket(file_url):
parseUrl = urlparse(file_url);
tempS3Key = parseUrl.path
isImagePresent = validateURL(internet_image_url)
if(isImagePresent == 1):
req_for_image = requests.get(internet_image_url, stream=True)
file_object_from_req = req_for_image.raw
req_data = file_object_from_req.read() try:
tempS3Key = tempS3Key[1:]
s3Bucket = s3.Bucket(bucket_name_to_upload_image_to) // Name of the S3 Bucket
response = s3Bucket.put_object(Key=tempS3Key, Body=req_data,ACL=’public-read’)
return response
except ClientError as e:
response = 0
return response
In above Function inside Response which i have marked in bold you will get S3 Bucket Object Data. That you can store it in Database for referring image path on main web site.
If any queries contact me on
[email protected] | https://medium.com/@shardulk10/how-to-upload-external-image-url-directly-into-s3-bucket-using-58fb41507c50 | ['Shardul Kulkarni'] | 2021-03-17 05:12:57.963000+00:00 | ['Python3', 'Python', 'Python Programming', 'Aws S3'] |
‘That’ vs. ‘Who’ | ‘That’ vs. ‘Who’
Sam: A small error I see frequently is “that” instead of “who,” such as “we need a president that shows empathy.”
I wouldn’t call that an error. Here is what the Merriam-Webster says about it:
In current usage that refers to persons or things, which chiefly to things and rarely to subhuman entities, who chiefly to persons and sometimes to animals. The notion that that should not be used to refer to persons is without foundation; such use is entirely standard.
‘That’ vs. ‘Which’
Tana: Using “which” when it should be “that,” like “a mindset which contributes to more incarceration” versus “a mindset that contributes to more incarceration.”
I’m afraid that’s not a grammar mistake either. The Merriam-Webster again:
In today’s usage which and that are both used to introduce restrictive clauses, those which cannot be removed from the context of the sentence, and which is also used to introduce nonrestrictive clauses, those which provide additional information but can be removed without the sentence falling apart. These rules are actually older than the words themselves, which were frequently interchangeable until the 18th century. If anyone questions your decision [to use which in a restrictive clause], you can say that you […] are making a decision based on custom, euphony, and convenience.
Impact
I agree with Iris’s take.
I’d just like to note that using impact as a verb is not per se wrong. From the Merriam-Webster: | https://medium.com/@cdelosada/that-vs-who-5105c36d87a6 | ['Cristóbal De Losada'] | 2020-12-05 19:53:16.025000+00:00 | ['Creativity', 'Writing', 'Editing', 'Writing Tips', 'Copywriting'] |
Insólito fallo en plataforma experimental de flash loans está literalmente regalando dinero | in A Right to Retrofit | https://medium.com/@cointelegrapher/ins%C3%B3lito-fallo-en-plataforma-experimental-de-flash-loans-est%C3%A1-literalmente-regalando-dinero-72901da9d6ab | [] | 2020-12-19 14:07:24.170000+00:00 | ['Smart Contracts', 'Blockchain', 'Bugs', 'Flash Loan', 'Exchange'] |
Teller Finance is coming to Polygon following their $11M NFT Sale! | Teller Finance is coming to Polygon following their $11M NFT Sale! Polygon Follow Aug 10 · 2 min read
We are thrilled to announce that Teller Finance, a money market protocol for risk underwriting and undercollateralized lending is deploying on Polygon.
“Teller wants to remain blockchain agnostic and EVM compatible, but accounting for immediate network issues with Ethereum is pivotal for our mission,” said Ryan Berkun, CEO of Teller. Developers can easily port Ethereum DApps onto a scalable network such as Polygon PoS commit-chain that solves concerns around network costs, rising gas fees, and security.
“We are happy to help Teller deploy on Polygon and to assist their team as they accelerate the development of DeFi applications on our network. Additionally, we anticipate this partnership with Teller will be a catalyst for joint initiatives moving forward,” said Sandeep Nailwal, Co-Founder of Polygon.
Teller NFT holders can easily bridge their NFTs from Ethereum to Polygon to begin staking their NFTs, receive their base loan value, and extract loans. Polygon users can begin making deposits and fund liquidity pools within Teller’s Polygon mainnet. Teller’s protocol will soon be live and available for use on the Ethereum mainnet.
Teller joins some of the best developers in the space such as DeFi blue-chips Sushiswap, Curve, Aave, Balancer, Kyber to build on Polygon. Polygon provides developers access to millions of potential users with integrations with major wallets including Trust Wallet, Coinbase Wallet, Huobi Wallet, imToken, etc.
About Teller Finance
Teller is an open-source protocol that interacts with consumer data to calculate default risk and offer unsecured crypto-asset loans. Users can supply liquidity to the protocol’s lending pools and earn interest from repaid loans. Teller leverages borrowers’ credit history to calculate an annual interest rate based on market conditions vs. consumer credit risk, reducing or eliminating the need for collateral to offer unsecured crypto asset loans. The protocol will act as a data layer for the underwriting of risk and the development of a new credit infrastructure for DeFi.
For more information, please visit: https://teller.finance/
Follow us on Twitter: @useteller
Join our community on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/Qeqb7Zp
About Polygon
Polygon is the first well-structured, easy-to-use platform for Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development. Its core component is Polygon SDK, a modular, flexible framework that supports building and connecting Secured Chains like Plasma, Optimistic Rollups, zkRollups, Validium, etc, and Standalone Chains like Polygon POS, designed for flexibility and independence. Polygon’s scaling solutions have seen widespread adoption with 500+ Dapps, ~567M+ txns, and ~6M+ daily txns.
If you’re an Ethereum Developer, you’re already a Polygon developer! Leverage Polygon’s fast and secure txns for your Dapp, get started here.
Website | Twitter | Ecosystem Twitter | Studios Twitter | Reddit | Discord | Telegram | Instagram | https://medium.com/the-polygon-blog/teller-finance-is-coming-to-polygon-following-their-11m-nft-sale-10f5537f61ae | [] | 2021-08-11 10:14:50.178000+00:00 | ['Nft', 'Teller', 'Polygon'] |
Vipassana: Buddha’s Philosophy to Live a Happier Life | How to Deal With Suffering: Observation
Indifference leads to a life with less suffering. That said, we’re not Buddha. We can’t learn to practice a life of total indifference so easily. We’re not enlightened. Not yet, anyway. As long as we have attachments in life, misery — like a shadow — will follow us. However, if we insist on creating cravings and aversions in life, we must also learn to deal with suffering.
Everyone faces unwanted situations in life. At which point, an individual loses their balance of mind and starts generating negativity which leads to misery. Such a situation leads to the generation of mental impurities such as hatred, anger, anxiety, fear, etc.
A standard solution offered to such a problem is to divert your attention elsewhere. But, by diverting your attention, you will only suppress your impurities and not get rid of them. They’ll always find a way to manifest again. Vipassana offers a solution: don’t run away from the impurity, face it. Observe whatever impurity arises within your mind and don’t let it overpower you.
By observing one does not suppress it, nor does one give it a free license to express itself in harmful vocal or physical action. Between these two extremities lies in the middle path: mere observation. When one starts to observe it, the negativity loses its strength and passes away without overpowering the mind.
That said, it’s very difficult to observe abstract impurities of the mind. However, whenever any impurity arises in our mind, we breathe a little bit faster. Our respiration is the physical projection of our mind. Therefore, whenever any impurity or defilement arises in our minds, we must observe our respiration.
By observing a defilement in its physical aspect, one allows it to arise and pass away without causing any harm.
Your anxiety, hatred, fear and anger are all short-lived. When such an impurity arises in your mind, instead of letting it manifest through your actions, observe your breath and wait for the impurity to die.
You’ll realize that when you observe your impurity by observing your breath, you strip it of its power to let it control your mind. You’ll also discover that within just a few seconds or minutes, it will die out. In short, outwait the impurity that takes birth in your mind.
Like everything else in the world, your suffering is impermanent. And those few moments of self-observation when any impurity arises will act as a shock absorber between the external stimulus and your response.
When you observe your breath, instead of throwing the seeds of suffering on fertile soil, you throw them on a rock. The seeds simply won’t grow into trees of suffering.
I’ve started practising this in my own life. I usually complement this practice with another thought that has helped me a lot. What I’ve done is, I’ve trained my inner angel to whisper these four words in my ear whenever such an impurity arises in my mind — This too shall pass.
When I get anxious about the future, I tell myself — This too shall pass.
When I’m in a tough situation, I tell myself — This too shall pass.
Whenever I get angry at anyone else, I tell myself — This too shall pass.
And I focus on my breath and wait patiently for the impurity to die. Because amongst all the uncertainties of life, there lies one very fortunate certainty — the impurity will die. So, instead of surrendering to your impurity, all you have to do is wait. | https://medium.com/mind-cafe/vipassana-buddhas-philosophy-to-live-a-happier-life-10cd9f7b547b | ['Akshad Singi'] | 2020-09-12 19:40:23.880000+00:00 | ['Philosophy', 'Happiness', 'Advice', 'Life Lessons', 'Life'] |
The Story of Noface | Photo by Krisztian Matyas on Unsplash
The Story of Noface
Everybody at work knew who is but if you asked them to describe him no one would have been able to do it.
Anything he said went unnoticed, anything he did was ignored. He never was invited to staff parties, no one laughed at his jokes(there were not many jokes said), nobody knew his family story.
One day Noface didn’t come to work- no one noticed. One week past he still was absent-no one noticed. | https://medium.com/@darius-butkevicius/the-story-of-noface-b45f2d9d6385 | ['Darius Butkevicius'] | 2020-11-25 15:09:57.192000+00:00 | ['Short Story', 'Loneliness', 'Fiction', 'Short Fiction', 'Short Read'] |
Things are opening up. What is ok for you and your family? | Kaarin Anderson Ryan, PhD, BCBA, LBA. 6.2.20
The information keeps flooding us, day after day more news and conflicting information about coronavirus. In my last post I talked about doing what you can each day. This time I will be turning the focus a bit back to children, and coping with the next phase of the pandemic when you have kids at home.
It seems to me that the new challenge for many of us will be deciding what to do. As restrictions start to loosen up in many states, the decisions about how to proceed with venturing back into the social world will be up to each of us, individually. Some may look to their family for guidance, or follow the lead of trusted friends. Others will do what they want or what they think is best based on what os happening in their area, or within their own family.
For people who have been home with their children for over two months, it will be tempting to jump back into life as usual as much and as soon as possible. There may also be some pressure for allowing playdates and other friend interactions, This pressure may come from your own children or it may come from their friends, or both. How will you navigate this next phase of the global pandemic?
As with many difficult decisions and tasks, it might be helpful to break these questions down a bit before you decide anything. Each thing you and your family do going forward will be based on your own personal calculation of the risks involved. What are some things to consider?
Most importantly, consider your family health risk. Are you or anyone in your family at greater risk for complications based on current health conditions? Do you care for someone who is at greater risk? If the answer to any of these is yes, it might be in your best interest to continue to stay home as much as possible and limit contact with others who are re-integrating into the world.
If you are at low or average risk for complications due to COVID, think about some basic common-sense measures you can take to protect yourself, your family, and others.
Social Bubbles. This is a concept based on the idea that it is safe to spend time with other people who have been practicing the same level of safe behavior as yourself. Do you have friends and family who have been working from home, rigorously distancing themselves from others, wearing masks out in public, and avoiding gatherings? If you have set a certain standard for yourself these past few months, and you know others with the same standards, they are likely safe to be with now. Here are a couple of recent articles on forming your own Social Bubble:
PBS News Hour
MIT Technology Review
Maintaining your own social distancing rules. Do you have friends or family who have been less careful than you? Do you know others who have had to go into a public work environment? As states ease restrictions and you want to see these friends, consider social-distancing gatherings. Sit on a deck or a patio, stay 6 feet away, bring your own food and drink.
Be careful in public. Yes, I know we still have mixed information on masks and how long the virus lives in the air and on surfaces. We — the public — do not know a lot more now than we did when this all started. But some studies are definitely showing a benefit to universal masks to reduce transmission if worn correctly. This means you •put it on • stop touching it • don’t touch your face • still maintain a safe distance from others • continue to wash or sanitize your hands after touching things in public • leave the mask on to talk, sneeze, cough (I actually heard about a woman in New York who was seen pulling her own mask down to cough into the air then putting it back on. True story.). The masks do not universally protect you. But used correctly, along with maintaining all the other recommended safety measures will certainly not hurt and will likely help.
Now for the tricky part. Think about your own kids. How will they do with maintaining boundaries? Are they able to keep a safe distance? Will they be able to keep their hands clean? Some older kids can actually do well with this. Other kids who are younger or who have behavioral or social difficulties may be more challenged with these safety measures. If you have one or more children who will struggle with maintaining safe standards, it will be up to you to decide what other people they can spend time with now. Will you let them play with other kids who have maintained the same level of caution as you have? The Social Bubble idea might be particularly relevant to families with young kids or kids with special needs.
For children, teens, and even young adults on the autism spectrum, this might be especially challenging. For one thing, if you have a child with autism and you have been at home with limited support, you may be tempted to take support and opportunities for your child to have time with others as quickly as possible, with less concern about the possible risks involved because basically, you have had enough. For another thing, people with autism may be less aware of howto maintain boundaries, and in some cases may have less social awareness and control to help them navigate interactions using distancing and other healthy precautions such as not touching their faces. The thing to remember is that you have choices. Using the Social Bubbles may help you with this, and it also applies to caregivers and support personnel, such as ABA providers or other therapists. If you allow your child to spend time with peers, do the best you can to make sure the peers and their families are following the same guidelines that you are. It may also help you to find caregiver support through ABA and other therapists, as well as local babysitters or respite providers who you trust to use precautions around you and your family.
Keep an eye on trends in your own area. As things open back up, how do the numbers look near you? Are things continuing to look better, or are the numbers going back up? You can decide how to handle your own safety measures based on what is happening where you live. Stay informed by the data to help guide your decisions, one day at a time.
If you really aren’t sure what is ok and what isn’t for you and your family, reach out to health experts in your area for guidance. This may include family doctors or local health officials who have been carefully following the trends with this outbreak. While it is good to be cautious, it is also important to balance caution with common sense measures you can take to help move back to some normal daily experiences.
**Originally published on positivebehaviordoctors.org. Today’s post, along with an archive of additional posts can be found on this website. | https://medium.com/@kaarin.andersonryan/things-are-opening-up-what-is-ok-for-you-and-your-family-cf62b0fc6935 | ['Kaarin Anderson Ryan'] | 2020-06-03 01:46:56.683000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Family', 'Autism', 'Support', 'Social'] |
Introduction to Raspberry Pi | Raspberry Pi……….Sounds like extremely delicious and edible pie doesn’t it? To the layman, it may, but to the ones initiated and integrated into technology, well, they’d know that Raspberry Pi is in fact, not an edible yummy pie made out of raspberries, but rather, a small computer the size of a credit card! These miniature computers can be plugged in with your standard monitors, a mouse, and keyboard and it’s good to go for usage! They were introduced in 2012 by a UK based charity called the Raspberry Pi Foundation whose aim is to educate people in computing and make it easier to access an education in computing.
They run on a free Linux based operating system that’s easy to understand and learn, making the functional aspect of a raspberry pi wide in all age groups, be it for school students with a keen interest in computer technology, to hobbyists enthusiasts of various tech related fields like robotics, weather prediction and other digital projects. Along with running Linux, it also has general purpose input/output pins (GPIOs) which allows the user to explore the field of IoT (Internet of Things) and control physical computing parts of a device. The low cost, modularity and open design of this computer makes it accessible and affordable to one and all, enabling them to explore computing and learn programming languages like Scratch and Python. Raspberry Pi runs on an open source ecosystem with a supportive Pi Operating System besides Linux, with it’s schematics regularly being published as open access. The Raspberry Pi Foundation relies on the sales of it’s unit to carry out its charitable activities in the educational sector.
Each model of Raspberry Pi that has been released generally has two models in circulation, Model A and Model B. Model A of all Raspberry Pi variants tends to be the cheaper one due to having less number of ports and reduced RAM. The latest models of this single board computer, named Raspberry Pi 4 comes with RAM capacities ranging from 2 to 8 GB. In India, these computers are available from a price range of Rs.1000 to Rs.10,000 per piece depending on the model one is interested in purchasing. Raspberry Jams are programs organized to increase the Raspberry Pi initiatives all around the globe, where people of all age groups can get together and share their ideas and projects with Raspberry Pi.
Now that we know how Raspberry Pi’s came about, it’s price range and usage benefits, let’s take a deeper look at the individual components within a Pi.
Part of a Raspberry Pi
1. GPIO
(General Purpose Input/ Output pins) are arguably the most important aspect of a Raspberry Pi, they allow one to connect electrical components like LED lights, buttons, inductors and relays to the Pi. They can be used to read the electrical signals from circuits and also to provide electrical signals to circuits. However it is to be kept in mind that it’s easily damageable.
2. Ethernet/USB/HDMI Ports
These ports allow the Raspberry Pi to be connected to a network with a cable or a wireless LAN, mouse, keyboards or USB drives and to an HDMI screen like a monitor or a projector to display the output from the Raspberry Pi.
3. Audio Jack
To connect the headphones or speakers to make your system audible, however if your HDMI device like your monitor has speakers, audio doesn’t need to be plugged in.
4. Camera Module Port
Allows the connection to a Raspberry Pi camera module. Web cameras cannot be connected as they have a regular USB connector.
5. Micro USB Power
Raspberry Pi’s are powered using these ports to which the power supply is connected. Ensure that this step is done last after attaching all the other components.
6. Micro SD Card
Used to place the microSD card within which the Raspberry Pi operating system (Raspbian) is contained. The SD card is bought separately and acts as the hard drive of the computer holding all of the users personal files as well.
Getting Raspberry Pi’s for your kids is a novel and innovative way to introduce them to the world of digital technology and electronics especially if they have a special interest towards this arena. Being kid friendly, Raspberry Pi’s host a myriad of benefits to the children’s learning and educational progress over other computers in the following ways -
Helps them understand the layout of standard computer
Enables them to create fun project with parental supervision
Introduces them to simple computers and it’s functioning.
It can even double as a portal movie player when attached to a projector
Help them learn programming languages like Scratch and Python
Meaning your child’s beloved Raspberry Pi can double as a helper in coding whilst also being compatible for regular use due its well developed OS, the Raspbian.
Help kick start or amp up their love for computers, programming and related fields, thus opening a wide spectrum for their future career!
Knowing the parts of a Raspberry Pi will help one configure the system to their specifications, however in order to make it functional it is important to install the operating system as well, the procedure for which can be found here. Now that you know the parts of a Raspberry and a plethora of details regarding it, including why it’s beneficial for your child, it’s time to help them get started on their very own Raspberry Pi based project be it for studies, passion or both! | https://medium.com/@rancholabs/introduction-to-raspberry-pi-b8e677799fc7 | ['Rancho Labs'] | 2021-08-10 13:50:12.390000+00:00 | ['Kids Computers', 'Technology', 'Raspbian', 'Computers', 'Raspberry Pi'] |
My Boyfriend Asked Me to Stop Shedding in his Immaculate Apartment | My Boyfriend Asked Me to Stop Shedding in his Immaculate Apartment
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels
Saying my boyfriend G was a neat freak is an understatement. His place looked like a catalog — the living room with its carefully folded afghan on one couch cushion, the kitchen counter with nary a crumb, and the bed always made, sheets tucked into tight hospital corners.
I enjoyed being a guest at his impeccable place — it felt like staying at a fancy hotel. That was, until his requests to “please not do that” became too much to deal with…
First, it was “Please don’t put your shoes on the furniture.”
That was reasonable. I had mistaken the chair (which he’d placed all alone, directly next to the front door) for a surface on which to rest my foot while tying my shoes.
But no, he explained. It was there to sit on, and then you could bend down to tie your laces.
Okay — that made sense. So I sat on the chair when I arrived to untie my laces, and then again I sat on it before I left, to tie them back up again.
Then it was, “Please don’t put your purse on the furniture,” and, “Don’t put the grocery bags on the counter.”
No biggie. I was in love, and love is about compromise. So my purse stayed on the floor, as did the grocery bags.
Once, before going to see him, I mentioned I was on my period.
I was feeling him out for his attitude around period sex, assuming maybe it wasn’t his thing, but figuring he’d appreciate knowing ahead of time.
Nope, I was wrong. He was all for period sex… but did I mind bringing a towel to protect the sheets?
Seriously? I texted back.
I wasn’t so much offended about his desire to protect his sheets as I was about his unwillingness to sacrifice his own towel to the cause.
You’ve seen my towels, he replied. They’re white.
We had a discussion about that after I arrived, and he apologized for offending me. I could tell his eccentricities were controlling him as much as they were me, so I was patient and did my best to not take it too personally.
But out of respect for his white towels, I was extra careful to not let any blood get on them as I was drying myself from my shower.
I failed, however, to consider the fact that blood might fall out of my body.
— and indeed, a single drop fell from my bleeding uterus and onto his bath mat.
And in case you’re wondering, yes, the bath mat was also white.
Frantically, I wadded up some toilet paper and dabbed at the scarlet drop, soaking most of it up into the tissue. What was left was a barely-visible reddish dot that I imagined would come out in the wash and, if not, could be hidden simply by flipping the mat to the other side.
To him, however, this was not an option.
Later that evening, I thought maybe he was having some tummy trouble when he disappeared for twenty minutes in the middle of a movie we were watching together.
But upon my visit to the bathroom later on, I was able to deduce that he had spent that time washing the bathmat, as it was now hanging over the shower curtain rod to dry.
The red flags went into full alert when he made his final request.
In the same manner and tone he’d used to ask me to not place my shoes on the chair or purse on the couch, he calmly asked if I could try to not let my hair fall around the apartment.
“Maybe you could just gather it and then throw it into the trash later on,” he suggested.
This was the first time I was truly shocked by a request.
“Really?” I asked, processing the shame I felt rising for having hair — which was followed quickly with anger at him for causing me to feel shame for having hair.
“It’s getting wrapped in the vacuum cleaner,” he explained, appearing quite confident that his request was nothing short of reasonable.
Seeing my face, he must have picked up that I did not find this request reasonable, so, with his voice rising a few decibels, he added, “I had to cut it out with scissors!”
“Yeah…” I explained slowly. “That’s what you do. You use scissors.”
I had to forgive him for his ignorance. I waited for him to thank me for the new knowledge I’d just given him, but instead he asked, his voice another few decibels up:
“So do you want to come cut the hair out of my vacuum each week?”
That was the first time I didn’t agree with his request — and it was the last request he made of me.
The hair request wasn’t the only factor contributing to our breakup, but it certainly added to the tension that built up until the fight we finally got into. I’d tiptoed around him for a half a year, telling myself it was his place and that he had the right to request I do things his way. But it made me feel more and more self-conscious and cautious. I finally exploded.
And he dumped me immediately.
In hindsight, I should have spoken up and defended my needs sooner, rather than wait until the pressure built up so much. Perhaps I should have been the one to say, “This isn’t working for me,” instead of trying so hard to make it work.
In any case, in losing my cool I was expressing I’d had enough. I would no longer be watching my every move, every drop of my blood, and every hair that fell from my head for this man. | https://psiloveyou.xyz/my-boyfriend-asked-me-to-stop-shedding-in-his-immaculate-apartment-fcd5624b640f | ['Anne Shark'] | 2021-01-28 14:37:09.263000+00:00 | ['Feminism', 'Boundaries', 'Relationships', 'Love', 'Dating'] |
Introducing Figma’s Live Embed Kit | We’re excited to announce our public Live Embed Kit to keep teams in sync wherever they are. With this development, anyone can add Figma designs and prototypes that are always up to date to their website. It’s as simple as embedding an iframe. The Kit will also allow 3rd party developers to enable Figma Live Embeds in their own tools — just like Trello, JIRA and Dropbox Paper.
It’s as simple as embedding an iframe.
To insert a Figma design or prototype into any webpage, just click share in the top right corner of the file, select public embed and copy the iframe code. If you’re a developer and want to make it easier for your users to embed live Figma documents, follow the instructions here.
We’re really excited to see what the community builds with this. Here’s a few examples of where live, synchronized designs could be helpful:
Do you run an internal wiki for your company? Add Figma and people can post live designs to articles about projects or features.
Are you building a messaging app for teams? Connect Figma and your users can share the latest versions of designs in group chats.
Do you want to blog about a project you’re working on? Embed a live Figma file and your readers will always see the most recent version of your design.
Live Embed in action with Trello:
Since Figma is the only design tool that runs on the web, these embedded designs will stay up to date and synchronized with the Figma original. Whenever a designer makes a tiny padding tweak or changes an icon in the Figma file itself, they can rest easy without having to re-export or re-upload the design.
We hope integrations like these will keep teams in sync and save them the hassle of hunting through the annals of their email history, mountain of Slack chats, or folders of their file sharing services.
This is only the beginning of our platform efforts. We’re excited to harness the power of our web-based technology to help teams communicate and build better products faster. Up next — stay tuned for a Figma API that will allow developers to pull other types of information from Figma files and incorporate them into new workflows. If you’re interested in partnering, shoot us a line at [email protected].
For more details on how to integrate Figma Live Embeds into your website or tool, go to https://www.figma.com/platform. | https://medium.com/figma-design/introducing-figmas-live-embed-kit-a04b9c7ad001 | ['Dylan Field'] | 2018-04-03 18:28:44.842000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Design', 'Software Development', 'Engineering', 'Tech'] |
Create an SMTP server with NodeJS | In this article, I will show you how simple it is to create an SMTP server using NodeJS and be up and running in a few minutes. You can then send emails to your node application, either as a method of remote control or for 1001 other reasons.
An SMTP receives emails from other email servers or email clients. If you want an application to process emails in realtime, then your own SMTP server is the way to go. Writing your own server provides some added benefits, like being able to use your own domain name with unlimited email addresses at no extra cost.
There is a bit more work to get it up and running, but I promise, it’s not that much.
What you're going to need.
Your own domain name with the ability to edit DNS records.
NodeJS
A fixed IP Address
If you're on a home network you will need to be able to set up port forward rules on your Internet Router.
DNS setup
In order for a domain to receive emails, it needs to know about the mail server that will handle incoming email.
I already have a domain hackmail.net which I will use as an example throughout this tutorial.
Here is how you need to configure your domain records. I use 123-reg.co.uk for domain registration. They provide their own guide on mail server setup. Your registrar may have a similar guide.
Step 1
Delete any existing MX records on your domain.
Step 2
Add a new A record that points to your internet router IP Address.
Hostname: mail
Type: A
Desination IP Address: <Your routers Public IP Address>
Step 3
Create a new MX record that points to the fully qualified hostname
Hostname: @
Type: MX
Priority: 10
Destination MX: mail.hackmail.net.
Notice the full stop (period) after the Destination. MX records must be terminated with a period or they will not work.
That’s it, Your DNS is configured.
Port Forwarding
You only need to do this if the server, computer, laptop that you will be running the server on, is behind a network router. How you configure this will be different for every router brand. At a high level, you need to tell the router to forward all traffic arriving on port 25 to the internal IP address of the computer running the SMTP server.
Forward all traffic arriving on port: 25 TO IP Address: <Your internal IP Address>
port: 25
Firewall configuration
If you have a firewall set up on your network or computer, you will need to make sure that traffic on port 25 is allowed through. Consult the docs for the firewall your using.
Writing the code
Create a new folder called node_smtp_server
In the new folder, run the following command
npm init -y
Create a new file called app.js
touch app.js
Before I add any code, I am going to install two npm modules. Run the following command to install them.
npm install smtp-server mailparser --save
Now open app.js in your editor of choice and add the following code.
On line 1, I import smtp-server this is the core of the application.
On line 2, I have imported mailparser , this will convert the received emails that are a simple string into a JSON object. This makes it easy to get the data I need or save them to a database like MongoDB.
Line 4 creates a new SMTP Server. It takes an object containing configuration as the constructor. In this example, I am passing in two options. I will cover the second option first.
disabledCommands is an array of commands you want to disable. In this case I am disabling AUTH . If you don’t do, this, any emails you send to this server will be bounced with an error. 530 Error: authentication Required
onData is a method that can take 3 parameters stream , session , and callback . In this case, I only require the stream and callback . The session is used for email clients, when a user is logging into the server with a client.
stream is a readable stream for the incoming email.
callback is run when the stream is ended. If you return an error object, it will reject the email.
Line 18 puts the server online. It only requires one parameter the port number In this case, I am also passing the optional IP address to listen on.
You can read more about the smtp-server module and it’s many options here https://nodemailer.com/extras/smtp-server/
Testing it out
I am going to send an email from my Gmail Account to [email protected] . When the message is received a few seconds later, the following is outputted to the terminal.
As you can see it’s an easy to use JSON object, thanks to the mailparser module.
Conclusion
Writing a mail server in NodeJS is really simple and can provide some really powerful features for an application.
Let me know in the comments, your ideas for using an SMTP server in an application.
As long as you can edit your domain’s DNS records, you can be up and running a few minutes.
If you liked this article, please show your appreciation and leave me a message. If you didn’t like it, I still appreciate the feedback, it keeps me on my toes 🙂 | https://medium.com/the-innovation/create-an-smtp-server-with-nodejs-5688d8fd882e | ['Simon Carr'] | 2020-08-22 18:25:31.265000+00:00 | ['Smtp', 'Programming', 'Nodejs', 'JavaScript', 'Startup'] |
Introducing the new TV Club | More than 1 and a half year ago, I wrote a blog post detailing the reason why I decided to stop improving TV Show Tracker 3 in order to focus on making a brand new TV Show Tracker from scratch. In a nutshell, the maintenance cost was too high and adding new features was nearly impossible as the code base was too old (a big chunk was written for iOS 3 nearly 10 years ago).
TV Show Tracker — now called TV Club (more on the naming later)—is now available on the App Store. This is a modern app (design and code-wise) ready to full-fill my promises of a better TV Show Tracker for the future.
As an independent single-person app development studio, developing a full-featured app can take a lot of time. In order to release the app as soon as possible, I decided to release the 4.0 with the same feature-set as TV Show Tracker 3 in addition to 1 single new feature: Club.
Club, a new peer-to-peer recommendations service
As you probably guessed, this feature plays an important role in this release, it even sneaked into the app name. I resisted to social features for a long time as I believed the “friends” feature you see in every apps were built out of real user need. The idea with Club is to provide people with much better recommandations than what Machine-Learning based algorithms are serving them on Netflix, Prime Video or Hulu.
How can we improve recommendations? By empowering TV Club’s 100,000 users community with a simple tool which allows powerful peer-to-peer recommandations. When a user asks for a recommandation, the app finds another user with same TV interest in order to ask for him a new show to watch. Optionally, the user can also guide the person who’s asked to recommend by giving a “hint show”, this will allow the requested user to provide a more accurate recommendation according to the requester’s mood.
I hope this will provide you with great new show ideas, please let me know as soon as you tested!
What about the next great features ?
Leveraging this flexible and clean code-base, I will be able to implement at fast pace the following developments which I have identified so far:
watchOS app
full featured iPad OS app
macOS client
tvOS client
Siri integration
The watch app, which is one of the driver behind the rewrote of TV Show Tracker didn’t make it on 4.0 in order to release ASAP but it will probably make it on 4.1 or 4.2 at the latest in the coming weeks.
The idea behind these developments is always to simplify the user experience by expending the way users can track their favorite TV Shows wether they are on iPhone, iPad or Apple TV. I truly believe in the mantra “less is more” and this is why I didn’t clutter the user interface throughout the years and this is what most loyal users loved about TV Show Tracker for years now.
Implementing all these features along maintenance and improvements to follow the continuous evolutions of the Apple OSes requires continuous work and it leads me to detail the reasoning behind the new business model of TV Club.
Why is it subscription-based now?
One-shot 1$ purchase is not a viable option for a software requiring continuous development over years. That was the naive business model which appeared with the App Store the first few years but has mostly disappeared since then.
Good software that you use daily for 5 years is definitely worth at least 20$ but I understand that it seems really hard to pay 20$ for an app when most of the app you use daily are free (such as Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, Apple Podcasts, WhatsApp or Instagram). Most of these apps have an Ads-only business model that works because they have 100s of million of users and/or funding that allows them to be in loss until they have enough users.
This is why subscription have become a viable business model for small developers. It allows people to pay-as-you-go software for a small amount of money and stop paying when you stop using it.
2$ for a year-long use of an app is definitely a good deal when you compare it to the amount you typicaly spend (~5$) for a 20 minute coffee experience. I believe that you get much more value for the money from TV Club.
What about people who already bought Premium (1$ upgrade) on TV Show Tracker ? Wether they upgraded 2 weeks or 5 years ago, they will benefit from 1-year free trial instead of the regular 1 month free trial. I understand that some people could say that it’s not what they paid for but I couldn’t make different cases and allow some people to keep the previous version and some people upgrade, it’s not possible on the App Store. Then, I decided to offer them 1 year of Gold to try it and continue the subscription if they enjoyed and believe it’s worth the price. At the end of the 1-year free trial, if you’re not convinced that it’s worth paying $1.99 for another year, just send an email to the support (link in the app) and I’ll extend your trial by another 6 month for free.
Looking forward to keep TV Club as the best and most simple app to track TV shows
I didn’t expected TV Show Tracker to last for 10 years on people’s home screens. I keep getting emails of happy users who checked the app daily for the past 5 years and it’s really what keeps me working hard on it.
To be honest, I wasn’t sure I would be able to complete the rewrite of TV Show Tracker when I wrote the initial blog post. As always in software development, I underestimated the work load and I’m not sure I would have committed to it if I knew it would take 1 year and a half to make it happen.
And last but not least, I would like to thank my wife Stéphanie and our three kids Gabin, Ethan and Samuel for supporting me instead of blaming me for working these long hours on night, weekends and holidays. I can really say that it wouldn’t have been possible without them.
If you enjoy the new version or just want to share feedback, please don’t hesitate to send me an email at [email protected] or a tweet to @tvclubapp. | https://medium.com/tv-show-tracker/introducing-the-new-tv-club-ad9c0a3d451b | ['David Attias'] | 2020-04-23 09:13:05.565000+00:00 | ['TV Shows', 'TV Series', 'Subscription', 'iOS App Development', 'Recommendation System'] |
Nine Ways To Create a Regenerative, Local Economy | Nine Ways To Create a Regenerative, Local Economy
By Roar Bjonnes
Photo: Courtesy Systems Change Alliance
The slogan “Think Globally, Act Locally” has been around for some years now. Only a few decades ago, vibrant local economies were indeed more prevalent: people grew food in their own backyards, local agriculture was thriving, and farmers markets were abundant.
The explosive growth of the global economy has damaged the majority of these local traditions and structures. Humanity is becoming increasingly aware of this fact, but as the knowledge curve about these and other economic and environmental problems has increased, so has the destruction curve caused by the corporate capitalist system.
The worldview of the centralized global economy has been based on the idea of limitless material growth: that nature is a free resource and profit is the primary goal of economic activity. This shallow ideology has led us to the brink of ecological and economic collapse via species extinction, global warming, the energy crisis, and growing economic inequality, to name a few.
The Nordic model is touted by many economists and progressive politicians as a better alternative. But, if we look closer at this relatively equitable welfare economy — with the “happiest countries in the world” according to some rankings — we will discover that it generates one of the world’s highest carbon footprints, and it is heavily dependent on feed imports from Brazil and other countries to feed its domestic pigs and chickens, so it is also not a long-term solution.
In the past four decades, various forms of Green Capitalism have been presented as a solution. This model, however, is just a softer version of business as usual, and is primarily used by the elite to greenwash their image. Sustainable capitalism is an oxymoron and has therefore been ineffective in solving any of the core problems in the global economy.
Since we have inherited a highly dysfunctional global economic system, a full economic-systems change is the only solution. We need to address the failures of capitalism and its ineffective forms head-on by creating decentralized and cooperative local economies and emphasizing local production with local resources to meet local needs, and to build local wealth. Below are nine steps we can take toward building such an economy.
Change the concept of ownership
Change ownership from private to collective. We need to replace policies based on private enterprise and accumulation of profit with policies protecting our commons — land, water, energy, as well as the internet. These natural, intellectual, and scientific resources belong to all of humanity, not only to the corporate elite. Global decentralized economic planning
In some places of the world, local production and farmers markets are making a return, but it needs to be more widespread. We can achieve that by integrating global, national and local planning. We need policies for the entire global ecosystem of localized economies rooted in local culture. If using westernized sustainable solutions, planning must be sensitive to the local population’s need, scale and culture. Limits on wealth accumulation
A core problem with capitalism is that there is no limit to what one individual can own. Today a handful of billionaires own as much wealth as half the global population while several billion people can barely feed themselves. A global cap on wealth accumulation is needed, as well as a maximum and minimum income, to balance the global inequality crisis. Economic structural change towards a post-capitalist economy
We need to change the whole structure of economics to live within the constraints of the environment. To best accomplish that, a three-tier economy can evolve:
1. Small-scale private enterprises — such as family farms, bakeries, restaurants, arts, and crafts businesses, etc.
2. Corporations turned into worker-owned cooperatives.
3. Key industries — such as large-scale energy and water plants, infrastructure, public education — to be run by national, regional and local governments and boards on a no-profit, no-loss basis, in order to prevent concentration of wealth, speculation and exploitation of natural resources. Local economic design changes
We need local, national and global policies to be aligned in order to:
– Avoid leakage caused by product imports and extraction of wealth by non-local businesses.
– Increase the speed of circulation of money between local producers, suppliers, institutions and the public.
– Provide more local jobs through increased local production and services.
– Achieve better local economic stability as localities become more self-reliant.
– Move from an economics of greed towards an economics of need, since local economies are much more effective at serving the local needs for housing, education, health care, food and energy. Cultural benefits of local economies
Economies and cultures are intertwined. Appreciating this is key to creating true “economies of happiness”. The current consumer economy has made us believe that happiness is derived from increased wealth and consumption, but once our basic needs are taken care of, personal wellbeing and cultural activities — such as spending time with family and friends, creating and appreciating art, music, literature — are better measures of progress. These are endeavors creating true, sustainable happiness and wellbeing. Environmental benefits of a local economy
Local economies produce less pollution, less transportation of products, less commuter time, etc. Due to their small scale, local economies also allow communities to live within their means and the local carrying capacity of the environment. People in local communities take better care of the local environment compared to those wishing to utilize it or capitalize on it from the outside. Economics for local self-sufficiency
Production within a local economy is most resilient when it is geared toward local self-sufficiency of food, water and energy. Only when those local needs are met should local resources be exported. Concerning exports, the focus should be on producing and exporting finished products — for example, chocolate rather than cocoa beans — as that will increase fair trade and local wealth. Policies must extend beyond the local area
We need nested and integrated systems change at the regional, national and global levels. The criteria to understand what constitutes a local or bio-regional area should also be outlined: language, culture, geology, resources, topography, economic similarity, and other criteria, can be taken into account. All the policy changes associated with a more localized economy have the welfare of local people in mind. Agricultural, industrial and cooperative policies should be coordinated from the local to the global level. Operating a cooperative economy today is quite challenging due to competition from the corporate economy, and only strong planning and coordination — such as in the cooperative economies of Mondragon, Spain, and Emilia Romagna, Italy — will allow a vibrant cooperative, local economy to emerge and thrive.
Underlying all the points above is the notion that in moving toward local economies, we can integrate the economy with the ecology. All local economic undertakings should be planned as part of a dynamic interrelationship with the local environment.
With this worldview, we can move towards creating truly regenerative local economies through an integrated network of local, national, and global systems change.
Join our online conference, Systems Change through Local Economies, to learn more about the key role that localization plays in creating a just and sustainable future.
Speakers include: Roar Bjonnes, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Daniel Christian Wahl, Tom Llewellyn, Alina Siegfried and many more. | https://medium.com/@rbjonnes108/nine-ways-to-create-a-regenerative-local-economy-6d047ba61312 | ['Roar Ramesh Bjonnes'] | 2021-09-06 17:16:34.931000+00:00 | ['Global Warming', 'Regeneration', 'Ecology', 'Local Economy', 'Sustainable Development'] |
Content Creation during COVID-19 | Shift strategies to accelerate growth | The upside-down routine and unexpected changes in the industry have been consistent recently. COVID-19 sweeps away all the credit for such misshapen and that’s just something to begin with. Get your business the limelight it deserves by shifting content strategies and promotions plans.
In between all the craziness of COVID-19 and other disasters, your business might need special attention. To migrate the risk of the pandemic, it’s important to think of improving the trade and strengthening the future avenues for your brand through savage content creation and more.
This post will tell you a lot about the tactic of content marketing, if utilized properly can flourish your business even in these difficult times. Along with the basic local promotion, you must also wrap your brain around reaching out to the global audience. A focused strategy will have to help you in getting the attention of a global audience and that will just be the beginning. After a long discussion and critical consideration, here are three main strategies to help your business get through the pandemic storm with the help of content marketing.
1. What is our goal from content marketing?
Writing and promoting content is interconnected to every customer, and whether you are retail trying to bridge the gap between the online products you are selling with the customer, or a real estate business looking to build trust, you will have to focus on your content marketing goals, recreate them if possible.
Here are some exceptional content marketing goals to keep:
Building long-term trust
Supporting and helping customers through these testing times
Engaging your customers in creative ways
Entertaining the customers so they can have a good time
Educating the customer on your industry
These business goals may alter at some point in time, and your business may require it on a different level. You are recommended to at least think of making the change to make your brand more relatable to the current situation.
2. Time-sensitive strategy over evergreen strategy
This will be a problem with every content marketing firm. Whether to create freely or take the road to time-sensitive content, investment in the time-sensitive content may lead to success but in the long run, it may affect to ruin your business. The key is to maintain a balance, you can use much software online to get that balance. However, it can be time-consuming and that’s when balance comes into the picture and a smart Content Marketing Agency in India takes complete advantage of these software.
Now that every business wants to stay on top of their game and beat the global economic crisis, applying small tips like this can get your business a long way.
3. Level of deviation from COVID-19 crisis in content marketing strategies
The answer to this question can be a little complicated, you can combat the problem by applying the estimation and elimination strategy. You can start by laying down your pre-COVID-19 strategy and estimate whatever addition you have to make in the plan. The next step would be to eliminate anything that is not compatible with the current plan.
If you are an owner of a brand that’s suffering serious consequences of the pandemic and you want to reach your target audience, then addressing the change is a basic necessity. No matter how painful it seems to shift the content creation strategy and introduce the new one, you will have to do it to bring your business on track.
At the age of virtual gathering and webinars, you need to understand the motive behind every content marketing campaign.
As an audience, you also have some responsibility and that’s not all. Taking advantage of a crisis is the worst thing an individual can do. Help one another to fight this crisis. Amazon suspended over 6000 sellers for taking advantage of the pandemic and increasing the price on the items. As a business owner, you have to be more thoughtful and help your customer and not prey on them when they need you the most.
Final Thought
Whether you like it or not, COVID-19 is here to stay, and the effect of it will be felt and experienced for the years to come. It’s a sad reality but you need to make a mental note and prepare yourself and your business for the days to come. As for content marketing, you must know that content that provides value never go out of fashion. Continue to create with the help of these techniques:
Identify and understand the trends that are reshaping the way we communicate and increase business and then utilize them to create your own.
You must understand that content is powerful, and the real importance of the content lies in its strategy
The choices you make matter, so make sure you represent as supportive, empathetic, and helpful to the audience.
Many professional agencies will take care of your content creation, however, it’s a tough choice to make. Let’s simplify that for you, connect with Carney Technologies Service for a balanced mix of content marketing and strategy making. Just visit www.carneytechnologies.com or dial 9163298336 to speak to an expert directly. | https://medium.com/@carneytechnologiesservices/content-creation-during-covid-19-shift-strategies-to-accelerate-growth-c520eb827c72 | ['Carney Technologies Services'] | 2020-12-16 09:36:29.595000+00:00 | ['Content Marketing Agency', 'Content Creation'] |
How I prepared for Japanese-Language Proficiency Test: JLPT N2 and N1 (part 2) | Preparation for JLPT N1
As a lazy part-time learner, I often prepare for the test about 2.5 months before the exam. My study for the test was like on and off. The test is held twice a year, every Jul and Dec. After the test, I didn’t touch any of the study materials at all. So when it was close to the test date, I started to prepare again. Because of this pace, it took me a long time to finish it.
Grammar
Try! Japanese Language Proficiency test N1
Again, I used the Try! series because of its features as described in “How did I prepare for Japanese-Language Proficiency Test: JLPT N2 and N1 (part 1)”. There are about 120 new grammar in the N1 level. I tried to memorize important grammar points, especially the ones with two and three stars. The fact is that there are few questions about casual and honorific languages. Grammars in the N2 level can also be seen in the N1 level.
Honestly, I didn’t comprehended some grammars and particles well. I usually use them based on my familiarity. To understand Japanese well especially complex sentences, going back to studying the basics is also worth it.
Vocabulary and kanji
As mentioned before, this set is a base for vocab and kanji study for me. The book structure is the same in every level. However, for the N1, amount of new words are doubled from N2. I quickly read though kanji book but I reviewed vocab several times.
2. 3000 Essential Vocabulary for the JLPT N1
I found this book later and I like it. So it became my favourite one. The book gathers vocabs that were used in previous tests. It groups vocabs into various sections such as news, health, world, human relations etc. There are example sentences for every vocab. Audio files for every sentence are available. It is a good tool to help with memorizing. Exercise are also provided in separated downloadable files. I personally like this book more than So-Matome because the example sentences help a lot to understand the word usages.
3. New Kanzen Master JLPT N1: Vocabulary
I recommend using this book when you have spare time. The book is rich in new vocabs and kanji sectioned in a variety of themes. I found that among the books introduced earlier, this one is the richest in idioms, compound verbs and especially lists of words that have many meaning. Another good point is there are many exercises, basically at the end of every lesson. The weak point is that the entire book is in Japanese, you have to look up the meaning of new vocabs by yourself which is quite time- consuming.
When considering the huge amount of new vocabs in this level, compared to the small number of questions in the test, you may be frustrated. Remember, the more you know vocabs, the more chance of correct answers. Not only you can answer the questions directly, but you can know which one is wrong. There is a possibility that vocabs/kanji in the test may not in any text books. | https://medium.com/@vanillalala/how-did-i-prepare-for-japanese-language-proficiency-test-jlpt-n2-and-n1-part-2-cf1cf08310e5 | ['Vanilla', '. .'] | 2021-05-01 07:39:06.903000+00:00 | ['Jlpt', 'Japanese Language', 'Japanese'] |
One Poll Doesn’t Equal “Polls” & It Doesn’t Make This Clintonite’s Case Either [Updated Below] | “Dude Kembro,” yet another crackpot Clinton cultist, has authored yet another rubbish article — “Why does media ignore polls showing Dem base still prefers Hillary not Bernie?” — that tries to craft a fantasy of how golly-gee great it would be if Hillary Clinton were to launch a 2020 bid for the presidency, a prospect that no one but Clinton, her diminishing cult and Donald Trump would find remotely appealing. I’m not going to deal with the bulk of his loony ravings but he makes some comments about polling, so I decided to tackle that narrow part of it.
Kembro describes the notion that Bernie Sanders is “the nation’s ‘most popular senator’” as an “outdated fiction” based, in part,
“on pushing disgruntled ex-Clinton pollster Mark Penn’s monthly Harvard-Harris poll, notoriously unreliable due to its online methodology.”
Well, let’s see…
— The very YouGov poll on which you’re relying as an alternative to Harvard/Harris is also an online poll:
— You provide nothing to support your fanciful assertion that Harvard/Harris is “notoriously unreliable,” because there is, in fact, nothing to support that claim.
— While your narrative suggests Mark Penn is some fellow with an axe to grind — some sort of motive for his faking a poll in an anti-Clinton direction, whatever would be gained by that — he is, in fact, a rightist Clintonite loyalist who has been with the Clintons for 23 years. When Democrats lost the 1994 congressional elections, he was the guy Bill hired to try to get things back on track. He worked for Bill right to the end of his administration, worked on the ’96 reelection campaign, worked on both of Hillary’s Senate races and worked on her 2008 presidential campaign. Only this Summer, he co-authored an op-ed in the New York Times and this was his advice to Democrats, re:the Sanders/Elizabeth Warren challenge from the left:
“The path back to power for the Democratic Party today, as it was in the 1990s, is unquestionably to move to the center and reject the siren calls of the left, whose policies and ideas have weakened the party.”
That delusional piece was uniformly derided across progressive media. Penn is both stupid and his views delusional, but any motive he may have to fake a poll — an asinine suggestion anyway — is in the other direction, toward making Clinton look better and Sanders worse.
— The Harris poll isn’t some wet-behind-the-ears upstart; it’s one of the longest-running established pollsters in the U.S., founded over 50 years ago (when, I’ll note in passing, Mark Penn was 9 years old). That doesn’t mean it’s right, of course. It does mean it isn’t some amateur in the field.
— While Harvard/Harris is conducted every month, your YouGov poll is just that, a single poll, and could be utterly anomalous, which happens in polling all the time (H/H isn’t immune to it either).
— In line with that last, there are some huge warning-signs within the YouGov results, principally the often-vast number of people who express no opinion. For example, 21% of independents report no opinion of Clinton while a staggering 34% report no opinion on Sanders. A huge warning that there’s something very wrong with the data. And you make it even better. You cite the two politicians’ relative standing among minorities in the poll and make a lot of fanciful assertions based on it:
“Hillary has a 78 percent favorable rating with Democrats, seven points higher than Bernie’s 71 percent. Her 69 percent favorable rating with blacks remains a whopping sixteen points better than Sanders’s 53 percent rating with that determinative demographic. Among Hispanics, Hillary’s 42 percent rating comfortably bests Sanders’s dismal 36 percent.”
But the poll shows that nearly 1 in 4 black respondents offered no opinion of Sanders, whereas this was only the case with 8% when it came to Clinton. Clinton only leads in this demographic by 16% and three times as many black folks are reporting no opinion of Sanders as reported no opinion of Clinton. This same dynamic repeats itself among Hispanics. It’s astonishing that 24% of Hispanic respondents offer no opinion of Clinton but utterly incredible that 36% offer no opinion of Sanders.
It’s also worth noting that your assertion regarding Clinton’s lead among Hispanics is comical. While you insist she “comfortably bests” him, Clinton’s lead among Hispanics is only 6% in a poll with a reported margin of error of 4.1%, meaning less than 2% separates them, yet you call his standing “dismal.”
— The overwhelming majority of “independents” always vote for their favored party and are just Republicans and Democrats by another name. Pollsters call independents who always vote for the same party “leaners,” while those who vary their votes among the different parties are called “true independents.” Whereas Harvard/Harris combines the leaners with the people who identify with the parties — a methodology that makes sense — the YouGov poll you cite divides these categories, which can seriously distort the data, as the leaners always make up a large share of the vote for each of the parties.
— The YouGov poll used only 1,000 respondents. That’s not unusual for these sorts of routine polls where laserlike precision isn’t essential. Some pollsters use even less. Harvard/Harris is a massive survey compared to these sorts of workaday polls. The just-released November H/H poll used 2,350 respondents.
— The YouGov poll appears absent context. Whereas H/H has been surveying on the same questions every month all year, YouGov hasn’t, as far as I can tell, conducted a single poll on these particular matters for 9 or 10 months before the one you’ve cited. H/H monthly polls provide a context wherein one can see the various politicians’ ratings changing over time. Sometimes — relatively rarely — there are anomalous jumps or dips but they usually seem to work themselves out in the next one. By lining up their polls, we can see that, for example, Sanders’ popularity has been in slow decline throughout the year, a pattern veteran poll-watchers will find familiar. Earlier this year, when other pollsters were polling on Sanders’ and Clinton’s popularity, their results mirrored those of H/H. No other polls have mirrored this YouGov poll.
This is Sanders’ current standing in the new Harvard/Harris survey:
And for comparison, this is Clinton’s standing in the same poll, tied with Donald Trump’s abysmal 38% overall favorable rating:
Sanders leads her by significant numbers in every category except among African Americans, where the two are statistically tied. He even leads her among people who voted for her last year.
Most of the rest of your piece is a Clinton-cult fever-swamp fantasy that has as little connection to reality as the Lord of the Rings. When one reads that kind of unhinged raving about a strange and mysterious place where the press isn’t a virtual monolith of reflexive pro-Clinton sentiment, where Joe Biden is somehow unacceptable to Clinton’s cult rather than one of the politicians to which elements of that cult are now turning to beat back any challenge from the left, where Clinton is some sort of counter-Establishment figure, where math is such that a single poll equals “polls” but multiple polls that disagree apparently don’t and where Bernie Sanders, the lifelong civil rights activist and feminist, is somehow a racist and sexist, one may wonder what color the sky must be in that parallel universe but one isn’t going to mistake it for anything resembling our own. To any informed, reasonably intelligent reader, your piece makes clear in virtually every line that nothing you say need be taken remotely seriously. As your nonsense regarding this poll is the only foundation upon which you’ve built the rest of your fantasy, I just decided I’d correct it.
— j.
— -
UPDATE (Wed., 29 Nov., 2017) — Kembro had written that the Harvard/Harris poll was “notoriously unreliable due to its online methodology,” but after I and others who commented on his article noted that the YouGov poll he, himself, was using was also an online poll, Kembro turned up and removed this wording from his article, replacing it with a description of H/H as “a survey given a poor C- in FiveThirtyEight’s pollster ratings due to its unreliability.” A little later, he added language that describes YouGov as “a pollster with a solid B rating from FiveThirtyEight.” For whatever reason, he also changed his listed name from “Dude Kembro” to “DK Kembro.” The current version of his article gives no indication that he’s changed any wording.
The FiveThirtyEight pollster ratings chart on which he bases these newly-inserted assertions is long out-of-date — the page indicates it hasn’t been updated since 5 August, 2016, nearly 16 months ago. While the chart rates Harris Interactive and that’s the rating Kembro cites, the Harvard/Harris collaboration didn’t exist until this year. The chart compares the outcome of elections to the final polls preceding them by various pollsters. Kembro apparently didn’t read beyond the simple letter-ratings he cites. While he wants to make a case that YouGov is more accurate, YouGov’s simple average error is 6.7%, compared to only 5.5% for Harris. YouGov’s better letter rating is based on the fact that it accurately called the results of 93% of the races it covered. Harris, the pollster Kembro says is “unreliable,” accurately called 86% of the races it covered — hardly a chasmic difference. Perhaps just as significantly, Harris is only ranked based on 135 polls; YouGov is ranked based on 707. | https://extranewsfeed.com/one-poll-doesnt-equal-polls-it-doesn-t-make-this-clintonite-s-case-either-221ce96f707a | ['J. Riddle'] | 2017-11-29 10:20:32.045000+00:00 | ['Hillary Clinton', 'Bernie Sanders', '2016 Election', 'Politics', 'Clintonites'] |
YOLO ile OpenCV ve Python Kullanarak Obje Tanıma | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/teknopar-akademi/yolo-ile-opencv-ve-python-kullanarak-obje-tan%C4%B1ma-6303f0376c25 | ['Erkan Onğur'] | 2020-10-20 10:48:17.570000+00:00 | ['Python', 'Yolov3', 'Computer Vision', 'Opencv', 'Yolo'] |
The Growing Struggle between Trademarking and Genericization | Two brands where genericization is happening now are Google and Photoshop. Googling has become synonymous with searching on the Internet for most, but courts have ruled that people still mean using Google’s search engine when they use google as a verb, allowing Google to keep its trademark. People are also starting to use the word “Photoshop” to describe editing their photos, even if they used another software, like Facetune. This may prove costly to Adobe as this becomes more widespread and they potentially face a trademark lawsuit.
Will Alexa become a generic trademark?
One product people have noticed becoming more generic is Amazon’s Alexa. With the smart speaker being the first to market, Alexa enjoys the benefit that when people think smart speaker, their minds go straight to Alexa. There are pitfalls to this, however. Though there are many more brands of smart speakers in the market now, most notably Google Home, if people still call other speakers “Alexas” or “a Google Alexa”, Amazon could face the repercussions of genericization.
With the smart speaker being the first to market, Alexa enjoys the benefit that when people think smart speaker, their minds go straight to Alexa.
And with the Internet being an area where brands can hardly police the way people are talking about them, genericization becomes a real threat. A tweet that goes viral can be great publicity for a brand, but if that tweet is talking about a cooler and calling it a Yeti when it’s really an RTIC, this widespread attention for the wrong brand could actually hurt the incorrectly named yet more well-known brand by genericizing it.
The “Alexa, play Despacito” tweets now have a worrisome edge when you consider that people could be calling their Google Home an “Alexa” in the tweet, and Amazon has no real power to stop them and enforce their trademark on their Amazon Alexa.
In the age of the Internet, both consumers and brands need to be careful about conversations about brands. With the ability of social media to go viral without any limitations by trademarks or copyrights, and the lack of control a brand now has around its name’s use on the internet, trademarks can get very diluted very quickly; turning into generic trademarks in virtually no time or disappearing altogether. Genericide is a real threat, and brands that become too successful may start to feel its impact. | https://medium.com/agencypmg/the-growing-struggle-between-trademarking-and-genericization-2223b3655736 | ['Pmg Digital Agency'] | 2019-03-14 15:50:07.749000+00:00 | ['Media', 'Branding', 'Trademark', 'Legal', 'Advertising'] |
Global Antibiotics Market | The global antibiotics market size was valued at USD 35.7 billion in 2019 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.5% from 20 to 2028.
The rising prevalence of infectious diseases and supportive government legislation are the major drivers of the market. Moreover, an increase in antibiotic resistance infections due to misuse or overuse of antibiotics is expected to shift the prescription patterns to novel therapies to treat bacterial infection. According to the CDC, the incidence of antibiotic-resistant infections is more than 2.8 million in the U.S. The pathogens such as Enterobacteriaceae, P. aeruginosa, and K. pneumoniae have a high resistance rate of an average of 40% in developed countries.
Market Drivers
Increasing number of patients suffering from infectious diseases drives the growth of antibiotics market. Ongoing clinical trials are being conducted by many pharmaceuticals’ companies will also boost up the antibiotics market growth. In addition, advances in antibiotics drugs and novel combination therapies to treat antibiotic-resistant microbial infections can advance the treatment landscape can also be a factor that drive the growth this market in the above forecasted period. Furthermore, a special designation from the regulatory authority to various potential pharmaceuticals companies is one of the factors which are expected to drive the market growth.
The rising threat of drug resistance and a weak pipeline of new molecules are leading to the development of combinational formulations. For instance, in countries, like India, the emergence of multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) is a major factor driving the R&D expenditures. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is another bacterium responsible for several infections in humans that are difficult to treat. The MRSA infection is difficult to treat with standard antibiotics, such as penicillin’s (methicillin, dicloxacillin, nafcillin, and oxacillin), and the cephalosporins. In 2014, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved four new antibiotics for the treatment of infections caused by gram-positive bacteria, including MRSA.
Visit https://insights10.com/ for more healthcare industry insights. | https://medium.com/@insightss10/global-antibiotics-market-ee902f4f95b3 | [] | 2021-12-29 09:45:19.604000+00:00 | ['Market Analysis', 'Market Research Reports', 'Antibiotics Market', 'Healthcare', 'Antibiotics'] |
Lose a Lot of Weight During the Pandemic (and Stop Making Excuses) | Lose a Lot of Weight During the Pandemic (and Stop Making Excuses)
A lesson in Sci-Fi thinking for these strange times
Photo by Stefan Cosma on Unsplash
Can you lose weight in a Pandemic?
My friend Nina has always been a little on the heavier side, but her health has been declining steadily since the start of the Pandemic, and so has her attitude towards it.
“When things get back to normal, I’ll lose the extra weight.”
Like many people, she has been working from home since March, and this has resulted in a much more sedentary lifestyle. Nina spends most of the day in her home office.
To make matters more difficult, Nina lives with her mom, who has cancer. She’s terrified about bringing home the virus, so she hasn’t been going to the gym.
For Nina, and for many others like her, weight gain has become another unfortunate side effect of this shared Pandemic experience.
Obesity is associated with the leading causes of death worldwide, but Nina feels weight gain is unavoidable under these crazy COVID-19 circumstances.
She’s wrong, by the way. | https://medium.com/in-fitness-and-in-health/a-sci-fi-method-to-lose-pandemic-weight-bdbdff5b96de | ['Keith Dias'] | 2020-11-21 12:01:26.265000+00:00 | ['Fitness', 'Health', 'Lifestyle', 'Nutrition', 'Pop Culture'] |
Why Race to College | How many of your parents bug you about college? The answer to that I am sure is most of them. I am here writing this from my own experience to tell you why it could be a good idea to take college slowly at a community college.
When I was in high school I remember my classmates talking about which colleges they wanted to go to, while my mind was always else where. I attended a private catholic school and so classes were generally smaller than public school classes, this led to a more intimate learning setting where they focused on getting students ready for college straight out of high school. Since the school was focused on getting students into colleges of their choice it always seemed like some sort of expectation to know what university you were interested in along with what career path you might take. It was almost looked down upon if you were to not know what you wanted to do or even if you wanted to just go to a community college. That is where I stood, uninterested and no clear idea of what I wanted to do. I believe this is a position many high school students may find themselves in, directionless and pressured into believing that going straight to a university is their only option.
I am here to tell you that it is not your only option. After high school I was still so directionless with what I wanted to do with my life that I decided to just go to a community college in my hometown. Today I believe this was the best choice; community college is only two years of schooling and a great way to get your general education out of the way if you still plan on going to a bigger college or university afterwards at some point. Community colleges are not only easier than the big schools but usually much cheaper. So rather than spending my money on classes at a big school where I have no direction as to what I want to do I decided to save and go to a community college. During this period I took my time with classes and worked outside of school which gave me time mature along with finding my passion. I would travel whenever I could, going to big cities across the country or even going abroad to Amsterdam or Greece. I found from traveling that the small town life I was used to live was not what I wanted and I learned about myself that I loved the fast paced, 24/7 life style of a big city. I also found while exploring my passions that I wanted to do something in the fashion industry since my fondness of fashion only grew from increased exposure to different cultures outside of my home. If I had been confined to an expensive college where I actually had to put effort into my work along with more money I doubt I would have had the time or money to find my passion. By the end of my two years I had grown and found myself which helped tremendously in deciding my next path; which was to go to a bigger college in the city where since I had my gen-eds done I was able to basically jump right into my intended major. Had I not taken this time to grow and find what I wanted to do I would have been spending countless dollars and time taking classes on things I could care absolutely less about.
So what I am here to tell you is to take your time with college and figuring out what you want to do, it is not a race to see who can get into a career first. We are young, we have our whole life ahead of us do not be afraid to find yourself and your passion before jumping straight into college. Why waste money and time doing something because you wanted to do right by your parents, your parents will be happiest when they know you are happy with your direction. Find yourself, find your passion and I promise college will be a million times easier when you are motivated to do exactly what you want to do. | https://medium.com/noahd97/why-race-to-college-7bd6c45bdc8b | ['Noah Durin'] | 2019-10-16 04:55:59.745000+00:00 | ['High School', 'Higher Education', 'Education', 'Students', 'Community College'] |
10 Tips to Better Baby Sleep | One of the most rewarding things as a new parent is to hear the sweet sounds of silence; that is, your baby peacefully sleeping! Every baby is unique in their sleeping habits, and it can be tough rough for parents to navigate.
To help you achieve better baby sleep, consider these 10 tips to improve your baby’s snooze sessions.
1. Consistency is Key
A bedtime routine can help a child to wind down before bed, and can also help them prepare mentally and physically for the end of the day. Pre-bedtime activities might include a bottle, a bedtime story, and pajamas.
When these things appear, children will know what is expected of them, and that playtime is over. Try to keep the room a little quieter when this routine begins.
2. Make Sleep Time Enjoyable
Sleep should never be seen as a bad thing in the eyes of a child. Make bedtime a soothing, relaxing experience for them by incorporating a soothing nightlight, some natural music sounds, and their favorite blanket or stuffed animal. Nighttime should be a comforting experience for them.
As an extension of that, bedtime shouldn’t always be a punishment for children. This makes sleeping, by association, a thing that children will want to avoid. If they’re in trouble, a time-out might be more helpful.
3. Swaddle Your Baby
Especially in their first few years, children will still prefer a warm, protective space similar to what the womb provided. Sleepsuits and swaddles are great for keeping the baby warm and wrapped in a comfortable position.
Swaddles can also stop babies from waking themselves up with sudden movements and jolts, and it can even halt jumpy babies from hitting or scratching themselves.
If you want your baby to fall asleep without any problems and also only rarely woke up during the night. CLICK ON THIS LINK RIGHT NOW to find a revolutionary method with you that puts even the most stubborn child consistently to sleep every night. (Affiliate link)
4. Give Children Time to Fall Asleep
The key to good sleep is to put your baby down while they’re still awake. This way, they associate their bed with the thing that makes them cozy and sleepy.
While it is gratifying to have your child fall asleep in your arms, this can teach them lousy sleeping habits as they get older. Having them fall asleep in their crib will help them to become more independent sleepers, and it will be much easier for you.
5. Give Kids a Moment
It’s hard to hear a baby’s cries and not tend to them-but this is precisely what you should do! If you hear your baby crying in their crib, stop and wait for a few minutes. You do not necessarily need to help them; they may already be in the habit of crying just because they don’t want to go to bed yet.
Instead, wait a little while. If children need a change or have lost their soother, you can go in. However, he or she may be able to put themselves back to sleep after a few minutes, which is a huge win.
6. Don’t Make Eye Contact
If your child makes eye contact with you during sleep time, they might think that it’s time to wake up. If you need to go into the room for any reason, try to soothe them without looking at them, and put them back down without too much interaction. Soothe them, but do not talk to them. Keep the room dark, so it’s clear this isn’t the time to be awake.
If you want your baby to fall asleep without any problems and also only rarely woke up during the night. CLICK ON THIS LINK RIGHT NOW to find a revolutionary method with you that puts even the most stubborn child consistently to sleep every night. (Affiliate link)
7. Refuse the Fun
Kids can easily switch off their tired mode and head back into playtime. As a parent, it’s essential to try to stay calm and collected when bedtime rolls around.
Kids will try to entice you to have a giggle fest but now isn’t the time. Even if you feel guilty for not playing with them, this will make both of your mornings so much more manageable!
8. Avoid or Prepare for Diaper Changes
Even if you know there is going to be a mess in the morning, it is helpful to skip diaper changes. These movements might trick your baby into thinking it’s time to wake up and play.
If it’s unavoidable, have all of the necessary changing items you need in a location outside of the bedroom. This practice will help you to avoid spending too much time in the room looking for the items, and you won’t have to turn on the light to find anything.
9. Create a Soothing Environment
Soothing music can help to drown out other sounds around the house and helps to put babies to sleep faster. Choose a music player that has a few different sound options, so that you can find out what your child likes the most.
It might be white noise, water sounds, or even a lullaby. Once they’ve found something they like, have that noise playing in their bedroom before they lie down.
10. Block Out the Light
A dark room is the best way to tell your baby that it’s time to go to sleep. Additionally, if they do happen to wake up in the middle of the night, they’ll know by the darkness that it’s not time to get up yet.
Find some light-canceling curtains that will block out the light. As they get older, you may slowly open these curtains so that they don’t get too accustomed to complete darkness.
This will help them to stay asleep when they’re in new environments that don’t have the same light-canceling curtains.
If you want your baby to fall asleep without any problems and also only rarely woke up during the night. CLICK ON THIS LINK RIGHT NOW to find a revolutionary method with you that puts even the most stubborn child consistently to sleep every night. (Affiliate link)
A Better Sleep for All
By following these tips, not only will the baby get a night of better sleep, but her parents will, too! Consider incorporating these suggestions so that everyone gets to bed on time and wakes up feeling happy and refreshed.
Not every tip will work with your child, but it’s all about patience and consistency. Work on an agreed routine and sleep schedule that works for everyone in the family.
If you want your baby to fall asleep without any problems and also only rarely woke up during the night. CLICK ON THIS LINK RIGHT NOW to find a revolutionary method with you that puts even the most stubborn child consistently to sleep every night. (Affiliate link)
***NOTE***THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS AFFILIATE LINKS (AS MARKED AFFILIATE LINK）AND IF YOU CLICK ON ANY AFFILIATE LINKS AND PROCEED TO PURCHASE ANY PRODUCTS I MAY RECEIVE A COMMISSION FOR THAT OFFER.
Originally published at https://ezinearticles.com on March 23, 2020. | https://medium.com/@mw98/10-tips-to-better-baby-sleep-26d531b39a9b | ['Maddox Wayne'] | 2021-06-07 19:32:23.724000+00:00 | ['Baby', 'Moms', 'Baby Products', 'Baby Care', 'Baby Sleep'] |
Exploring Monotone Subsequences With Dynamic Programming in Python | Exploring Monotone Subsequences With Dynamic Programming in Python
When computer science and dynamic programming meets mathematics
Introduction
This is the code heavy addendum to the more mathsy article I wrote on the Erdos-Szekeres Theorem. However, this is also self-contained, and is focused on finding monotone sequences rather than proving things about their size.
Our task is to write a program to find the longest increasing subsequence in a sequence of numbers. And then to visualise the results!
For instance, the longest increasing subsequence in [1,2,3,0,4] is [1,2,3,4].
The mathsy result is quite astonishing. It says that for any sequence of n² different numbers, we can always find an increasing sequence of length n, or a decreasing sequence of length n.
Dynamic Programming Solution
In dynamic programming, we aim to memorise solutions to a smaller part of the problem to solve the larger problem. If the solution to the larger problem can be built from the smaller problems, then dynamic programming may be useful. The key insight here is that sometimes by removing the first element of a sequence, the longest increasing subsequence remains the same. A simple example of this is [100, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, -1], where the longest increasing subsequence is [0,1,2,3,4,5]. and when we remove the first element, the longest increasing subsequence of [0,1,2,3,4,5,-1] is still [0,1,2,3,4,5].
In this case, the longest increasing subsequence has to start somewhere. If it starts at the first element, then all we need to consider is the remaining elements which are larger. If it doesn’t then we just consider the smaller problem of all elements after the first.
Dynamic programming builds the larger solutions from the smaller solutions in this way, by working upwards.
What we will do is create a python dictionary. In the dictionary* we will map a number to the longest increasing subsequence starting at that points. (There are probably more memory efficient ways to encode the information). Then, we will use the information we have worked out for points later in the sequence to quickly solve for the longest.
*As each number will only appear once, this works fine. If the same number appeared multiple times we could use a tuple of number and position.
A Worked Example
Code will abstract this logic, and abstract logic is confusing, so let’s see it in action first.
Our sequence is [100,0,1,2,3,4,5,-1].
We first look at the last element of the sequence. The longest increasing subsequence starting at -1 is, unsurprisingly, of length 1, because this is the end element.
So, our dictionary currently has {“-1”: [-1]}.
Next, we look at an increasing subsequence beginning at 5. [5,-1] isn’t increasing, so once again the maximum length of increasing subsequence is 1.
Our dictionary now reads {“-1”: [-1]. “5”:[5]}
Next we get to 4. We want to solve this using our previous knowledge. So, we scan for elements which are larger than 4. 5>4. So the longest increasing subsequence beginning at 4 is [4] + [whatever the longest increasing subsequence starting at 5 is].
The use of the previous knowledge allows us to solve each step very simply. To work out the longest increasing subsequence starting at 0, we just find the numbers larger than 0 to the right hand side, and find the longest one, add 0 to the beginning, and add the new sequence to our dictionary.
Eventually, our dictionary will read:
{“-1”: [-1]. “5”:[5], “4”:[4,5], “3”:[3,4,5], “2”: [2,3,4,5], “1”:[1,2,3,4,5], “0”:[0,1,2,3,4,5], “100”:[100]}.
To find the longest subsequence, we just find the longest entry in our dictionary, or we update the largest element we have found as we create the dictionary. As both are O(n) time, it doesn’t make much difference which one we do.
Implementation
I would encourage you to try implementing this yourself! My code is nothing special — I’m not a coder by training (nor by experience), so what I present is fairly rough and ready.
First, we set up our function. It takes in an array (the sequence) as an input. Then we create a dictionary called scores_dict, and memorize the length of the sequence seq.
def longest_increasing_subsequence(seq):
scores_dict = dict()
length = len(seq)
Next, we loop over the sequence. Yes, I indexed from 1 to length+1, because I prefer it, even if it marks me out as a real amateur! If i==1, we are adding the last element of the sequence to our dictionary, which is just that element anyway.
Otherwise, we set up ‘current_best’ to keep track of our best option so far. Then, we loop over all elements later in the sequence. If they are larger than our current element, and they give a better score than our current longest increasing subsequence, then we update our longest subsequence accordingly. If an element is smaller than our current element, we ignore it.
This loop then completes the dictionary, working from the last element in the sequence backwards, until we have found out the longest increasing subsequence starting at every element. Then we return the dictionary, for the user to use as they wish! (they can extract the longest increasing subsequence in O(n) time, as previously discussed)
for i in range(1,length+1):
if i == 1:
scores_dict[seq[-i]] = [1, [seq[-i]]]
else:
current_best = [0, None]
for j in range(1,i):
if seq[-j] > seq[-i]:
if scores_dict[seq[-j]][0]+1>current_best[0]:
current_best[0] = scores_dict[seq[-j]][0] + 1
current_best[1] = [seq[-i]] + copy.deepcopy(scores_dict[seq[-j]][1])
else:
pass
else:
pass
if current_best[0] == 0:
current_best = [0, [seq[-i]]]
scores_dict[seq[-i]] = current_best
return scores_dict
Some elementary running time analysis
The overall solution has some easy upper bounds. The outer loop is length n, the inner loop performs less than O(n) operations, which gives a maximum running time of O(n²).
In contrast, the ‘naiive’ approach of searching through all the subsequences and identifying whether they are increasing and their lengths is exponential time. I first implemented this solution, which got slow at around n=7, and didn’t work on my computer (intel i5, two cores, 8gb ram) for n=10. In contrast, I could fairly comfortably run the dynamic programming solution when I tested it for n=100.
Some Visualisations
Graphs are pretty. So let’s see some ways to visualise this. First, let’s understand what the graphs below are representing.
Here we look at both longest increasing subsequence, and longest decreasing subsequence. I use Inc[x] to represent the length of the longest increasing subsequence starting at the number x in the sequence, and Dec[x] to represent the length of the longest decreasing subsequence in the sequence.
E.g., in our sequence [100,0,1,2,3,4,5,-1], Inc[0] = 5, as the longest increasing subsequence starting at 0 is [0,1,2,3,4,5], and Dec[0] = 2, as the longest decreasing subsequence starting at 0 is [0,-1].
Each ‘dot’ (technically: node) of the graph represents one of the numbers in our sequence. I set n=49=7²
A connection is drawn between a node x and a node y if (Dec[x]==Dec[y] or Inc[x]==Inc[y]). E.g. in (4,5,6,1,2,3) we would connect node (6) with node (3), as the length of the longest increasing subsequence ending with (6) is length 3, and the length of the longest increasing subsequence ending with (3) is also length 3, so Inc(3)==Inc(6).
We colour a node red if the longest increasing subsequence, or the longest decreasing subsequence, ending at that point, is greater than root N. These red points therefore show us how often the condition of the theorem is met. I.e. a red point signifies the existence of an increasing or decreasing subsequence of length at least root N. Every diagram contains red points!
Next, we thicken some of the edges (‘connections’). We thicken the connections if they are a connection between red dots. This is to give some feel for the density of red dots.
The code I used for this is below. It just adapts some of the documentation code I found on the networkx website. See here. It creates 10 graphs, by generating 10 random 49 digit sequences, finds the longest increasing and decreasing sequences for each digit, and adds the nodes as described using the dictionaries.
for i in range(10):
my_seq = [i for i in range(n)]
random.shuffle(my_seq)
G = nx.Graph()
for j in range(n):
G.add_node("a" + str(j)) #aj is the longest increasing subsequence starting at j
G.add_node("b" + str(j)) #bj is the longest decreasing subsequence starting at j
dict_a = longest_increasing_subsequence(seq=my_seq)
dict_b = longest_decreasing_subsequence(seq=my_seq)
for a_obj in dict_a.keys():
for b_obj in dict_b.keys():
if dict_a[a_obj][0] == dict_b[b_obj][0]:
G.add_edge("a"+str(a_obj), "b"+str(b_obj), weight=dict_a[a_obj][0])
else:
pass
pos = nx.spring_layout(G)
elarge = [(u, v) for (u, v, d) in G.edges(data=True) if d['weight'] > n/2]
esmall = [(u, v) for (u, v, d) in G.edges(data=True) if d['weight'] <= n/2] # nodes
nx.draw_networkx_nodes(G,pos,
nodelist=["a"+ str(i) for i in range(n)],
node_color='r',
node_size=20,
alpha=0.8)
nx.draw_networkx_nodes(G,pos,
nodelist=["b"+ str(i) for i in range(n)],
node_color='b',
node_size=20,
alpha=0.8) # edges
nx.draw_networkx_edges(G, pos, edgelist=elarge,
width=1)
nx.draw_networkx_edges(G, pos, edgelist=esmall,
width=1, alpha=0.5, edge_color='b', style='dashed') G.clear()
plt.show()
plt.clf()
Now, let’s visualise in another way. Now, we only draw edges between two nodes if Dec[x] == Dec[y]. This visualises, for each point in the sequence, how many other points’ longest decreasing subsequence is the same length.
We can do the same for increasing subsequences. We now draw an edge between two nodes x and y if Inc[x]==Inc[y]. This visualises, for each point in the sequence, how many other points’ longest increasing subsequence is the same length.
This visualisation is a neat way of illustrating the logic used in the Erdos-Szekeres Theorem I wrote about previously. You can check out what I wrote about that here! | https://medium.com/cantors-paradise/exploring-monotone-subsequences-with-dynamic-programming-in-python-b8b0a55e9411 | ['Maths'] | 2020-07-25 16:37:29.694000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Programming', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Math', 'Mathematics'] |
20 Foods That’ll Help You Lose Belly Fat | If you’re seriously trying to lose belly fat then you already know that diet is one of the most important pieces of the puzzle with a proper diet plan where you’re eating the right foods in the right amounts you’ll strip off layer after layer of body fat and you’re gonna be saying goodbye to that belly fat forever however if you’re eating the wrong things you’ll only be setting yourself back further and further and with an improper diet plan you don’t have to get used to loosening your belt notch after notch because your belly fat will be there to stay so to ensure that you aren’t making any mistakes with the food that you’re selecting I want to go over the 20 best foods that you should be eating regularly to lose that belly fat for good the first food I want to start with is the avocado unlike other fruits that are loaded with carbs avocados are full of healthy monounsaturated fats specifically oleic acid they are also full of fiber which is going to help you feel full for longer another great thing about avocados that was discovered during a study from the Ohio State University at Columbus is that avocados help you absorb more cartoon odes from fruits and vegetables up to 15 times more to be exact so not only will avocados help you burn fat but you’ll also be strengthening your immune system and absorbing more cancer fighting Cardinals than ever next we have eggs eggs are great to incorporate into your diet plan because they’re high in protein high in healthy fats and they can help you feel full for a very low amount of total calories eggs are also one of the most bioavailable sources of protein out there meaning that your body can very efficiently digest absorb and assimilate the protein found in eggs having a solid protein source like eggs in your diet will help prevent muscle loss while you eat less calories to create enough of a deficit to burn fat let’s move on to one of the best fruits you can eat while trying to lose belly fat berries compared to most other fruits berries are very low in carbohydrates while being full of vitamins and antioxidants these antioxidants can help improve blood flow delivering more oxygen to your muscles and your cells in general ultimately this can help improve your workouts while assisting with the fat loss process the Lokar berries the e.r blackberries raspberries and strawberries blueberries are gonna be a bit higher in carb so to keep calories low stick with the other three the next food isn’t really a food but instead it’s a drink that has been proven very effective at helping you fight that belly fat apple cider vinegar apple cider vinegar has been shown to help people lose weight and waist circumference these aren’t the typical animal studies that you constantly see that don’t necessarily guarantee the same results for human beings is that these are human studies one of these studies was 12 weeks long and it demonstrated that obese individuals could lose anywhere from 2.6 to 3 point 7 pounds just by consuming 1 to 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar per day it has also been shown to improve blood sugar spikes after meals and it could help increase fullness after a meal in fact one study showed that taking apple cider vinegar with a high carb meal could result in people eating 200 to 275 less calories for the day keep in mind you want to make sure that you dilute only one to two tablespoons of the apple cider vinegar and water don’t drink it straight up next I have another high-protein food for you and that’s tuna tuna is a very lean fish that’s pretty much entirely made up of protein this makes tuna a great option to increase protein intake without increasing calorie intake too much the important thing is if you you’re buying canned tuna you want to make sure that you get the tuna in water not oil if you get the oil then all the extra calories that you save from the low-fat fish will be canceled out fish in general is a great option for when you’re trying to burn fat even a higher fat fish like salmon which is our next food that I want to go over salmon is loaded with high quality protein healthy omega-3 fatty acids that will help lower inflammation as well as many important nutrients it’s also very filling and contains iodine which is an important nutrient for proper thyroid function to ensure that your metabolism is running optimally next we have green tea which is once again it’s a drink that can help speed up your fat loss now don’t get me wrong sitting around drinking tea all day isn’t gonna get you to lose your belly fat alone however green tea has a compound in it known as EC GC that has been shown in studies to help increase fat loss 3 cups of green tea per day or a supplement with EC GC can help enhance your fat loss when combined with a proper diet and exercise program you have a proper diet plan one of the number one foods that you should be eating that I should have actually started off with are leafy green vegetables these include kale spinach collard greens arugula swiss chard and a couple more green vegetables in general are a great way to decrease hunger and increase fullness there are also not very calorically dense your stomach will be full from the volume as well as the fiber found inside leafy green vegetables for a very small caloric cost on top of that they’re loaded with beta-carotene as well as plenty of vitamins and minerals moving on we have a bodybuilding staple food chicken breast chicken breast like tuna is a very lean source of protein that leaves you feeling full for a small amount of calories consuming more protein throughout the day like chicken breast tuna eggs and salmon has been shown in studies to reduce cravings by 60% reducing your cravings is a great way to prevent late-night binge eating and that’s a huge portion of the battle for a smaller waistline now that you have a couple good protein options let’s talk about some great carb sources starting first with sweet potatoes sweet potatoes have a relatively low calorie content and they’re slow digesting so they’re gonna keep you full for longer another reason why sweet potatoes are great at keeping you full is because they have a high amount of dietary fiber which takes up a lot of room in your stomach and prevents over eating oatmeal is another slow digesting carbohydrate full of fiber that will leave your stomach feeling full it also can help improve digestion which may be very useful if you’re eating a high-protein diet even though oats are great you have to be careful because not all oats are created equal flavored instant oats are full of added sugar and obviously that’s not going to help you who’s very much fat at all trying stead to get plain oatmeal and flavor it yourself with something like cinnamon another great carb source for losing belly fat is beans beans are one of the highest protein plant-based foods available so many people assume that it falls under the category of a protein source however even the highest protein beans like black beans will still contain a lot more carbs than protein so there’s still primarily considered a carb source regardless they’re a great carb source because they’re filled with fiber and protein there are now a lot of bean based products available that you can incorporate into your diet plan as well things like black bean pasta being potato chips as well as black bean burgers are all worth looking into to make your diet more enjoyable and versatile one last card that I want to mention is my favorite carb to eat to help build muscle as well as to help burn fat just like the sweet potatoes and the oats brown rice is slow digesting and full of fiber and it’s also full of something known as resistant starch which can help boost the metabolism and burn fat a half cup serving of brown rice contains one point seven grams of resistant starch moving away from foods high in carbs the chili pepper is another great food to incorporate into your diet not only can eating Chili Peppers temporarily increase your metabolism it also has great benefits for your appetite one study showed that eating just one gram of red chili peppers reduced appetite and increased fat-burning in people who didn’t eat Chili Peppers regularly let’s move on to grapefruit it’s no secret that grapefruit is recommended in many different fat loss diet plans but does it really help people lose more weight or is it just another fad diet Ecstatic II well it turns out there was a 12 week long study done on ninety obese people in which they would eat half a grapefruit before their meals this actually did lead to a weight loss of 3.5 pounds and also improved insulin sensitivity with less insulin resistance it becomes easier to burn fat faster another great food to reduce belly fat is soup by having soup before your meals it’ll help reduce the total amount you eat for the day of course it’s very important that you’re just not eating any random soup soups are very high in calories and carbs and when you start adding things like croutons to your soup you’re no longer looking at a meal that’s gonna help you lose belly fat stick to low calorie options like vegetable of chicken or mushroom clear soup next we have another food that isn’t really food per se but can serve as a meal replacement and that’s protein powder even though you should always try to have real food over supplementation protein powder can really help you out when you’re in a pinch and you have no time to actually prep a meal it’s also a great option to have after workout when you need a fast digesting source of protein that can get into your bloodstream and your muscles to start the repairing process another thing you could do with protein powder is make a protein shake directly before going out to eat with friends or family at a restaurant this will significantly reduce your hunger and the total amount that you wind up eating at the restaurant a great way to further reduce your hunger is to enjoy the appetite suppressing effects of coffee coffee isn’t exactly a food but it’s virtually an empty calorie beverage that reduces your desire to eat food black coffee is best but even if you add a little bit of cream or unsweetened almond milk you’ll still experience the benefits without any downside coffee is used as a staple by people that are trying to do intermittent fasting because it’s so great at suppressing appetite most people don’t know that coffee also contains many antioxidants one of these antioxidants is chlorogenic acid or CGA and it can actually increase your body’s use of fat for energy research has also shown that CGA can slow the release of glucose and lower insulin resistance to prevent weight gain after eating a meal moving on we only have two left and asparagus is next on our list asparagus is not only a great green vegetable that helps fill your stomach up and satisfy hunger but asparagus has been shown to reduce bloating especially around the midsection so one of the lowest carb vegetables available with only roughly half a gram of carbs per sphere the last food that you can incorporate more as a snack while trying to lose belly fat is peanut butter peanut butter is very filling and also has a good amount of protein however regular peanut butter is still pretty packed full of calories and fat getting a dehydrated peanut butter like PB 2 can help you cut the calories in half while still getting plenty of protein and maintaining that same familiar peanut butter taste I actually like to taste a PB to better than regular peanut butter that’s it guys I really hope this post has helped you out with understanding some of the food options that you can incorporate into your diet to lose belly fat if you enjoyed it .Also, it’s important for me to mention that just eating any of these foods won’t necessarily result in losing belly fat unless the rest of your diet is on point to lose belly fat you have to make sure that you’re on a diet that incorporates these foods while giving you the right amount of calories and lowering insulin levels if you’re serious about making a transformation and you want to take the next step and try a done-for-you approach that requires literally no trial and error on your part try my 6-week challenge which on average has my clients losing either 20 pounds or 5% of their body fat in only 6 weeks you get a customized diet plan a 42-day workout plan a recipe book a full video exercise library and much much more including an accountability coach that’ll be assigned to check in with you every week to help answer questions and guide you through the entire process as long as you don’t cheat and you don’t quit for the six weeks not only will you lose 20 pounds or 5% of your body fat but you’ll also get the entire challenge for free to find out more you can click here so that you can visit the website directly. I’ll see you guys soon. | https://medium.com/@ashprouser/20-foods-thatll-help-you-lose-belly-fat-902f669063a6 | ['Ashutosh Singh'] | 2020-02-20 06:32:15.389000+00:00 | ['Fitness Tips', 'Weight Loss', 'Diet Plan', 'Lose Belly Fat', 'Health'] |
WE AND SILICON CHIPS:- | Integrated circuits.
Well known to every one that now and the upcoming time is of technology, artificial intelligence, internet of things, data science, etc. today any information from around the world is at tip of pour hands, just a click and you are served. Well it’s known that there are a lot of factors compromising the zenith attained by mankind in this sphere, the one today’s article is about CHIP OFTEN KNOWN AS SILICON CHIP, 14th element in the periodic table, the most abundant, preferred semiconductor.
What’s the most astonishing thing about chips nowadays is the size or to be more precise “the shrinking size”.
Technology, full of wondrous antiquity, laid it foundation stone in year 1946 with the invention of ENIAC, words first programmable electronic computer, developed by John Mauchly and John Presper Eckert, weighted 2700 tones, area 1800 sq-ft or precisely a 3BHK apartment, with electrical supply of 150kW( 300 mixer grinders at a time).
And today’s electronically derived computers weight (eg iphone 7 weighs 138gm), storage area required is one hand utmost, and electricity at a time is 2–6W depending upon the technical infrastructure. This enormous amount of versatility , energy power have somewhat been attained because of the the shrunken size of chips in these 5 decades from size of 10 microns to 0.005microns. It’s obvious that smartphones would have been handy with 10micrometre chip and not even efficient. Eact consecutive generation of computer chips is insuring more versatility, efficiency, reliablity.
HERE’S A QUICK LOOK :-
1971 — intel40004- 10 micrometer
1993- intel pentium — 0.8 micrometer
2007- intel core 2 duo — 0.065 micrometer
2013- snapdragon 800- 0.028 micrometer
2017 — apple A10X — 0.01 micrometer
2018 — apple A12X — 0.001 micrometer
2020 — apple A14 0.005 micrometer
2023* — TSMC — 0.003micrometer
2029* — 0.0014micrometer.
apple’s move 14nm A10 to 7nm A11 yielded a 25% increase in efficiency as per the reports , and lately, BBC reports says 5nm chips are expected to be 15% faster then 7nm chips while using the same power even working with higher speed as compared. This all is possible because of millions of transistors embedded in it. And this advancement would go and go.
AND a latest stuff about apple M1 silicon chip of 5 nm size with 16 billion transistors embedded. | https://medium.com/@abha975675/we-and-silicon-chips-e49f251a6daa | ['Abha Negi'] | 2020-11-26 14:19:12.722000+00:00 | ['AI', 'Chips', 'Silicon Valley', 'Technology'] |
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