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This is Downtown Portland, Oregon | This is Downtown Portland, Oregon
I have lived in Portland, Oregon, for many years and my office building is downtown. I love downtown Portland. I love the people watching, the restaurants, the food carts, the bars and lounges, the art, the grit, and just the general feel of being alive with creativity. Portland is a creative and unique town. In March, 2020, downtown Portland emptied out due to COVID-19. People started working at home, myself included, to help prevent the spread of a deadly disease. As a result, downtown Portland became a bit of a ghost town. The liveliness that is usually there is gone for now. But the night George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis, Portlanders flooded the streets in protest and into what some would call chaos. Protests broke out in multiple parts of town, but primarily downtown, just as they did across much of the country. But Portland didn’t just hold vigil for George Floyd, it celebrated Black lives and stood up against police violence and corruption. It wept for others that had been killed, too. Portland did not do this for just a few days or weeks, but rather months. And sadly, some of the protests turned violent. The downtown that I love was shattered as some protesters took it too far and smashed windows, set fires, and turned downtown Portland into disarray. The national news showed pictures of it being unruly. People across the country have asked me what is happening in Portland and if the entire city has gone crazy. No, it has not. One of the facts that did not get shown in the national news as much, was the goodness and camaraderie of people joining together for what they believed was right. For the most part the protests were large and loud, but peaceful. In fact the violence has been contained to a relatively small portion of downtown, but the fact remains that buildings are boarded up and the city that I love has become a different city due to both COVID-19 and the protests. Downtown has become a place that people avoid rather than congregate. The other day I needed to go to my work building, so I took the chance to see what had become of my beloved downtown. People will come back someday, but for now, this is what downtown Portland looks like. I do not show this to make people mad or sad, but to get an idea of what the reality is right now. Parts of it are beautiful. The amazing artwork is inspiring, but the empty buildings and businesses are sad, as are the large number of people that no place else to go. But slowly Portland is starting to rebuild and the people will return someday. | https://medium.com/snap-shots/this-is-downtown-portland-oregon-58fd45d9c75a | ['Katherine Pollock'] | 2020-12-22 19:15:40.791000+00:00 | ['Black Lives Matter', 'Downtown', 'Photography', 'Portland Oregon', 'Protests'] |
Sexual Witch-Hunts Strike Again | The news that legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin has been suspended by The New Yorker and CNN for (apparently) masturbating in a Zoom conference has been received with the hilarity one might expect. But when some commentators expressed the view that Toobin was being treated too harshly, the story quickly turned into an outrage moment that brought together feminists (who felt that Toobin was the recipient of unwarranted “himpathy,” to use Kate Manne’s coinage) and conservatives (who felt he was the recipient of partisan wagon-circling by the liberal media).
Toobin’s suspension was entirely appropriate. But the outrage is a reminder that our post-#MeToo age is not only the age of accountability but also the age of the sexual witch-hunt — and the Toobin outrage is not the only one going on at the moment.
The original account of the Toobin incident in Vice, if read in its entirety, makes it quite clear that the exposure, during an election simulation by New Yorker staff, was an accident.
The two sources described a juncture in the election simulation when there was a strategy session, and the Democrats and Republicans went into their respective break out rooms for about 10 minutes. At this point, they said, it seemed like Toobin was on a second video call. The sources said that when the groups returned from their break out rooms, Toobin lowered the camera. The people on the call said they could see Toobin touching his penis. Toobin then left the call. Moments later, he called back in, seemingly unaware of what his colleagues had been able to see, and the simulation continued.
In other words, there was a break, during which Toobin apparently got on a sex-chat video call, unaware that he was still visible in the Zoom session. Of course it wasn’t very smart of him to do that. But it also seems clear that he had no intention of exposing himself to, or sexually harassing, his colleagues. He’d have to be insane to do this intentionally.
And yet many insisted otherwise. “If Toobin was on mute he was listening/watching the other participants and that’s still disgusting & violating. If the urge is so great end the call. He knew that,” progressive OB/GYN Jen Gunter, who has over 320,000 followers, wrote on Twitter, oblivious to the evidence.
Later, Gunter tweeted:
She went on to add that even if Toobin believed he had left the call, that was no better: “Like what about that meeting triggered the urge? So violating.”
In other words, Gunter seems to believe that if someone masturbates immediately after getting off a video call, it somehow violates the people in the call.
Some in Gunter’s thread suggested that Toobin’s behavior was intentional; others called it “predatory” or “vile and indefensible,” or expressed disgust with people, especially women, who sympathized with him. A “Resistance” and Women’s March activist with over 8,000 followers branded him a “vile, predatory pig.” “Mr. Toobin deserves no quarter,” wrote a male activist. “His excuses [are] pathetic and his record appalling.”
Meanwhile, a #MeToobin hashtag made an appearance, and attorney and television host Adrienne Lawrence insisted that Toobin’s conduct was nothing less than sexual harassment. (Not a single woman who was in the Zoom call has complained, but never mind.)
A number of people likened Toobin’s actions to Harvey Weinstein’s reported self-pleasuring in front of unwilling and shocked women — as if there was any similarity between a brief, almost certainly accidental glimpse of the act on your screen and being coerced into watching it, as it were, in the flesh.
Some also tried to suggest that Toobin had a history of predatory behavior, sharing a 2010 article from The New York Daily News alleging that he pursued a “well-known media figure” in a rather disturbing way — whispering a graphic proposition into the woman’s ear at a party when they first met, then following her to her hotel room and trying to invite himself in, and then calling her at the office and leaving “several sick messages.”
If this happened as described, it’s certainly quite bad. But we’re talking about an anonymous accuser (the woman in the picture illustrating the article is Casey Greenfield, then embroiled in a legal fight with Toobin over paternity and child support) and behavior that allegedly happened some 15 years earlier, circa 1995. We have no way of verifying any of the details or knowing if there is another side to the story such as a mutual flirtation. Notably, so far — despite the scandal — not a single other woman has come forward, anonymously or not, with a complaint of misconduct by Toobin.
Some also suggested that the Toobin/Greenfield scandal itself pointed to a pattern of abuse. It’s certainly not a nice story: Toobin, a married father of two, had an on-and-off affair with Greenfield for years, got her pregnant, and initially tried to deny paternity and offered to pay for an abortion.
But you have to really stretch the facts to fit this into a #MeToo framework. While Toobin’s detractors suggested that he tried to “pressure” Greenfield into an abortion, she herself has made no such claim. And while numerous tweets described her as “a co-worker’s daughter,” with a not-so-subtle hint of a very young woman being exploited by an older man, Greenfield — daughter of CBS legal analyst Jeff Greenfield— was a 35-year-old attorney when she got pregnant. The “baby mama drama,” as Daily News called it back then, may certainly make Toobin look like a jerk (though if you’re a Trump supporter, at least, you should probably keep quiet on that subject). It hardly makes him a sexual predator.
No less disturbing than the vindictiveness toward Toobin has been the vilification of people defending him — sometimes with overt threats of reprisals. After Atlantic writer Conor Friedersdorf argued that Toobin deserved some empathy and forgiveness for what was in overwhelming likelihood a stupid mistake, some people tried to go after Friedersdorf himself by tagging The Atlantic in comments which suggested that he too might be a sexual predator.
Granted, these were random Twitter users whose comments (and about a dozen more like them) got no traction. Even so, the impulse to punish someone for daring to suggest that perhaps we should go easy on Toobin is troubling.
Others, like Gunter, limited themselves to collective bashing of Toobin’s male “apologists.”
A USA Today op-ed by veteran journalist Michelle Weldon, an assistant professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, argued that the sympathy for Toobin, and CNN’s failure to fire rather than merely suspend him, indicate “white male privilege.”
Meanwhile, in touching agreement, a conservative chorus rushed in to depict the pro-Toobin sentiment — expressed, besides Friedersdorf, by CNN’s Brian Stelter, Vox’s German Lopez (in a later-deleted tweet) and BuzzFeed culture writer Scaachi Koul — as liberal journalists defending unacceptable behavior by one of their own. The “liberal privilege” arguments are amusingly similar to the “white male privilege” ones: it’s either “a conservative journalist would have been destroyed for doing the same thing,” or “a journalist who is not a white male would have been destroyed for doing the same thing.”
Were some of the pro-Toobin takes ridiculous? Sure; a few of his defenders seemed to suggest that he shouldn’t have been disciplined at all, because everybody does it. (Not in a video call!) Stelter claimed that it was practically a national tragedy for Toobin to be sidelined as a commentator during a critical election. (If that turns out to be our worst election problem, we’re very lucky.) Was there political bias in some of these defenses? Well, I’m pretty sure Stelter and Koul would have taken a very different view if it had been a Fox News journalist in Toobin’s place. (Then again, so would many of Toobin’s conservative detractors.) Friedersdorf almost certainly would not.
And gender bias? My guess is that if a woman was two-timing between a Zoom meeting and a video sex chat and accidentally flashed her breasts to her colleagues on Zoom, her suspension would have set off loud cries of “slut-shaming” from the usual suspects.
The story doesn’t end here, though. The crazy writers of the “2020 Show” have added a plot twist in which the politics of being caught with one’s pants down actually do get flipped.
While the Toobin scandal was still unfolding, the news came that Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York City and currently Donald Trump’s attorney and zealous champion, can be seen in Sacha Baron Cohen’s new Borat film in a compromising position with a young woman who poses as a reporter. As The Daily Beast’s Kevin Fallon sums up:
The Trump toad agrees to be interviewed by an attractive, blonde foreign journalist. He giddily flirts with her, accompanies her into a hotel bedroom after the interview for a drink, lies on the bed, and starts to reach for his penis (one can only imagine what he had in mind) when star Sacha Baron Cohen bursts in to stop the escalating situation. “Rudy, Trump would be disappoint, you are leaving hotel without golden shower!” Borat shouts after him as Giuliani retreats, his hand literally caught in his pants.
In the film, the woman is supposed to be Borat’s 15-year-old daughter Tutar. (When Borat ambushes Giuliani, he shouts, “She fifteen! Too old for you!”) In reality, she’s 24-year-old Bulgarian actress Maria Bakalova.
The widely seen full clip is certainly embarrassing for Giuliani, though Fallon’s description is not quite accurate; it’s Bakalova/Tutar who blatantly flirts with Giuliani — among other things, putting her hand on his knee. He does, however, look comically pleased. Before he lies back on the bed, the flirtatious “reporter” removes the microphone he was wearing for the interview, untucking his shirt and groping around his midsection in the process.
Does the clip show Giuliani is “reaching for his penis”? It actually looks quite plausible to me that, as he claims, he’s tucking his shirt back in. Cohen’s claim that he was concerned about Bakalova’s safety during the scene sounds extremely far-fetched: the only physical contact initiated by Giuliani is to pat her on the back.
Of course the situation is entirely inappropriate. Of course Giuliani looks like an idiot, and as Indiewire’s Chris O’Falt argues, he displays a stunning lack of judgment. (A man close to the president of the United States falls for a setup that could be a classic “honeytrap.” The KGB used to do that a lot; its successor agency, the FSB, still does.)
But you know what? In this particular situation, I find Cohen and his antics far more distasteful than Giuliani’s conduct. In fact, Borat actually succeeded in making me feel bad for Giuliani, which I didn’t think was possible in 2020.
I don’t especially like Cohen’s schtick in general. I don’t really see how it’s better than James O’Keefe’s antics on the “other side.” I generally don’t like sting operations in which the target’s bad behavior is strenuously elicited and encouraged. This is especially repulsive when the intent is sexual humiliation. A honeytrap operation is still bad if its goal is to ridicule someone you find loathsome. And the liberals and leftists chortling over Borat’s “exposé” of Rudy really should ask themselves how they would feel if this had been a Project Veritas operation targeting a progressive figure — especially one who was black, or gay, or female.
Giuliani and Toobin both showed bad judgment and behaved stupidly and unprofessionally. Neither did anything “predatory,” misogynistic, or abusive. Both deserve to be the butt, as it were, of some jokes. But neither deserves to be “canceled” — not over these incidents, anyway.
There was a time when women’s sexual lapses were judged far more harshly than men’s. The Toobin and Giuliani incidents show that the pendulum has swung dramatically the other way. Himpathy? Right now, we could use some more of that. | https://medium.com/arc-digital/sexual-witch-hunts-strike-again-cbb442fe3bc1 | ['Cathy Young'] | 2020-10-26 20:51:50.636000+00:00 | ['Borat', 'Metoo', 'Politics', 'Sexual Harassment', 'Society'] |
Bubloo(Urdu word; use as a nickname which means chubby but cute person) | Its just not a nick name. Its a voice of a person who didn’t only wants attention also wants affections. First time when I heard this word “BUBLOO” , it was just a name but after knowing about his thoughts I fall in love with that person. That person who only wants loyalty from me. A person changes your mind with the passage of time and you will change for a person who really wants you in her\his life. Now its the time, when I really wants to hear this word “BUBLOO” and I missed it a lot.
Now on every voice note first words are “Han Bubloo” (Yes! Bubloo). Times change your feelings change along emotions and attitude of others towards you. I am changed for him because when he said “I want to be your everything because you’re everything to me. I want you emotionally, spiritually even physically to hold your arms and hug you like I am completely your own soul”. Its all about feelings that will change for a someone special or with a someone special, its up to you how to deal with them. It doesn't mean everyone who say you “I love you” is loyal but there is someone who is only for you and he changes you, your mind, your thoughts, your way of thinking and even your smile’s shine. So be happy with your someone special. Outer beauty is not important but inner beauty is the most important to live happy. I thought no one in this world can change you and your thoughts but now its vice versa. | https://medium.com/@ayeshariyyaz/bubloo-urdu-word-use-as-a-nickname-which-means-chubby-but-cute-person-c0402988055 | [] | 2020-12-25 11:53:44.997000+00:00 | ['Thoughts', 'Emotions', 'Someone Special', 'Feelings', 'Love'] |
Elasticsearch Composite Aggregation Java API example | While I was trying to build a Composite Aggregation request from a java client, I realized there is a no-good example found in any resources. So here is a simple composite aggregation request (with a sub-aggregation).
P.S.: Composite Aggregation is not present inside Aggregations (org.elasticsearch.search.aggregations.*). Its present Inside Composite (org.elasticsearch.search.aggregations.bucket.composite.*)
List<CompositeValuesSourceBuilder<?>> sources = new ArrayList<>();
sources.add(new TermsValuesSourceBuilder("field1").field("field1"));
sources.add(new TermsValuesSourceBuilder("field2").field("field2"));
sources.add(new TermsValuesSourceBuilder("field3").field("field3")); CompositeAggregationBuilder compositeAggregationBuilder =
new CompositeAggregationBuilder("byProductAttributes", sources).size(10000);
You can add sub-aggregations as
compositeAggregationBuilder
.subAggregation(AggregationBuilders.min("sub-field1").field("sub-field1"))
.subAggregation(AggregationBuilders.max("sub-field2").field("sub-field2"))
Then add it to the searchSourceBuilder | https://medium.com/@thenerdnomad/elasticsearch-composite-aggregation-java-api-example-16979b6675b8 | [] | 2021-02-02 09:35:50.459000+00:00 | ['Java', 'Elasticsearch', 'Composite Aggregations'] |
Tagget - Worlds 1st 5-in-1 Marketing App for AUTOMATING Phone Calls, SMS, Emails, Voicemails &… | Tagget - Worlds 1st 5-in-1 Marketing App for AUTOMATING Phone Calls, SMS, Emails, Voicemails & Story
Tagget is the world’s first A.I Multi-channel marketing platform that allows you to set up interactive and engaging SMS, phone call, email, story and interactive voicemail campaigns under one central dashboard – all at a one-time price.With the first ever on-page story widget, you can instantly tell your story about your brand, product or services… and instantly appeal to your visitor so that you can easily close the sale.
PRICE:$47.99
AFFILIATE LINK:https://jvz7.com/c/1101129/360287 | https://medium.com/@davidabrahamgopal/tagget-worlds-1st-5-in-1-marketing-app-for-automating-phone-calls-sms-emails-voicemails-980fc088a3a0 | ['Ramachandran Gopal'] | 2020-12-26 16:33:10.994000+00:00 | ['Earn Money Online', 'Digital Marketing', 'Money', 'Online Marketing', 'Make Money Online'] |
The Best Strength Training Workout Is Surprisingly Easy | The Best Strength Training Workout Is Surprisingly Easy
The number of reps and sets you do is less important than these fundamentals
As a fitness columnist, I get lots of questions about the best way to work out. Many of these queries are about strength training: How many workouts per week are necessary? Do I need to lift weights, or are body weight exercises like pushups and lunges enough? Is it better to do a few repetitions of heavy weights or more reps with lighter ones? How many sets are optimal?
The reality is: Unless you’re a bodybuilder or training for powerlifting, those details aren’t all that important. If you’re doing strength training to increase your fitness, get stronger, and improve your health, “The most important thing is to just do something,” says Greg Nuckols, founder of StrongerByScience.com and a powerlifter who’s held three world records. “The number one principle is to start doing it and continue doing it — that’s probably where 80% of the health benefits come from.”
The most effective program is one that you’ll stick with.
Weights are great, but not necessary
There’s a misperception out there that resistance training needs to involve complex routines and special equipment, but that’s simply not true, says James Steele, PhD, a scientist at U.K. Active and assistant professor of sport and exercise science at Solent University in Southampton, U.K.
In 2011, Steele and his colleagues published a set of evidence-based resistance training recommendations based on strength-training research. They concluded that free weights, resistance machines, and body weight exercises (like pushups and lunges) could all increase strength, “with no significant difference between them.” Strength training can be done at home with minimal or even zero equipment, Steele says, adding that he trains in his backyard with a pullup bar and some cheap dumbbells.
A 2017 study found that pushups and bench press produced similar muscle and strength gains when done at a similar load. And a study published in 2016 compared the results of elbow flexion exercises (basically an arm curl) done either with or without weights. (In the condition without weights, participants contracted their muscles as hard as they could throughout the exercise.) Researchers found no differences in muscle gains between the two conditions, though lifting weights did result in greater increases in strength, at least as measured by the dumbbell “one rep maximum” which is the maximum amount of weight that a person can possibly lift for one repetition.
Even bolstering your bones doesn’t require you to stack on the weights. The vast majority of the forces on your bones during strength exercises comes from the muscle contractions themselves, Nuckols says, and “that’s where most of the bone health benefits come from.”
Pick exercises that target the major muscle groups
You don’t need to do a bunch of different exercises to get stronger. Instead of doing moves like bicep curls and leg extensions that target a few muscles in isolation, you can hit all your major muscle groups with exercises like pushups and squats, which work a lot of muscles at once. This also cuts down the duration of the workout. “Mobility permitting, great beginner exercises include squats, deadlifts, pushups, rows, walking lunges, and bench press,” says Shannon Kim Wagner, a certified strength and conditioning specialist and founder of the Women’s Strength Coalition.
During the pandemic, getting to a gym is extra challenging (and may not be safe), but never fear. Nuckols has a helpful primer, “How to Make Gains Without a Gym,” that lists equipment-free exercises for every major muscle group, along with links to detailed instructions on how to do them. “Body weight exercises are absolutely fantastic for upper body training,” Nuckols says. No matter how strong you are, there’s some variation of pullups, pushups, or dips that can make you stronger.
“Training through a long range of motion will build more muscle per rep than training on a shorter range of motion.”
Once you get really strong in your lower body muscles, it can become a little harder to continue progressing with unweighted exercises, but it’s not impossible. Body weight squats can be surprisingly hard if you do a lot of them, Nuckols says, and moves that require a long range of motion, like strict body weight step-ups and pistol (single leg) squats can also continue to challenge you as you get stronger.
After you’ve selected your exercises, try to execute them through the safest range of motion you can, Nuckols says. That means, for instance, when you’re doing squats, you want to go as low as you comfortably can and return to a full upright on each rep. “Training through a long range of motion will build more muscle per rep than training on a shorter range of motion,” Nuckols says. What’s more, it will also help you to maintain that range of motion and functionality over time.
Intensity matters more than reps
Whatever exercise you do, intensity is key. The evidence-based recommendations that Steele’s group created calls for doing eight to 12 repetitions to achieve “momentary muscular failure” — the point at which you can’t do another rep without a break. As long as your set of exercises produces this kind of fatigue, it should be enough to evoke adaptations that improve strength. How many reps you’ll need to get to that breaking point will depend on the exercise you’re doing, whether you’re using weights and your level of fitness, but it’s that sense of fatigue that should guide how many you do, not some arbitrary number. It might take you 40 pushups to get to your breaking point, but only eight arm curls if you’re using heavy dumbbells.
You probably just need one set
Unless you’re a strength athlete with specific goals in mind (like benching a certain weight), you can get what you need by doing a single set of each exercise. “Personally, I do single sets of pretty much every exercise I do,” Steele says. The guidelines he helped create also call for just a single set.
“Personally, I do single sets of pretty much every exercise I do.”
Last year, a study in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise looked at the question of how the number of sets affects results. The researchers split 34 volunteers into three groups, and all of them performed an eight-week program of the same strength training three times a week. The difference was how many sets of the seven exercises they performed — one group did one set per workout, another did three, and the final group did five sets per session. The results showed that all groups similarly improved their muscle strength and endurance (as measured by one repetition maximum testing on squat and bench press and the number of reps a subject could do of 50% of their bench press one-rep max); doing more sets made the workout take longer, but it didn’t increase the gains.
Keep it regular — even once a week is helpful
Yes, twice a week is better than once, and in a perfect world, that’s a good goal. But once a week is better than nothing, Steele says. You’ll have a lot more success if you do your workouts on a regular basis than if you set an unrealistic goal that you’ll blow and then feel bad about.
Stick with it in the beginning, and the swift progress you make could be self-reinforcing, as you discover that your body is capable of doing much more than you initially imagined, Wagner says. Any newbies, especially women and others who have been “encouraged to stay small and take up as little space as possible,” find that strength training provides a welcome reframe about what and who their body exists for, she says.
Aim to progress
There’s a concept in weight lifting called “progressive overload” — it’s the idea that to achieve gains, you need to progressively increase the strain your workout is placing on your muscles so that they adapt to the increasing loads. “The principle of progressive overload is more like a mindset than a rigid prescription,” Nuckols says. The important thing is to keep track of what you do each workout (Nuckols suggests using a notepad or your phone to keep a training log), and then try to do a little bit each time. That could mean doing one more repetition or adding more weight or resistance.
In this regard, weights can have an advantage over body weight exercises because you can add more weight, and that allows you to measure consistent, measurable progress, Wagner says. “Many new lifters find that their bodies adapt to increased resistance at rates they wouldn’t expect.”
Put it all together
There’s no need to make things unnecessarily complicated. Find a selection of exercises that target your major muscle groups, then do one set of them to failure once or twice per week. It’s really that simple. | https://elemental.medium.com/the-best-strength-training-workout-is-surprisingly-easy-a7c7eb095a6f | ['Christie Aschwanden'] | 2020-09-09 14:20:04.528000+00:00 | ['Exercise', 'Fitness', 'Strength Training', 'Test Gym', 'Health'] |
Visa and Lightning, how do they compare? | With this article, I want to share my thoughts on the differences between two payment systems: card networks (Visa, Mastercard, etc) and Lightning.
Why is this comparison relevant? Because each of these types of networks is designed for small and high-throughput payments.
By facilitating settlement among banks, Fedwire is the foundation of digital dollars. Bitcoin (the protocol) is the foundation of bitcoin (the currency) and is also what makes transactions between bitcoin holders possible. But because these protocols are restricted to trusted member banks (Fedwire) or don’t scale in throughput (Bitcoin), there is a need for higher-layer protocols that facilitate smaller day to day transactions.
There is a whole category of payment systems that are facilitated by moving numbers in a single database, managed by a single entity, for instance, Paypal, Venmo or even Fedwire. We won’t spend time on those in this blog post.
Some useful definitions:
Card payment networks include Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Discover, and many other local debit networks.
Card network policy varies greatly by country. I’m mostly having a US point of view here.
Issuing banks are the banks that create cards. There is a bank’s name on every card: this is the issuer.
Acquiring banks are the banks that represent merchants.
To simplify the narrative, I’ll assume that the merchant is the payee, and that the customer is the payer.
I’m assuming the usage of non-custodial Lightning wallets.
We’ll dive into the differences between each aspect of the networks.
It’s hard to be exhaustive, given the 10,000+ pages worth of reading to cover every aspect of the card industry. And much of this information is not publicly available nor disclosable. But for the sake of comparison, this article should provide a good overview.
I hope this article will be helpful for anyone learning or working in payments, whether it’s on Lightning or traditional card payments. Leave a comment if you feel this is helpful. ;)
Thanks for the feedback on this post from Alex Bosworth, Bass Bauman, Herve Zenner.
Technical side
Node connection
Every card payment network maintains a list of financial entities they are working with. For example, Visa has about 15,000 members. Visa Inc., the payment network operator, has an agreement with each member of the Visa network.
A large part of the security in this network is related to the fact that a financial entity needs to be a member in order to participate in it, so the security comes from the principle of a walled garden. The way to connect to this network is not publicly disclosed.
Unlike card payment processors, Lightning is an open network.
First, this means the specifications are publicly available.
Second, it means that anyone can join or leave the network at any time.
Some messages are being broadcast to the whole network (eg: there is a new channel between two nodes), some are only transferred between specific nodes (eg: a payment occurring between nodes).
A Lightning node can be connected to as few as one or more than a thousand different nodes. On average, nodes are connected to 11 other nodes. The median is currently 3.
Acquiring or issuing banks are generally connected to Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Discover, and usually a couple of other debits / ATMs networks (NYSE, STAR, etc).
Card networks themselves are connected to every member of their network, eg: 15,000 members. With the permissionless aspect of Lightning, there is more decentralization. The largest node currently has ~1,200 open channels.
A transaction must pass through Visa (or the other associated card network), whereas it may or may not go through one of the large nodes on Lightning.
Graph
Lightning has a concept of payment graphs, which is how nodes connect with each other. Using graph theory terminology, nodes are vertices, and channels are edges.
This graph aspect creates a unique set of challenges for Lightning, as nodes currently need to know about the whole graph before they’re able to initiate a payment. Some solutions such as trampoline payments would help to reduce this burden, especially for mobile phones that are online intermittently.
The notion of a graph is not prevalent in card networks, because each member of the network has only a few static connection points, typically to the mainframe server of the card network. Card networks act as giant routers.
The routing table is relatively easy to define. Each member has a “BIN” which is basically a prefix, represented by the first 4 to 6 digits of a card number. For instance, every card starting with 481582 is a Bank of America Visa debit card. A list (maybe a bit outdated?) can be found here.
A member doesn’t need to know about any other members in the network. It receives every message from the payment network’s central server. For example, an acquiring bank only needs to know about the merchant they are working with and the payment network they are connected to (Visa, Mastercard, etc) but they don’t need to know anything about the card-issuing bank.
Payment authorization and settlement
Protocols rely on the exchange of messages to process a transaction.
For cards, the low-level protocol is ISO8583. The first version was created in 1987, with more recent versions being standardized in 1997 and 2003. Those wire protocols can be seen as low-level version of XML, optimized for bandwidth. The full ISO8583 specifications can be bought from ISO for $232.
Every payment network uses one of the ISO8583 flavors as a starting point and adds their business logic on top of it. Only members of a card network have access to the full specifications. For instance, this would be Base I, Base II, and SMS for Visa.
Since every network implements ISO8583 differently, an ISO8583 message on the Mastercard network differs from an ISO8583 message on the Visa network, and a non-trivial mapping must be implemented by a processor who wants to process messages across both networks.
There are some subtleties around whether a payment comes from a debit card (single message) or a credit card (dual message), but the overall concept is the same. There is a clear distinction between authorization, which happens within seconds of the time a customer initiates a payment, and settlement, done once or a few times per day by batching transactions together. This results in a net settlement principle.
In Lightning, the merchant creates an invoice that the customer receives out of band (with a QR code typically), and then the customer manually approves the invoice by cryptographically signing a message.
If the payment must go through multiple hops between the customer and merchant, it might take a while for the payment to arrive. Although there is a small possibility that the payment can be stuck for a long time if a node unexpectedly goes offline, on average, payments settle in seconds.
On the other hand, with a direct channel between the customer and merchant, a Lightning payment will settle in a subsecond.
But regularly, Lightning payments will be declined, if for instance there is not enough liquidity in some channel along the way.
Payments are declined in the card space for different reasons: if there is not enough money in a bank account, or if the payment is deemed fraudulent, or rarely if the host is offline (this happened to Chime recently and created a lot of frustration).
Since Lightning payments are cleared at the time a payment is sent, this type of payment is in the category of gross settlement.
Message flow
Both card networks and Lightning operate on an electronic level by passing messages across different servers, representing different entities.
For card transactions, the flow is fixed. For an authorization, it basically always looks like this:
[ Image from https://pramodrrao.wordpress.com/2016/05/27/payment-in-brick-and-mortar-world-vs-online-world/ ]
It’s a pull payment in the sense that the merchant’s point of sale is initiating the transaction.
Any merchant that is part of the card network, and has a card holder’s card number, can initiate a transaction to receive money — but this won’t necessarily be approved, cardholder verification may be deemed to be insufficient or a fraud filter may cause the transaction to be declined.
In Lightning, the message flow is not structured as it is for the card system. Anyone can be a merchant, a payer, or an intermediary. It will probably be common to be all of these at the same time!
The unstructured aspect can clearly be seen with this representation of the Lightning network (interactive version):
Lightning is a push system, in the sense that the user always has control of his funds and must approve every transaction. A node can’t pull money from a user’s account.
Cryptography
The use of cryptography for processing transactions really started with the advent of the EMV chip.
The first EMV chip card dates back to 1997, but this technology was introduced in the public in the UK in 2003. In the US, migration from the very insecure magnetic stripe to the much more secure EMV chip continues, slowly. Eg: For some reason, my BitPay card still doesn’t have a chip, which makes it very prone to fraudulent transactions.
The crypto algorithms underlying EMV were chosen multiple decades ago, and could be considered dated due to recent innovations in cryptography, but are still secure for the most part (well, SHA-1 was broken, but that is not enough to compromise card networks 🤔 ?).
Online authorization uses both TripleDES to create a MAC, called ARPC and ARQC. PIN also uses symmetric encryption with TripleDES. Offline authorization relies on asymmetric cryptography with RSA, SHA-1, and certificates.
Just as ISO8583 defines a framework for financial messaging, EMVCo has defined the base set of functionalities for the EMV chip. This is publicly accessible on the EMVCo website (the cryptography is described in Book 2). Each payment network further specializes the specification, for instance, Visa has V.I.S., or Visa Integrated Circuit Card Specification. This document is only accessible to the members of the Visa network.
The chip is the bearer of the cryptographic keys used for the cryptographic calculations and is considered secure enough to keep the key safe. With millions of dollars worth of equipment, the key might be recovered by an attacker, but because the keys would only apply to the particular card number (keys are unique per card), and because cards themselves don’t hold any fund (unlike crypto), knowing the key would only be helpful to bias authorizations in favor of an approved transaction. This is not worth the effort.
Now…if you do an online transaction (card-not-present, as it’s called in the industry) you’re…back to square one! No strong cryptography to authenticate the transaction. 😱 And it is also the case with cards that are still magnetic.
Most European countries use a form of two-factor authentication (2FA) for online transactions (3D Secure), but this has not been deployed in the US. More and more card transactions are happening online, but they are also the least secure transactions since they don’t rely on strong cryptography. Google Pay and Apple Pay are helping on this as they require a 2FA, and it’s pretty transparent to the users.
Not surprisingly given the open nature of the Lightning network, it makes heavy use of cryptography:
Payments are currently based on the SHA256 hash function.
Signing invoices is done with an Elliptic curve (same as for Bitcoin, secp256k1).
Nodes are identified by public keys, using the same secp256k1.
Communication between each node is encrypted using ChaCha20, and handshakes are done with the noise protocol.
Onion routing is reducing the odds of knowing the sender and receiver.
Whereas EMV was designed almost 30 years ago, Lightning relies on recent cryptography that is more secure and can work in an open, but also more hostile, environment.
In contrast to card systems, Lightning doesn’t have a concept of card-present transactions (which make use of cryptography with an EMV), or card-non-present transaction (which don’t). All Lightning transactions rely on strong cryptography.
One comment on the chain of trust. While payment networks have a chain of trust based on contractual agreements, Lightning has a cryptographic chain of trust.
Tech Compliance
With the goal of preventing fraud, the card industry has developed, with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Security Standard Council, a compliance program called PCI-DSS. The goal is to make sure that every entity on earth that processes card transactions is bound by strict rules that, for instance, make sure that card numbers are not stored in clear text, are accessible only to the people who have a business reason to access those numbers, etc.
The goal of PCI-DSS is to limit fraud in the industry, especially as more and larger hacks happen, disclosing millions of card numbers.
The drawback is the enormous cost of this program, which in aggregate may well be $24.6B by 2022.
Lightning, like Bitcoin, is free of technical mandatory compliance requirements. It doesn’t mean nevertheless that security is not paramount. Lightning are hot wallet so customers have to do some work to safeguard their funds.
Business and financial
Currency
Visa manages 160+ currencies, which may cover all of the government currencies in the world, with the exception of countries sanctioned by the US.
Lightning is often associated with Bitcoin but can operate on pretty much any blockchain protocol that has a hash function, some timing features, and a reliable, predictable settlement layer.
Another important part of the network is currency conversion. Cards today can be used anywhere in the world, to pay for goods and services in pretty much any currency. The currency conversion is done in the back end either by Visa or the card issuer (generating additional revenue), and is transparent to the card user. This is a great innovation that is one less point of friction for frequent travelers such as myself.
Is it different for Lightning? Nope, it’s pretty much the same. Although most of the experimentation today relies on top of the Bitcoin network, there is no technical limitation to sending BTC to settle an LTC invoice. Now the philosophical question is whether it will make as much sense to have different internet currencies for payment, assuming Lightning can scale as much as needed.
An important point is that there is no overlap between the currencies that card networks manage, and the currencies that the Lightning network can work with. Said another way, card networks don’t settle in crypto, and crypto networks can’t “interact” with card networks. The cards that allow you to spend cryptocurrency today does the currency conversion outside of the card network, typically by selling BTC and “loading up” USD.
Will this separation change in the future? Maybe… but does this really make sense?
Financial risk
Let’s dive into the financial aspects of card networks and Lightning, what’s common and what is different.
Liquidity and solvency are key aspects.
Card networks are settling transactions on a net basis. The network is aggregating all the transactions during a period window, for instance, 24 hours (the period is extended for weekends), and then calculating how much each member bank owes or is owed to or from one another.
But to facilitate payments and accounting, card networks act as intermediaries so that the banks that owe money send it to the card network’s bank, and banks that are owed money receive it from the card network’s bank.
Why is that a big deal? Because Mastercard is taking on solvency risk related to all the members of their network.
This flow is clearly described in this paper published by the Fed:
While the majority of funds are transferred within the first few hours after settlement cutoff, MasterCard monitors settlement constantly throughout the day to see who has paid and who hasn’t. If MasterCard sees a position, especially one of $1 million or more, that isn’t settling promptly, that situation is prioritized for action and review.
Let’s dive into the implication of this. As MasterCard takes on counterparty risk related to the members of their network, they want to make sure that those members are well-financed. But as MasterCard operates in 160+ countries, what’s the best way to do it? Partner with banks! Banks are some of the most regulated entities in the world, and relying on the banking system allows Mastercard and other card networks to scale in the number of countries they operate while providing them with the assurance that their members will continue to be solvent.
This is why card payment networks are by nature walled gardens.
As described in this Fed report, settlements are ultimately done through the FedWire network.
There are a lot of other financial risks in card networks, but one that is worth mentioning is the credit risk. This risk is not borne by the card network, but by the issuer.
Lightning is very different in that regard because, for the first time in history, payments can be made instantly, without any counterparty risk, across the world.
So there are no such things as counterparty risk, but instead, Lightning is susceptible to technology risk. A software bug could result in loss of funds as a result of a hack, or a bug could simply make money unspendable. However since Lightning is open source, there is a good reason to believe that, over time, this risk will be drastically reduced.
Liquidity
For Lightning, liquidity is probably the biggest hurdle that must be overcome before it can really take off.
The issue is the following: to be able to pay, a customer needs to have outbound liquidity. To receive a payment, a merchant needs inbound liquidity. Every channel has a defined sum of money in it, split between inbound and outbound liquidity.
At a high level the issue is that:
Funds must be locked. If a merchant only receives payments, or a customer only sends payments, then at some point the channel will be “exhausted” and additional payments won’t be possible until channels are rebalanced.
There are a lot of articles that discuss this, so I’ll defer to those for further explanation.
There is no need to lock up funds for members of card networks. Issuing banks are supposed to pay “within the next few hours” when it’s time for settlement. Likewise, acquiring banks (the merchants’ banks) receive their funds in the following hour.
There is a major exception to this. In the US specifically, FinTechs don’t normally apply for a banking license (because it takes many years to obtain one), so instead, they partner with banks. As banks themselves are focused on risk management, they limit their own risk by requiring the FinTech to have a reserve account, which equals a multiple of a FinTech’s daily card transaction volume. This reserve could be seen as similar to the Lightning liquidity lockup.
Fraud
If liquidity is the Achilles heel of Lightning, Fraud is the weakness of the card networks. Not only does it cost a tremendous amount of money to prevent fraud, but fraud itself also costs in the “$100b range” according to The Nilson Report. This is approximately 0.07% of card transaction volume.
The reason this fraud exists is because of the many flows of the card network. Most of this fraud happens either with online transactions, or magnetic stripe transactions, neither of which are secured by the cryptographic components of the EVM and so are easy to counterfeit.
I believe that with Lightning (non-custodial), as long as cryptography is not broken, fraud will be pretty much nonexistent. Is this an unfair advantage?
Chargeback
Chargebacks are related to fraud, but there are some subtleties. Card networks have zero liability policy which is meant to protect card users.
Chargebacks include abusive transactions from unscrupulous cardholders that take advantage of chargebacks, as well as transactions that customers genuinely forget about and then dispute. Since each dispute cost dozens of dollars to resolve, this can be a significant burden, especially for low margin merchants.
This results in increased expense for merchants that must bear the cost of fraud (unless it’s an EMV transaction, in that case, the liability shifts to the issuer); this cost is ultimately passed on to the customer in the form of higher prices for products and services.
Because there is an instant finality in Lightning transactions, there is no such concept of chargebacks. Is that good or bad? I think it’s good because it provides optionality.
Many services do not require chargeback protection. Especially if the payment is individually authorized. Pay for your electricity bill, a movie ticket, a coffee or lunch? Send money to your family? There is no need for an eventual chargeback. The goods and services have already been consumed by the time payments are made, or there is otherwise a trust relationship between the payer and payee.
Now, if you pay for airfare 6 months in the future? Ok, it wouldn’t be the first time a travel company went under, so in this case, being able to dispute the transaction as the service has not been delivered is very valuable. Similarly, this protection gives peace of mind when making payments to online merchants.
But this type of assurance could be dedicated and optional. By unbundling the payment and the insurance for the good or service provided, the cost of the payment can be reduced. This reduction of cost can ultimately be passed on to the customer.
Fees
The fee market is an interesting one. For Lightning, fees are a free market. Any node can set their own fee level per channel, so it’s expected that the fees will become competitive.
Lightning has not yet reached maturity, such that most nodes are operating at a loss today — the fees don’t yet cover the cost of running a secure Lightning node. A rise in fees is expected to happen eventually when a critical mass of payments will shift to Lightning.
For card payments, this is more complex. There are many layers of fees, which vary with regard to the type of merchants and geography. The interchange table from Visa or the fee schedule for merchants banking at Wells Fargo are good indicators of the complexity.
There are primarily 3 fees for merchants:
Interchange (fees earned by the issuer)
Network cost
Acquiring bank cost
Interchange fees and network costs are set by the network operator (except for the debit cards for large banks, these are regulated by the government). Acquiring bank costs are more of a free market.
That said, who is the customer of the network and why is there regularly tension between network operators and merchants?
One could think that the customer of the card networks is the card user…but actually the customer is the card issuer. Why? Because to foster adoption, network operators want to make sure you carry their card. Visa wants you to have a Visa card in your pocket the same way Mastercard wants you to have a Mastercard in your pocket. So how do card networks compete to get more banks issuing cards for their network? Well, they offer more revenue to the issuing banks, and they do this by increasing the interchange! And higher interchange means the merchant has to pay more for the issuer to settle a card transaction.
There is no doubt that card networks have done a tremendous job of facilitating payments, but the fee structure creates a conflict of interest regarding the interchange between issuing banks and merchants.
A simple fee structure, that doesn’t put pressure on merchants, is definitely an opportunity for Lightning.
Privacy
Since card networks are a walled garden, it’s difficult to eavesdrop on transactions easily. Additionally, the only entities that receive the messages are part of the payment and authorization flow. An issuer would only know about the transactions that concern them.
But every intermediary has full details about the transactions (for card-present transactions only the PIN is encrypted). Card networks have to mitigate fraud, so having access to the transaction detail helps them developing algorithms to prevent fraud from happening.
For Lightning, messages are sent encrypted but use onion routing. On paper, this provides great privacy, as intermediaries have only limited information about a particular payment: the previous and next hop and the amount sent inclusive of fees. Unfortunately, it seems the privacy of Lightning is not really as robust as it sounds. Claudia Diaz gave a great presentation on this topic at The Lightning Conference in Berlin.
From an analytics point of view, payments are being tracked closely by the card payment networks, but what would be considered the most important metric, the global payment volume, is something that is just not trackable for Lightning.
Adoption and use cases
While one could argue that the potential use of Lightning is still speculative today given the fact that there are very, very few merchants accepting Lightning today, compared to the 46 million merchant locations accepting 3.3 billion cards issued for the Visa network alone.
The reason Lightning could get traction quickly and exponentially is because it’s open-source and entirely software-based. Every smartphone can become a Point-of-Sale or payment device just by installing a mobile app. This is differentiated from cards that still predominantly rely on some form of hardware. Even Google Pay or Apple Pay payments depend on an NFC receiver, requiring costly upgrades to Point-of-Sale systems.
Some of the unique use cases that Lightning enables:
Streaming payments
This is extremely relevant in so many areas when consumption is continuous, and would furthermore basically eliminate counterparty risk. Think of paying your electricity in real-time, every couple of seconds as you are using it. Oh, it’s sunny today and you have a surplus of electricity from your solar panel? Payment channels are bidirectional, now you get paid for every watt you provide to your neighbor.
Another obvious use case is pay per use, for instance, an API. Roasbeef, the CTO of Lightning Labs described this use case in detail in his presentation at The Lightning Conference.
Sub cent / nano payments
Micro donations, paying for an online article, online game…anytime an online sub dollar payment could make sense, the fixed cost of a card transaction prevents these payments from happening.
Privacy, KYC is optional
Do restaurants need to be aware of the name of every customer having lunch or dinner? Today every person that pays with a card is revealing their identity. Cash is still an option for most places, but in countries like Sweden or China where cash is disappearing rapidly, having the option of a privacy-oriented payment system is valuable. The recent protests in Hong Kong are a great example of why this is important. To avoid revealing their identity, protesters queued to buy transit passes using cash, rather than using digital payment methods.
Closing thoughts
Card networks like Visa are very mature, and from a consumer perspective, they work extremely well.
But there are still inefficiencies and costs underlying the apparent simplicity of the card swipe that are well in the hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Those costs are ultimately paid by the consumer.
Like Bitcoin, Lightning gives back a lot of control back to individuals. But with great power comes great responsibility. Users may lose funds if they don’t properly manage their keys. And a lot of education is needed before billions of people manage their keys confidently.
Yet, the potential benefits of Lightning are tremendous.
First, it enables Bitcoin to be a medium of exchange. The Bitcoin blockchain handles about 5 transactions per second, with a 10 to 60 minute time to finality and a $0.50 to $5 USD cost per transaction.
Second, it enables new payments use cases. While some of the “obvious” ideas have been listed above, many new uses are unimagined. Like with the internet of the eighties and nineties, we still have to discover what Lightning will ultimately enable.
Third, Lightning brings some privacy and can be a key part of freedom of speech and democracy.
To succeed, Lightning still has many challenges ahead, including high liquidity, convenient fiat on and off-ramps, high security, better UX, also some form of tax de minimis exemption in the US. I believe all these will be solved in the coming years.
Probably the biggest question is: how to solve the chicken and egg problem inherent in payment systems — payers and payees need to both use a method of payment — before a network effect and mass adoption kick in?
Card network started on the issuer side, by making sure every person has a card in their pocket. Will Lightning starts the same way, or will merchants favor this first because they have fewer fees associated with it? | https://medium.com/galoymoney/visa-and-lightning-how-do-they-compare-1f4d89bdbbaf | ['Nicolas Burtey'] | 2019-12-17 21:27:10.580000+00:00 | ['Lightning Network', 'Payments', 'Bitcoin', 'Visa', 'Cryptocurrency'] |
You’re Not Writing Enough… And That’s Okay Right Now | It’s Day… Whatever of Lockdown. Everywhere around me people are reaching outside of their comfort zones, trying to adjust to the New Normal. Going above and beyond to try and stay healthy and connected during this confusing time. Probably using features and apps in ways you hadn’t ever planned on. (I, for one, never expected to receive a Zoom invite from my dad.)
What I’ve found to help me is to stick to some kind of loose morning routine. To have a sleep schedule. I’ve been trying to move throughout the day and get some sunlight if I can. But because of social distancing, there’s a lot more literal and figurative space in my life. Most likely, in all of our lives.Which — as a people-loving, introverted writer — is both a boon and a burden for me.
I don’t think I have to explain the burden. But the boon? Suddenly, I’m ordered to stay home. Automatically ridding my life of a whole lotta distraction. Which makes me excited. Because maybe I can finally sit down, organize all of the projects I want to work on and then start working on them.
Because, whether you’re conscious of it or not, we’re wired to believe that any amount of “free” time is — and should be — opportunity to “be productive.” And in a capitalist society like ours (don’t worry; I’m not going to launch into a civics lesson), we’re conditioned for “not enough.” So this pressure to constantly be getting more done. Which can be exhausting.
Brené Brown describes this in her book Daring Greatly:
[F]or many of us, our first waking thought of the day is “I didn’t get enough sleep.” The next one is “I don’t have enough time.” …Before we even sit up in bed… we’re already inadequate, already behind, already losing, already lacking something. And by the time we go to bed at night, our minds are racing with a litany of what we didn’t get, or didn’t get done, that day.
Sound familiar? Have you been plagued with a niggling sense of guilt recently, ever since social distancing? That you could be — and should be — doing more?
There’s no excuse, right? Many of us have been “gifted” with this extra space and time. We should be the most productive we’ve ever been! We should be writing multiple stories a day! We should clean the entire house! We should be crafting and cooking and figuring out what else we can broadcast ourselves doing!
Well… not exactly. See, the thing is, there is an excuse. There are several excuses. Why? Because we’re living through a pandemic, people. An experience that obviously threatens people’s physical wellbeing but also their emotional, mental, and psychological health.
And as someone who has lived with mental illness for the past 11 years, I’m well aware that all of the invisible hardships we’re being put through are most certainly taking their toll. It takes energy to process what the world is going through. It takes effort to change your life for the good of the community.
It’s all work.
While we’re all probably feeling some sort of pressure to be productive during this time, it seems that writers might be feeling it more acutely. Because it seems whenever a writer has any time on their hands, they’re expected to write. If they’re truly “serious” about being a writer. We could be working to put a new story out there. Update our blog. Work on our ever-looming book.
We put this special pressure on ourselves that if we have time and aren’t writing, then that’s time wasted. It comes from capitalism, sure, but also from one of the truest (and most annoying ) pieces of advice ever:
Wanna be a better writer? Fucking write, already!
Again, it’s true! As it’s true of most forms of art or skill. But for whatever reason, writers are plagued more by this truism than others. Maybe it’s because no matter where we are, we should be able to write. Notebook, phone, computer — it’s all portable. We really have no excuse. It’s not like we need special clothing or equipment. Get inspired on the beach? Start writing in the sand! Get inspired while locked in an empty room? Start writing on the walls in blood!
And maybe some of you out there have been able to use this time in a way that supports your writing. Maybe you’ve been able to attend online writing classes or have been able to practice your craft.
But if your writing productivity hasn’t exploded, that is okay! If you haven’t been able to write at all, that also is okay.
Did you hear me? It’s okay if you haven’t been writing more. The most important thing is keeping yourself, those around you, and your community healthy. To help prevent the spread of Covid-19. Writing can wait. It’ll be there whenever you’re ready. | https://medium.com/swlh/youre-not-writing-enough-and-that-s-okay-right-now-dcc51c62a13a | ['Rachel Drane'] | 2020-03-26 17:45:56.363000+00:00 | ['Life', 'Writing', 'Inspiration', 'Mental Health', 'Covid 19'] |
Our partner IDS Media UK is preparing 200 hand sanitizer kiosks | Our partner IDS Media UK is preparing 200 hand sanitizer kiosks for deployment across gyms and medical clinics! This is great technology for fighting the spread of germs and virus. Learn more: | https://medium.com/novisign/our-partner-ids-media-uk-is-preparing-200-hand-sanitizer-kiosks-for-deployment-across-gyms-and-b14346705d06 | ['Eva T'] | 2020-03-20 15:38:17.166000+00:00 | ['Sanitizers', 'Digital Signage', 'Novisign', 'Coronavirus'] |
Progressive Web Apps: The Future of Web Apps? | As we make advancements, the number of daily mobile phone users is increasing. According to research, the number of mobile users is increasing by around 100 Million every year. Due to the increasing usage and space requirements, at times, users choose to access the web application instead of downloading the native app. That’s why it is necessary to have a good web application irrespective if you have a similar native app or not. Due to technological advancements, user expectations have also gone up.
To solve these issues arising in the latest times, Progressive Web Apps has started becoming the first choice of many companies to give the customers a better experience. Let us understand more about PWAs and the success stories of companies that have adopted it.
Steps to install a PWA on your device
Web App to PWA on your device
Visit the website of your choice. (PWA enabled) Using the settings tab, select ‘Add to Home Screen’ It gives you options to modify the app name if wish you to else, keep it the way it is and click ‘Add’ This will add the PWA of your choice to the home screen of your device
I have added various PWAs to my home screen above like Facebook, Flipkart, Instagram, and Medium. Getting the app was so easy. But that is not even the best part. When you open this app, you will be able to browse the content even when you do not have access to the internet. You have offline access to the app! How cool is that?
Introducing Progressive Web Apps (PWA)
PWA is application software, delivered through the web. It is basically a hybrid of a web and a mobile application. It can be developed using common web technologies like HTML, CSS, and Javascript.
It is platform-independent, gives a similar experience as a web application but in the form of a mobile application. PWAs are web applications that use web standards that allow users to install and access it like any other mobile app.
It can be accessed offline without an internet connection, by leveraging the data cached from your last interaction with the app, sync in the background, and later provide native app-like experience. If you use a mobile browser and have the appropriate flags turned on, you will be prompted to install the app when you visit the website. That’s why it depends on the user’s browser capabilities to provide you with an app-like experience. It progressively enhances its features to provide a look and feel like any other native app.
Why do we need PWA
When there are native apps already, how does PWA stand out:
Fast: PWAs provides a faster and consistent experience. From the moment the user adds the app to the home screen, you can cache the data, it is very fast to restart the app with or without network. Reliable: By using service workers, data caching is possible is to provide an offline experience to the user. Thus, there is always some data that will be displayed, even when there is no network available. Also, it uses HTTPs to provide data to the user, so the internet security is maintained. Engaging: Every app should provide certain features to make sure the user is engaged throughout for better retention. PWAs provides many such features to enable good user engagement and keeps the user notified like offline availability, push notifications, full screen, splash screens. Easy to Develop: Compared to most native apps, PWAs are platform-independent, so you only have to maintain only one codebase. Also, there is no need to worry about the testing for iOS or Android versions. No need to go through the App Store or Google Play publishing process, just upload to a server and your PWA is readily accessible through any device. It makes the development before and after phase faster. High Conversion Rate: For native apps, you need to download and keep updating it from App Store or Play Store. With PWAs, as we saw above, once you have the URL, add that to your home screen and BAM! your app is ready to be accessed from your home screen. This faster and seamless process has helped many companies to increase user conversions. Less Data Consumption: As they run on browsers, less data is consumed. They render the data to be cached in a much lighter way. Since you do not install the app from the app store or play store, less storage is used on the mobile. Integrated User Experience: PWAs provide an experience that is integrated and seamless throughout. Since they can be added to the home screen of the device, push notifications, and looks like any other native app.
Core Requirements for PWA
As per the checklist for Progressive Web Apps by Google, there some minimum, core requirements:
Web App Manifest
It is a JSON file that provides meta-information about the web app. It contains information like the app icon (after installation), background-color of the app, name of the app, and so on. We can create the manifest file as per our needs or we can use tools to generate one for us.
Service Workers
Service Workers are event-driven workers that run in the background of an application, which acts as a proxy between the network and application. They are able to intercept network requests and cache data in the background based on the last user interaction. This can be used to load data when offline. It is a javascript script that listens to events like fetch and install, then loads data accordingly.
Served over HTTPS
For a PWA, the web application must be served over a secure network, HTTPS. Being a secure site is not only a core requirement, but it also establishes your application as a trusted site for users demonstrating trust, reliability, and avoiding middle man attacks.
Google has published success stories of companies that implemented PWA. Read here about how companies have used the web to create amazing web experiences for their users, some have improved performance load time, have optimized their user experience, and had an 80% increase in conversions and SEO performance.
MakeMyTrip.com PWA delivered 3X improvement in conversion rates. Twitter Lite had a 75% increase in tweets sent and a 20% decrease in bounce rate. Users appreciate the faster and seamless experience, helps companies with user retention with the PWA than the traditional native app.
In a nutshell
PWAs have a huge potential to increase conversion rates because they use technology that makes it faster to use, at a low cost and work flawlessly across various platforms. It solves the mobile conversion dilemma and the desktop responsiveness challenge by bridging the divide. PWAs make the most use of the latest technologies by providing a combination of the web and mobile apps to the users.
Developed with modern APIs to deliver higher capabilities, reliability, and installability for any type of user, in any part of the globe, on any smart device by using a single codebase.
Companies are shifting to PWAs, making it a game changer in the software world and have a long way to go.
I hope you found this blog helpful and increased your understanding of Progressive Web Apps. Do comment below with any questions or suggestions.
Hit the 👏 button below if you liked the blog! :) | https://medium.com/udgama-engineering/progressive-web-apps-the-future-of-web-apps-1a3b44142cbb | ['Shreya Ghate'] | 2020-05-03 12:48:00.314000+00:00 | ['Pwa', 'JavaScript', 'Software Development', 'React', 'Web Development'] |
The Lifelong Struggle To Be Yourself | The Lifelong Struggle To Be Yourself
In a world that wants you to be someone, there is an eternal struggle to find out who you are. Perhaps you’ll never find it
What does it mean to be yourself?
From our earliest days, we are told to follow a rule — a staple advisory for successful life and work. “Be yourself”, they say. “Don’t try to be someone you’re not”.
What does this mean?
As children, our parents and carers discourage us from playing certain roles. They encourage us to adopt more desirable ones that fit in with the design of our social group. They buy us trucks and dolls and guns, plastic kitchens and superhero outfits. We watch TV shows and visit the movies. We mix with other kids who are sculpted the same as us. These things comprise the force that sculpts our identity.
Ever-increasing circles of society mould us into mini-others. The adults, who appear from our naive position to know better than us, set the rules of the game and they decide in large part, who it is we should be.
But beneath these outer layers of personal identity, there is something subtle, quiet, and unidentifiable. Although we sometimes sense it, we can’t quite put our finger on it. And despite the pervasive nature of the surface level self, it exists, waiting for us to uncover it.
To do so means undoing years of conditioning towards the ideological self. But for individual creative expression, we must embark on the journey. We have no choice if we are to break the mould, bring about innovation and create beautiful things. | https://medium.com/the-creative-mind/the-lifelong-struggle-to-be-yourself-e7dad489714e | ['Larry G. Maguire'] | 2019-10-22 20:48:53.971000+00:00 | ['Art', 'Creativity', 'Philosophy', 'Self', 'Psychology'] |
Cover Up or Someone Will See You | Photo by Anton Malanin on Unsplash
Stay warm, we told you.
Here is a long skirt to cover your bare knees. And a dress too big — but don’t worry, you’ll grow into it.
And here. Another sweater — handknit with you in mind. Put it on before you offend someone.
Prayer shawls and sackcloth. Heavy drapes to hide your figure. Trust me, this is a good look for you.
Too hot? You get used to it.
Too itchy? Well, you can’t just strip it all off. Everyone will see. You do realize you’d have to peel off each layer to get at what’s scratching your skin.
Now you’ve gone and done it. A wide heap at your feet.
Some of us look away. Some of us try to shield you. Some grab your discarded clothing and fling it back, hoping it will stick. Go back to the way you were, they cry.
Some others draw closer. They sit with you in your nakedness. They sit with tall backs. They lean close.
I see you’re one of those who won’t rush to re-dress. You close your eyes and soak the sunlight straight into your blood vessels. You walk and don’t even mind when blades of grass get stuck between your toes. You run headlong into the ocean. You spin in circles, kicking up sand. You laugh.
Eventually you’ll go back to your garment pile. You’ll flap each one out in the wind. You might find one or two pieces that still fit. You might put one careful finger through a sleeve.
Or you might find, on a cold night, that a huddle by a fire is a better way to keep warm. | https://medium.com/indian-thoughts/cover-up-or-someone-will-see-you-40cff8109a7 | ['Courtney Christine'] | 2019-07-01 16:11:17.112000+00:00 | ['Self-awareness', 'Religion', 'Self Improvement', 'Self', 'Poetry'] |
How To Write a Marketing User Story | How To Write a Marketing User Story
And why it should be the first thing you do for your customer
Photo by Alexander Andrews on Unsplash
In the previous post, I mentioned the idea of how shifting the attention from transactions to relationships would help marketing teams in delivering value both to the customers and the company. I’m sure it is nothing new for many of you, but I understand that others may find this transition pointless, complicated, and ultimately discouraging. That’s why I suggested to start small by making the hierarchy of roles and responsibilities in Marketing more flat and open, and by replacing a certain waterfall approach with a more collaborative flow of work, the planning of which could involve the entire team.
Changing abruptly is never a good idea. So, instead of knocking this new approach over the heads of your coworkers, you’ll have to start small. For instance, it’s better to be careful with branded terms, like “agile”, “lean”, or “kanban.” After all, no one likes to be taught from above by another team member. People want advice, not lessons.
In this piece, I’ll show you how to write a user story to make sure you deliver gradual change to your customers. The idea of user stories comes from agile software development, but, in my opinion, they’re the first and easiest step to ensure your services are going to be of great value for the user.
Let’s get into it! | https://medium.com/better-marketing/how-to-write-marketing-user-stories-1b50c6adf5fe | ['Emanuele Nicolotti'] | 2019-09-05 11:59:44.724000+00:00 | ['Marketing', 'Storytelling', 'Lean Startup', 'Teamwork', 'Agile'] |
Every thing you need to know about LSTMs in Keras | Every thing you need to know about LSTMs in Keras Ashwinkaurav Follow Sep 18 · 3 min read
Introduction
LSTMs were in existence for a very long but came into popularity due to their work in NLP i.e. Seq2Seq models which lead to neural machine translation (ex: Language Translators and Chatbots) . The struggle I had in understanding LSTMs (thanks to Keras for their poor explanation of some of the terms in documentation) made me write this blog for those who are going through a similar phase @_@. I promise you IT AINT GONNA BE TOUGH!
This blog is moreover related to how LSTMs work.
Structure
Credit: Colah’s blog on LSTM.
The first thing to note is that unlike other neural networks LSTM takes input in timesteps and every timestep there is an output i.e. Ht-1 , Ht , Ht+1 which is known as its hidden state, we generally refer to the last hidden state as Output.
Hidden State
And there is one more thing to notice that is the cell state , at every time step there is a cell state. Look at the figure below to know what is a cell state.
Cell State Ct.
To know the mathematics and more information on why these cell states and hidden states are used and what are they I would suggest you to go through the links I have cited at the end.
Implementation in Keras
The input should always be in the shape (batch_size,time_steps,features)
input = Input(shape=(time_steps,features))
lstm = LSTM(units=10)
output = lstm(input)
There is a general misconception about the “units” argument (even I had that at first) , most of the people at first assumes that the units means the number of cells in our LSTM , but that’s not the case.
The argument ‘units’ actually decides the output shape of the LSTM , which means that all the hidden states and cell states will be of shape (units , ).
Number of lstm cells is automatically decided by the input shape we give in the input layer.
Flow of data :
Shape of data at different positions
Ht-1 is of shape (units,) which we input as an argument ‘units’.
Xt is of shape (num_features , ) , Ht-1 and Xt are concatenated , so the new shape becomes (units+num_features , ).
All the weights W1,W2,W3,W4 will be of shape (units , units+num_features) .
Shape of W5=(units , units )
And the biases B1,B2,B3,B4,B5 will be of shape (units , ).
After matrix multiplication : W*[num_features,units]
(units , units+num_features) * (units+num_features , )
Shape = (units , )
We will only get the final output i.e. hidden state at last step
2. return_sequences
When return_sequences is set to True in argument , the lstm will output a list of the hidden states at each time step rather than the hidden state at last time step. By default it is set to False.
input = Input(shape=(time_steps,features))
lstm = LSTM(units=10,return_sequences=True)
output = lstm(input)
Output shape will be ( time_steps , units )
3. return_state
When return_state is set to True in argument , the lstm will output both hidden_state , cell_state of the last timestep. Unfortunately there is no way known to me by which we can get cell_state at each timestep.
And I bet you know what would be the shape of both ;-).
input = Input(shape=(time_steps,features))
lstm = LSTM(units=10,return_state=True)
hidden_state,cell_state = lstm(input)
4. return_state,return_sequences | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/every-thing-you-need-to-know-about-lstms-in-keras-6f1e95a4d114 | [] | 2020-10-06 12:51:03.472000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'NLP', 'Lstm'] |
8 UI design trends for 2020 | The rapid growth of technology influences design trends every year. As designers we need be aware of the existing and upcoming design trends, constantly learning, improving and expanding our design toolkit in order to be up to date on the current market. Based on my research, experience and observations I’ve selected very carefully 8 UI/UX design trends that you should watch in 2020. Let’s get started then! :)
Illustrations have been in digital product design for a long time. Their evolution in the last years is very impressive. Illustrations as very popular design elements add natural feel and “human touch” to overall UX of our products. Illustrations are also very strong attention grabbers: at the top of that by applying motion to these illustrations we might bring our products to the life and make them stand out— adding extra details and personality.
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Onboarding animations — Virgil Pana
Another benefit of applying motion is capturing users attention and making users engage with your product. Animations are also one of the most effective ways to tell the story about your brand, product or services.
Microinteractions exist pretty much in every single app or website. You see them every time when you’re opening your favourite app —for instance Facebook has tons of different microinteractions and I assume that the “Like” feature is just the perfect example. Sometimes we are not even aware of existence, because they are so so obvious, natural and “blended” into user interfaces. Altough, If you remove them from your product you will notice very quickly that something really important is missing.
Menu toggle close animation — Aaron Iker
Tab bar active animation — Aaron Iker
Generally speaking, in UI/UX design sometimes even really small and subtle change might make huge impact. Microinteractions are the perfect proof that details and attention to them might greatly improve the overall user experience of your digital products and place them on the next/higher level. Every year, every new device brings new oppurtinitues for creating brand new and innovative microinteractions. 2020 wouldn’t be exception for sure.
3D graphic exist pretty much everywhere — in movies, video games, adverts on the streets. 3D graphic has been introduced few decades ago and since then has improved and evolved dramatically. Mobile and web technology is also growing rapidly fast. New web browser capabilities have opened the door for 3D graphic allowing us as designers to create and implement amazing 3D graphics into modern web and mobile interfaces.
3D flip menu by Minh Pham
Car health report UI by Gleb Kuznetsov
Creating and then integration of 3D graphic into web and mobile interfaces requires some specific skills and tons of work, but very often the results are very rewarding.
Apple AirPods Pro landing page
3D graphic renders allows to present the product or services in the a lot more interactive and engaging way: for instance 3D graphic renders could be viewed in 360 degree presentation improving the overall UX of the product.
In 2020 even more brands will use 3D render models to present the product or services in order to emulate the real world (in-store) shopping experience.
2019 has been a big year for VR. In the last years we have seen a lot of progress and excitement in VR headsets — mostly in gaming industry. We need to keep in mind that gaming industry very often brings innovation and new technologies into digital product design. Research proves that VR is no exception as after Oculus Quest in 2019 launch many opportunities have opened for other industries. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has already tested exciting hand interaction feature and officially announced hand-tracking update for Quest, coming early 2020!
Oculus Quest — hand interaction feature
PlayStation Virtual Reality Website Design by Kazi Mohammed Erfan
Sony and Microsoft will release their new generation consoles in 2020 holiday season. These would bring a lot opportunities and room to growth for VR technology.
In the last years we have seen a lot of progress, excitement and improvement of AR. The world’s leading tech companies are investing millions into AR development , so we should expect to expand and grow this technology in 2020. Even Apple has introduced their own AR toolkit called ARKIT 3 to help designers and developers build AR based products.
Apple ARKit 3 by Apple
Public transit app by Yi Li
House of Plants AR Concept by Nathan Riley
There are endless opportunities to innovate and create brand new and exciting experiences in AR space. UI design for AR will be one of the major trends in 2020, so as designers we should be prepared and eager to learn new tools, principles when creating AR experiences.
Generally speaking Skeuomorphic design refers to the design elements that are created in a realistic style/way to match the real life objects. The growth of VR/AR technology and latest design trends shown on the most popular design platforms (Dribbble, Behance etc.) might make skeuomorphic design comeback in 2020 — but this time with a lot modern fashion and slightly modified name: “New skeuomorphism” (also called Neumorphism).
Skeuomorph Mobile Banking | Dark Mode by Alexander Plyuto
Simple Music Player by Filip Legierski
Sleep Cycle App — Neumorphism Redesign by Devanta Ebison
As you’ve probably noticed: Neumorphism represents very detailed and precise design style. Highlight, shadows, glows — attention to details is very impressive and definitely on spot. Neumorphism has already inspired a lot of designers from all over the world and there is big chance that Neumorphism will be the biggest UI design trend in 2020.
In the last years we have noticed huge grown of asymmetrical layouts in digital product design. Traditional / “template” based layouts are definitely going away. 2020 will not be any different as this trend will continue. Proper usage of asymmetrical layouts add a lot of character, dynamic and personality to our designs, so they do not template based anymore.
Limnia Fine Jewelry Grid — Zhenya Rynzhuk
Carine fashion store — selection screen concept — Dawid Tomczyk
There is a lot of room for creativity as the number of options and opportunities when creating asymmetrical layouts are endless. Although, creating successful asymmetrical layouts requires some practice and time — placing elements randomly on the grid wouldn’t work :) also they should be used and implemented with care — always keeping in mind users needs : we do not want to get them lost when using our digital products — do we? :)
Stories play an very important role in overall UX in the digital product design. You might see them very often on the landing pages as introduction to the brand, product or new service. Storytelling is all about transferring data to the users in the best possible informative and creative way. This could be achieved by copyrighting mixed with strong and balanced visual hierarchy (typography, illustrations, high-quality photos, bold colours, animations and interactive elements).
A+WQ / Young Lab Page Story of The Week Animation by Zhenya Rynzhuk
Free Sketch Template :: Mimini by Tran Mau Tri Tam
Storytelling really helps to create positive emotions and relationships between your brand and users. Storytelling might also make your brand a lot more memorable and making users feel like they are part of our products or services, so they would like to associate with them. Having said that, storytelling is also great and efficient marketing tool that might greatly increase the sales of your products/services. Storytelling as the very successful tool will continue and expand in 2020.
Summary: 8 UI/UX design trends for 2020
#1 Animated Illustrations
By applying motion to illustrations we might really make our designs stand out and bring them to the life — adding extra details and personality.
#2 Microinteractions
Microinteractions are the perfect proof that details and attention to them might greatly improve the overall user experience of your digital products and place them on the next/higher level.
#3 3D Graphics in web and mobile interfaces
New web browser capabilities have opened the door for 3D graphic allowing us as designers to create and implement amazing 3D graphics into modern web and mobile interfaces.
#4 Virtual Reality
Gaming industry very often brings innovation and new technologies into digital product design.
#5 Augmented Reality
There are endless opportunities to innovate and create brand new and exciting experiences in AR space. UI design for AR will be one of the major trends in 2020, so as designers we should be prepared and eager to learn new tools, principles when creating AR experiences.
#6 Neumorphism
The grow of VR/AR technology and latest design trends shown on the most popular design platforms might make skeuomorphic design comeback in 2020 — but this time with a lot modern fashion.
#7 Asymmetrical Layouts
There is a lot of room for creativity as the number of options and opportunities when creating asymmetrical layouts are endless. Although, creating successful asymmetrical layouts requires some practice and time.
#8 Storytelling
Storytelling is all about transferring data to the users in the best possible informative and creative way. Storytelling is also great and efficient marketing tool that might greatly increase the sales of your products/services.
Which of the trends I’ve mentioned has got you the most excited? Is there any other trend that should have been included in the list? Please let me know In the comments section below! :) You might also check my previous articles:
Master the basics of visual: how to become a self-taught UI/UX designer
7 simple & effective methods to get better at Visual/UI Design
Top 8 soft skills in UI/UX design
If you have any questions please feel free to email me — always happy to help. You can also find me at: Dribbble, Behance, Instagram, Uplabs, Facebook, LinkedIn or by visiting personal portfolio website. | https://medium.com/@odvd29009x/8-ui-design-trends-for-2020-deab8b22b4ec | [] | 2020-12-20 10:19:30.921000+00:00 | ['Babies', 'Coronavirus', 'Health', 'Life', 'Mental Health'] |
The Struggle of Being a Woman | The concept of beauty standards has finally been blurred in our modern lives. There is no longer a standard that defines a certain type of body, hair color, makeup or fashion choices and a woman can finally choose who she wants to be without being pressured by the expectations of her culture.
You can see plus-size women looking just as gorgeous as their fellow skinny models in a famous underwear show as well as a stunning girl without any makeup embracing her flaws while promoting natural beauty.
Women are different. But whether we like to grow our body hair or remove it completely, or whether we prefer to do our full makeup before leaving home because it makes us feel confident and sexy, or wear no makeup at all because we want to showcase our natural self,no matter what kind of woman we chose and are comfortable to be, the bottom line is — it sure does cost a lot of money to be a woman.
Like any other woman, my mood is unpredictable. I can feel sexy and beautiful with messy hair and no makeup walking to the local coffee shop with my boyfriend in his oversized hoodie just as often as when I wear my best makeup and outfit to go out on a date night.
I can feel beautiful and attractive in any state and appearance as long as I feel confident about myself.
It’s not a secret that confidence comes from the inside. It is a complex feeling and most of the time depends on many factors — from being with the person who loves you and makes you feel more beautiful than you ever felt, to being happy about yourself at work and at home.
But sometimes, even when I’m in love with someone who brings out the best in me and makes my eyes brighter, I need an extra boost in my confidence. Maybe my period is getting closer, or I’m not so secure about my life at that moment, or maybe I simply don’t feel that good about myself. The fact is, sometimes (often) I find myself lacking confidence and immediately need to change something about myself. In response to this feeling, I typically buy new lingerie, put on some makeup, or go to a nail salon.
Recently, I’ve been thinking about what my life would be like if I constantly treated myself this way, making those beauty practices an essential part of my feminine life. So, I’ve decided to calculate how much extra money I or any other woman would have to spend every month in order to look our best on a day-to-day basis.
It turns out, it would cost a lot, and I’d be better off getting in touch with my inner beauty sooner:
$30 for your well-groomed nails you’ll be biting in two days
I rarely do my nails professionally. Not because I like the natural look of my nails, but because I don’t really care about them. I bite them and I rip off the hangnails when I’m nervous (read — always).
Most of the time I’m too ashamed to go to a nail salon knowing that a person who works there won’t be able to do anything but lecture me. At the same time, I always adored women with beautiful and fresh manicures. Their nails are always shiny, with appropriate length and color. It’s such a simple detail I always neglect that makes me want to start growing my nails back and take care of my hands until I forget about it the next day and rip the fuck out of my hangnails while watching a new Joker movie.
And don’t forget $40 for your pedi even though no one would see it.
Because, as 5 gay men on Netflix taught me — you deserve it, queen.
$45 for your glorious armpits and fresh bikini
I like to shave, not because of how it looks but because I feel more comfortable with a shaved, smooth body. I feel very itchy and most of the time, more sweaty as soon as my hair grows back.
I shave every other day, which I’m perfectly fine with since I like taking long baths almost every night, but being able to go to a specialist every 30 days to remove my hair for a whole month would sure save me a lot of time and provide much smoother results.
However, it’s too painful. And even though your body gets used to it the more you do it, if I want to experience unbearable pain, I’d rather get another tattoo or text my ex-boyfriend.
$50 for your Kardashian I-woke-up-like-this-lashes
I have very long and fluffy eyelashes. Mostly because of genetics, but part of it is the fact that I never wore mascara while my friends in school were experimenting with their bright and cheap makeup as most girls do in their teens these days. Still, I’m obsessed with eyelash extensions. And not the most natural kind.
For two years of my life, I saw my lash lady more often than my friends, updating a new set of 3D-volume-with-foxy-eye-and-wing-effect every month on a schedule. I love to wake up not even feeling guilty for being too lazy to do my makeup because I simply don’t need it with lashes like that.
One time, an officer on the American border couldn’t let me go without complimenting my extensions for 10 minutes before letting me in. I used to consider my lashes as something very essential and therefore, I was willing to use emergency money for my extension appointments. But it’s been over 6 months since I’ve gone there and lately, I always find more important things to spend money on. In fact, I got used to my natural lashes and don’t even care about going for extensions again. Or maybe I just gave up on my life.
$20 for I-swear-I-have-eyebrows
I don’t know about you, but I always had weird eyebrows. They’re thick and brown though they weirdly disappear near the base. It makes me look 10 years younger, and since I’m 21 I’m not always happy to look 11. Thus, I went through all the stages of learning how to fill my eyebrows from less successful (and equal) to more appropriate attempts. Luckily, there are places that are ready to turn any eyebrows into perfection and somehow magically keep it this way for a whole month. Eyebrow botox, lamination, henna — you name it as long as you’re ready to sacrifice $240 alimony per year to your eyebrows.
$300 for your post-breakup sugar coma
It’s almost summer and I realize that I’ve been leaving chocolate wraps all over my sheets at night, and my body has seen more sweets than water ever since my breakup. I am now a proud owner of a double chin and 5 extra kilograms beyond my comfortable weight. I convinced myself that it is time to buy a gym membership even though I usually use it one time, get scared of all the massive equipment and jocks and don’t return there until the next time I find myself sporting extra weight. I’ve always been more comfortable with home and outdoor workouts but since this is an emergency, I have to go for it.
$100–$2000 for your inner makeup artist
Most of the time, I don’t wear makeup unless I’m going to an important event, photoshoot or a date. Don’t judge me — I’m not trying to impress the guys, but being 5'2” with no makeup, I barely pass for a high school student. And even though I’m all up for student-teacher role-playing, I don’t want my new date to think he can actually go to jail.
I can’t say I’m very comfortable with my natural self and prefer myself without makeup most days, but I’m extremely lazy and would rather spend an extra hour watching one more episode of a show or playing with my cat instead of spending it in front of a mirror.
At the same time, I love experimenting with makeup. I’m passionate about beauty products and new makeup and have more points in Sephora than in my local grocery store. There’s a good chance I already have all of the expensive makeup that’s coming out any given month.
Makeup can be quite pricey. I wonder how much money I’d save on it if I was a man and never had to buy it.
And don’t let me start on skincare.
$140/month to make everyone believe blond is your natural color
I am one of the few people who never colored their hair. Even though experimenting with hair color is one of the most popular things in high school and college, I always loved my natural color and never felt the need to change it.
Nevertheless, most of my friends chose to change their natural color. As always, blondes go brunette, brunettes go blonde, and the less blonde go even blonder.
It turns out, it’s not as expensive to pay for your coloring, as it is to pay for your monthly appointment to maintain your color and touch up your roots.
In addition to it, here’s $100 worth of shampoo and hair care products to prolong your blonde and not make it go yellow after two showers.
And last, but not least,
$200 for emergency Amazon shopping while on PMS
Because you feel sad and those pillows look really good with that queen comforter.
Of course, not every woman needs or does all the things from this list. Some women don’t wear makeup, some have great skin they don’t need to take care of, and some just don’t spend all their money on useless stuff out of PMS-induced despair. All women are different and require their own things in order to feel more confident, prettier, or to occasionally cheer themselves up. But the fact remains, it’s really expensive (and time-consuming) to always look your best like most influencers and TV stars convince us to do.
But even though I sometimes feel jealous about men who only need a bar of soap, deodorant, and two pairs of underwear to look good, it’s still fun to be a woman. Because when we’re bored, or have some extra money, there’s a whole variety of things we can do to treat ourselves and feel better. | https://medium.com/the-haven/the-struggle-of-being-a-woman-2f366abfb037 | ['Julia Beaudett'] | 2019-11-02 04:49:57.807000+00:00 | ['Women', 'Money', 'Humor', 'Beauty', 'Life'] |
How to write a Ansible Playbook to Configure Reverse Proxy and Configure it with Apache Webserver? | Prerequisite:
yum configured in all the managed nodes Install ansible in the controller node Enter the IP’s of managed nodes in the ansible inventory
What is ansible playbook?
An Ansible playbook is a file where users write Ansible code, an organized collection of scripts defining the work of a server configuration. They describe a set of steps in a general IT process or a policy for your remote systems to enforce. Playbooks consist of one or more plays run in a particular order.
What is HAProxy?
HAProxy is a free, very fast and reliable solution offering high availability, load balancing, and proxying for TCP and HTTP-based applications. It is particularly suited for very high traffic web sites. Over the years it has become the standard for open source load balancing. It’s also free and comes with most Linux distributions.
Understanding Load Balancing
Load balancing ensures the availability, uptime and performance of your servers, websites and applications during traffic spikes. It’s especially important for companies with multiple data centers and high traffic websites or apps.
Load balancing is defined as follow:
A performance optimization tactic that provides fault-tolerance by splitting incoming tasks across multiple computing resources, thereby preventing any one resource from becoming overloaded.
To further explain, a load balancer is a workload distributor across multiple computing resources. These resources can be computer clusters, network links, CPUs or disk drives.
Load balancing aims to achieve optimal resource usage, maximize server stability, and prevent individual components from becoming overloaded. It divides the amount of work that a server has to do between two or more servers, allowing more work to get done in the same amount of time.
What is web server?
A web server is a computer that runs websites. It’s a computer program that distributes web pages as they are requisitioned. The basic objective of the web server is to store, process and deliver web pages to the users. This intercommunication is done using Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).
In this task we will create 1 load balancer and 2 web servers, so let’s install haproxy and httpd services in the respective systems and start the services.
Codes to install and start haproxy in load balancer:
Codes to install and start httpd service:
To configure a reverse proxy we have to update the IP of the web server in the configuration file of the Haproxy(/etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg). This can be achieved manually entering the ip or by dynamically updating the IP’s directly from the inventory in the controller node. We have to add certain codes in the configuration file of haproxy for updating it dynamically, Below are the codes to dynamically update the managed node ip’s in load balancer configuration file.
Now, run the playbook in which we have written the codes to Configure Reverse Proxy i.e. Haproxy and update it’s configuration file automatically each time a new Managed node (Configured With Apache Web Server) joins the inventory.
Now, go to the load balancer and web servers to check their status of connectivity in the following way:
As we can see the connections are up, we will now connect to the IP of the load balancer and it will redirect us to one the web server.
Checkout the codes here: Ansible Playbook to Configure Reverse Proxy and Configure it with Apache Webserver
Thank you for reading!!! | https://medium.com/@yashrajblogs/how-to-write-a-ansible-playbook-to-configure-reverse-proxy-and-configure-it-with-apache-webserver-ad1a153dd1f0 | ['Yashraj Panda'] | 2021-01-12 06:58:47.354000+00:00 | ['Haproxy', 'Apache', 'Ansible', 'Automation'] |
Solving Problems With Dynamic Programming | This content originally appeared on Curious Insight
Dynamic programming is a really useful general technique for solving problems that involves breaking down problems into smaller overlapping sub-problems, storing the results computed from the sub-problems and reusing those results on larger chunks of the problem. Dynamic programming solutions are pretty much always more efficent than naive brute-force solutions. It’s particularly effective on problems that contain optimal substructure.
Dynamic programming is related to a number of other fundamental concepts in computer science in interesting ways. Recursion, for example, is similar to (but not identical to) dynamic programming. The key difference is that in a naive recursive solution, answers to sub-problems may be computed many times. A recursive solution that caches answers to sub-problems which were already computed is called memoization, which is basically the inverse of dynamic programming. Another variation is when the sub-problems don’t actually overlap at all, in which case the technique is known as divide and conquer. Finally, dynamic programming is tied to the concept of mathematical induction and can be thought of as a specific application of inductive reasoning in practice.
While the core ideas behind dynamic programming are actually pretty simple, it turns out that it’s fairly challenging to use on non-trivial problems because it’s often not obvious how to frame a difficult problem in terms of overlapping sub-problems. This is where experience and practice come in handy, which is the idea for this blog post. We’ll build both naive and “intelligent” solutions to several well-known problems and see how the problems are decomposed to use dynamic programming solutions. The code is written in basic python with no special dependencies.
Fibonacci Numbers
First we’ll look at the problem of computing numbers in the Fibonacci sequence. The problem definition is very simple — each number in the sequence is the sum of the two previous numbers in the sequence. Or, more formally:
F_n=F_n−1+F_n−2, with F_0=0 and F_1=1 as the seed values.
(note: Medium does not have the ability to render equations properly so I’m using the fairly hack-ish solution of displaying mathematical notation in italics…apologies if the true meaning doesn’t come through very well.)
Our solution will be responsible for calculating each of Fibonacci numbers up to some defined limit. We’ll first implement a naive solution that re-calculates each number in the sequence from scratch.
def fib(n):
if n == 0:
return 0
if n == 1:
return 1 return fib(n - 1) + fib(n - 2) def all_fib(n):
fibs = []
for i in range(n):
fibs.append(fib(i)) return fibs
Let’s try it out on a pretty small number first.
%time print(all_fib(10)) [0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34]
Wall time: 0 ns
Okay, probably too trivial. Let’s try a bit bigger…
%time print(all_fib(20)) [0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987, 1597, 2584, 4181]
Wall time: 5 ms
The runtime was at least measurable now, but still pretty quick. Let’s try one more time…
%time print(all_fib(40)) [0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987, 1597, 2584, 4181, 6765, 10946, 17711, 28657, 46368, 75025, 121393, 196418, 317811, 514229, 832040, 1346269, 2178309, 3524578, 5702887, 9227465, 14930352, 24157817, 39088169, 63245986]
Wall time: 1min 9s
That escalated quickly! Clearly this is a pretty bad solution. Let’s see what it looks like when applying dynamic programming.
def all_fib_dp(n):
fibs = []
for i in range(n):
if i < 2:
fibs.append(i)
else:
fibs.append(fibs[i - 2] + fibs[i - 1]) return fibs
This time we’re saving the result at each iteration and computing new numbers as a sum of the previously saved results. Let’s see what this does to the performance of the function.
%time print(all_fib_dp(40)) [0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987, 1597, 2584, 4181, 6765, 10946, 17711, 28657, 46368, 75025, 121393, 196418, 317811, 514229, 832040, 1346269, 2178309, 3524578, 5702887, 9227465, 14930352, 24157817, 39088169, 63245986]
Wall time: 0 ns
By not computing the full recusrive tree on each iteration, we’ve essentially reduced the running time for the first 40 numbers from ~75 seconds to virtually instant. This also happens to be a good example of the danger of naive recursive functions. Our new Fibonaci number function can compute additional values in linear time vs. exponential time for the first version.
%time print(all_fib_dp(100)) [0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987, 1597, 2584, 4181, 6765, 10946, 17711, 28657, 46368, 75025, 121393, 196418, 317811, 514229, 832040, 1346269, 2178309, 3524578, 5702887, 9227465, 14930352, 24157817, 39088169, 63245986, 102334155, 165580141, 267914296, 433494437, 701408733, 1134903170, 1836311903, 2971215073L, 4807526976L, 7778742049L, 12586269025L, 20365011074L, 32951280099L, 53316291173L, 86267571272L, 139583862445L, 225851433717L, 365435296162L, 591286729879L, 956722026041L, 1548008755920L, 2504730781961L, 4052739537881L, 6557470319842L, 10610209857723L, 17167680177565L, 27777890035288L, 44945570212853L, 72723460248141L, 117669030460994L, 190392490709135L, 308061521170129L, 498454011879264L, 806515533049393L, 1304969544928657L, 2111485077978050L, 3416454622906707L, 5527939700884757L, 8944394323791464L, 14472334024676221L, 23416728348467685L, 37889062373143906L, 61305790721611591L, 99194853094755497L, 160500643816367088L, 259695496911122585L, 420196140727489673L, 679891637638612258L, 1100087778366101931L, 1779979416004714189L, 2880067194370816120L, 4660046610375530309L, 7540113804746346429L, 12200160415121876738L, 19740274219868223167L, 31940434634990099905L, 51680708854858323072L, 83621143489848422977L, 135301852344706746049L, 218922995834555169026L]
Wall time: 0 ns
Longest Increasing Subsequence
The Fibonacci problem is a good starter example but doesn’t really capture the challenge of representing problems in terms of optimal sub-problems because for Fibonacci numbers the answer is pretty obvious. Let’s move up one step in difficulty to a problem known as the longest increasing subsequence problem. The objective is to find the longest subsequence of a given sequence such that all elements in the subsequence are sorted in increasing order. Note that the elements do not need to be contiguous; that is, they are not required to appear next to each other. For example, in the sequence [10, 22, 9, 33, 21, 50, 41, 60, 80] the longest increasing subsequence (LIS) is [10, 22, 33, 50, 60, 80].
It turns out that it’s fairly difficult to do a “brute-force” solution to this problem. The dynamic programming solution is much more concise and a natural fit for the problem definition, so we’ll skip creating an unnecessarily complicated naive solution and jump straight to the DP solution.
def find_lis(seq):
n = len(seq)
max_length = 1
best_seq_end = -1 # keep a chain of the values of the lis
prev = [0 for i in range(n)]
prev[0] = -1 # the length of the lis at each position
length = [0 for i in range(n)]
length[0] = 1 for i in range(1, n):
length[i] = 0
prev[i] = -1 # start from index i-1 and work back to 0
for j in range(i - 1, -1, -1):
if (length[j] + 1) > length[i] and seq[j] < seq[i]:
# there's a number before position i that increases the lis at i
length[i] = length[j] + 1
prev[i] = j if length[i] > max_length:
max_length = length[i]
best_seq_end = i # recover the subsequence
lis = []
element = best_seq_end
while element != -1:
lis.append(seq[element])
element = prev[element] return lis[::-1]
The intuition here is that for a given index i, we can compute the length of the longest increasing subsequence length(i) by looking at all indices j<i and if length(j)+1>i and seq[j]<seq[i] (meaning there’s a number at position jj that increases the longest subsequence at that index such that it is now longer than the longest recorded subsequence at i) then we increase length(i) by 1. It’s a bit confusing at first glance but step through it carefully and convince yourself that this solution finds the optimal subsequence. The “prev” list holds the indices of the elements that form the actual values in the subsequence.
Let’s generate some test data and try it out.
import numpy as np
seq_small = list(np.random.randint(0, 20, 20))
seq_small [16, 10, 17, 18, 9, 0, 2, 19, 4, 3, 1, 14, 12, 6, 2, 4, 11, 5, 19, 4]
Now we can run a quick test to see if it works on a small sequence.
%time print(find_lis(seq_small)) [0, 1, 2, 4, 5, 19]
Wall time: 0 ns
Just based on the eye test the output looks correct. Let’s see how well it performs on much larger sequences.
seq = list(np.random.randint(0, 10000, 10000))
%time print(find_lis(seq)) [29, 94, 125, 159, 262, 271, 274, 345, 375, 421, 524, 536, 668, 689, 694, 755, 763, 774, 788, 854, 916, 1018, 1022, 1098, 1136, 1154, 1172, 1237, 1325, 1361, 1400, 1401, 1406, 1450, 1498, 1633, 1693, 1745, 1765, 1793, 1835, 1949, 1997, 2069, 2072, 2096, 2157, 2336, 2345, 2468, 2519, 2529, 2624, 2630, 2924, 3103, 3291, 3321, 3380, 3546, 3635, 3657, 3668, 3703, 3775, 3836, 3850, 3961, 4002, 4004, 4039, 4060, 4128, 4361, 4377, 4424, 4432, 4460, 4465, 4493, 4540, 4595, 4693, 4732, 4735, 4766, 4831, 4850, 4873, 4908, 4940, 4969, 5013, 5073, 5087, 5139, 5144, 5271, 5280, 5299, 5300, 5355, 5393, 5430, 5536, 5538, 5559, 5565, 5822, 5891, 5895, 5906, 6157, 6199, 6286, 6369, 6431, 6450, 6510, 6533, 6577, 6585, 6683, 6701, 6740, 6745, 6829, 6853, 6863, 6872, 6884, 6923, 6925, 7009, 7019, 7028, 7040, 7170, 7235, 7304, 7356, 7377, 7416, 7490, 7495, 7662, 7676, 7703, 7808, 7925, 7971, 8036, 8073, 8282, 8295, 8332, 8342, 8360, 8429, 8454, 8499, 8557, 8585, 8639, 8649, 8725, 8759, 8831, 8860, 8899, 8969, 9046, 9146, 9161, 9245, 9270, 9374, 9451, 9465, 9515, 9522, 9525, 9527, 9664, 9770, 9781, 9787, 9914, 9993]
Wall time: 4.94 s
So it’s still pretty fast, but the difference is definitely noticable. At 10,000 integers in the sequence our algorithm already takes several seconds to complete. In fact, even though this solution uses dynamic programming its runtime is still O(n2). The lesson here is that dynamic programming doesn’t always result in lightning-fast solutions. There are also different ways to apply DP to the same problem. In fact there’s a solution to this problem that uses binary search trees and runs in O(nlogn) time, significantly better than the solution we just came up with.
Knapsack Problem
The knapsack problem is another classic dynamic programming exercise. The generalization of this problem is very old and comes in many variations, and there are actually multiple ways to tackle this problem aside from dynamic programming. Still, it’s a common example for DP exercises.
The problem at its core is one of combinatorial optimization. Given a set of items, each with a mass and a value, determine the collection of items that results in the highest possible value while not exceeding some limit on the total weight. The variation we’ll look at is commonly referred to as the 0–1 knapsack problem, which restricts the number of copies of each kind of item to 0 or 1. More formally, given a set of n items each with weight w_i and value v_i along with a maximum total weight W, our objective is:
maxΣv_ix_i, where Σw_ix_i≤W
Let’s see what the implementation looks like then discuss why it works.
def knapsack(W, w, v):
# create a W x n solution matrix to store the sub-problem results
n = len(v)
S = [[0 for x in range(W)] for k in range(n)] for x in range(1, W):
for k in range(1, n):
# using this notation k is the number of items in the solution and x is the max weight of the solution,
# so the initial assumption is that the optimal solution with k items at weight x is at least as good
# as the optimal solution with k-1 items for the same max weight
S[k][x] = S[k-1][x] # if the current item weighs less than the max weight and the optimal solution including this item is
# better than the current optimum, the new optimum is the one resulting from including the current item
if w[k] < x and S[k-1][x-w[k]] + v[k] > S[k][x]:
S[k][x] = S[k-1][x-w[k]] + v[k] return S
The intuition behind this algorithm is that once you’ve solved for the optimal combination of items at some weight x<W and with some number of items k<n, then it’s easy to solve the problem with one more item or one higher max weight because you can just check to see if the solution obtained by incorporating that item is better than the best solution you’ve already found. So how do you get the initial solution? Keep going down the rabbit hole until to reach 0 (in which case the answer is 0). At first glance it’s very hard to grasp, but that’s part of the magic of dynamic programming. Let’s run an example to see what it looks like. We’ll start with some randomly-generated weights and values.
w = list(np.random.randint(0, 10, 5))
v = list(np.random.randint(0, 100, 5))
w, v ([3, 9, 3, 6, 5], [40, 45, 72, 77, 16])
Now we can run the algorithm with a constraint that the weights of the items can’t add up to more than 15.
knapsack(15, w, v) [[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 45, 45, 45, 45, 45],
[0, 0, 0, 0, 72, 72, 72, 72, 72, 72, 72, 72, 72, 117, 117],
[0, 0, 0, 0, 72, 72, 72, 77, 77, 77, 149, 149, 149, 149, 149],
[0, 0, 0, 0, 72, 72, 72, 77, 77, 88, 149, 149, 149, 149, 149]]
The output here is the array of optimal values for a given max weight (think of it as the column index) and max number of items (the row index). Notice how the output follows what looks sort of like a wavefront pattern. This seems to be a recurring phenomenon with dynamic programming solutions. The value in the lower right corner is the max value that we were looking for under the given constraints and is the answer to the problem.
That concludes our introduction to dynamic programming! Using this technique in the real world definitely requires a lot of practice; most applications of dynamic programming are not very obvious and take some skill to discover. Personally it doesn’t come naturally to me at all and even learning these relatively simple examples took quite a bit of thought. It might seem like these sorts of problems don’t come up all that often in practice, and there’s probably some truth to that. However I’ve found that simply knowing about dynamic programming and how it fits into a more general problem-solving framework has made me a better engineer, and that in of itself makes it worth the time investment to understand. | https://towardsdatascience.com/solving-problems-with-dynamic-programming-ea4a872dae61 | ['John Wittenauer'] | 2017-02-19 19:26:25.818000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Dynamic Programming', 'Python', 'Fibonacci', 'Algorithms'] |
[React Native] Firebase Authentication | ⛔ Coding Area
Setelah semua konfigurasi sudah siap, selanjutnya kita akan lanjut untuk coding untuk login, sign up dan juga logout. pastikan kalian sudah menginstal react-native-navigation karena kita akan menggunakannya untuk berpindah halaman ke halaman lain. Untuk dokumentasi react-navigation dapat dilihat disini. Berikut merupakan susunan projek kita nantinya, yaitu terdapat App.js kemudian folder “component” yang berisi Login.js, Signup.js dan Homescreen.js
projek folder
▶ Membuat Stack Screen
Pertama kita buat stack screen dimana akan menjadi navigasi antar halaman kita, selain itu penting diketahui bahwa kita harus membuat komponen seperti gambar projek diatas. Berikut merupakan file App.js yang kita jadikan sebagai stackscreen
▶ Membuat Komponen Signup, Login dan Homescreen
Ikuti langkah-langkah dibawah ini
🟢 Sign Up (Register)
Setelah itu kita lanjutkan untuk develop signup.js dimana kita akan membuat tampilan sebagai berikut, dengan menginputkan program seperti dibawah ini
import React from 'react';
import { View, Text, StyleSheet, TextInput, Button, Alert, ActivityIndicator } from 'react-native';
import auth from '@react-native-firebase/auth'; class Signup extends React.Component {
constructor() {
super();
this.state = {
displayName: '',
email: '',
password: '',
isLoading: false
}} updateInputVal = (val, prop) => {
const state = this.state;
state[prop] = val;
this.setState(state);
} render() {
if (this.state.isLoading) {
return (
<View style={styles.preloader}>
<ActivityIndicator size="large" color="#9E9E9E" />
<Text>Succes creating account</Text>
<Text>Returning you to login screen..</Text>
</View>
)} return (
<View style={styles.container}>
<TextInput
style={styles.inputStyle}
placeholder="Name"
value={this.state.displayName}
onChangeText={(val) => this.updateInputVal(val, 'displayName')}
/>
<TextInput
style={styles.inputStyle}
placeholder="Email"
value={this.state.email}
onChangeText={(val) => this.updateInputVal(val, 'email')}
/>
<TextInput
style={styles.inputStyle}
placeholder="Password"
value={this.state.password}
onChangeText={(val) => this.updateInputVal(val, 'password')}
maxLength={15}
secureTextEntry={true}
/>
<Button
color="lightskyblue"
title="Signup"
onPress={() => this.registerUser()}
/>
<Text
style={styles.loginText}
onPress={() => this.props.navigation.navigate('Login')}>
Already Registered? Click here to login
</Text>
</View>
);}} const styles = StyleSheet.create({
container: {
flex: 1,
display: "flex",
flexDirection: "column",
justifyContent: "center",
padding: 35,
backgroundColor: '#fff'
}, inputStyle: {
width: '100%',
marginBottom: 15,
paddingBottom: 15,
alignSelf: "center",
borderColor: "#ccc",
borderBottomWidth: 1
}, loginText: {
color: 'lightskyblue',
marginTop: 25,
textAlign: 'center'
}, preloader: {
left: 0,
right: 0,
top: 0,
bottom: 0,
position: 'absolute',
alignItems: 'center',
justifyContent: 'center',
backgroundColor: '#fff'
}
});
export default Signup;
Untuk signup sendiri kita memerlukan fungsi untuk dapat terdaftar sebagai pengguna pada firebase dengan menambahkan function berikut :
registerUser = () => {
if (this.state.email === '' && this.state.password === '')
{
Alert.alert('Enter details to signup!')
} else {
this.setState({
isLoading: true,
})
auth()
.createUserWithEmailAndPassword(this.state.email,
this.state.password)
.then((res) => {
res.user.updateProfile({
displayName: this.state.displayName
})
console.log('User registered successfully!')
this.setState({
isLoading: false,
displayName: '',
email: '',
password: ''
})
this.props.navigation.navigate('Login')
}) .catch(error => this.setState({ errorMessage: error.message }))
}}
Hal tersebut akan dapat membuat kita mendaftar dan terautentifikasi pada aplikasi yang dibuat
🟢 LogOut
Setelah itu kita akan mendevelop login pada login.js, setelah membuat akun kita arahkan kembali ke login screen setelah itu user harus login menggunakan akun yang sudah didaftarkan tadi berikut ini perintah login.js
import React, { Component } from 'react';
import { StyleSheet, Text, View, TextInput, Button, Alert, ActivityIndicator } from 'react-native';
import auth from '@react-native-firebase/auth'; export default class Login extends Component {
constructor() {
super(); this.state = {
email: '',
password: '',
isLoading: false
}} updateInputVal = (val, prop) => {
const state = this.state;
state[prop] = val;
this.setState(state);
} render() {
if (this.state.isLoading) {
return (
<View style={styles.preloader}>
<ActivityIndicator size="large" color="#9E9E9E" />
<Text>Loginning...</Text>
</View>
)}
return (
<View style={styles.container}>
<TextInput
style={styles.inputStyle}
placeholder="Email"
value={this.state.email}
onChangeText={(val) => this.updateInputVal(val, 'email')}
/>
<TextInput
style={styles.inputStyle}
placeholder="Password"
value={this.state.password}
onChangeText={(val) => this.updateInputVal(val, 'password')}
maxLength={15}
secureTextEntry={true}
/> <Button
color="lightskyblue"
title="Signin"
onPress={() => this.userLogin()}
/>
<Text
style={styles.loginText}
onPress={() => this.props.navigation.navigate('Signup')}>
Don't have account? Click here to signup
</Text>
</View>
);}} const styles = StyleSheet.create({
container: {
flex: 1,
display: "flex",
flexDirection: "column",
justifyContent: "center",
padding: 35,
backgroundColor: '#fff'
}, inputStyle: {
width: '100%',
marginBottom: 15,
paddingBottom: 15,
alignSelf: "center",
borderColor: "#ccc",
borderBottomWidth: 1
},
loginText: {
color: 'lightskyblue',
marginTop: 25,
textAlign: 'center'
}, preloader: {
left: 0,
right: 0,
top: 0,
bottom: 0,
position: 'absolute',
alignItems: 'center',
justifyContent: 'center',
backgroundColor: '#fff'
}});
Selanjutnya kita harus menambahkan fungsi login agar dapat masuk pada aplikasi yang kita gunakan, dengan perintah berikut :
userLogin = () => {
if (this.state.email === '' && this.state.password === ''
{Alert.alert('Enter details to signin!')
} else {
this.setState({
isLoading: true
}) auth()
.signInWithEmailAndPassword(this.state.email, this.state.password)
.then((res) => {
console.log(res)
console.log('User logged-in successfully!')
this.setState({
isLoading: false,
email: '',
password: ''
}) this.props.navigation.navigate('Home')
})
.catch(error => this.setState({ errorMessage: error.message }))
}}
Dengan itu kita dapat login pada aplikasi kita menggunakan akun yang sudah dibuat tadi pada halaman signup
🟢 Logout
Dan yang terakhir adalah log out, logout disini adalah fungsi untuk user keluar dari sistem. fungsi logout lebih simpel daripada fungsi lainnya. Berikut merupakan perintah pada homescreen.js
import React, { Component } from 'react'; import { StyleSheet, View, Text, Button } from 'react-native'; import auth from '@react-native-firebase/auth'; class Homescreen extends Component {
constructor() {
super();
this.state = {
uid: ''
}
} render() {
this.state = {
displayName: auth().currentUser.displayName,
uid: auth().currentUser.uid
} return (
<View style={styles.container}>
<Text style={styles.textStyle}>
Hello, {this.state.displayName}
</Text>
<Button
color="lightskyblue"
title="Logout"
onPress={() => this.signOut()}
/>
</View>
);}} const styles = StyleSheet.create({
container: {
flex: 1,
display: "flex",
justifyContent: 'center',
alignItems: 'center',
padding: 35,
backgroundColor: '#fff'
},
textStyle: {
fontSize: 15,
marginBottom: 20
}
}); export default Homescreen;
Tambahkan function untuk logout, agar user dapat keluar dengan perintah berikut :
signOut = () => {
auth().signOut().then(() => {
this.props.navigation.navigate('Signup')
})
.catch(error => this.setState({ errorMessage: error.message }))
}
Horee, sekarang anda sudah membuat semua komponen dan dapat dites untuk firebase.
📱 Testing
Sekarang saatnya kita melakukan testing apakah sudah semua fungsi berjalan baik atau tidak. Silahkan buka firebase konsole pada projek yang telah dibuat tadi
Signup Testing
signup testing
Login Testing
login testing
Logout Testing
Logout testing
Yey kita sudah berhasil menghubungkan firebase dengan react-native dan juga membuat firebase authentication menggunakan email pada halaman signup, login dan juga homescreen untuk logoutnya. | https://medium.com/@gusjul/react-native-firebase-authentication-b28aa301e3af | ['Gus Jul'] | 2020-12-03 08:14:46.592000+00:00 | ['React', 'React Native', 'Firebase', 'React Native Firebase', 'Mobile App Development'] |
Smartphone too distracting? Here’s how to reclaim your focus | In 2017, I decided I’d had enough of my smartphone and the companies that make the apps that were robbing me of my time and attention. I thought I found the perfect solution: the card phone.
The card phone is what it sounds like: It’s an $18 tiny phone with no social media, no internet browser, and no email. In fact, the card phone has no apps whatsoever. It has only the ability to make phone calls and send text messages. (It even has an FM tuner too. Take that, iPhone!).
At first, it was edgy and interesting to be the one friend with the “weird phone.” But the edginess wore off, and I began to miss my smartphone. I missed the convenience of navigating with GPS. I missed listening to audio books and reading articles I’d saved in Pocket. And I admit: I sort of missed the connectedness to friends I felt from using social media. I liked being “liked.”
In other words, my card phone, although functional, wasn’t much fun. Hence, the paradox of modern technology: we want tech to be easy to use and engaging, but when we get what we want, we blame the tech for giving it to us. Critics call it “addictive” and “irresistible” and say it’s “hijacking our brains,” but I’m not so sure things are quite that dramatic. Technology is built into the fabric of our lives and everyday habits — and as I learned in ditching my smartphone, that device might have its ills, but it also makes things easier and connects me to my friends and loved ones.
That said, I also saw substantial benefits of the card phone. I used social media less. I was more present when I was with the people in my life. I was less plugged into the stream of information and updates that accost us every day, and because I had some breathing room from it all, I felt a little less on edge.
This, then, was the dilemma: I wanted my smartphone back, but I didn’t want it exploiting me. I wanted to find a way to keep the good elements of today’s tech while ditching the bad.
So I decided to “hack back.” Over the course of the next several months, I experimented with changing elements of my smartphone so I could have the best of the technology — and avoid the worst. Those experiments paid off, and the steps I took are measures any and all of us can take to reduce distractions smartphones cause while not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The best part: all of these steps took me less than an hour to put in place.
1. Remove
The first step to managing distractions on your phone is to remove the apps you no longer need. If you are anything like I was, you likely have an app or two (or forty) you haven’t used in years. These apps take up storage space in your phone’s memory and bandwidth when they update themselves. But worst of all, these zombie apps fill your device with visual clutter and distraction.
As a technophile, I love trying out the latest apps. However, after a few years, I’d collected page after page of useless apps clogging up my phone. Clearing out every app I hadn’t opened in the past three months took less than ten minutes.
The latest version of Apple’s iOS makes this process easier than ever. Bowing to user gripes that unused apps were hogging too much memory, Apple’s iOS is issued with an “Offload App” feature to automatically remove rarely used apps while still keeping your data and settings intact.
For example, say you were into a particular game a few months back then grew tired of it. With Offload App, the app would be automatically removed from your phone but one tap would bring it back and you could continue playing where you left off. Unfortunately, Offload App doesn’t remove the app icon, it just places a little download symbol next to it, so the visual clutter remains. However, whenever I see that icon, I take it as a sign I should likely delete the app for good or at least place all my Offloaded apps into a folder somewhere else.
In doing this, you get the feeling you have after you’ve emptied out a closet or really given your kitchen that spit-and-polish cleaning you’ve been meaning to. It feels like you’ve lightened the load, and strictly speaking, you have: the less visual clutter on your phone, the less there is to tempt and distract you. This was a big step, among others, towards renewing focus on what was important to me.
Total time to remove rarely used apps: 7 minutes
2. Replace
Purging unused apps was easy. I didn’t have to make any emotional decisions saying goodbye to apps I never used. However, the next step in hacking a distraction-less phone is deciding what to do with the remaining apps I love but sometimes used when I didn’t intend to.
For instance, I often found myself checking Facebook and Twitter on my phone when I had planned to spend time with my daughter. When I’d feel a tinge of boredom in between playing the hundredth round of Uno with her, I’d give social networks a quick pull to refresh. Unfortunately, this variable reward mechanic — also used, it should be noted, in casinos to keep gamblers on the hook — often pulled me into the app and out of the present moment with my daughter.
I didn’t quit using Facebook and Twitter entirely, I just replaced when and where to use them: I deliberately reserved time for social media in my weekly schedule planner. Now, in my daily habits, I reserve an hour every night to refresh as much as I like. And since I know I’ll have time for social media at my desktop, there is no longer any need to have their apps on my phone. I also deleted the YouTube app from my phone for the same reason. I can watch later, just not on my phone.
Perhaps the most unexpected replacement strategy was swapping out the way I checked what time it was. When I bought a smart watch, I noticed something unexpected: I check my phone far less frequently. As someone who hates being late, I glanced at my phone throughout the day to find out what time it was. But too often, I’d then get sucked into some notification on my phone vying for my attention. With a smartwatch, that is no longer a problem. A quick glance tells me what I need to know and no more.
I had to ask myself the critical question of which trigger was serving me and which was I serving. In my case, I uninstalled apps I could use endlessly but didn’t align with my values. Apps like Audible for listening to books and Pocket for reading articles stayed; breaking news apps with blaring alerts that did nothing but stress me out had to go.
I also deleted all games from my phone. I’m not saying you need to do the same. Many games today, particularly those made by indie studios, are works of masterful craftsmanship and beauty and are no less entertaining than quality books or films. But for me, I decided the games I had on my phone didn’t align with how I wanted to spend my time on that device. I decided I’d rather learn something new by listening to an audio book, call a friend, or just breathe in silence for a few spare minutes instead. (Just to make the change a little less intense, I replaced the time I’d spend gaming on my phone with gaming elsewhere. For example, I find time to play a console game with my daughter on the weekend instead of on my phone.)
Remember, the only one making moral judgements about what should spend your time and what should be on your phone is you. Just make sure it aligns with how you want to spend your time on that device. The idea is to find the best time and place to do the things you want to do. Just because your phone can seemingly do everything, doesn’t mean it should.
Total time to replace: schedule social media time at desktop instead of my phone (5 minutes), delete apps that don’t align with values (10 minutes of contemplation, 1 minute to actually do it)
3. Rearrange
What would you look like if you dressed the way you kept your phone’s home screen?
Many people’s home screens are a jumbled mess of apps, notifications, and other digital clutter — the equivalent of walking out of the house with 11 staticky socks stuck to your jacket. Sure, socks are great, but in the wrong place they look ridiculous and aren’t very useful. Given the sheer number of times the average smartphone user looks at their phone every day, we should put at least as much attention to its upkeep as we do thinking about the clothing we wear.
Now that I had just the apps I needed and deleted the rest, it was time to rearrange the ones that remained. Nothing on the home screen should be able to take you off course from what you came to do on your phone. This means no social media, no games, no news apps, or anything else you may turn to in a moment of weakness. Even if you keep these apps on your phone, (which, as previously mentioned, I’d recommend reconsidering) the idea is to not let them trigger you every time you check your phone.
Tony Stubblebine, Editor-in-chief of the popular Medium publication, Better Humans, calls his phone’s set-up the “Essential Home Screen.” Stubblebine was the sixth employee at Twitter, so he knows both the promise of social media apps — and their peril when all that information is immediately accessible to you on your phone. He hacked back too, and Stubblebine recommends sorting your phone’s apps into three categories.
The first category is “Primary Tools,” which “helps you accomplish defined tasks that you rely on frequently: getting a ride, finding a location, adding an appointment. There should be no more than five or six.”
Then there are apps he calls “Aspirations,” meaning “the things you want to spend time doing: meditation, yoga, exercise, reading books, or listening to podcasts.”
Finally, Stubblebine calls the rest, “Slot Machines. These are the apps that you open and get lost in: email, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.”
“Now, rearrange your phone’s home screen so that it includes only your Primary Tools and your Aspirations,” wrote Stubblebine. “The gist … is to think of your home page as a group of apps that you feel you are in charge of. If the app triggers any mindless checking from you, move it to a different screen.”
For Apple phones, moving apps around is a matter of pulling them from screen to screen and depositing them elsewhere. On Android devices, apps can be removed from the screen altogether. After clearing away the home screen, you’ll be left with a pile of apps somewhere, either in the apps folder on Android or on other screens on iOS. Now it’s time to relearn the way you find those apps.
Instead of swiping through, I recommend searching for the app you need. If it’s not on the home screen, there’s too high of a risk you’ll bump into a distracting app. Instead, pull down on the iPhone or up on Android to access the app search bar where you can type the name of the app you’re looking for without encountering all the ones you don’t need.
Total time to clear only essential apps from home screen: 5 minutes
4. Reclaim
A senior writer at WIRED wrote a piece airing his frustrations with the notifications on his cell phone:
“I get notifications when an acquaintance comments on a stranger’s Facebook posts, when shows I don’t care about come to Netflix, and every single day at 6 PM when the crossword puzzle becomes available. Recently, I got a buzz from my close personal friends at Yelp. ‘We found a hot new business for you,’ it said. I opened the notification, on the off chance that Yelp had finally found the hot new business I’ve been waiting for. It did not. So I closed Yelp, stared into space for a second, and then opened Instagram. Productivity over.”
He’s not alone. In 2013, Apple proudly declared that its servers had sent 7.4 trillion push notifications. Fortunately, no matter how many they send, your phone can’t interrupt you if you don’t see or hear those triggers. Thus, the best and simplest thing you can do to evade those trillions of triggers and reclaim your productivity is to turn them off!
Unfortunately, few people do that. Google and Apple have made it unnecessarily difficult to adjust these settings. According to Adam Marchick, CEO of mobile marketing company Kahuna, less than 15 percent of smartphone users adjust their notification settings — meaning the remaining 85 percent allow app makers to interrupt them whenever they’d like. It’s up to us to make adjustments to suit our needs, not theirs.
But which app notifications should we disable and how do we do it? Thankfully, if you’ve followed the first three steps, you’ve already whittled down the number of apps to the bare essentials. If you use an Apple device, go to “Settings” then “Notifications.” Then you can go through each app on the list to turn off the triggers you don’t want. For Android, you’ll have to find the “Apps” section in “Settings” and adjust each app’s notification permission.
This process can be tedious but it’s well worth it. In my mind, there are three kinds of notification permissions you can allow an app:
Sound
An audible notification is the most interruptive and should only be granted to the kind of apps who should be able to break your concentration even when you need to be most focused. Ask yourself which services should be able to ping you when you’re with your family or in the middle of a meeting? I only grant text messages and phone calls this privilege — and even those I restrict at times, which we’ll discuss in a sec. The exception to this rule is allowing apps I want to interrupt me when I may be doing something I shouldn’t. For example, I use an app to remind me to stop eating past 7:30 at night. I use another app to play a chime at the top of the hour to help make sure I’m following my schedule for the day.
2. Sight
After sound, visual triggers are the next level of interruption. In my case, I only allow visual notifications in the form of those red “meat balls” on the corner of the app. On the iPhone, you can toggle “Show on Lock Screen,” “Show in History,” and “Show as Banners,” but those advanced features take too much mental energy to understand and customize so for me. I turn them all off and only allow the “Badge App Icon.”
The apps granted this level of permission include messaging services like my email app, WhatsApp, Marco Polo, Slack, Messenger, and Instagram. These are apps I know I can check anytime. No one would use one of those to contact me in an emergency, so I know I can wait to open them the next time I’m ready to look at my phone.
3. Sayonara
The rest of the apps on my phone can kiss notification privileges goodbye. I open them when I need them.
What about apps like Lyft, Calendar, and Maps? I find when I use these apps, I use them actively. If I’ve just called a Lyft or Uber, I’m looking at the app to know where my car is anyway, and since the app sends me text messages as well, I don’t need notifications. Same goes for Maps I’m already in the app when I use it. As for my calendar, I’m in the habit of looking at it throughout the day anyway, so I don’t need more reminders.
The one flaw with these three classifications is that some audible triggers can get through during my focused time. I want those triggers to get to me in case there’s an emergency, but usually there isn’t. Thankfully, Apple’s iOS comes built with two incredibly helpful “do not disturb” features.
The first is the standard “Do Not Disturb,” which can be programmed to prevent all notifications from reaching you, including calls and texts. That is, unless someone calls twice within three minutes or texts the word “Urgent.” In that case, Apple let’s the call or message through. My phone is set to “do not disturb” every night from 10 pm to 6:30 am.
The second kind is “Do Not Disturb While Driving” feature which also blocks calls and text but sends a nice little message that tells the other party you can’t pick up the phone at the moment. Of course, no one needs to know I’m not actually driving when I use this feature. Every time I’m with friends, in a meeting, spending quality time with my daughter or wife, or just need some focused work time, I tap on “Do Not Disturb While Driving,” and enjoy the silence. I know I’ll have time in my day to get back to calls and texts because I’ve booked time for just that purpose.
In addition to remembering to set the Do Not Disturb button, un-triggering also requires a bit of maintenance. Every time I install a new app, I need to adjust the notifications permission settings. If I forget to do it right away, I do so the next time I get a notification I don’t want. I hope Apple iOS and Android will make this process easier, but in the meantime, although this was the most time-intensive task of the four, it only took 30 minutes to change the notification settings for all my apps.
Total time: disable notifications for any app that can wait (30 minutes); turning on Do Not Disturb before each focused time period (5 seconds)
At the end of the day, there are many things we can do to put technology in its place and remove the unwanted triggers on our mobile devices. As powerful as the psychological hacks may be, they’re no competition to simply removing, replacing, rejiggering, and un-triggering the apps that don’t serve us. The best part is that all four steps took me a grand total of 59 minutes — a fraction of the time I’d spend scrolling on Facebook or watching YouTube videos in an evening before I made those changes. There’s no reason you can’t hack back — and when you do, you can live with the technology and accrue all its benefits, while mitigating the costs. | https://uxdesign.cc/smartphone-too-distracting-heres-how-to-reclaim-your-focus-61fa6a3a8e70 | ['Nir Eyal'] | 2021-03-29 11:11:29.683000+00:00 | ['Design', 'Growth Hacking', 'Social Media', 'UX', 'Ts'] |
Trésor | Photo by Jessica Felicio on Unsplash
Is it bad to want a love so deep
He buys a plot of land and names it after me?
Apricot blossom and roses surround the perimeter
While lilies and lilac lay the path to my tomb
Carved out of Georgia marble, gold
Limestone and crystal
Peaches, leather, and vanilla fill the air he breathes while
Looking at me. Memories of my skin soft of cocoa and oil
Torturing him like the scorching summer heat in Mississippi
Visions of long hair flowing at the sight of water running
Through the light of the fountain he built for me
A mile away from my feet
He pauses for a moment,
Droplets running down his face
As he paints on canvas
My shadow amongst the stars while he remembers my
Movements and sounds at midnight on the day that he proposed
Treasuring the moments of our last kiss before he dismissed
Our love through bouts of anger that arose
From his inability to get off the bhode
Treasuring the love that we had,
The love that was so deep
He bought a plot of land and named it after me
Carrying irises
Laying them at my feet. | https://psiloveyou.xyz/tr%C3%A9sor-3cbef4b4c48f | ['Jehan Senai Worthy'] | 2021-02-14 13:02:21.282000+00:00 | ['Poem', 'Poetry Sunday', 'Relationships Love Dating', 'Love', 'Poetry'] |
How working out can benefit you in various ways? | How working out can benefit you in various ways?
I believe there are a bunch of advantages to moving your muscles and training them to a level of physique that certainly will boost your confidence and level of serotonins.
Here are 5 benefits of working out:
Increased levels of energy
The more your workout, the greater your body will adapt to that level of exhaustion. You will feel a rush of adrenaline throughout your bloodstream and displaying a better endurance whenever taking out heavier physical tasks. In conclusion, your body will have enhanced boost of stamina and dispose a physically stronger version of yourself.
2. Boost of happy hormones
What are happy hormones? Serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins are famously happy hormones that promote positive feelings like pleasure, happiness, and even love.
During exercises, either doing a home workout or outdoor exercising, we will feel a fresher state and feel a kick to startout a day. This kick will give us a ‘ready’ feeling to jumpstart your day. Also, the hormones produced will boost our mood throughout the day.
3. Reduce the risk of numerous diseases and cancers
Staying fit and healthy keeps you fight off certain diseases or at least reduces the risk to develop certain harmful diseases like cancer and heart disease.
4. Manage blood sugar and insulin levels
Doing a regular workout means training your body physically and definitely will lower your blood sugar levels and increase the production of insulin from the pancreas. It will help prevent Type II diabetes and metabollic syndrome
5. Improve sleeping quality
Staying fit by exercising daily is the key to get a good night sleep.
During the day, you will feel a rush of high energy levels and at night, you will feel more exhausted and your body will appreciate what you do during the day and automatically notices that it deserves a good long rest after the whole day of activity.
Here are my own personal whole body workout tips:
Planks 60s Push-ups 25x Jumping jacks 20x Incline push ups 20x Decline push ups 20x Lunges 20x Squats 30x Sit ups 20x Mountain climbers 20x
10. Russian twists 20x
11. Crunches 20x
12. V ups 15x
13. Sit ups 15x
14. Triceps dips 10x
15. Superman 15x
This is one set. Do these 15 movements 2-4 sets a day and you will feel a drastic change to your body.
What you ought to eat daily?
A daily intake of 2000–3000 calories is what I personally consume every day.
My normal diet includes:
A bowl of chicken breast with a cup of rice Two bananas A bowl of oats Protein shake 2–4 eggs 5–6 liters of water A portion of beef or chicken rice Milk Calcium and man’s vitamin tablet in the morning
10. Multivitamin and Fish oil at night :)
No alcohols and no cigarettes though, seriously.
You can try to take this advice or consume similar diet and implement it in your daily routines. Good luck! | https://medium.com/@bryancalvord56/how-working-out-can-benefit-you-in-many-ways-6cf362801bf0 | ['Bryan Calvord'] | 2021-06-08 08:06:43.323000+00:00 | ['Workout', 'Fitness'] |
Add Interactive Maps to Your Website | Installation
To install the library, we need to add a few things to the head section of our HTML file.
CSS file
2. Leaflet JavaScript file (Should be placed after the above CSS file)
That’s all the files we needed to add.
Now we can element to help display the map. You can provide a unique ID to the div element.
This element would be used to display the map.
Also, make sure the element has a height property such as given below:
<div id="htmlmap" style="height:50vh"></div>
In this article, we will be using Mapbox to get apt tile layers. However, to get the tile layer, we need an access token (which is free to obtain). You can create an account and get the access token by going here.
Additionally, I will also be adding my custom CSS file as well as an index.js file.
The final HTML file should look something like this: | https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/add-interactive-maps-to-your-website-5e935924ff5c | ['Anurag Kanoria'] | 2020-11-22 07:02:53.528000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Programming', 'Web Development', 'Technology', 'Software Development'] |
Working With Entrepreneurs to Build Global Connectivity, One Community at a Time | Zaya Learning Labs’ “ClassCloud” hardware delivers high-quality education content via the cloud to students like Pooja, Ashwini and Bindu (pictured left to right) in low-income government schools like this one in Mumbai, India. The technology also collects data on student performance, helping teachers personalize lesson plans based on student needs. Photo courtesy of Zaya Learning Labs.
Next month, Microsoft will join entrepreneurs, investors and innovators from around the world as a proud sponsor of the 7th annual Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES), hosted by President Obama in Silicon Valley. GES seeks to spotlight inspiring entrepreneurs who are building creative solutions to some of the most pressing challenges of our time.
At Microsoft, we know first-hand how passionate entrepreneurs can change the world. We believe that technology can empower everyone to achieve more. And for much of the world, it already has. You’re probably reading this on a laptop, tablet or smartphone, each connecting you to the incredible power of the Internet.
But for 4 billion people — more than half the world’s population — the benefits of digital technology remain out of reach.
In my role, I get to dream big about how to solve these kinds of challenges. And I’ve seen again and again over my career that often behind any lasting solution is an entrepreneur with the creativity and courage to take a risk on a big idea. It’s one reason why I’m so excited for the important conversations that GES will generate.
This past November, we announced the Affordable Access Initiative, one step Microsoft is taking to partner with the global community of entrepreneurs and help bridge the digital divide to bring affordable Internet access to underserved markets around the world. Taking what we’ve learned from our TV White Spaces work, we’ve seen how, for the first time, we have real, affordable solutions that truly bring the benefits of the Internet and computing to even the most remote communities.
The challenge is deploying these solutions, and then empowering people with the tools and information to make the most of them. But when you’re talking about an issue that affects 4 billion people, you can’t take a one-size-fits-all approach. Last-mile connectivity is a global challenge, but it requires local solutions.
We recently announced the first 12 entrepreneurial businesses that will receive our Affordable Access Initiative grants. With these grants, we’re partnering with local entrepreneurs across five continents, each of whom deeply understand the unique needs of their own communities, and are already delivering hardware, applications, connectivity, and power solutions to solve them. Our partners will receive seed funding, as well as range of resources, including mentorship and BizSpark tools like free software, services and tech support so they can scale up the great work they are already doing in their communities. You can learn more about our grant recipients through our website and video.
New Sun Road, a Microsoft Affordable Access Initiative partner, manufactures SolTrees, one component of a solar micro-grid power system that delivers reliable, affordable electricity and internet services to communities in Uganda. SolTrees also double as streetlights for nighttime safety in the community. Photo courtesy of New Sun Road.
Many challenges remain, but the opportunities are far greater. Together with these committed partners, our goal is to incentivize business and build an affordable, sustainable market that will not only have an impact today, but also in the years to come.
We look forward to continuing the conversation at GES next month. | https://medium.com/global-entrepreneurship-summit/working-with-entrepreneurs-to-build-global-connectivity-one-community-at-a-time-3dc89a5437c4 | ['Peggy Johnson'] | 2016-06-07 01:34:41.365000+00:00 | ['Entrepreneurship', 'Education', 'Featured Stories'] |
Credit Risk Fund: A Moderate Risk Investment Fund | Every investor invests in various types of funds, according to their risk profile. Some have a high appetite for risk, while other prefer a moderate risk. One such fund for such an investor is credit risk fund. Credit Risk funds are a category of debt funds that invest 65% of their portfolio in AA rated paper. They aim to generate high returns by taking high credit and investing in lower–rated papers. These low papers typically generate two to three percent more returns as compared to risk–free papers.
How does the Credit Risk Fund work?
These funds are ideal for those investors with a higher appetite for risk in the fixed income space should opt for it. They mainly generate income in two ways, first they earn interest income on the securities they hold and secondly, they invest in low rated securities. So, if the securities get upgraded then they have a chance to make a capital gain on those risks. A credit risk fund manager mainly invests in the debt instrument of AA rating (which is highly risky compared to AAA rating). They possibly look upon the potential upgrade on the ratings later in the future or assured returns due to strong fundamentals. Also, if the economy performs better, then there will be an improvement in the finances, which may lead to an upgrade in the bond rating.
Before selecting any credit risk fund, an investor must know that, he must choose a fund manager and fund houses with good experience in managing debt portfolios. Finally, investors should hold no more than 20% of their debt portfolio in such funds, since this category carries higher risk as compared to other debt funds. Apart from that, he should also look upon the fund house size, as most of these funds have high liquidity risk. So, if in case a bond with having a low rating in the portfolio faces a downgrade or default, then it may be difficult for the fund manager to exit the holding. Large asset-based funds act as a cushion against any kind of risk. They should also look out at the fund expense ratio and make sure it is not concentrated with a single sector or any single business group.
One of the biggest benefits of investing in the credit risk mutual fund is dividends are exempt from tax, but the scheme must pay a dividend distribution tax of 28.84%. An investor who invests in three years of investment is treated as short term capital gains and taxed as per your income tax slab. In case, if the investment is more than three years, then they are eligible for long term capital gains tax at 20% with the benefit of indexation.
Are you looking to invest? How about opening your account with Gulaq & start investing in Direct Mutual Funds? Get in touch.”
*Mutual fund investments are subject to market risks. Please read the scheme information and other related documents carefully before investing.
Source: https://www.gulaq.com/credit-risk-fund-a-moderate-risk-investment-fund/ | https://medium.com/@gulaqfintech/credit-risk-fund-a-moderate-risk-investment-fund-47865eb40b6 | [] | 2020-03-03 03:55:36.170000+00:00 | ['Investors', 'Invest', 'Investing', 'Investment', 'Education'] |
Spending Christmas Alone | Mental health has been a personal battle of mine for the larger part of the last decade. My time has been filled with ups, downs, and everything in-between. Mental health is volatile, unstable, unpredictable. It is this way by its own nature. Seasons come. Seasons pass.
Despite the changes in our moods, one thing is particularly timely: the Holidays.
We don’t always have time to account for guests, nor do we necessarily have guests to invite, in the first place. Many of us don’t live in highly-populated areas. Having guaranteed guests outside of the immediate family is not promised.
The state of being alone has a preconceived negative notion. The reality of being alone, however, is inherently neutral.
Events do not bother us. We subconsciously decide whether to attribute positive or negative connotations to events. It is up to us whether we enjoy being alone.
Of course, it is important to note that previous events have a serious impact on our perception of particular events (most notably, Christmas). Christmas is considered by many to be a social holiday. We are heavily encouraged to spend time with friends and family.
But sometimes, this isn’t an option.
Allowing yourself to feel emotion is a perfectly healthy way to live. Allowing yourself to wallow is not.
Mental strength allows you to push through the natural (or sometimes, unnatural) emotions that you will feel throughout the course of your life. The best tool you possess is mindfulness.
When you start to feel alone and lonely, focus on the emotion. I know this sounds counter-intuitive, but by focusing on your emotion, letting yourself process the negativity, you are allowing yourself to move on.
Many times we get stuck in a negative rut because we are unable to move on from the emotions we are feeling. This is because our brain is wired to avoid any negativity. It does this purely for evolutionary reasons. The reality of the matter is that we must feel and process these emotions, in order to grow from them.
Feeling alone during the holidays is a perfectly natural experience. What is unnatural, is allowing ourselves to feel miserable. Being alone is not a negative experience. Being alone on the holidays frees your calendar (literally) and grants you ultimate freedom.
Do not obsess on your negative thoughts. Remember that your mind is very able and willing to lie to you, thus changing your perception of your life. Also, remember that you are in control. Remember that you are able to fight your own intrusive thoughts through meditation and mindfulness.
This is a battle you can, and will, win. All you have to do is fight. | https://medium.com/illumination/spending-christmas-alone-54879521c4d9 | ['Joseph M. Learned'] | 2020-12-24 23:45:29.089000+00:00 | ['Alone', 'Loneliness', 'Christmas', 'Mental Health', 'Psychology'] |
Lawyers: You Can Overcome Bad Habits | Who Doesn’t Have Bad Habits?
It is no secret that lawyers are creatures of habit. Law schools drill their pupils in disciplines and hectic routines. Living in the pressure cooker of practicing law is like putting miracle growth on one’s faults.
Personal demons can rapidly pop up in a demanding and stressful career. Young and old lawyers and nonlawyers can easily become overwhelmed.
Every one of us has at least one bad habit or two. These self-sabotaging behaviors don’t serve our best interests. Every time you repeat the bad habit, a neural pathway is stimulated in your brain. Over time, this neural pathway becomes strengthened. It morphs into a superhighway that dominates our behaviors.
Here are some possible bad habits
Procrastination
Gossip
Interrupting others
Always oversleeping
Spending too much money
Overeating
Getting drunk or high
Smoking
Yelling at your children or loved ones
Staying up too late
Addictions to devices, videos, television, social media
Suicidal ideations
Slovenliness
Disorganization
Talking too much
Judging others
Putting others down
Racial prejudices
Hatred
Compulsive shopping
Workaholism
Can We Change?
Most of us want to change our self-defeating habits. But, the trouble, of course, is that it’s hard to do. If you’ve spent years and years doing the same thing, consciously or unconsciously, it’s not easy. We don’t wake up one day and say, ‘well, that’s it, I’m done with doing this or that.’
Another reason we can’t instantly change is when we must acknowledge how little control we have over our thoughts.
According to The National Science Foundation, here is some data about our thoughts:
We have about 50,000 to 70,000 thoughts per day.
Approximately 80% of our thoughts are negative.
Of those many thoughts, 95% are repetitive thoughts. (every day the same thoughts)
Looking at these numbers gives us the answer to why it is so difficult to change our bad habits. To make matters worse, we keep repeating those negative thoughts! Plus, we have many more negative thoughts than positive ones.
We are not even aware of most of our thoughts.
Unconscious thoughts (beyond our conscious awareness) 95%
Conscious awareness of (decisions, emotions, actions, behaviors) 5%
This reinforces why it is so difficult to change. We are unaware of the majority of our thoughts. Thus, we are products of our childhood, background, environment. Our primary personality traits were developed before the age of 7 years old.
7 Steps How You Can Change Your Bad Habits
Educate yourself about neuroplasticity. Your brain is plastic. You have the ability to adapt and change your brain. You can form new neural connections throughout life. In fact, your brain is able to ‘reorganize’ itself and adapt.
Here are 7 steps to rewire your brain and create new neural pathways.
Write down all your bad habits. Be 100% honest with yourself. Purge yourself of your secrets and put them on paper. Rank your list of bad habits by putting the most painful and destructive habits at the top. Choose 1 habit you are committed to change. Each day write down 2 actions you will take to overcome this habit. (You can start off easy and set yourself up to win) At the end of the day, rate the 2 actions you said you would take with either “Yes” or “No.” (acknowledge whether or not you took the actions) Repeat #5 and #6 each day for 30 days. After 30 days, decide to either continue working on the same habit. Or, if you are satisfied with your progress, move on down to the next item on your original list of bad habits.
Now You Are Changing & Rewiring Your Brain
You cannot change a habit without changing your brain. Your old habits are like overworked, well-traveled superhighways in your brain. As I said earlier, these highways are neural pathways. Each time you repeat the habit, the superhighway gets bigger and stronger.
When you take actions #4, #5, #6, (above), you are building a new neural pathway or a new highway in your brain.
This new pathway is weak, skinny, and puny. Each day, as you begin new behaviors, your neural pathway gets bigger and stronger.
When you dig your heels in and take the new actions, you will be using neural plasticity to change your brain. Even though you have spent years following the old habit, you CAN change. As you go against the grain, overcoming bad habits becomes easier.
You Deserve A Better Life
You will achieve more of your potential as humans, lawyers, parents, or partners. You will become an active participant in changing your brain and growing each day. Being more mindful of how you respond to things stops knee-jerk, automatic, self-defeating behaviors.
A word of caution. Stop ignoring your bad habits. Also, stop berating yourself. Remember, your bad habits didn’t appear overnight and won’t disappear instantly. Be patient.
It is time to recognize that you can create an entirely new life by changing your brain. This way, each of us gets the best out of our lives and terrific progress for ourselves and our loved ones. | https://medium.com/@pdeneuve/lawyers-you-can-overcome-bad-habits-22477339ed4b | ['Pamela Deneuve'] | 2021-06-08 07:56:45.955000+00:00 | ['Attorney', 'Wellbeing', 'Lawyers', 'Law Firm'] |
Product Management | Case Exercise | Featuring Amazon Halo
Photo from https://restechtoday.com/hello-amazon-halo-wearable/
Amazon enters the healthcare arena to compete against Fitbit and iWatch with their newly released product, Amazon Halo. View my product strategy deep dive here. | https://medium.com/@attnbella/product-management-case-exercise-cd45c9c5ec67 | ['Bella Rubin'] | 2020-12-25 18:03:12.926000+00:00 | ['Case Study', 'Product Management', 'Amazon Halo', 'Product Strategy'] |
How To Draw Republicans | Hi, I’m Tyler Snodgrass, a balding comedian in Chicago. I’m also an illustrator, and I’ve been drawing political cartoons for the past year. Really, nothing too clever or subtle, I’ve just kind of been illustrating what I’ve read in the news. So I don’t often get asked what my cartoons “are trying to say,” or anything like that, but sometimes I am asked about best practices for cartooning our nation’s most important political figures.
Drawn in Fall 2016, a simpler time.
April 2017
So, How Does One Draw A Cartoon of A Prominent Republican? The quick answer: Chins.
In my experience, cartooning is about highlighting distinguishing features — characterizing what’s obvious about your subject. So when it comes to drawing Republican leadership, draw just what you see! Why make things hard on yourself by trying to draw the absence of a heart, or, harder yet, the absence of a spine? Focus on what’s right in front of you: the plump, meaty wrinkles which compose the multiple chins or nightmarish necks of the GOP.
January 2017
So let’s try a few examples togther.
Drawing Mitch McConnell. One technique I’ve used is first drawing something easy and familiar, and then changing it slightly so that it looks like what I’m actually going for. With Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, you have a few options: you could draw a tortoise, and then make that tortoise asexual, and angry at the idea that somewhere children might be having fun; or, you could draw a recently removed cyst, then give it a human eyes, human teeth, and a hate for common sense gun laws. Or, you can do what I do:
Start by drawing an average old man. Any emotion you give him will do. I made mine jolly.
Step 1. Jolly old man. Wow, he looks so nice!
Next, remove the soul from that old man. Rendering him a shriveled, joyless version of his former self. To make it more “McConnelly,” make his curled lips and neck flaps extra prominent. (HOT TIP: Ol’ Mitch is around 40% chins/neck — you aren’t drawing him correctly if the area between his mouth and shoulders are smooth.)
Step 2. Remove the soul, and give him some neck flaps. Now he’s comin’ for your reproductive rights, ladies!
Great!! Let’s try another!
2. Drawing Donald Trump. I’ve drawn Trump a lot — more than any other politician by far — and I eventually found a technique that worked really well for me, so that I don’t even have to look at a picture of him anymore. Because you’re probably new to drawing Trump, start with real photos for reference, and then try an outline of his lumpy head. (HOT TIP: include lumps!!)
It will be hard to tell when his chin stops and his neck begins, so this may take some practice!!
When it comes to drawing Trump, I start with an outline of his head, and then I add each of his distinguishing features (hair floop, squinty eyes, chins, etc). And these features are important for making Trump Trump. Remember: Captain Two-Scoops is self-obsessed and full of ego, meaning that he looks this way on purpose. This aesthetic is what he wants.
Step 1. Outline. Remember that he does not have a normal head shape, because his face skin goes so far away from his skull.
Next, add some features to help shape the rough draft.
Step 2. Outline his head with some signature features. Notice that I left room for chins!!!
Ok, great job. Now add eyes and the necessary wrinkles.
Step 3. Eyes and wrinkles. Add as many as you feel like!
Just a few more characteristics to draw. Including — you guessed it! — chins and flaps, baby!!
Step 4. Complete the portrait with an overcompensating tie and chins/flaps.
Wow! Now you’ve got your finished product and it looks great! If it looked any better, I’d swear it was actually using taxpayer money to go golfing again! (HOT TIP: if your drawing of Trump looks at all toned or handsome, or his neck looks like anything other than hardened mashed potatoes, you have done this incorrectly and need to start over!!) Are you ready to try one more?
3. Drawing Sean Spicer. It’s important to draw Spicer while you can, because it seems like he’s going to be fired any day now. We’ll add color to this one too, but let’s get the line work done first. To begin, we’ll need to analyze what’s going on with his chins/neck.
Yikes.
I’ll be drawing Sean Spicer as accurately as I can, so I’ll be including details like perfectly groomed hair, stress lines, deeply sad eyes, etc…however, I will be taking some creative liberties with his chins. I’m going to give him a few more chins than normal, but you might not even notice.
Step 1. Draw his signature FRUSTRATED FACE, and maybe a few extra chins for fun. (Did you notice that I added a couple?)
To color Sean, you can really do whatever you like. The only essential thing is to color him as if he’s had pink eye for his entire life.
Step 2. Pasty and contagious.
Finally, give him a body. Here I took some creative liberties. I drew him as Pinocchio, and made up a backstory in my head that every time he lies to the public on behalf of the Trump Administration, instead of growing a longer nose, he just grows another chin. What fun!
Step 3. Remember that he’s a puppet.
Well, that’s the end of the lesson for today. I hope this has been helpful and you can start cartooning Republicans on your own now! Just remember, if nothing else, gunk up that chin!
Thanksgiving 2016
Tyler Snodgrass is a comedian and artist living in Chicago. You can read his tweets here, and keep up with his storytelling show and podcast, We Still Like You, here. | https://medium.com/panel-frame/how-to-draw-republicans-bea8c712002c | ['Tyler Snodgrass'] | 2017-05-28 17:23:21.961000+00:00 | ['Tyler Snodgrass', 'Illustration', 'Art', 'Cartoon', 'Donald Trump'] |
Why I Love Australia's Inauthentic Chinese Food | Inauthentic Yet Delicious: Why I Love Australian Chinese Food
Australian country towns are full of Chinese restaurants like this one in Griffith, NSW. Photo by Author.
The first time I visited China, I was disappointed with the food. I loved eating “Chinese” food in my home country of Australia, but the meals served in the real China were totally different.
I thought I knew what Chinese food was, but everything seemed unfamiliar in Beijing. What on earth were these Sichuan peppercorns (a.k.a. numbing balls), I wondered? And where’s the prawn toast, special fried rice and fortune cookies?
I soon realised that the food served in Australian Chinese restaurants was not really “authentic” at all, even though it often says so on the menu. The cuisine I thought I knew and loved was a lie!
I enjoy trying new international cuisines and quickly came to like the local Chinese food.
Pekind duck, one of many local dishes I tried in Beijing. Photo by Author.
But after returning to Australia, I couldn’t quite look at Australian-Chinese food in the same way. I couldn’t help thinking that it was fake and started to resent it. I started going out of my way to find restaurants that served “real” Chinese food. Living in Sydney, this thankfully wasn’t too difficult.
Australian Chinese food is adapted for local tastes
The menus at Chinese restaurants in Australian country towns are almost identical. For most dishes, you’ll invariably have a choice of various different types of meat, veggies or seafood — or a combination — served with a choice of pre-made sauces.
I think there must be one or two sauce manufacturers that supply half of Australia’s Chinese restaurants, as they always seem to be the same: satay, black bean, sweet & sour, chilli, Szechuan and “Mongolian” sauce, for example. (I’m quite sure that you wouldn’t find Mongolian lamb, an Aussie classic, in Mongolia!) These sauces often taste the same, too, even at different restaurants.
Most of these dishes are at least cooked in an Asian style, but they’ve been adapted to Australian tastes and expectations. They’re often served with a knife & fork and I’m met with a surprised look if I ask for chopsticks instead. Some Aussie Chinese restaurants even have fish & chips or hamburgers on the menu, and one of my local Chinese restaurants serves some of its rice dishes with tomato sauce.
Very occasionally, the chef is even an Aussie bloke called Wayne, Steve or Malcolm.
Malcolm’s Chinese Restaurant, Griffith NSW. Photo by Author.
And don’t get me started on those Asian fusion restaurants that sell 20 different cuisines, but cook none of them well…
Perhaps the most bizzare Australian Chinese restaurant menu I’ve come across was in Cobar, NSW. For a supposedly Chinese restaurant, the menu was a fusion confusion featuring Turkish garlic bread, Hawaiian chicken parmigiana, Aussie steak and even a few Thai dishes for good measure! | https://medium.com/@mattjgraham/inauthentic-yet-delicious-why-i-love-australian-chinese-food-47f9001976d4 | ['Matt Graham'] | 2020-12-21 03:33:05.751000+00:00 | ['Food', 'Australia', 'Travel', 'Restaurant', 'Chinese Food'] |
Francis Menassa (JAR Capital): Why EU legislation on ESG can enhance high yield returns | By Francis Menassa — Founder of JAR Capital, an independent wealth and asset management firm based in St. James’s
In the last two years investment in sustainable fixed-income assets has been gathering pace. According to a report published by the Global Sustainable Investment Alliance, investing in ESG fixed income now accounts for over a third of responsible investing, an increase of 34% in two years.
Interest in environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors should come as no surprise, however; shifting social norms and evidence of worsening climate conditions are of course major contributing factors to this trend. But an EU law requiring large companies to disclose certain information on the way they operate and manage social and environmental challenges is having particular benefits for high yield fixed income investors.
Creating a framework for responsible business
The EU’s 2014 Non-Financial Reporting Directive requires companies to disclose non-financial and diversity information. The aim is to help investors, consumers, policy makers and other stakeholders to evaluate the non-financial performance of large companies and encourages these companies to develop a responsible approach to business.
Fully implemented at the end of 2017, this new law requires previously unrated or poorly rated companies to increase transparency when issuing debt. As a result, many companies are now actively working to improve corporate governance and channels of communication while making more efficient use of resources. Ultimately reduction in legal, environmental and reputational risks is opening up more opportunities for sustainable fixed income investment.
Fixed income needs different metrics
Until recently, incorporating ESG factors into fixed income investment analysis, particularly in high yield, has been easier said than done. Unlike the equity space, there have been no ESG credit ratings (ratings agencies had little or no access to ESG information) or sustainability indices against which to benchmark performance. Furthermore, the issuers themselves were unprepared for any ESG concerns from investors in their fundraising process.
Inevitably, investing in the sustainable high yield bond market is higher risk. It involves complex analysis of companies’ opaque debt structures. Meanwhile reporting inconsistencies and gaps in accessible information make it difficult to compare companies. This can result in mispriced risk and in extreme cases, corporate defaults. Parmalat, Enron and Worldcom are just a few examples of where things can go wrong.
The fund managers at JAR Capital are pioneers in the high yield fixed income sustainable sector, always assessing environmental, social and corporate governance factors as an integral part of the decision-making process. In the case of Parmalat, despite their wholesale misleading of the market and many investors, we chose not to invest. By using our proprietary analysis, we could see that there were significant shortcomings in the debt structure.
Active collaboration with issuers
To compensate for the lack of available information, we have developed our own ratings universe, partnering with ISS-oekom, one of the largest independent rating agencies in the sustainable space. Additionally, we now employ ESG experts to enhance our analysis. Our extensive due diligence has meant that we have had no defaults in any of our funds.
The European car industry is a good example of where we have added value. In terms of components, most cars are produced by the suppliers and almost 60% are privately held. Many of the companies that we invest in had no published data and there was very little transparency in their operational structure, yet we found that most complied to sustainable standards. However, no active public engagement meant no sustainability rating which limited their financing options. We offered guidance on sustainability standards, resolving problems and improved their ESG ratings.
Higher standards, more opportunities
The growth of ESG continues and there are signs that the EU directive is beginning to take effect, albeit slowly. A report published in November 2018 by the Climate Disclosure Standards Board found that over a year after the implementation of the EU’s 2014 Non-Financial Reporting Directive companies do not consistently report information. While 99% of the sample of 80 companies representing 3.75 trillion euros in assets disclose their policy approach to at least one key non-financial aspect, less than half described their due diligence processes for climate and environmental risks.
Yet we are now seeing more wide-ranging approaches to high yield debt, both for issuers and investors. Advancements in technology mean that there are more sophisticated methods of data collection and interpretation.
There are also a range of benchmarks to draw from as well as highly regarded sustainability standards, both private and governmental. In March 2019, the European Parliament adopted rules under its Sustainable Finance Action Plan to require asset managers to use a common reporting standard to disclose how they consider ESG factors and to prevent them from greenwashing.
On a private level, the FNG Label, established in 2015 for sustainable mutual funds provides a transparent standard for funds which pursue a consistent and rigorous sustainability strategy.
These major policy developments combined with industry-wide approaches are presenting unique opportunities for genuine responsible investing. Those high yield fixed income funds that can provide ESG and sustainable expertise have the potential to effect positive change while generating improved returns. | https://medium.com/@menassafrancis/francis-menassa-jar-capital-why-eu-legislation-on-esg-can-enhance-high-yield-returns-eb62813a70d5 | ['Francis Menassa'] | 2019-07-09 14:47:20.601000+00:00 | ['Capital', 'Finance', 'Esg', 'Francis Menassa', 'Europe'] |
Are You Still Watching? Corning Museum of Glass and Netflix’s Blown Away | Fast forward to Blown Away and in many ways the core proposition of the show is imparting levels of knowledge to the audience at a fairly high level. “You’re seeing the artist and the technical challenge of the makers working all under a time pressure, and they don’t hold back. All while telling you the technical details behind everything. So that wasn’t a surprise to me that it would be a winning formula.”
Blown Away
When Canadian Production Company Marblemedia were upfront about the concept of the series when they approached Corning Museum of Glass about being involved, sharing details like insights to who the director was going to be, previous programs produced, and shared what kind of camera equipment was going to be used.
“One of the things that i learned in my museum career is that the world is organized to say no, but that should never stop a good idea,” said Cassetti. “Anytime someone comes to you with a new project and proposition, the staff is already working flat out. We had to ask is it worth our while, worth the investment and we went through an analysis. Once we had all of those data points from the production company we asked ourselves, is this going to be good?” The fact that the show was going to be distributed by Netflix was a huge validation of the project for the museum, but there was still risk.
Corning Museum of Glass Involvement
Once the museum felt comfortable moving forward, the questions moved to how does the museum participate? “There was this incredible time pressure, which could have been its own TV show. We were talking with them in the summer when they were in the middle of building the studio space where the series was going to be filmed in, and filming was going to begin in the fall. It turned out that this idea of the prize package including a residency and the opportunity for our team of glassblowers to participate in the last episode sealed our participation in the show.
“They [Marblemedia] said the gold standard [of reality competition shows] is the Great British Baking Show and many of the things that work in Blown Away are in the Great British Baking Show including camaraderie and the respect that the contestants have for one another,” said Cassetti. The glass-blowing world is a tight-knit community. Artists assist one another, take classes together, and know of each other by reputation. “There’s very much a family feel to it that we at the museum have understood for over twenty years by not only doing live glass blowing but by helping guest artists. Our objective is to help artists realize their work at a level that not only meets what they can do but hopefully exceeds that because of the skills of our team and the equipment we support them with.” It’s that sense of goodwill that viewers get in the last episode of each season when the museum’s Hot Glass Demo Team assists the finalists. “There is a huge amount of energy and sort of a cooperative let us help each other to succeed kind of feeling.”
Behind the Scenes
Rob Cassetti served as the Season Two finale guest judge, which was recorded just before the pandemic. As the guest judge, Cassetti had no idea who the finalists were, or knew their past performance on the show. “Which is a good way to judge something.” In the finale, the finalists were tasked to make an installation which involved making multiple pieces to fill a gallery space. Cassetti was on set to watch the Season One finale, but watching how the show came together behind the scenes was fascinating to see. “The thing that is so impressive is the director and his crew are so good at filming glass blowing…I think it’s the most impressive part of the show.”
Rob Cassetti joins judge Katherine Gray and host Nick Uhas in the Season Two finale. Photo courtesy of David Leyes for marblemedia
The Netflix Effect
After Season One, the museum saw an immediate interest and uptick in glass-blowing classes. “So much so that the beginner classes sold out and we had to add additional classes. Amy [Schwartz, Director of The Studio] was checking in with her colleagues who run glass blowing programs around the world and they were all seeing the same thing happen,” said Cassetti. “Talk about a museum fulfilling its mission. We’re glass-evangelists and we want people to learn about it, including how to make it. So it was a very powerful partnership to be able to have that visibility with Netflix.
The museum saw more visitors including Season One winner Deb Czeresko fans who visited the museum during her residency to watch her work. Part of the decision-making for getting involved with the series was to increase awareness of the museum and to motivate visitors. Following each season, the museum hosts a small exhibit that features work from each participant. “It’s so interesting to see visitors interact with these objects…they are immediately connecting to the person who made them,” said Cassetti. “They talk about the objects in a different way and talking themselves back to seeing that person make it. As a museum professional that just resonates on so many levels…their knowledge of the progress.”
Rob Cassetti onset of Blown Away. Photo courtesy of David Leyes for marblemedia
Full Circle
For Cassetti, the entire experience was immensely satisfying. “I proposed the idea of a live glass blowing demonstration to the museum in the mid-1990s, knowing the inherent drama that was built into the equation,’ said Cassetti. “To have that energy captured in this easy with Blown Away, distilling so many things I know and love about the process that you see when you visit Corning Museum of Glass but for a global audience to be able to see it just speaks to me so deeply.” Cassetti is passionate about this process, seeing both the artist's potential and the challenge associated with it. For him, it never gets old. “Thinking about it as a museum professional where our core reason we exist to get people to see glass differently, it’s just a beautiful culmination.” | https://medium.com/museum-association-of-new-york/are-you-still-watching-corning-museum-of-glass-and-netflixs-blown-away-c5430d3cff91 | ['Museum Association Of New York'] | 2021-03-01 16:05:46.026000+00:00 | ['Museums', 'Netflix', 'Corning Museum Of Glass'] |
Universe; A Self Simulating Strange Loop | Image Credit: Pinterest
When I project my mind’s eye to reflect on this bewildering & breathtaking cosmos, I’m always struck by wonder & awe. I find it astounding how far did our nomadic species came in understanding this vast sea of existence. Yet we have just started to scratch the surface. There is so much more to know, so many mysteries that are yet to be explored, so many questions yet to be answered & so many questions that we don’t know yet, to be asked. Whatever new understandings of cosmos await us, I submit to you; Universe will turn out to be far weirder, far more complex & far spookier than any of us can ever imagine. At least that’s what has happened so far.
In this article I want to walk you through a new ontology or should I say, the third ontology, which emerges from “Emergence theory.” A group of scientists in LA California, trying to come up with a “Unification theory” published a paper in entropy journal titled “The Self-Simulation Hypothesis Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.” Which proposes that universe could be a self-simulating strange loop. Let’s explore this fascinating idea in detail.
How real are you? What if everything you are, everything you know, all the people in your life as well as all the events were not physically there but just a very elaborate simulation? Philosopher Nick Bostrom famously considered this in his seminal paper “Are you living in a computer simulation?,” where he proposed that all of our existence may be just a product of very sophisticated computer simulations ran by advanced beings whose real nature we may never be able to know. Now a new theory has come along that takes it a step further — what if there are no advanced beings either and everything in “reality” is a self-simulation that generates itself from pure thought?
The physical universe is a “strange loop” says the new paper titled “The Self-Simulation Hypothesis Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics” from the team at the Quantum Gravity Research, a Los Angeles-based theoretical physics institute founded by the scientist and entrepreneur Klee Irwin. They take Bostrom’s simulation hypothesis, which maintains that all of reality is an extremely detailed computer program, and ask, rather than relying on advanced lifeforms to create the amazing technology necessary to compose everything within our world, isn’t it more efficient to propose that the universe itself is a “mental self-simulation”? They tie this idea to quantum mechanics, seeing the universe as one of many possible quantum gravity models.
One important aspect that differentiates this view relates to the fact that Bostrom’s original hypothesis is materialistic, seeing the universe as inherently physical. To Bostrom, we could simply be part of an ancestor simulation, engineered by posthumans. Even the process of evolution itself could just be a mechanism by which the future beings are testing countless processes, purposefully moving humans through levels of biological and technological growth. In this way they also generate the supposed information or history of our world. Ultimately, we wouldn’t know the difference.
But where does the physical reality that would generate the simulations comes from, wonder the researchers? Their hypothesis takes a non-materialistic approach, saying that everything is information expressed as thought. As such, the universe “self-actualizes” itself into existence, relying on underlying algorithms and a rule they call “the principle of efficient language.”
Under this proposal, the entire simulation of everything in existence is just one “grand thought.” How would the simulation itself be originated? It was always there, if we accept the concept of “timeless emergentism.” According to this idea, time isn’t there at all. Instead, the all-encompassing thought that is our reality offers a nested semblance of a hierarchical order, full of “sub-thoughts” that reach all the way down the rabbit hole towards the base mathematics and fundamental particles. This is also where the rule of efficient language comes in, suggesting that humans themselves are such “emergent sub-thoughts” and they experience and find meaning in the world through other sub-thoughts (called “code-steps or actions”) in the most economical fashion.
While many scientists presume materialism to be true, we believe that quantum mechanics may provide hints that our reality is a mental construct. Recent advances in quantum gravity, such as seeing spacetime emergent via a hologram, also is a hint that spacetime is not fundamental.
The scientists link their hypothesis to panpsychism, which sees everything as thought or consciousness. The authors think that their “panpsychic self-simulation model” can even explain the origin of an overarching panconsciousness at the foundational level of the simulations, which “self-actualizes itself in a strange loop via self-simulation.” This panconsciousness also has free will and its various nested levels essentially have the ability to select what code to actualize, while making syntax choices. The goal of this consciousness? To generate meaning or information.
If all of this is hard to grasp, the authors offer another interesting idea that may link your everyday experience to these philosophical considerations. Think of your dreams as your own personal self-simulations, postulates the team. While they are rather primitive (by super-intelligent future AI standards), dreams tend to provide better resolution than current computer modeling and are a great example of the evolution of the human mind. As the scientists write, “What is most remarkable is the ultra-high-fidelity resolution of these mind-based simulations and the accuracy of the physics therein.” They point especially to lucid dreams, where the dreamer is aware of being in a dream, as instances of very accurate simulations created by your mind that may be impossible to distinguish from any other reality. To that end, now that you’re sitting here reading this article, how do you really know you’re not in a dream? The experience seems very high in resolution but so do some dreams. It’s not too much of a reach to imagine that an extremely powerful computer that we may be able to make in not-too-distant future could duplicate this level of detail.
The team also proposes that in the coming years we will be able to create designer consciousnesses for ourselves as advancements in gene editing could allow us to make our own mind-simulations much more powerful. We may also see minds emerging that do not require matter at all.
While some of these ideas are certainly controversial in the mainstream science circles, Klee and his team respond that “We must critically think about consciousness and certain aspects of philosophy that are uncomfortable subjects to some scientists.” | https://medium.com/@malikaaqib/universe-a-self-simulating-strange-loop-7bd81b44ed | ['Malik Aaqib'] | 2021-09-08 19:05:50.110000+00:00 | ['Physics', 'Existence', 'Simulation', 'Universe', 'Strangeloop'] |
React Native Stability Monitoring | We do get a call stack, but it is the call stack for the native exception thrown by React Native. JavaScript does not crash, but when an unhandled JavaScript exception occurs, React Native throws a native exception that causes a crash. While these reports are still useful for tracking the volume of crashes coming from JavaScript code, it’s not immediately actionable like a typical native crash report. The JavaScript call stack is all part of the crash report message, and is also minified and obfuscated. Further, all crashes from unhandled JavaScript exceptions are grouped together because these exceptions all have the same native call stack, making it hard to see how many different issues we have.
Symbolicated call stacks with source files and line numbers that are grouped by the top stack frame are table stakes when monitoring and fixing stability issues on mobile apps, so we didn’t feel like the reports we were getting were sufficient. The call stacks we really care about in these cases are the JavaScript call stacks that trigger the native exceptions.
Solution — Bugsnag
Official React Native Library capable of automatically symbolicating JavaScript reports via source maps
capable of automatically symbolicating JavaScript reports via source maps Native SDKs power their React Native library under the hood, allowing us to continue to capture native crashes as well
power their React Native library under the hood, allowing us to continue to capture native crashes as well Robust Indexing enables powerful search functionality which improves the efficiency of resolving stability related issues
Here is what a Bugsnag crash report looks like for an unhandled JavaScript exception in React Native: | https://medium.com/zynga-engineering/react-native-stability-monitoring-fbf425eb71ac | ['Words With Friends Engineering'] | 2019-05-21 16:42:55.290000+00:00 | ['Android', 'iOS', 'React Native', 'Mobile App Development', 'React'] |
intelligent Crypto currency | HOW A 5% NET WORTH BET ON SELECT CRYPTOCURRENCIES COULD QUADRUPLE YOUR NET WORTH IN THE NEXT 12 MONTHS
For more details: https://www.digistore24.com/redir/339306/Parth374/
WHY CRYPTOCURRENCY?
Where else do you get a chance to potentially make 10x, 50x or even as much as 277x returns in less than a year?
I believe we're on the cusp of the biggest cryptocurrency bull market we've ever seen. Bitcoin has already traded over $23,000 and I believe it's just the beginning.
But forget about Bitcoin... the time to buy that was months ago when it was still trading under $10,000. Sure, it may still go up to $100,000 in future, but that's "only" a 5x and it would take ENORMOUS capital to get it to that level. | https://medium.com/@panchalparth374/intelligent-crypto-currency-258022606cb0 | [] | 2020-12-25 06:03:42.187000+00:00 | ['Trading', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Money', 'Business Strategy', 'Bitcoin'] |
Optimal Transportation — 1. Relationship with Deep Learning | Relationship with Deep Learning
Introduction
Recently, I have followed professor David Gu of Stony Brook university on some computational geometry stuff. It’s enlightening that fundamental mathematics have such profound impact on computer science and machine learning. Since my background is algebraic geometry/topology, I find this field smooth and exciting to follow. I decide to write a series of posts based on what I learned and show some cool stuff regarding optimal transportation (first).
I will try not to get too technical in the first post cause I don’t want to scare people away. I will briefly show how optimal transportation can improve deep learning, especially in GAN case.
Deep Learning and model collapse
GAN stands for Generative Adversarial Network. There are plenty of articles online introducing GAN model, so I will not go into details of it. In short, GAN is a generative model consisting of two neural networks, one is discriminator and another is generator. The discriminator network is used to judge whether an image is “fake” or “real”, which is usually pre-trained. The generator model will generate images taking input points from latent space and output an image. The latent space is a vector space and need to be trained. The GAN model stacks generator and discriminator together and a random point flows into generator then to discriminator. The output from generator model is manually labeled as “real”, the discriminator however, at the beginning, will deem it to be “fake” and the large error will force the back propagation to update generator weights to output better image. In this process, the latent space will be assigned meaning and eventually represent the output distribution.
Let us see more broadly into deep learning. Often time when we train a DL model, e.g, NLP models, we use embedding. A word or an object is embedded into a high dimensional matrix or space, so that each point is represented by a high dimensional vector in some space. The model is then trained to endow the space a meaning so that our training sample data will be distributed accordingly in this space. Now, it seems we can answer the question: what does deep learning really learn? It learns the probability distribution on a manifold.
However, the distribution of the latents points in latent space may not be continuous. This may cause problem, for example, what if our input point lies in the gap area of latent space? Then the model has no way of telling which distribution it comes from and will generate a very poor result. Let’s show this issue with a concrete example: the MNIST digit data set. Use GAN, we can generate digit image from a large latent space, say, 100 dimensional vector space. By choosing appropriate learning rate and number of epochs, the discriminator can do a pretty good job telling “real” and “fake” images
Accuracy of Discriminator Model
but the GAN model loss (binary cross-entropy) stays at a pretty high level even after 100 epochs. This suggests the generator may not be able to fool the discriminator even after long time training.
Let us plot the latent space after projecting it to a lower dimensional space (2-dimensional) using UMAP.
Immediately we see that the distribution is highly non-continuous and has large gaps. What would happen if we just use this 2-dimensional space as latent space to generate digit image?
There are clearly many ambiguous outputs and some of them are not recognizeable. No wonder the discriminator is not fooled and easily catches the “fake” ones.
Optimal Transportation
We can resolve this issue by using optimal transportation. Optimal transportation theory tries to solve the following problem: we have two measurable spaces
with probability distribution functions
Probability Distribution Function
We say a map T from X to Y measure preserving if
Measure Preserving Map
Then given a cost function c
Cost Function
we want to calculate the measure preserving transportation T (which is called the optimal transportation) that minimizes the cost
Monge Problem
The integral we try to minimize is often called the Wasserstein distance and the above expression is called the Monge problem. Via some mathematical manipulation, we can transfer Monge problem to Brenier problem (I’m hoping to give more maths details in this series!):
Brenier Problem
It can be shown that Brenier problem has a solution if we take quadratic cost function
Brenier Cost Function
The function u in the Brenier problem is called the Brenier potential (see diagrams below) whose gradient gives the transportation map T.
We apply optimal transportation theory from Brenier point of view to the 2-dimensional latent space given above. First, we endow a uniform distribution to the 2-dim latent space in the sense that each point has equal weight, this will be our Y space. Then we build the Brenier potential as follows:
We do a triangulation (Delaunay) of Y and the corresponding Voronoi diagram, and calculate each Voronoi cell’s area. We build Brenier potential by lift the Voronoi cells into 3-dimensional space as hyperplanes and calculate their upper envelope. The projection to 2D space of the Legendre dual of this upper envelope gives a weighted Delaunay triangulation of Y space. Iteratively adjust the heights of the liftings and upper envelope so that its projection to 2D space gives the Voronoi decomposition such that cells’ areas equal to the given weights. This gives the X space.
The Brenier potential obtained this way would be a piece-wise linear space, and the projection will give the Voronoi diagram of the X space so that each cell has measure the target weight, i.e, in our case, a uniform distributed space.
Brenier Potential
We see that the projected space obtained this way has no gap between distributions, and singular points have measure zero. If we run GAN from this space instead of original 2-dim latent space, the model collapsing issue would be drastically improved.
GAN after OT
It is worth noticing that majority of the generated digit is clean and unambiguous, but still some of them are fuzzy, e.g, the bottom row third to the right. Reason is the data point in the OT latent space is on the edge of two distributions, a.k.a, a singular point. Although singularities have zero measure (it’s codimension 1 in our space), it can happen that some points lie in this zero measure set. However, this is already a huge improvement of the original latent space. | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/optimal-transportation-1-61fe0dda03ba | ['Fei Sun'] | 2020-12-28 16:40:28.517000+00:00 | ['Convex Optimization', 'Probability Distributions', 'Deep Learning', 'Computational Geometry', 'Optimal Transport'] |
Best Game Design and Development Software | Making a game is not as easy as playing it. One needs to have the required knowledge and skills to make a game. To create games, you need to learn programming languages such as C++ or JAVA. With the advent of good software tools, it has become possible for everyone to make a game, even at home. We have brought you some of the best game making software. These software tools will help you achieve the dream of making a game. Let’s check them out.
Indie Game Maker
Indie Game Maker is a great game making software that will help you make a game in an easy way. The software is intended for beginners. Putting your ideas into action with the help of this great software is now even easier. From designing to 3D modeling, Indie Game Maker offers almost all relevant features. You can customize the characters and make something of your own using the Indie Game Maker.
Adventure Game Studio
Another good game making software on the list is Adventure Game Studio. It offers all the tools that will help you create a fantastic game. You can design a game easily in the software as it comes with several pre-made materials. It is an easy to use software that doesn’t take much of your time and effort. The downside is, you can create only simple games using this free tool.
GameMaker Studio 2
GameMaker Studio 2 is a recently-released excellent game making tool that will help you put your ideas into action. Turning your dream of creating a game into reality is no more difficult. The features to design, customize the elements are really good. It is a lightweight software tool that you can use on your laptop also. From arranging to organizing the elements, GameMaker Studio 2 does an excellent job. The game making software offers a free trial so that you can decide whether to pay for it or not. The paid version costs $39.
RPG Maker VX Ace
It is a decent tool for creating fabulous games. Its simplicity and great features make it one of the best game making programs on the list. It comes with many characters and pieces of equipment that you can use to create a fantastic game. Its features allow you to customize characters in the desired way. The game is exported to an EXE. File, which is playable only on Windows PC. It offers a free trial. The paid version costs $69.
Construct 2
Using Construct 2 may seem difficult to some in the beginning, but it is an effective game making software. It will help you make games in just a few simple steps. The drag and drop feature on the software lets you arrange elements in an easy way. You can make objects act in the desired way using the software. You can put to life the elements in the game. Various effects and features such as flash, wrap, and drop will make your game more fantastic. The free version of Construct 2 offers limited features. The paid version costs $255.
The purpose of the list was to help you familiarize with the best game making software.
Everleig is a Blog expert and has been working in the technology industry since 2003. As a technical expert, Everleig has written technical blogs, manuals, white papers, and reviews for many websites such as 4yellowpaes.com
Source: Development Software | https://medium.com/@addisonwalker922/making-a-game-is-not-as-easy-as-playing-it-2795efcedaf6 | ['Addison Walker'] | 2020-11-24 06:09:54.599000+00:00 | ['Game Design', 'Development Software'] |
A Christmas Carol Retrospective: Part 11 | A Christmas Carol (1994)
This is an animated version made by Jetlag Productions, which was a small animated film studio that worked on a few TV series, before releasing their own films. Most of their films are considered “mockbusters”. If you’re not familiar with the term, it’s when studios release movies that are deliberately made to look like they are the same title as a big budget studio movie. Next time you look at a department store DVD bargain bin look for titles like “Karate Panda” or “Frozen Land” for good examples. Jetlag put out a number of movies like this including knock offs of Pocahontas, Hercules, and the Lion King, all released at the same time as Disney’s versions. Jetlag also put out a couple of literary adaptations, one of which is A Christmas Carol.
It starts with a MIDI-sounding adaptation of Jingle Bells. A narrator tell us that Christmas was a time of giving, but for Scrooge, it was nothing of the sort. Scrooge was a mean man, but no one feared him more than his unfortunate clerk.
Scrooge screams at Bob with an incredibly screechy voice. Fred immediately arrives and they quickly argue.
When Fred gives his little speech, Bob tries to clap, and literally hits his hands together once before falling off of his chair and knocking over his ledger and ink. It’s funny in how unfunny it is.
One charity guy shows up and is dismissed. Scrooge lets Bob leave with Christmas Day off and heads home. His door knocker transforms into Marley’s face, which kind of looks cat-like for some reason and Scrooge puts on glasses to take a closer look. As he heads in to his home he hears some ghostly wailing and yells “I won’t have this!” and “Double nonsense.” The fire in the fireplace turns into multiple Marley heads awkwardly opening and closing their mouths while they make noise and then Marley’s ghost turns into some bolts of electricity cracking in the air that had me thinking Doc Brown was going to burst into the room with the DeLorean. (Note to self: There should be a Back to the Future comic where different timeline versions of Doc visit Biff and take him to different pasts, presents and futures to get him to change his ways at Christmas. If IDW Comics is reading this, call me!)
For some reason, all of Marley’s features like his hair and waist coat are floating upwards like he’s being pulled by a magnet. His voice is exactly how a child would imitate a ghost by drawing out each word, which makes it pretty unintentionally funny. Marley gives him the standard speech and floats out the window, where we see a bunch of spirits in chains just floating around, and the same animations loop over and over, while a really weird song (which I hesitate to call a song) plays where some ghostly voices tell Scrooge to change his ways and be good to others while the ghosts keep screaming. The sound of the song is drowned out by the screaming and it is much more annoying than it is creepy.
The Ghost of Christmas Past arrives and looks kind of like the Dungeon Master from the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon, a little old man with white hair in a blue robe with a strange green hat. He flies Scrooge out the window with what looks like telekinesis and they arrive at Scrooge’s boyhood school. Scrooge surprisingly yells “Merry Christmas!” to his boyhood friends, and when the Ghost asks what good Christmas is to him, he says Christmas was a great time at the school, as everyone was happy and laughing. The Ghost then points out that there is one child who is lonely at this time, so why Scrooge would remember the good parts of Christmas is kind of odd.
He refuses to go inside to see, but the Spirit uses tendrils of smoke and then a wave of snow to force him in, which was a brilliant waste of the animation budget. Inside, he watches his younger self crying over a book and as time moves, Fan arrives to bring him home. Young Scrooge’s voice is clearly his adult voice actor talking in falsetto and sounding like he’s imitating a girl, which is really laughable.
The Spirit says they must move on, but Scrooge throws a tantrum saying “No, no, I want to stay here with Fan!” They move anyway onto Fezziwig’s warehouse party, which at least has about 15 party-goers in this version, but they all move back and forth repeating their animation exactly like it’s the animatronics on a Disney ride. The Spirit whisks him away again to the Belle break up, which is extremely short.
Scrooge grabs the Spirit to beg to be let go and he’s back in his bed grabbing his curtains. The Ghost of Christmas Present arrives, and a giant spectral hand appears under his bedroom door to coax him out, which looks crazy. He criticizes the whole spirit thing and a lightning bolt appears in his room to strike at him, and frightens him into apologizing to Marley. I don’t know why Marley apparently controls electricity in this version.
The Ghost of Christmas Present looks sort of traditional, but with a big purple robe and he moves Scrooge with a whirlwind of fruit to a street where he says that people keep Christmas in their hearts. They briefly walk inside a house and we see two people putting up a wreath and a Christmas tree, but no one speaks at all in the scene. It took me a little to realize that it was Fred, which was a pretty sad excuse for showing Fred’s party. Scrooge then goes to the Cratchits house where Bob arrives with Tiny Tim in tow. Interestingly this version of the Cratchits has 3 boys and 3 girls. Why they took the time to animate even more children than necessary is kind of strange. He says Tiny Tim is getting stronger and Scrooge says it doesn’t look like it. The Spirit says “Bob only says what he wishes is true”.
Scrooge pleads that Tiny Tim will not die and the Cratchits toast to Scrooge. The Spirit disappears and Scrooge awakens in his bed. Scrooge mentions that when all of this is over, he is buying new sheets and new curtains. At first I thought it was a “wet the bed” joke, but why would he need curtains? It’s just a plain weird thing to say.
He flings open the curtains and a pointy-finger grim reaper figure is standing there. “Are you the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come?” he asked. When he gets no response, he says “I know. Stupid question.” and follows him out. We see two businessmen talking about the funeral that no one wants to go to. Scrooge says “I know these men, I’ve done business with them all!” But there were only two of them, so shouldn’t you say both?
They walk into Old Joe’s, where Mrs. Dilber, the laundress and the undertaker sell off his possessions. “Someone in this city must mourn this man!”, Scrooge cries and we get taken to the Cratchits. Scrooge is touched at the grieving for Tiny Tim. “What can the death of the man we saw have to do with the death of Tiny Tim?” He’s taken to the cemetery and pointed to his own tomb.
“I am the man who died!?” he cries. He makes his promises to honor Christmas and grabbing the spirit, awakens holding his curtains again. He jumps around and kind of laughs like Woody Woodpecker while he recollects what occurred.
He shouts to a boy to buy the prize turkey and heads out. We see the turkey arriving at the Cratchits and Bob suggests he only knows one man who could afford a turkey that big. Mrs. Cratchit says “You can’t mean Mr. Scrooge!” and they all laugh about it.
Scrooge finds the charity guy and gives his back payment donations. He stops at Fred’s where he asks for forgiveness for never visiting, and the party goers awkwardly golf clap for him. We then see Scrooge at his business the next day, where he pranks Bob and raises his salary. It ends with a song as Scrooge walks down the snowy street with the Cratchits and hugs Tiny Tim, all while a song about a “Very Merry Christmas” plays. A narrator reads the last few sentences of the story, but it amazingly takes out “God Bless us, everyone.” which I then realized Tiny Tim didn’t even say earlier during the toast. I guess this is an extremely secular version?
Overall, this is a pretty big stinker. Clocking in at only 48 minutes, I was still ready for it to be over with. The character designs are surprisingly kind of nice, they have a bit of an anime-like quality to the way they are drawn. But Scrooge is oddly given brown hair, rather than the traditional white or gray. With his pointed jaw and lean face, I found myself more than once thinking he looks a lot like Abe Lincoln, and the hair and top hat only added to the illusion. Scrooge’s voice is done way over the top and he sounds like someone impersonating a Decepticon from Transformers instead of a curmudgeonly old guy, but all the other voice acting is average. The actual movement of the animation is typical 90s TV cartoon quality. While the dialogue is sometimes fairly accurate to the source, it’s not particularly better than any other version, so there is practically nothing that really works for this version to make me recommend it over any other.
The Flintstones Christmas Carol (1994)
Okay, I’ll just address the age-old joke before I dive into this one. Why do the Flintstones celebrate Christmas, when it would not exist without the birth of Christ, and the Flintstones lived thousands of years before the birth would have taken place? I have no idea, other than that they live in a cartoon universe where cars and appliances exist in animal form and dinosaurs live concurrently with man, so this is clearly not our universe. Presumably this is a parallel universe where the caveman style of life survived to the equivalent of our modern-day and they had a caveman Mary, Joseph, and Jesus at some point in their past. There’s my ridiculous theory and I’m sticking to it!
Bedrock Community Theater is putting on a production of “A Christmas Carol” and Fred is playing the role of Scrooge. He’s taking it a little too seriously, practicing his lines everywhere, with the dialogue he’s trying out being book accurate for the most part. He’s so into the role that he’s ignoring the feelings of his family and friends due to the clout it’s giving him. At the construction site, his usually mean boss Mr. Slate points out that he would make a better Scrooge, which is interesting, because I expected that to be the plot of the movie, but I guess they want the main character in the Scrooge role. This comes up a few times later, so it’s clear that the writers knew that Slate would make more sense as Scrooge too!
We are also introduced to a young blonde named Maggie who talks like a ditsy floozy and she says how excited she is for the love scene she does in the play and she reads some of her lines and then tries to kiss Fred, but is blocked by a stone tablet. Fred is just as excited as her for the “romance scene”, which I think is kind of awful since he’s married.
Fred tries reading the script while running the excavating dinosaurs and one of the dinos remarks “I thought our job was to chew the scenery.” I have to admit, that’s a solid joke.
Fred buys some last minute gifts for Wilma and Pebbles and tries to get them wrapped, but the line is too long, so he leaves them with a kid and asks him to get them wrapped for him in exchange for his lower call number and he rushes to the theater. Wilma chastises him because he forgot to pick up Pebbles from daycare and it’s clear she isn’t happy with Fred as the production begins.
Once he gets on stage, the story begins and transforms from a stage production into a seemingly real tale. The narrator reads some lines that are surprisingly straight from the book, including some that I’ve never heard read in any other version’s narration. Barney is in the role of Bob Cratchit (IN this version, Bob Cragit…ugh.) Nephew Ned (I guess it would be confusing if he was also named Fred) arrives and has the usual banter.
The charity guys arrive and Scrooge says he certainly can support them, but he WON’T!
As Scrooge leaves, a kid knocks off his hat which gets trampled by a carriage (much like the 1934 version, but without Bob). He calls a constable on the kid, who is caught, and Scrooge gives him the option of shoveling the snow from his building, or going to the workhouse. Mr. Slate appears as “Marbley” on his sabertooth tiger door knocker.
Marbley’s ghost arrives and gives his speech. This play they are doing oddly wobbles back and forth from extremely accurate book dialogue to odd fluff. Scrooge returns to bed, and the audience applauds and the curtain is drawn, and they seem to take a break, as Fred now comes off stage and is talking about how great a job he did. Barney changes costumes and the production continues.
The actress who was going to play the Spirit of Christmas past has the “Bedrock Bug” and is too sick to perform, so Wilma has to swap in, much to Fred’s surprise. The Spirit shows Scrooge his past as a boy, where he quickly swaps into the role of young Scrooge and sees Fan (who he mistakes for Pebbles) and he leaves with Fan. He’s taken to Fezziwig’s (who Barney is now playing). Wilma gets called offstage and Maggie, the floozy from earlier who was going to play Belle is also sick, so Wilma has to step into another role. Fred is surprised yet again, and Wilma asks in an angry tone if he wanted to do the love scene with the other girl instead.
We move forward in time, and we see Scrooge propose to Belle after a snowball fight. But then we move forward again to the breakup scene where Belle tells him that she has been replaced by the idol of greed.
The curtain closes and Fred heads offstage, where he tells Barney he is concerned because Wilma’s tears seemed real. Barney tells him he is acting like a real Scrooge by forgetting about Pebbles and being self-centered. He realizes he forgot all about the kid at the store holding his presents and the intermission only has 10 minutes left! He runs to the store, breaks in, tripping a “silent alarm” bird in the process and gets caught by his cop friend and taken back to the theater in time, with the presents still missing.
Christmas Present shows up as a big green robed fellow. He takes Scrooge to the street and sprinkles his torch and even gives the speech about bigotry that I haven’t heard in any other version. He takes Scrooge to the Cragits (played by Betty, Pebbles, and Bam Bam as Tiny Tim, along with Dino as a family dog). He is touched by Tiny Tim’s sentiment at church and is distraught at the Spirit’s assessment that he will die.
They move on to Nephew “Ned”, where they are playing charades and acting out “selfish” and “cheap” and ultimately Uncle Scrooge. (It’s interesting that there are so many variations of what game they are playing. I think we’re up to about 5 now.) Scrooge wants to stay, but time is short. The Ghost of Christmas Future arrives, which is just a hovering white robe.
The Spirit shows him to two men discussing the funeral, then to the corpse in bed, then to Old Joe’s where two women and a man quickly sell some of Scrooge’s possessions. Finally, to the Cragits, where Scrooge is moved by Tiny Tim’s death. They quickly move to the graveyard where he is shown his own grave (which reveals he is “Eboneezer Scrooge” in this version), but he awakens in his bed and says some more oddly accurate dialogue about his reformation.
He goes to the window and sees the boy who he made shovel his sidewalk, but the boy hits him in the face with a snowball, which he says he deserved. He asks the boy to buy the biggest turkeysaurus in the window and bring it to the Cragits.
He runs into the charitable guys, but one of them is Wilma! (She explains the other charity guy is sick now too). He plays it off as though she is Belle, and invites her to Nephew Ned’s (much to the director’s dismay, who bemoans that none of this is in the script and throws his copy to the ground). They go to a surprised Ned’s house, who happily accepts them.
He then runs into Bob and offers to make him his partner. Poor Bam Bam can’t get out the final “God Bless us, everyone.”, but Pebbles helps him out. As the curtain drops, the cast drops Fred and calls him out for his bad behavior. He apologizes and reconciles with Wilma, and the boy he left at the mall drops off his presents in time. He ends up feeling sick with the Bedrock bug, but Wilma points out it only lasts 24 hours, so he’ll be able to be ready to go to her mother’s Christmas dinner, which makes Fred sick to his stomach as he runs off stage.
This one felt like what Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol should have been. It uses the framing device to actually do things with the characters and have a plot outside of the normal Christmas Carol, and even intercuts the “performance” with more character stuff and plot. It’s really bizarre how there is some narration and dialogue that I haven’t seen in any other film version, so props to them for including some of that stuff and it is certainly better than most of the animated versions I’ve watched. They hit the major notes and most of it is done well, especially since we sort of get two different redemption stories that both involve Christmas in different ways. The stuff outside of the “Christmas Carol” part is pretty watchable and while I usually found most of the “modern stuff in the stone age” jokes lame in the cartoon series as a kid, some of the ones in this special are pretty inventive and funny. At only 1 hour long, there are certainly worse versions to watch, so I give this one a passing grade!
A Christmas Carol (1997)
This is an animated version released by DIC Entertainment, a studio most well known for creating the Inspector Gadget cartoon series, along with the Super Mario Bros Super Show and some Sonic the Hedgehog cartoons. Scrooge in this version is voiced by veteran character actor Tim Curry.
The film begins with the narration “Folks say life is a song, for some that means a ditty, for others, a dirge, but at the holiday season, we all sing a carol… a CHRISTMAS CAROL.” (How forced that was got a good laugh out of me.)
People in London sing an original song, “Tell Me a Tale About Christmas”, while the street goers dance and celebrate. Bob Cratchit (voiced by Michael York, who I only know as Basil Exposition from Austin Powers) is humming the song while he works. A random boy looks inside Scrooge’s business window. Scrooge is angered by the humming and scolds Cratchit. The boy watching from the window tries peeking through the keyhole, but in this version, Scrooge has a large bulldog named Debit, who comes barking at the door to scare him away.
Fred arrives and a lot of the language here is “dumbed down”. For example instead of Fred asking why Scrooge is dismal, he asks why he is grumpy. Scrooge says numbskull, instead of idiot, etc. It just seems like a lot of the Victorian-era flavor is being dried out for the sake of kids watching. When Scrooge says someone should be buried with a stake of holly through their heart, an anthropomorphic mouse in the safe he is using faints at the prospect of such a thing. Not even 5 minutes in, and we’ve got a comedic bulldog and a mouse, we just need a cat to go full Tom and Jerry.
Fred kindly picks up the mouse and pets it while he gives his speech in defense of Christmas, while Scrooge literally covers his ears (while Debit does the same) and when the mouse awakens, it jumps on Scrooge’s desk, who grabs a book to smack it with, which scares it away into a mousehole, where Debit chases it and smacks into the wall. It’s already going full Tom and Jerry it seems.
Fred leaves and the charity guys show up. When they ask about Marley, Scrooge points to a portrait and says he has been dead for seven years. The portrait is oddly modern looking, with a man in a green suit and tie with a modern mustache. I don’t know what was going on with that character design. He scolds Cratchit for arriving with one fewer lump of coal then he ordered while they talk.
He dismisses them and when they ask him to relent, he sics Debit on them who chases them out of the business. Closing time comes and Tiny Tim arrives at the door. Scrooge grabs his cane and yells “Beat it beggar!”, but Bob stops him telling him it’s his son. Scrooge says he has no idea he had a family (C’mon, how long has Bob been working there!?) and in a moment of sentimentality says “He is rather…tiny.” Even mean-old Debit seems to like Tiny Tim.
Bob leaves and Scrooge closes up the shop and walks home, watching Tiny Tim and Bob sliding on the ice for fun, which he shakes his head at. He makes his way to a tavern and orders “Hash for me, scraps for my dog”. The barmaid and a tavern fly comment that he’s so cheap getting the same thing everyday. The barmaid than breaks into a song “Random Acts of Kindness”, which does not have a very Christmas rhythm to it, it almost has a spooky beat. Scrooge himself joins in with verses arguing against charity and helping others. As he leaves he gives his 19th century Yelp review, “Waitress, here’s the only tip you’ll be getting from me, find a new chef, your hash isn’t fit for a dog.” What a jerk. Everyone celebrates him leaving.
He walks past a mother with her infant in a cold alley who begs “Please sir”, and he just keeps on walking. He finally gets home and his lion door knocker becomes Marley’s face, still with that Teddy Roosevelt mustache. As Scrooge reads in his bedroom, a tile on his fireplace morphs into Marley’s face, who says Scrooge’s name. Debit even barks at the face, but Scrooge won’t believe it. He calls himself a “dunderhead” and says there is no such thing as spirits. His door unlocks itself and Marley arrives. His body even looks like Teddy Roosevelt!
Scrooge sics Debit on him, but he can’t bite the ghost. When he says there is more of gravy than of grave, Marley gets filled with green light like he’s going to turn into the Hulk and scares Scrooge into lighting his butt on fire in the fireplace. Marley shows him the woman and child from earlier outside his window, where two spirits try to give her ghostly bread and blankets to no avail.
“You’ll be haunted by three ghosts”. “No deal”, says Scrooge. He even says he likes chains, so he doesn’t care.
The Ghost of Christmas Past shows up and looks like a young boy in a blue suit and voiced by Kath Soucie ,whose voice you recognize from dozens of different cartoons and is played like a stereotypical street urchin (Aye guvna!). He pulls Scrooge outside, and Debit bites his robe and tags along. He’s taken to his school days (Debit sees a cat in the schoolhouse, but it’s just a shadow of the past and he can’t chase it. We were so close to going full Tom and Jerry!)
He sees himself reading alone and sees his imagination’s version of Robinson Crusoe appear out of the fire. Young Scrooge sings about how he is on his own in the song “When Shadows Fall”, and he uses shadow puppets to create various storybook tales to keep him company.
Time moves to a teen Scrooge and Fan arrives, who is clearly voiced by Kath Soucie as well. Young Scrooge leaves with her, and the Spirit points out that her goodness lives in Fred now. The Spirit says they will see another kind soul and Scrooge is taken to Fezziwigs. Young Scrooge and Dick Wilkins clean up for the party. Scrooge recalls being treated like a son and goes to pet Debit who recoils from his touch. Geez, not even his own dog trusts him.
He enjoys the party and is moved forward to his time with Belle, voiced by Jodi Benson, who played Ariel in Disney’s The Little Mermaid. He says he has a surprise for her, it’s small and round and gold and holds the future. She happily guesses a ring, but he says no, it’s the first profit from his business. Smooth…
Belle immediately begins to sing a duet with Scrooge (I’ll Cross This Bridge With You) where she talks about the future, but Scrooge sings about how they need money to live well. By the end of the song they part. Old Scrooge asks to not be shown anymore, he grabs the Spirit to beg him to stop, and the Spirit turns into his curtains.
He yells to the Spirits, “No more!” and goes to sleep. Debit tears up and eats some of his blanket, because that’s funny, I guess? The Ghost of Christmas Present arrives and for the first time is portrayed as a woman, but still tall and in green robes, voiced by Whoopi Goldberg. Scrooge begrudgingly goes along flying outside, leaving Debit behind. He asks “Why should he be accused of being selfish when Christmas is a selfish holiday?” “WHAT?!” screams the Spirit who drops him in shock.
She says she’ll take him to somewhere to prove that isn’t true. She takes him to Bob Cratchit’s house. Scrooge points out how meager they live and the Spirit chastises the salary Scrooge provides. Bob says that Tiny Tim behaved as good as gold, even better. Scrooge is confused that something is better than gold. Ugh.
Bob offers a toast to Scrooge and Mrs. Cratchit gives her usual retort, which then turns into a reprise of “Random Acts of Kindness”, which still has kind of a dramatic undertone to it instead of sounding happy. He watches Tiny Tim read by the fire, and the Spirit asks him if it looks familiar, drawing a parallel to young Scrooge earlier. Scrooge even notices he is reading Robinson Crusoe and begins to get into the story.
Scrooge openly wishes he had a family to spend time with. But the Spirit points out he had Fred and takes him to his house, where Fred is putting on an impression of Scrooge to the amusement of the party goers. He mentions his mother’s love for him and he notices how much Fred looks like her (which I believe they just stole from earlier live action versions and probably assumed was in the novella, as this isn’t an actual detail in the story).
The party goers start singing about Santa Claus in a song called “Santa’s Sooty Suit”. Scrooged is apparently amused by it, with such brilliant lyrics as “scrubba dubba dub dub dub, dub dub dub”. The Spirit reveals that it has aged and it disappears. Scrooge finds himself in a purple void, and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come appears as a floating blue robe with bony hands.
It takes Scrooge to the exchange, where he hears two businessmen mocking the funeral and is then taken to his body, where a woman and a man are pilfering the belongings from his bedroom. The woman even takes his slippers off his feet. Scrooge asks for tenderness and the Spirit makes a JJ Abrams lens flare effect that takes them to the Cratchits, where they mourn Tiny Tim.
Scrooge is distressed and is quickly taken to the cemetery and is shown his place in it. As he begs for a chance to live a different life, the Spirit leaves him alone at this grave. Another lens flare and he realizes he is home in his bed. He gives Debit a hug and kiss and says Debit has another chance too! He begins to sing “I Have a New Song of Christmas”.
He goes to the window and calls to the boy that Debit scared earlier and asks him not to be afraid and to purchase the big turkey. He walks the street wishing people a merry Christmas much to their surprise. He sees the charity guys, who run away in fear, but he chases them down and asks them to come back. Debit grabs a hold of one of their pants legs, and Scrooge apologizes and tells them to come to him tomorrow. They ask why he wants to donate now and he says “It’s too late to do it when you’re dead.”
As he walks away, he remarks to Debit that he likes this new feeling but that smiling will take getting used to. Fred and his wife arrive at the Cratchits and say they received word to meet Scrooge here. Bob is worried over that news. Scrooge helps Debit look meaner and then pulls his typical Bob prank where he raises his salary. The boy arrives with the turkey and a fiddler comes as well for a party, where Scrooge promises that he and Fred will teach them “Santa’s Sooty Suit”. I prayed that he would not reprise it for my sake.
Scrooge and Tiny Tim both give a “God bless us, everyone” and a narrator closes out with the last bit of the story.
This one isn’t the worst animated version, but it also doesn’t really use animation to its advantage either. Its character designs are okay, if not a little too modernized, but the animation is stiff and not very appealing to look at, when you have versions like Mickey’s Christmas Carol that are 10 years older and 100 times better looking. The most glaring thing with this version is the very cartoony addition of Debit the dog, who serves no real purpose except for some slapstick that isn’t very funny. In fact, once we get to the Ghost of Christmas Present, he’s ditched until the end and I noticed the story was much more streamlined and the dialogue was better once he was gone.
The voice acting is just alright. I’m a big fan of Tim Curry. He’s got serious comedic and dramatic chops, which unfortunately are put to waste here. I wish we had gotten a more serious take on a Christmas Carol with him as Scrooge, as I think he would have done a fantastic job. The other voice actors don’t really get much time or chance to add anything to their roles. This isn’t the worst rendition, but it’s certainly not the best either.
Next time I’ll be looking at the Patrick Stewart version and an animated version that inexplicably has Nick Cage in it. Thanks for reading, and have a merry Christmas! | https://medium.com/@btbicksler/a-christmas-carol-retrospective-part-11-b8e0912f4870 | ['Brett B'] | 2020-12-22 02:06:13.409000+00:00 | ['Movies', 'A Christmas Carol', 'Christmas', 'Charles Dickens', 'Film Reviews'] |
🎤We are not seeing lots of big companies went ICO, why? | Kodak coin was launched during Consumer Electronic Show in January 2018 and when the coin was launched, Kodak price increased 450 million dollars.
However, we are not seeing a lot of big companies went ICO, why?
We were fortunate to have Bruce Elliott to interview with us, the president of ICOx Innovations, who founded Kodak coin and KodakOne platform project, and partnered with East Kodak company to launch the KodakOne ICO. ICOx Innovations provides the process and technology. It finds big brands and bring them to the blockchain space. And Kodak is the first big name company they helped stepped into the Blockchain and Cryptocurrency space.
He is also mentioning that
“Bringing big brands to ICO will make the customer adoption easier, and we think that’s the key to have a sustainable coin economy in the next 2–3 years.”
What’s your thought on why big companies not going ICO? If you are ICOx what is the next big company you are going to go after for launching ICO? | https://medium.com/boosto/we-are-not-seeing-lots-of-big-companies-went-ico-why-59e829ed45f9 | ['Crypto Influence'] | 2018-07-31 17:55:55.945000+00:00 | ['Social Media', 'Ethereum', 'ICO', 'Interview'] |
FP&A is the Backbone of Business Decisions | To provide the best support to the business leaders, FP&A needs to quickly leverage the accounting information at hand. Especially during hard times, business is hungry for insights from financial results and the pressure on FP&A increases tremendously.
This article covers three critical aspects of telling the business story behind the numbers:
What is the context behind numbers? Is there a strong collaboration between accounting and finance? What is the main purpose of the story?
Context is King
Financial results without context not only leave room to interpretation but can also result in poor business decisions. Before providing any recommendations, FP&A leaders are expected to do their homework by analyzing the current business situation i.e. comparing plans and forecasts with the previous year, assessing changes in the accounting regulations, competitive positioning of the organization and etc. This can be done easily with a financial analytics platform.
For example, when a product line has poor top-line performance but promising margins there can be multiple explanations such as:
a deliberate strategy to pull back on a particular product
a new allocation methodology
revised capitalization strategies
the impact of foreign exchange rates on that particular line
the salesforce falling short of its objectives
the system failure
It is also possible to have a combination of several reasons listed above.
The context can be very different and if it is not taken into account, the financial results alone will not be very helpful to the business.
Collaboration with Accounting
Accounting and finance are often described as two different activities. One is backwards-looking while another one is forward-looking. The contextualization of the results is possible only if there is a strong partnership between these two functions.
To become successful business partners, FP&A needs to foster mutual respect and a high level of communication. Some useful methods for enhancing the partnership include:
Be an active rather than a passive participant in the meeting. Come prepared by having already reviewed the results and done research into key variances.
in the meeting. Come prepared by having already reviewed the results and done research into key variances. Design and follow highly integrated processes around reporting by making sure both accounting and FP&A team members are developing narratives that support both accounting and FP&A activities. For example, management discussion and analysis (MD&A) and management reporting.
by making sure both accounting and FP&A team members are developing narratives that support both accounting and FP&A activities. For example, management discussion and analysis (MD&A) and management reporting. Communicate clearly around swim lanes between accounting and FP&A. This is important even in a collaborative environment. Clear definitions for accounting vs FP&A roles and responsibilities are indispensable when it comes to conflict management.
Communicating Insights
Organizations should strive to not only develop annual operating and long-range plans but also to attempt to operate in alignment with those plans.
With the advent of COVID-19 most 2020 annual operating plans went in the circular file and we all witnessed (i.e. learned) in real-time how to adjust and make new plans quickly.
Here are some ways FP&A communicates important insights in a quickly shifting environment:
Model the worst-case scenario which can include an immediate re-structuring and lay offs. It is crucial for FP&A to offer this type of scenario in conjunction with context around the implications for a return to normal and/or growth.
which can include an immediate re-structuring and lay offs. It is crucial for FP&A to offer this type of scenario in conjunction with context around the implications for a return to normal and/or growth. Design a decision-making methodology by choosing trigger points for operating decisions. Typically, trigger points are sales metrics such as market expansion/contraction, pipeline expansion/contraction, and new sales performance that indicate the direction that things are going.
by choosing trigger points for operating decisions. Typically, trigger points are sales metrics such as market expansion/contraction, pipeline expansion/contraction, and new sales performance that indicate the direction that things are going. Contextualize the results. When those metrics fall short it is the responsibility of FP&A to contextualize the results in partnership with accounting and through the framework of management reporting. The richer and more colorful the communication is the better it is.
The above mentioned three steps become a cycle that repeats itself while the economic environment is uncertain.
In summary
FP&A can achieve better results by providing context, collaborating with accounting and creating different scenarios with rich insights.
The COVID-19 crisis has taught us all about the unexpectedness and how to react to unplanned events. We have very quickly moved from theoretically modeling three-year plans based on assumed growth rates and potential investments to completely shifting the paradigm and structure of a given business outlook in the next 18 months. | https://medium.com/@stephen-zduncan/fp-a-is-the-backbone-of-business-decisions-4762a7506d58 | ['Stefanie Duncan'] | 2020-12-13 13:44:33.229000+00:00 | ['Financial Planning', 'Work', 'Business', 'Financial', 'Finance'] |
What Makes Dialectica a Great Place to Work | What Makes Dialectica a Great Place to Work
2020 will be remembered as a year that reshaped (almost) everything. Navigating from fear and uncertainty to hope, both society and the economy have been challenged to demonstrate resilience and flexibility. At Dialectica, despite the initial shock, we managed to have an impressive comeback fueled by our most valuable asset: our talented team! Over the last months, not only did we stay incredibly productive but we kept team morale high.
Our “secret of success” — if there is only one — is our dedication to foster a strong company culture that keeps us together even when we are miles away from each other. This was (and still is) our number one priority. We strive to promote a culture where our people feel recognized, respected, heard, and supported. A culture that cultivates the best talent and provides our employees with all they need to succeed within the organization or beyond. A culture that makes a company a great place to work, a place where people feel happy and empowered every single day.
According to our Director of People Operations, Hazem Fadly, “fostering a strong and positive company is at the core of our business. This enabled us to be adaptable and resilient in light of the pandemic and the sudden shift to a new way of working. The reality is that culture is not an initiative, it’s the enabler of initiatives that make a great place to work even during a crisis”
In 2020, our distinguished and differentiated culture helped us be recognized as “Best Workplace” by the Great Place to Work®, while in January of 2021, we got certified as a “Great Place to Work”. For the outsiders or the wider business community, they might look like anticipated accomplishments. But for us, both are clear reflections of our ability to work together, set clearly defined goals, innovate and contribute to each other’s development, cultivate talent and leadership, discover new opportunities abroad, and attract the best talent to our family. And all these, during the hard and stressful times of COVID-19 that forced us to think out of the box and launch a range of new activities and initiatives including virtual happy hours, remote “check-ins”, virtual cross-team lunches, quiz nights, the Dialectica Talks and many more.
But we don’t stop there. We also aim to provide our employees with competitive and exciting rewards for the hard work they put in, including continued growth and development opportunities, above-market-average compensation packages, savings plan, private health insurance, and regular social activities sponsored by the company. We also invest heavily in our Learning & Development program. Throughout the journey of an associate, they gain many valuable and transferable skills such as commercial acumen, lead generation, compliance, specialist management, time management, client communications, client protection, people management, and interpersonal excellence. Furthermore, In 2018, we launched the Dialectica Mini MBA Program which runs twice a year for a six-month period, focused on equipping emerging leaders and taking their careers to the next level. Getting inspired by the Harvard Business School, the Dialectica Mini MBA Program includes a variety of modules such as Business Skills, Finance, Business & International Markets, Strategy, Organizational Growth, and Merger & Acquisition.
Denia Pavlatou, a Client Service Team (CST) Manager who has been with the company for more than two years mentioned “Dialectica’s first priority is investing in its employees’ growth and development. Following their induction, the new joiners are provided with a wide range of learning opportunities, including an exciting Learning and Development scheme”, while Lynn Mourtada, a Montreal-based CST associate added “At Dialectica, you get a chance to grow your career alongside the business in a dynamic environment that cares for their people. The people you work with become your family — always there to help when needed. That’s what makes Dialectica so special”
Denia Pavlatou & Lynn Mourtada, proud Dialecticans
We couldn’t agree more with our colleagues. In the end, our incredible and talented team is what makes Dialectica a great place to work in Athens, London, Montreal, and New York. | https://medium.com/dialectica/what-makes-dialectica-a-great-place-to-work-d1acb8e473d9 | ['Dialectica Staff'] | 2021-03-26 12:59:58.600000+00:00 | ['Hiring', 'Startuplife', 'Startup', 'Hiring For Startup'] |
Hybrid-tenancy with MongoDB in .NET API — Part 02 | Go to Part 01
For this article, we will focus on Hybrid-Tenant, according to the before part of this article. So, let’s see our scenario that we will build:
First, about the business rules: we will register many users in a different database, according to the register number of the company.
Second: all the data will store in MongoDB, so we will manipulate more than one database on it.
Third: we will build an API using .NET Core
Fourth and last: we will implement the tenancy technique in our project, according to request.
The complete solution will be:
So, after to create an instance of MongoDB (local or remote), and after to create the project in ASP.Net Core Web Application, of API type, let’s organize our structure:
The initial structure is like below:
First, let’s delete the WeatherForecast class and WeatherForecastController class. Next, let’s create 3 other folders:
Interfaces: location where stay the contracts of repositories. Used to make the Dependency Injection.
Database: location where stay the repository classes.
Middleware: location where stay the code that intercepts the requests and makes something.
Models: location where stay the model entities
The final structure will be like below:
Now, let’s code:
Model Entities
We need two specific entities, Customer and AppTenant. The customer entity will represent customer data:
And the AppTenant entity will contain the Register Number of Company:
Tenant Configuration
We need to install the package:
SaasKit.Multitenancy v1.1.4 (or latest)
We create a class in the Middleware folder:
It is necessary to inherit the ITenantResolver interface and implement it.
This class will receive the intercept the request, verify the headers, get the header that contains the register number of the company, and attribute it to AppTenant class.
To register this, we will need to input some codes in the Startup class.
Into the ConfigureServices, will be like below:
And into the Configure, will be like below:
Database configurations and operations
We need to install a package:
MongoDB.Driver v2.11.5 (or latest)
Before we starting, let’s define our connections parameters, in appSettings.json file:
Now, let’s configure our entities that will represent the register in the database, which will be the Customer entity, so we just go to update it:
We need too, of the class that will contain the operations methods to the database:
In the constructor, we will wait for the MongoClient, to do the operations, database name e collection name, by Dependency Injection.
We will inherit the ICustomerRepository, to implement it and to do the Inversion of Control
Finally, we need to configure the IMongoClient and the Repository, and we will do it in the Startup class:
In this case, we just build the connection string and create the MongoClient instance, like Singleton.
And this case, we recover the AppTenant data, to get the registration number of the company, to do a replacement on the database name, with the registration number. And finally, we will pass the MongoClient, database name formated and the collection name, to create the repository instance, like Transient.
The execution
We make the request below:
And in the cluster, will be crate a specific database, if it does not exist:
And, if I try to recover all data of a specific database. We will see all the data for only this company:
Conclusion
We can see that is very simple to make a solution for many clients, and we have more than one to do this. I would like to exalt this solution because I think this is more secure and simple to do. We can observe that we segregate the DBs but the business logic is the same.
The code you can look at GitHub. | https://medium.com/@alexalvess/hybrid-tenancy-with-mongodb-in-net-api-part-02-530c8ee8b623 | ['Alex Alves'] | 2020-12-08 12:24:06.216000+00:00 | ['Code', 'Dotnet', 'Tenants', 'Architecture', 'Mongodb'] |
2 Mental Shifts to Stop Feeling Like You’re Not Good Enough | 2. Stop the spread of shame by having grace, empathy, and self-compassion. You must choose to believe more of the good stories about yourself over the negative ones.
I don’t know about you but when I mess up, my default is to beat myself up. I say you should have known better, how could you let this happen? and the negative self-talk continues. I wouldn’t say these things to my friends, so why do I say it to myself?
It’s hard to have self-compassion when you’re a perfectionist, when you see mistakes as a weakness or when you hold yourself to a high bar.
Ask yourself whose hero are you trying to be? And why? Most of the time the things we’re doing, the life we’re living have nothing to do with us.
No wonder you’re hard on yourself and unhappy. This isn’t even your life.
Cultivate self-compassion by having grace, by saying more kind words about yourself. Below are some of my favourites, when I’m present enough to remember (eek face), if not you can always remind yourself after the moment.
I’m still learning
I’m in recovery.
This is something I still need to work on, good to know.
This is still a trigger for me so I need extra support.
When thinking you’ve done something “stupid” you don’t even want to hear about compassion. It’s challenging to talk yourself out of negativity, but no one else can do it for you. Each new experience helps you learn triggers and is a reminder that healing work is continual.
We can summarize grace by a quote from Brené Brown, a researcher in shame, vulnerability, courage, and empathy, that says,
Grace means that all of your mistakes now serve a purpose instead of serving shame.
Takeaway
We struggle with never feeling good enough when people tell us through their words, actions, or lack thereof that we aren’t enough for them- just the way we are.
These feelings of inadequacy are rooted in shame. If we don’t reject shame it will destroy our core being, robbing the world of our talents, values, and unique personality.
We can take our power back by rejecting shame through…
-relentlessly choosing ourselves,
-having grace, empathy, and self-compassion by believing more of the good stories about ourselves. We also do this through the words we tell ourselves like, I’m still learning.
Lastly, I want us to remember that shame is all around us, it can be overwhelming, daunting, and discouraging, but the most powerful thing we can do is to decide, decide that we are moving forward no matter how slow or how long we take, continue to reject shame.
Find more of me here.
~Arlene~ | https://medium.com/assemblage/2-mental-shifts-to-stop-feeling-like-youre-not-good-enough-209e7724e1df | ['Arlene Ambrose'] | 2020-10-31 15:17:40.860000+00:00 | ['Shame', 'Mindfulness', 'Self', 'Mental Health', 'Women'] |
Is Germany Losing the Fight Against the Winter Surge? | Is Germany Losing the Fight Against the Winter Surge?
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
Angela Merkel is not known for being emotional. For the past 15 years, the German chancellor has, quite regularly, maintained a reputation as a calm, analytic, and reserved leader. This wasn’t the Merkel who spoke in front of the German parliament on December 9.
Merkel was pleading with lawmakers and with the public. She was emotional, her voice changed tones, she used her hands — a lot — her eyes were full of sadness. “I’m really am sorry, from the bottom of my heart,” she said, pointing at her chest, “but if the price we pay is 590 deaths a day, then that is unacceptable in my view.” The crowd cheered. I can’t remember ever seeing Merkel this way, many people don’t.
A week passed; Germany recorded 952 deaths in a day and went into a second full lockdown. | https://coronavirus.medium.com/is-germany-losing-the-fight-against-the-winter-surge-e6c64d044be4 | ['Elad Simchayoff'] | 2020-12-17 06:32:26.372000+00:00 | ['Coronavirus', 'Covid 19', 'Health', 'Germany', 'World'] |
A submission to the Everyday Sexism project (written when I was 17) | I was walking home the other day in broad daylight — had my headphones on jamming along, when a tall black man in a hoodie and CHINOS for crying out loud casually put his arm around me and started chatting me up. Stupidly I thought it was someone I knew for a second so didnt shrug his arm off immediately He took this as a good sign!? When I did shrug him off and began to walk faster — on MY road on MY route home at 1pm in MY happy day — thinking this had happened before he’ll just walk away. But he didnt. He continued to chat me up — What endz am I from etc. I pretended to be a 15 year old girl who was very nerdy and studied a lot (basically me 3 years ago). Cheeky men had come up to me before chatting me up. This guy was different. He tried to shove me in an alley after shoving me against the wall and groping my breasts. I was shocked outraged INDIGNANT. I was actually quite posh about it — saying excuse me ! I couldn’t believe this was bloody happening ! groping me in bloody daylight ! But this went a bit further than incidents on the Everyday Sexism Project. He tried to shove me in an alley again I reiterate this point because it was 1 PM IN THE DAY. But I fought him. Some TV show came to mind — some scene where a girl is raped at night all alone in an alleyway and her resilience and also the adrenaline enabled me to push his hands away from my top to stop him from yanking down my bottom and his torso from invading MY space. I ran away him in pursuit, across the road outside my grandmother’s old house — dead not even a year ago. A builder SAW me and SAW him and LOOKED back down. I cant be angry at him he didn’t speak very much English as it turns out and couldn’t have seen what was going on a few moments ago. The attacker — cant believe I’m saying that — called out after me ‘Come on!’ ‘Why are you having a temper tantrum’. ME a blooody temper tantrum the cheek! I wasnt even wearing anything that revealing ! I ensured my top was sufficiently covered by my scarf! I had been to 6th form for goodness sakes ! I ran home after that — just 10 houses down. I could see my house from where the attack had happened. I just broke down in front of my mum expecting a cup of tea and a hug but she called the police. I was shocked ! And HERE lies the problem. We are taught day in and day out — and was truly exposed to this from reading The Everyday Sexism Project — that its ok to be touched up thats its not really sexual assault. My mother was a livid woman searching for the guy — who by the way just WALKED NOT RAN off after he spied the builder looking. He was still shouting things after me. My mum wanted to get a lead pipe and beat him if she could find him. My mum told me it was the one time I could swear. My mum had to be calmed down by the police women who came. It was only until I was being interviewed by the police woman that I even began to associate what had happened to me with the words sexual assault. The policewoman said ‘ well that’s what’s happened to you sexual assault’. But isnt that sad? Me, a 17 year old strident feminist attending the Ursuline High School JOINT 6th form ( i could never hack an all girls) thinking I didnt get sexually assaulted. I just think its shameful — I feel ashamed. But I’d just like to point something out. The policewoman who helped me were gracious kind and understanding. The builders(not the same one who saw me) who were at my home that day doing renovation work offered to leave in case I felt uncomfortable. My mum and her best friend Dian got in the car and started searching for him the attacker. We still havent found him yet I doubt we ever will. I had to go into the police station give a statement — which was honestly one of the most surreal experiences ever. Sitting there in a tiny interrogation room talking about what happened where he touched me and what he did was just surreal. i still cant quite believe it was sexual assault — and IT MAKES ME ANGRY. You know, the guy he went for my boobs. My boobs are fantastic — there one of my biggest quite literally assets and they’ve attracted a lot of attention over the years but this guy went for them. After this happened I found myself saying even more reason to get a boob job! As in breast reduction. They don’t hurt or anything like back pain but they attract tooo much attention. How sad ! is that. I wanted to mutilate and change my body because some idiot tried to cop a feel and rape me, like it was MY FAULT. this is what society puts on US women. We cant even bloody look nice at 1 pm in the day ! When the detective in the interrogation room read out my statement to me (she had been writing it down) I sounded weak and helpless — so she was shocked when I wanted to put in I was ANGRY. Well Why cant i be? Why shouldn’t I be? I WAS THE ONE VIOLATED. Reading the Everyday Sexism prokect gave me strength to write this and share this. its MY story its what happened to ME and it exposes a much greater problem in society — that women are made to feel like these incidents are just the norm. It also has given me the strength to say to you — Dont cover up Dont give in Dont give up. Why the hell should you? Its YOUR body. Dont ever let ANYONE make you feel that it isnt. | https://medium.com/@sheri-bhim/a-submission-to-the-everyday-sexism-project-written-when-i-was-17-2d9b1dcdc3a5 | ['Sheri-Ann Bhim'] | 2020-11-03 16:15:27.146000+00:00 | ['Assault', 'Sexism'] |
Web Programming in Rust— 02/x: Deploy your first App | Lets move on. In this part of the series, we want to deploy our first application. If you come from NodeJS, the deployment life cycle looks like this:
Possible breaks during a deployment and in production
With NodeJS, you can push any code to a production server. You have to have good tests, ESLint and other tools to catch undefined and Type errors.
In an ideal world, we have a development cycle which looks like this:
An ideal world scenario where the code fails before it is getting deployed
So we want to break things as early and close to the code (your local machine) as possible. Once we figured out a working code base, we would like to bring exactly this working solution onto a server. Because of Rusts Type System and strong compiler, we would be able to pack a working binary and move it to production. Tests would cover the rest of the errors.
Rust moves possible errors closer to the coding environment
a) The Rust Compiler will catch a lot of problems, almost all of them.
b) You can catch the rest with good tests (in our case: Error handling when receiving the wrong parameters).
c) After you can compile your Rust Code, you have a binary which can be shipped in many different ways.
Difference between local and production-ready code
When we talk about deploying, we have to make sure that our code is able to:
randomly assign a PORT based on the environment it is running
handle errors gracefully
respond to not expected input with proper return codes and messages
fail early in the deployment pipeline with a proper test setup
log events so errors can be traced
In this article we will cover the first must-have (randomly assigning a PORT). Each article in the series will cover the rest of the requirements.
Four different deployment options
We generally have different deployment and hosting options. Some are more suited for large scale application and some are better for private projects and to get a project off the ground without too much complexity. Our options are:
Managed Deployments / Hosting (Heroku)
Self managed via Docker and a Docker registry
Self managed via Docker and a Git registry
Managed Serverless Lambda functions (AWS Lambda, ZEIT now)
We will cover each of these options in this article and see advantages, disadvantages and how to prepare your Rust Code so it can be deployed (in the best possible way).
Building the first version of your app
As we said in the beginning, we need an idea and what we want to build. Even if we map out a bigger picture of the application in the next article (03/x), we can get started and choose a framework we want to build it with:
rocket actix gotham tide (work in progress)
As seen in the first article, you can go lower level if you want:
We will pick one framework for the written version of this article. I will pick tide, since I am planning to contribute to it more in the future. I will map out solutions for rocket and actix in the GitHub repository for this series.
Set up our app
We want to make sure to use asynchronous code, which is not in Rust stable yet. Therefore we need to install and set the nightly version of Rust:
$ rustup install nightly-2019-02-25
$ rustup default nightly
Now we can create our application. Open a terminal window and enter:
$ cargo new my-cool-web-app
$ cd my-cool-web-app
This will generate our first folder structure. The bare bones of a running web app with tide look like this:
Cargo.toml
[package]
name = "my-cool-web-app"
version = "0.1.0"
authors = ["YOUR NAME + EMAIL"]
edition = "2018" [dependencies]
tide = "0.0.5"
main.rs
#![feature(async_await)] fn main() {
let mut app = tide::App::new(());
app.at("/").get(async || "Hello, world!"); app.serve();
}
As we said earlier, we need to give the hosting environment the chance to assign a PORT to our application.
Our main.rs has to accompany these requirements:
#![feature(async_await)] // to be able to read environment variables
use std::env; // to be able to pass a different base configuration to our app
use tide::{configuration::Configuration}; // we need to read the PORT from the env variable (Heroku sets it)
fn get_server_port() -> u16 {
env::var("PORT")
.ok()
.and_then(|p| p.parse().ok())
.unwrap_or(8181)
} fn main() {
let mut app = tide::App::new(());
let app_config = Configuration::build()
.address(String::from("0.0.0.0"))
.port(get_server_port())
.finalize(); app.config(app_config);
app.at("/").get(async || "Hello, World!"); app.serve();
}
With this setup ready, we can go over each deployment option.
Managed Deployments via Heroku
Managed environments are for the most part just an abstraction. They internally do the same as you would with your own pipeline: Push code to a git repository. A “hook” is watching this repository and on changes will start to compile the latest version and run it. For you however, it’s just a git push heroku master .
High level overview of deployments via Heroku
To get started, you need a Heroku account (free). Login with your new account and create a new app:
“Create new app” interface in Heroku
After clicking “Create app”, Heroku explains under the “Deploy” tab how to push your code to their servers:
Heroku explains what you need to do to push and deploy code
Prepare your code
First, we need to be able to push our code base to the remote location (Heroku). Therefore please install the Heroku toolchain. Afterwards we can add the remote location to our GIT repository:
$ cd my-cool-web-app
$ heroku login
$ heroku git:remote -a my-cool-web-app
Next, we need to tell Heroku how to run our application after it is build. Heroku expects a file with the name Procfile, which has the start command in it:
$ touch Procfile
And put the following line it it:
web ./target/release/my-cool-web-app
We also have to tell Heroku which version of Rust we are using. Since we want to use nightly, we create a file called RustConfig in the root directory:
$ touch RustConfig
with the following line:
VERSION=nightly
Caveat
Rust is so new that Heroku doesn’t support it out of the box. We need to install and activate a “buildpack” for Rust. So inside the root directory of your application, execute the following commands
$ heroku create --buildpack emk/rust
$ heroku buildbpacks:set emk/rust
This will activate the language support for Rust.
Now we can
$ git add .
$ git commit -m "Init"
$ git push heroku master
When succeeded, we go back to the Heroku dashboard in the browser and click on the the generated domain (under “Settings”). A browser windiw should open and display “Hello, World!”.
Summary
Heroku makes it easy to deploy your application
In less then 5 minutes you have a running version of your app live
You can assign your own domain and activate HTTPS (if you pay for it)
Heroku ist the best option when it comes to this tutorial and starting side projects: Cheap, easy to use and removes the overhead of deplyoments especially in the beginning
Docker
Using Docker has the huge advantage of being free in choosing your pipelines and environments. You can either build the image locally and push it as-is to a Docker registry. From there a server can take(download) and execute ( docker run ) it. Or you create a blueprint (Dockerfile) which other service can use to build on their servers.
If you are using Docker for your deployments, you have two options. The first one is to push your code (with a Dockerfile) to a Git registry (like GitHub or Bitbucket) and then have a configured deployment server which listens to changes, SSHs into the Git registry, takes the code, deploys and runs it.
Using Docker and a Git registry to publish your code
Your second option is to use a Docker registry. There you have the advantage to pre build your container and ship it as-it-is. This makes it sometimes faster to run deployments and you have to ship less code (especially in case of Rust).
Using Docker and a Docker registry to ship and publish your container
We can use Rusts feature of being able to be compiled to a binary. We can even go one step further and compile a static Rust binary with no external dependencies. What we would need for this, is:
Build a Rust binary
Statically linked the needed C libraries to it so it can run on it’s own
The result would be to have a binary which doesn’t even need Rust to run. Thanks to the Open Source community and Erik Kidd, there is already a solution out there which helps us with that.
The result is a super small Docker image with no external dependencies. Meet rust-musl-builder. It is a Docker image which helps you build static Rust binaries. It will download the whole image just after the first execution.
Everything we type and create happens from the root directory of our application.
$ cd my-cool-web-app
Before we create our Dockerfile, lets see what we actually trying to do. We are using the rust-musl-builder to statically link the musl-libc library into our binary.
$ docker run --rm -it -v "$(pwd)":/home/rust/src ekidd/rust-musl-builder cargo build --release
This will create our super small binary. You can inspect it like that:
$ ls -lh target/x86_64-unknown-linux-musl/release/my-cool-web-app
It is just a few MB small (in my example: 4,4MB). To be able to recreate this procedure over and over again, and not just on our local machine but also in a deployment pipeline on different servers, we create a multi-stage Dockerfile.
FROM ekidd/rust-musl-builder:nightly AS build
COPY . ./
RUN sudo chown -R rust:rust .
RUN cargo build --release FROM scratch
COPY --from=build /home/rust/src/target/x86_64-unknown-linux-musl/release/my-cool-web-app /
ENV PORT 8181
EXPOSE ${PORT}
CMD ["/my-cool-web-app"]
You can build the image now via
$ docker build -t my-cool-web-app:latest .
And run it with
$ docker run -d --rm -P --name heroku heroku:latest
Now you can open your browser via:
$ open http://$(docker container port my-cool-web-app 8181)
We just created a super minimal Docker image which contains our binary with no external dependencies. You can inspect your just created image via
$ docker image ls my-cool-web-app
The size of our Docker image is super small
Summary
Docker is a beast, but when used wisely can be quite helpful
Especially with Rust: You can create statically linked binaries which are super small and don’t even need a Rust environment to run in
You also have much more options to host and run your application when choosing Docker
However, managed hosting environments like Heroku don’t allow pushing Docker images to their environment
Serverless runtimes — ZEIT/now
Serverless is a different mindset then the first two options. Serverless also means stateless, so you are not building web applications but functions. Instead of having API endpoints build into your app, you basically just have those API endpoints (in serverless terms: handlers). Our web frameworks like rocket and actix might be an overkill here. Right now, ZEIT is not supporting Rust nightly builds in their new serverless environment.
So instead of creating a binary (with cargo new web-app ), we create a library:
$ cargo new now-service --lib
$ cd now-service
Here we have to create a file called now.json
And our src/lib.rs example looks like this:
use http::{Request, Response, StatusCode, header}; fn handler(request: Request<()>) -> http::Result<Response<String>> {
let response = Response::builder()
.status(StatusCode::OK)
.header(header::CONTENT_TYPE, "text/html")
.body("<!doctype html><html><head><title>A simple deployment with Now!</title></head><body><h1>Welcome to Rust on Now</h1></body></html>".to_string())
.expect("failed to render response"); Ok(response)
}
As with Heroku, you need to install the ZEIT toolchain, which is called “now”. There are several options. If you are on macOS, you can do it via:
$ brew cask install now
Which installs the Now application. Find it in your /Applications folder and open it. You can finish the installation by typing in your email address. This will also install the command line tool chain.
That’s basically it. You can type
$ now
and hit Enter. This will start the upload of your application. Login to your ZEIT dashboard and click on the provided link.
All deployments are getting listed with a link to the deployed application
Summary | https://medium.com/@gruberbastian/rust-for-the-web-02-x-deploy-your-first-app-51d1ed69cbe3 | ['Bastian Gruber'] | 2019-03-19 09:20:26.386000+00:00 | ['Heroku', 'Docker', 'Nodejs', 'Rust', 'Deployment'] |
Holding the new Panamanian president to his public commitments | Ahead of the elections, President Cortizo signed a list of anti-corruption promises. Now he needs to deliver.
View of Panama City (Image: flickr/Ron Reiring)
Status quo: why anti-corruption reforms are needed
Earlier this month, citizens in Panama elected Laurentino Cortizo as their new president. He will assume office on 1 July, at a time when the need for anti-corruption reform in the country is more urgent than ever. Panama scores below the regional average on the latest Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) and has been engulfed in various corruption scandals in recent years, including the Odebrecht bribery scheme, wiretapping by former president Martinelli and, of course, the ‘Panama Papers’.
The Panama Papers revealed the role of a number of Panamanian law firms in hiding wealth, often of murky origins, for the global rich and powerful — while vast parts of its own population, especially in rural areas, continue to live in poverty. Transparency International’s chapter in Panama has been working hard to keep anti-corruption on the agenda, before, during, and after the elections.
Time to act
To fix this, the most important step that needs to be taken is the passing of proper anti-corruption legislation. Transparency International Panama (TI Panama) has carried out assessments of state institutions and worked together with legislators. Based on this, it has compiled a list of necessary legislative reforms, including laws on public contracting, conflicts of interest, whistleblower protection, asset declaration for public officials, as well as anti-bribery laws for the private sector. Especially in the building and construction sector, rigged contracts and other forms of corruption are a widespread problem.
Then president-elect Laurentino Cortizo signing the Transparency Challenge and committing to anti-corruption measures
Strengthening legislation and rule of law
Citizens’ faith in democratic institutions can only be restored by taking strong anti-corruption measures and following through on promises. Political leaders need to commit to concrete steps against corruption. Four months ahead of the general elections, TI Panama launched “Reto Transparencia”, the Transparency Challenge, a list of anti-corruption commitments across five areas:
Anti-corruption legislation
Transparency and accountability
Public contracts
Justice
Access to information, open governments and open data
All major Presidential candidates committed to the recommendations on this list, including President Cortizo. It is now up to his administration to deliver on these commitments.
Mr. Cortizo has promised a constitutional amendment correcting the balance of power between the three branches of government, which would be a welcomed step. A proper separation of powers and parliamentary control mechanisms form the backbone of a healthy democracy and are key to preventing corruption from undermining it. TI Panama participated, as representatives of pro-democracy CSOs in the Consejo de la Concertación Nacional, the National Agreement Council, to negotiate and craft a constitutional reform package, which was concluded on Monday June 10thand will be presented to president-elect Cortizo next week.
The new administration has a window of opportunity, and must seize it to create change for the better. | https://voices.transparency.org/holding-the-new-panamanian-president-to-his-public-commitments-36d644610287 | ['Libertad Ciudadana'] | 2019-07-02 14:20:38.277000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Panama', 'Anti Corruption', 'Transparency', 'Corruption'] |
Jeff Bezos Goes to Space | Jeff Bezos never came back to Earth. He can still be seen up there, if you look closely on a night with no moon — the Amazon logo like the fading stain left behind a shooting star.
When he and his younger brother boarded the New Shepard — the rocket ship made by Bezos’s space company Blue Horizon — he had no intention of coming back. This is already not a habitable enough rock to come back to; we ruined it, turned it into one of the other planets with opaque clouds of sulphuric acid. No, he ruined it. He made us buy towering monuments of plastic toys, all shipped and suffocated in that trademark rectangular bubble wrap. He made us buy those 4-in-1 inflatable pool floats that are shaped like a crocodile. He made us buy a Dyson ball vacuum; and then a miniature-sized fake one for our kids. He made us buy those hipster-chic security cameras. He made us buy the virtual assistant AI with the sexually enticing name of libidinal paralysis, Alexa. Earth used to actually be a nice place in the universe. It had swirling turquoise oceans filled with the bioluminescent octopus and sea turtles, the Glaucus Atlanticus blue sea slug, the narwhal, the ribbon eel, the frilled shark and goblin shark, and predatory whales as old as the dinosaurs. The sprawling orgiastic terrariums of moss and lichens and mushrooms that grew amongst the old growth forests all helped fill this terraqueous orb, and somehow levitated in empty space, spinning around in the benevolent circumstellar habitable zone, known as the Goldilocks zone.
When Jeff Bezos looked out from his portal window, he had no intention of coming back. The ship lifted out of the thick mass of smog like a shimmering erection slowing rising out of a witch’s stew. He cackled maniacally, still wearing his aviators, his bald head slippery with a thin coat of Vaseline. He looked down as the last armies met in the ashen rubble of an old city, its skyscrapers of bursted windows and the stained steel armory that couldn’t last long enough for a real empire. Shopping malls had been left abandoned, their plain stucco coating crumbling into a slurry of sand and kindergarten paste; their food courts invaded with king-sized rodents dragging entire pizzas into their locked away dens under the ten story parking structure that has already deteriorated into the groaning skeletons of rebar and concrete that falls apart like bread crumbs. What were once painfully dull neighborhoods of track houses that wandered through labyrinths of cul-de-sacs, where every grass lawn had at most one dainty tree supported by two wooden posts larger than the tree itself, were now barricaded training grounds for opposing armies, preparing for widespread civil war. Free two day shipping was canceled, and the militias assembled.
As Jeff Bezos lifted off, he looked down on them all — all those humans running around desperately amongst their bombed-out cities, like crazed ants whose hill was smothered and ruined by a lonely schoolyard bully. The New Shepard left the mesosphere and almost immediately into the exosphere, as the flight commander flipped some switches, turning on the magnetoplasmadynamic thrusters and their unique plasma propulsion specially designed for exoplanet exploration, sending them hurling through the soundless arena of eternity, the distant flurries of other worlds whispering in some absurd fantasy.
Jeff Bezos left because he couldn’t stand being the richest person on the planet any longer. On this planet any longer. Even after the divorce, and giving up half of his wealth, he’s projected to be a trillionaire in his lifetime. He had to eject himself into the vast nothingness of space, into the infinity of other galaxies and stars, to find out if there’s someone wealthier. Or something wealthier. Because everyone knows that in space is where true wealth lives. Every last scrap of gold ever discovered on Earth came from a supernova explosion or from when neutron stars collide. It can’t be synthesized in chemistry. All the original gold was pulled to the center of our planet upon its formation, and so all the existing gold has come from astroid impacts. The simple truth is: Jeff Bezos is not nearly rich enough. He got rich selling books to a people that don’t read anymore. Imagine the cosmic wealth he could attain if he reached the stars — the stelliferous plumes of priceless empyrean glitter spreading a full lightyear across, as he basks in the violet enthusiasms of their clouds.
On Earth, we are boorish hicks, a singular aggregate of inbred distant cousins smashing rocks together in the sandbox of time. From the ionosphere, he realized us as a mass of ants that could be swept away and easily forgotten. But from space, he came to the final and full realization that we are the microscopic virus maggots chewing through the rotting carcass that we made the Earth to be. Jeff Bezos has said before that ever since he was five years old, he has dreamt of traveling space. He’s known since before he became Jeff Bezos. This space journey is his return home to where the gods live, amongst the astral throes of infinity. When Walt Whitman wrote about his own mortality, he wrote “If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles.” Bezos wants the opposite: to be found still glimmering in that ephemeral milk stain behind a shooting star.
Once the New Shepard fully left the gravitational pull of the Earth, Jeff Bezos unbuckled his harness, floating out from his seat and summersaulting forward out past the main cabin. The ship commander spoke into their synchronized headsets that it was against protocol doing this so early. Jeff’s brother reached out with a helpless hand. Jeff bounced around aimlessly against the ship’s walls like the digitized ball in those old pong games, the laws of physics still dictating bodies of mass in these weightless skies. His glossy circumcised head stuck out eagerly from the hugely floppy astronaut suit — it ached and pulsed with a sullen heartbeat for the coruscating grandeur of something better than himself. It wasn’t on Earth — a preposterously small pebble of dew and bacterial peasantry. And it surely wasn’t on this ship. This ship was already a claustrophobic hell of authority and the simple machinations of mankind. Bezos was destined for castles of spiraling hallucinations, the primordial gases made up of shades of crimson and vermillion we’ve never seen before. He reached the back-bottom of the ship, rumbling above the rocket boosters attached securely beneath it. He flipped open the simple plastic shield, and tightened his grip around the large red lever, hesitating for less than a moment before he made that singularly fateful twist-pull motion.
A child with an unkempt bowl cut stood on a pile of soot covered bricks that were once stacked in an order that made up his home. He looked up at the enormous night sky filled with the conflagrant disorder slowly swirling around overhead. Gunfire whizzed by his head, as the militias closed in. And all at once, the large familiar stroke of a shooting star poured from the top of the sky — a friendly logo appeared, a smiling arrow, connecting a to z, making the boy smile one last smile. | https://medium.com/@guywalker110/jeff-bezos-goes-to-space-6dbc537570cc | ['Guy Walker'] | 2021-06-23 15:57:03.558000+00:00 | ['Amazon', 'Short Fiction', 'Space Exploration', 'Jeff Bezos', 'Blue Origin New Shepard'] |
Claiming One’s Seat: 65 Years After Rosa Parks | As I reflect on this tumultuous year, I am focused on the diverse coalition that participated in a resistance movement led by Black young adults in response to the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and sadly, many more. These inspiring acts of protest are the active seeds of democracy in action, a mobilization of ideas and voices that leads to policy change, community action, and shifts in public opinion.
December 1 is a significant date to look back on both the protests of 2020 and the longer shadow of racial history in this country. On this day in 1955, another act of resistance sparked a movement that forever changed our democracy. Civil rights leader Rosa Parks’s action of defying the racist policy of bus segregation in Alabama sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott that led to the dismantling of racist policies at the federal level and in the national conscience.
At the core of these movements is the idea that a functioning democracy and all its benefits should work for everyone. At Public Agenda, we are dedicated to this idea of an inclusive and equitable democracy. In order to make that a reality it is more important than ever that we reflect ever more deeply on the role that equity–racial and otherwise–should play in our work. Over the past five years our public engagement team has been integrating equity into our engagement work, throughout the country and in our home base, the New York metro area. We have done this, for example, through our community-led resiliency planning work in largely Black immigrant communities in Brooklyn that were devastated by Superstorm Sandy; in our scan of resident’s perceptions of civic engagement in the ethnically diverse Norwood section of the Bronx; and, by holding trainings for New York City government and nonprofit leaders on integrating equity, diversity, and inclusion into their public engagement initiatives.
In my work on these programs and with communities, this year of protests and the events of December 1, 1955, weigh on my mind. It will be years before we truly know the impact of the recent protests. But immediately, and not unlike the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the protests have forced us to reckon with the far-reaching damage of the pernicious systemic racism that remains deeply embedded in America’s institutions and culture. Sixty-five years after Rosa Parks claimed her seat, passionate, engaged Americans carry on the fight to give everyone a meaningful seat at the table. As long as that fight continues, I know I have work to do. | https://medium.com/@alutacontinua/claiming-ones-seat-65-years-after-rosa-parks-579a07d34ab7 | ['Nicole Hewitt-Cabral'] | 2021-07-06 18:56:27.299000+00:00 | ['Rosa Parks', 'George Floyd', 'Breonna Taylor', 'Racial Justice', 'Public Engagement'] |
Best limoncello recipe: limoncello with Everclear for real Italian flavor | Reading Time: 4 minutes
Best limoncello recipe: limoncello with Everclear for real Italian flavor
by Therese Iknoian | Oct 15, 2020 | Recipes
Making the best limoncello isn’t that hard. Just stick with limoncello with Everclear to come up with a mixture that is not too sweet and has the taste of Italy. Our limonchello recipe uses just lemons, Everclear, water and sugar, and we promise it will be a lot better than any store-bought limoncello.
Who hasn’t traveled in Italy, sipped a refreshing glass of limoncello and just sighed in delight over the lemony goodness? We have, and I wanted to recreate that goodness with a limoncello recipe with Everclear. We wanted it refreshing, full of lemon zing, and not too sweet.
Perhaps you haven’t actually had limoncello in Italy, but in an Italian restaurant someplace else. No matter. Just one sip of the best limoncello after dinner will send your mind dreaming of long Italian dinners on a bucket-list trip to the Italian peninsula.
Meanwhile, it’s time to make your own limoncello with Everclear! And it’s not difficult at all –except all that zesting just takes a bit of time and patience.
I knew what I wanted in a limoncello — not too sweet, very Italian, very lemony — so I decided to do a little research myself. And of course, I had all kinds of friends offering me their ideas and recipes. So I took a bunch of suggestions, ideas, other concepts, and created my own limoncello recipe with Everclear. The Everclear is an important part because it is a neutral grain-distilled alcohol with a very high proof (191). You only drink it alone if you want to sizzle your insides, die early, and “feel a wildfire inside,” as the sales clerk told us. Everclear’s mission in life is to be used to create lower-proof alcohols, yes, like limoncello!
Forget any well-meaning friends or online recipes that use vodka. Just won’t do the job and give you a real Italian limoncello. Get ready for dreams of Italian holidays with this limoncello recipe!
How to make the best limoncello with Everclear
Makes two 750-ml bottles
You will wish you had made more so consider doubling or tripling.
What you’ll need
15–20 lemons — Meyer lemons are great, organic or home-grown even better
Everclear, 750 ml
Sugar, 2.5 cups
Water, 3 1/6 cups
Equipment:
Microplane zester — I ADORE my Microplane zester and swear that if the house is on fire that’s what I’ll grab. Ok, just kidding. But if you don’t have one of these babies, get one for this since zesting this much lemon is a knuckle-buster.
A couple of decorative bottles — we saved a couple of empty wine and liquor bottles.
One or two large glass containers for mulling, wide-mouthed so you can stir as needed, great if they seal well, but you can always add plastic wrap under a lid, as I did.
Part 1
Zest 15–20 lemons, depending on their size. Try to avoid cutting into the white pithy stuff and stick with just the skin for zest. That’s why I love my Microplane zester. It makes this easier.
Dump the zest into your mulling container, and add a 750 ml bottle of Everclear.
Cover tightly, put in a cool, dark place for 10–14 days — I just had it on a shelf in a darker corner of the living room away from any windows.
Check occasionally and give it a shake or stir.
Part 2
Simmer 3 1/6 cups of water with 2 ½ cups of sugar until the sugar is completely dissolved. Let it cool. Add some or all* of the sugar syrup to the mulling zest and Everclear mixture. *NOTE: I only used about 4 cups of this mixture to my batch of limoncello with Everclear with one 750ml bottle. It came out perfectly. However, if you think you may like a bit more sweetness, add it all. I would not recommend less. Cover tightly, return to its cool, dark place for another 6–7 days. Check a couple of times to give the mixture a swirl and make sure it’s looking OK.
Part 3
Retrieve the mixture from its limoncello cave.
Give it a big stir, then strain it using cheesecloth in a colander or strainer, depending on the quantity. (I used double-layered cheesecloth.)
Pour the liquid into your pretty limoncello bottles. Stick in the freezer for storage.
Congratulations, you are now the limoncello master!!!
You will want to wait until it is very very cold to drink. No worries: With all that alcohol, it won’t freeze. Serve in small schnapps or liquor glasses. Get ready to swoon and start your bucket-list dreaming of rolling Italian hills, long Amalfi sunsets, and Tuscany wine tours.
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Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2020 HI Travel Tales | https://medium.com/@hitraveltales/best-limoncello-recipe-limoncello-with-everclear-for-real-italian-flavor-cfe6503eeec | ['Hi Travel Tales'] | 2020-12-13 22:14:39.427000+00:00 | ['Aperitivo', 'Recipes', 'Limoncello', 'Alcohol', 'Drink Recipes'] |
Xiaomi Mi 11 Images Confirms the Design — Tech Carving | Xiaomi Mi 11 launch is set for 28 December and before that, we’ve got the official Xiaomi Mi 11 images. These leaked images confirm the design of this flagship handset which is also the first phone to feature Snapdragon 888 SoC.
The first thing we notice is the display which has few edges. Despite this, the image does not reveal the upper portion of the display to confirm the positioning of the front camera. The backside has a triple camera setup in a square module with round edges.
Besides this leak, Xiaomi released a video confirming the Xiaomi Mi 11 will come with Gorilla Glass Victus. The company also points out that the cost of using technology in the display is as high as that of producing a TV.
For now, Xiaomi has not made any comment on the leaked Xiaomi Mi 11 images. Talking about the specifications, the phone will have Snapdragon 888 processor, 108 MP main camera. In addition, we also have a battery of 4,780 mAh with fast charging of 55W.
Anyway, the company has nothing more to hide, since the launch of the devices is very close and practically all details have already been leaked. So just stay tuned, as we’ll be covering the virtual launch. | https://medium.com/@fahmad054/xiaomi-mi-11-images-confirms-the-design-tech-carving-7104e646c2ce | ['Faizan Ahmad'] | 2020-12-25 11:54:38.328000+00:00 | ['Xiaomi Mi 11', 'Xiaomi', 'Technology', 'Smartphones', 'Android'] |
What is Digital Marketing and Types of Digital Marketing | In this article, I try to describe to you actually what is digital marketing, and the user also searches like this what digital marketing is, and digital marketing what is? And also explain what is the role of digital marketing to a company, types of digital marketing, and how to find the best digital marketing company a little bit here:
What is digital marketing?
What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing encompasses all marketing efforts that utilize an electronic device or the internet. Businesses leverage digital channels such as search engines, social media, email, and other websites to attach with current and prospective consumers.
A seasoned inbound marketer might say inbound marketing and digital marketing are essentially the same things, but there are some insignificant differences. And discussions with marketers and business owners in the U.S., U.K., Asia, Australia, and New Zealand, I’ve learned a lot about how those small variations are being observed across the globe.
What is the role of digital marketing in a company?
While traditional marketing might live in print ads, phone communication, or physical marketing, digital marketing can occur electronically and online. This indicates that there are far more chances for brands to influence buyers, including email, video, social media, and search engines.
At this stage, digital marketing is important for your business and brand awareness. It seems like all other brands have a website. And if they don’t, they at least have a social media appearance or digital ad strategy. Digital content and marketing are so popular that users now expect and rely on it as a way to learn about brands.
Long story short, to be competitive as a business owner, you’ll require to cover some aspects of digital marketing.
Because digital marketing has so numerous options and strategies connected with it, you can get imaginative and experiment with a diversity of marketing tactics on funds. With digital marketing, you can also apply tools like analytics dashboards to observe the achievement and ROI of your campaigns more than you could with traditional promotional content — such as a billboard or print ad.
How does a business define digital marketing?
Digital marketing is characterized by the usage of numerous digital tactics and channels to attach with clients where they contribute much of their time: online. From the website itself to a business’s online branding assets — digital advertising, email marketing, online brochures, and beyond — there’s a spectrum of tactics that fall under the sunshade of “digital marketing.”
The best digital marketers have a transparent view of how each digital marketing campaign helps their overarching goals. And depending on the goals of their marketing strategy, marketers can establish a larger campaign through the free and paid channels at their disposal.
A content marketer, for instance, can produce a series of blog posts that help to create leads from a new ebook the business freshly created. The company’s social media marketer might then help raise these blog posts through paid and organic posts on the business’s social media accounts. Possibly the email marketer generates an email campaign to convey to those who download the ebook more information on the company. We’ll talk extra about these specific digital marketers in a minute.
Types of Digital Marketing
Types of Digital Marketing
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Social Media Marketing Content Marketing Pay Per Click (PPC) Marketing Automation Affiliate Marketing Native Advertising Email Marketing Inbound Marketing Online PR Sponsored Content
Here’s a quick rundown of some of the most common digital marketing tactics and the channels involved in each one.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
This is the method of optimizing your website to “rank” higher in search engine outcomes pages, thereby improving the amount of organic (or free) traffic your website gets. The channels that benefit from SEO cover websites, blogs, and infographics.
There is a figure of ways to approach SEO in order to create adequate traffic to your website. These include:
On-page SEO: This kind of SEO concentrates on all of the content that lives “on the page” when viewing a website. By researching keywords for their search volume and intent (or meaning), you can answer inquiries for users and rank higher on the search engine results pages (SERPs) those questions produce. Off-page SEO: This kind of SEO concentrates on all of the action that takes place “off the page” when viewing to optimize your website. “What action not on my own website could change my ranking?” You might ask. The solution is inbound links, also known as backlinks. The number of publishers that associate with you, and the sibling “authority” of those publishers, affect how deeply you rank for the keywords you care about. By networking with other publishers, writing guest posts on these websites(and connecting back to your website), and generating outside attention, you can obtain the backlinks you require to move your website up on all the right SERPs. Technical SEO: This kind of SEO concentrates on the backend of your website, and how your pages are coded. Image compression, structured data, and CSS file optimization are all forms of technical SEO that can improve your website’s loading speed — an essential ranking factor in the hearts of search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and more.
Social Media Marketing
This practice raises your brand and your content on social media channels to raise brand recognition, drive traffic, and generate leads for your company. The channels you can use in social media marketing include:
Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Instagram Snapchat Pinterest TikTok
If you’re fresh to social platforms, you can use tools like HubSpot, Buffer, much more to unite channels like LinkedIn and Facebook in one place or even you can hire us for your social media appearance. We help you to promote your business through organic and paid social platforms.
Content Marketing
Content Marketing
This phrase denotes the conception and rise of content assets for the goal of creating brand awareness, traffic growth, lead generation, and customers. The channels that can play a role in your content marketing strategy involve:
Blog posts: Writing and publishing articles to accompany blog support you describe your industry expertise and generates organic search traffic for your business. This eventually provides you more possibilities to turn website visitors into leads for your sales team. Ebooks and whitepapers: Ebooks, whitepapers, and related long-form content help additional educate website visitors. It also permits you to transfer content for a reader’s contact information, generating leads for your business and influencing people through the buyer’s journey. Infographics: Sometimes, readers desire you to show, not tell. Infographics are a sort of visual content that helps website visitors visualize a thought you need to encourage them to learn.
Pay Per Click (PPC)
Pay Per Click (PPC)
PPC is a process of driving traffic to your website by paying a publisher each time your ad is clicked. One of the most popular types of PPC is Google Ads, which permits you to pay for prime slots on Google’s search engine results from pages at a charge “per click” of the links you place. Other channels where you can use PPC include:
Paid ads on Facebook: Here, users can pay to customize a video, image post, or slideshow, which Facebook will distribute to the news feeds of people who meet your business’s audience. Twitter Ads campaigns: Here, users can pay to spot a series of posts or profile badges to the news feeds of a particular audience, all committed to accomplishing a particular goal for your company. This object can be website traffic, more Twitter followers, tweet engagement, or even app downloads. Sponsored Messages on LinkedIn: Here, users can pay to send messages straight to the precise LinkedIn users based on their industry and background.
Marketing Automation
Marketing Automation
Marketing automation applies to the software that assists to automate your primary marketing methods. Many marketing agencies can automate repetitive tasks they would otherwise do manually, such as:
Email newsletters: Email automation doesn’t just enable you to automatically post emails to your subscribers. It can also assist you to shrink and grow your contact list as required so your newsletters are only going to the people who desire to see them in their inboxes. Social media post scheduling: If you desire to improve your organization’s appearance on a social network, you are required to post regularly. This performs manual posting a bit of an irrational process. Social media scheduling tools promote your content to your social media channels for you, so you can consume more time concentrating on content strategy. Lead-nurturing workflows: Generating leads, and turning those leads into clients, can be a long process. You can automate that method by sending leads precise emails and content once they meet certain guidelines, such as when they download and open an ebook. Campaign tracking and reporting: Marketing campaigns can add a ton of various people, emails, content, webpages, phone calls, and more. Marketing automation can assist you to sort everything you operate on by the campaign it’s serving, and then trace the achievement of that campaign based on the growth all of these elements make over time.
Affiliate Marketing
This is a kind of performance-based promotion where you earn a commission for advertising someone else’s goods or services on your website. Affiliate marketing channels include:
Hosting video ads through the YouTube Partner Program. Posting affiliate links from your social media accounts.
Native Advertising
Native advertising applies to advertisements that are essentially content-led and highlighted on a platform alongside another, non-paid content. BuzzFeed-sponsored posts are a great example, but many people also recognize social media promotion to be “native” — Facebook advertising and Instagram advertising, for instance.
Email Marketing
Email Marketing
Businesses use email marketing as a way of interacting with their readers. Email is often applied to promote content, discounts, and events, as well as to direct people toward the business’s website. The kinds of emails you might send in an email marketing campaign include:
Blog subscription newsletters. Follow-up emails to website visitors who downloaded something. Customer welcome emails. Holiday advertisements to loyalty program members. Tips or similar series of emails for consumer nurturing.
Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing refers to a marketing methodology wherein you attract, engage, and delight consumers at each stage of the buyer’s journey. You can utilize every digital marketing tactic noted above, throughout an inbound marketing plan, to build a consumer experience that works with the consumer, not against them. Here are some famous examples of inbound marketing versus traditional marketing:
Blogging vs. pop-up ads Video marketing vs. commercial advertising Email contact lists vs. email spam
Online PR
Online PR is the use of securing acquired online coverage with digital publications, blogs, and other content-based websites. It’s much like traditional PR but in the online space. The channels you can use to maximize your PR efforts cover:
Reporter outreach via social media: Communicating to announcers on Twitter, for example, is an excellent way to improve a relationship with the press that produces obtained media opportunities for your business. Engaging online reviews of your company: When someone reviews your business online, whether that review is great or poor, your instinct might be not to touch it. On the antithesis, engaging company reviews help you humanize your brand and deliver robust messaging that preserves your eminence. Engaging comments on your own website or blog: Related to the way you’d reply to reviews of your company, answering to the people who are seeing your content is the most reliable way to produce productive discussion around your industry.
Sponsored Content
With sponsored content, you as a brand pay different companies or entities to produce and develop content that considers your name or service in some way.
One familiar example of sponsored content is influencer marketing. With this kind of sponsored content, a name sponsors an influencer in its industry to issue posts or videos associated with the firm on social media. Another kind of sponsored content could be a blog post or article that is composed to highlight a topic, service, or brand.
How to find the best digital marketing company?
Frankly speaking, It’s hard to select the right digital marketing agency for your business. Because there are so many digital marketing companies around the world, even at your local numerous digital marketing agencies. So how to find the right digital marketing company for our business and they come on under budget. Let’s Start:
First, search for a digital marketing agency near me Select the digital marketing company you want to Hire Check The Portfolio Check The Clients Testimony and Reviews See Price List Check her further service and Case studies Ask so many questions about the digital marketing process Check her previous work before hiring Search more digital marketing services, provider Decide your Business Budget
Have a nice day and stay in touch with me for more info. | https://medium.com/@marketingspecial/what-is-digital-marketing-and-types-of-digital-marketing-1da8d1b13fc | ['Stefan Scott'] | 2020-11-20 12:36:18.981000+00:00 | ['SEO', 'Marketing', 'Digital Marketing', 'Business', 'PPC Marketing'] |
Speed up your Airflow development with Docker and tests | If you develop in the cloud or on a shared server, you might have experienced the beauty of working with your teamate relying on the same codebase and the same database! Actually, when working on the same cloud environment with other people, it happens that certain resources (files, tables…) are shared between several teammates. This means you can sometimes find yourself blocked because other people are working on the same resource. And it can become frustrating when a file/table you needed is overwritten, moved or deleted…
TL;DR
If you want to do most of your Airflow’s work without relying on a shared workspace and avoiding latency, use an Airflow Docker container and run syntax and unit tests in it.
Nizhny Novgorod - Photo by c7dys
The dream
To have the cloud in your computer!
Or at least a local environment in which you could check that everything is ok with Python/Airflow syntax so the only thing you need to do on the shared environment is to test you code behavior.
When you have this local environment, you avoid a lot of handling to deploy your code or copy it to your environment, waiting 30s+ that Airflow understands you updated a file and refreshes it. With your local environment, you’ll see all errors faster than through the web interface or the Airflow’s logs (so you must switch to another application, like Stackdriver, to read this logs).
Achieve your dream
To run Airflow on your computer and in your CI, we are going to use… Docker, so it’s a bit of configuration at the beginning, but in the end you’ll be able to reproduce your Cloud configuration and share it with your teammates. You can save your Docker image in a private Docker registry to avoid rebuilding it. From my point of view, it’s easier to run an already configured Airflow with Docker than installing it on a virtual environment.
Add Python packages to your Docker image
You can use an Airflow Docker image from Docker hub ( puckel/docker-airflow:1.10.9 ) or add Python packages to an existing image, by creating a Dockerfile:
FROM puckel/docker-airflow:1.10.9 USER root
# requirements file with packages you need
COPY requirements.txt .
RUN pip install -r requirements.txt
USER airflow
If you customize your image, you need to save the Dockerfile and run this command in the Dockerfile directory (you might need to add sudo before docker ):
$ docker build -t my-airflow-img:1.0 .
So you can see it in your local images :
$ docker images
REPOSITORY TAG IMAGE ID CREATED SIZE
my-airflow-img 1.0 96696eea2641 5 minutes ago 1.89GB
2. Allow Airflow’s variable loading
If you use Airflow variables in your code, you’ll need to configure a Fernet Key (cryptography key for Airflow) :
# replace <img> with my-airflow-img or puckel/docker-airflow:1.10.9 $ docker run <img> python -c " from cryptography.fernet import Fernet; FERNET_KEY = Fernet.generate_key().decode(); print(FERNET_KEY) "
R9mdx6wCwIb0h_GChn1-Fbcth3H_gTBAjgvf87JLgSU=
And to pass this key through an environment variable :
# replace <fkey> (by the one you just produced) and <img>
# your Airflow's variables file is expected to be in dags directory (in your local/host machine) with name vars.json docker run -d -e FERNET_KEY=<fkey> -e DAGS_DIR='dags' \
--name airflow-web \
-v `pwd`/dags/:/usr/local/airflow/dags \
-p 8080:8080 <img>
Now, you can load your variables :
docker exec -it airflow-web airflow variables -i ./dags/vars.json
So now you have a working space to launch tests locally and save a lot of time. It’s not exactly a cloud: no scale up, no link with other applications ; but good enough to work and understand if your code will work. The remaining tests within your cloud environment and with your data will be quicker.
You can make your life much easier with a pinch of Bash, especially to run your tests in a CI/CD pipeline.
Fulfill your dream
You have Airflow running locally, you can see your dags loading in your browser localhost:8080 . If there are syntax errors, it will be displayed in the dags page and you can easily access the logs with docker logs -f airflow-web .
Now that you have this environment, if you add a few more lines, you will be able to test the syntax of your code (it could be thought like a compilation step). We will run Python tests to check Python and Airflow syntax (ie: do tasks have task_id?) and you will know if it’s going to work within seconds.
First, we must create a file dags/test_syntax.py and import Python and Airflow packages:
import os
import unittest # usefull to launch tests and imports
from importlib import util # usefull to import a file from airflow import models as af_models
We create a Python unittest class (DagsTest), with a test method (test_load_dags_integrity) that will try to load the dag files listed with dag_import method:
class DagsTest(unittest.TestCase):
"""Validate dags syntax.""" def test_load_dags_integrity(self):
"""Import ml dag files and check for DAG syntax."""
root_dag_dir = os.path.join(DAG_DIR, 'load')
files = ['load_mesages.py','load_users.py'] self.dags_import(root_dag_dir, files)
You could easily change the files list definition to fill it with a function (that takes a directory as input) defining which files to try to import in this directory based on a name convention, so you don’t have to update test files each time your team add a new dag!
The import_dags function try to import all files defined in list_dag_files , thanks to _load , and checks if it’s able to find a dag within the loaded module with _check_if_there_is_a_dag_in (function’s content was found in the first cicle of Data Testing Hell with Airflow):
def import_dags(self, dag_dir, list_dag_files):
"""
For each file in list_dag_files, we:
- try to load it to check syntax and
- check if there is a dag defined in the file.
"""
for filename in list_dag_files:
module, module_path = self._load(dag_dir, filename)
self._check_if_there_is_a_dag_in(module, module_path) @staticmethod
def _load(dag_dir, filename):
module_path = os.path.join(dag_dir, filename)
module_name, _ = os.path.splitext(filename) def _load(dag_dir, filename):module_path = os.path.join(dag_dir, filename)module_name, _ = os.path.splitext(filename) mod_spec = util.spec_from_file_location(
module_name, module_path)
module = util.module_from_spec(mod_spec)
mod_spec.loader.exec_module(module)
return module, module_path @staticmethod
def _check_if_there_is_a_dag_in(module, module_path):
"""Look if there is at least one dag defined in the module."""
assert any(
isinstance(var, af_models.DAG)
for var in vars(module).values()) def _check_if_there_is_a_dag_in(module, module_path):"""Look if there is at least one dag defined in the module."""assert any(isinstance(var, af_models.DAG)for var in vars(module).values())
You can now launch your syntax tests with:
docker exec -it airflow-web python -m unittest dags/test_syntax.py
Beyond your dream
We have integrity tests, we can easily add unit tests.
First, we must create a file dags/test_unit.py and import some packages (no need of Airflow here, thanks to mock/patch!):
import unittest
from unittest.mock import MagicMock, patch from Training import Training
Next, we create a new unittest class for a Training class (in dags/Training.py ) with a setUp (triggered before each test) to define a false dag instance and to instanciate Training (so we won’t instanciate it in each test):
class TrainingUnitTest(unittest.TestCase):
"""
Unit test for training functions.
"""
def setUp(self):
self.dag = MagicMock(return_value="it would be a dag obj")
self.tr = Training(self.dag)
We add a new test in TrainingUnitTest, to check if our method launch from Training class behave as defined and that keep working in this way :
def test_launch(self):
with patch('airflow.operators.python_operator.PythonOperator') \
as mock_op:
self.tr.launch(usecase='topics_in_messages') mock_op.assert_called_with(
task_id='training_for_topics_in_messages',
python_callable=self.mi._train_model,
op_kwargs={
'usecase': 'topic_in_messages',
'number_of_clusters': 7},
dag=self.dag
)
We use a patch with patch('...') to catch any call to PythonOperator , so we don’t need Airflow to test it, it’s quicker and (more importantly) we do not want to test Airflow here, we just need to test our own code. We can test our code in intercation with Airflow, but it will be less accurate and slower (around 2 times slower by my measurements), we better want having specific integration tests for it (planned in a futur post).
You can now launch your unit tests with :
docker exec -it airflow-web python -m unittest dags/test_unit.py
Above the dream
(Yes… until the end with the dream….)
So you can work faster by checking if there are syntax errors in your code without dependancies to other people (if you share the same cloud) and you can manage your codebase in a safer way with unit tests.
Some interesting resources found on my way :
Data’s inferno : 7 Circles of Data Testing Hell with Airflow (a must read)
Airflow’s Best Practices on tests : it could be interessting to look at implementing the dagbag solution for dag loader test (instead of the one from Data’s inferno)
Thanks to Tiffany Souterre to read over !
Thank you for reading ! | https://ulysse-hg.medium.com/speed-up-your-airflow-development-with-docker-and-tests-a8449d443174 | ['Ulysse Humbert Gonzalez'] | 2020-09-15 12:44:25.760000+00:00 | ['Testing', 'Airflow', 'Test Automation', 'Big Data', 'Cloud'] |
DON’T WANT THE JOB? DO THIS! | Photo by Cassiano Psomas on Unsplash
Title:
DON’T WANT THE JOB? DO THIS!
S ummary:
A concise guide on how to best prepare and conduct a job interview. The article is written with a tongue and cheek approach and offers the reader the Do’s and Don’ts for successful job interviewing.
Photo by Travis Essinger on UnsplashDON’T WANT THE JOB? DO THIS!
Article Body:
Most people do not prepare properly for an interview. A lot of time, energy and money are spent in preparation for the chance to have an interview meeting with a prospective employer. However, little to no preparation is done for the interview itself. Most professionals spend an incredible amount of time preparing their resume, and even make a considerable investment to have their resumes prepared by skilled professionals so as to increase their chances of getting the interview. Ironically, many of these same professionals will then spend minimal time or investment in making certain that their interview skills are fine tuned.
Dear job seeker here is 25 years of collective business experience and wisdom boiled down into this piece of advice. Don’t prepare for the interview, IF you don’t want the JOB!
Having an employer ask you to interview is not the ultimate goal; it’s the second to last step in the overall job search process. The candidate interview is only one of several steps along the way. Being the very best candidate during the interview will typically result in the candidate landing that dream job offer. Many professionals make the same mistakes during the job search process. Amazingly, these well educated, highly skilled and experienced professionals keep repeating the same mistake and yet, expect different results or outcomes from candidate interviews. Often professionals treat the interview as something that is a forgone conclusion. Somehow the confusion develops from thinking that the interview is the same as the job offer, let me reassure everyone taking a few minutes to read this article, in a word WRONG! So, if your goal is not landing the job of your dreams, then all you have to do is make the same critical errors outlined for you below. I promise you that if you consistently make all of the common mistakes listed the only job you land is the one you don’t want; an eternity of searching for your next job.
Far more interviews are lost than won. There are things that will work to your advantage in an interview, and then again there are things that will absolutely kill your chances. Here are some of the biggest mistakes to avoid, if you want that job. Your chances for success vastly improve by not doing what others do.
1. Don’t Conduct Any “Pre-Flight” Planning!
This is the single biggest mistake you can make. There is a direct correlation to preparation and performance. Many professionals are walking into their interviews ill-equipped and unprepared and expecting to make the right impression. These professional are not walking away from the interview with job offer and unfortunately become doomed to repeat the process until the lesson is learned.
Good preparation means doing intensive research so that you know what you need to know about the hiring authority, knowing your capabilities and what you specifically can offer the hiring authority in the position they seek to fill. You must prepare and then practice so as to be able to respond to nearly any question thrown in your direction.
2. Don’t Be Dynamic, Be Passive During The Interview!
You do not need to conduct the interview. However, this is your time to shine. You are in the spotlight. It’s your opportunity to prove that you are the best candidate. It is not the interviewer’s job to pull the information from you. Many people mistakenly believe that it’s up to the hiring authority’s interviewer to figure out if you’re the best candidate. As the candidate, it is your responsibility to make the interviewer aware of your capabilities and why you are the best candidate to fill the open position.
Your goal is to make certain as you complete the interview, the interviewer knows all of your qualifications and how you will make positive and powerful contributions in your new position. By taking responsibility for your actions and accepting that you must convey your skills, experience, talent and persona in the most positive manner, it changes the way you prepare and how you conduct yourself during the interview. It separates your candidacy from the competition.
Often professionals “wing it” during the interview process. The problem is, if you do that you are leaving your career to chance and letting someone else take control of your destiny. If you want to succeed in an interview, you have to be proactive and think on your feet. An interview is the starting gate of a competitive race — there’s only one winner. You should be thinking about what you need to say and do during the interview to be recognized as the best candidate to fill the position. What does the interview seek to find in a candidate? What do they want to hear from me? How can I be the candidate they select? Don’t get caught up in the mindset of not preparing for the interview, think it through and plan for all possibilities so that you can beat the competition.
3. Why Make A Good First Impression? I Can Always Make A Second One, Right?
Wrong! Here’s the fact — it only takes a few minutes for the interviewer to assess his/her first impression of you. You only get one chance to make a first impression. If you make a great first impression, the interviewer will automatically look for more positive contributions throughout the remainder of the interview to justify their first impression. The reverse is true. If you make a bad first impression, the interviewer will look for bad things to justify their first impression. It is either a Win-Win or Lose-Lose proposition with no middle ground. Your first impression must be good. You must start out strong and maintain the strength.
Starting strong means greeting the interviewer with confidence, being personable, and conducting yourself professionally at all times. No matter how formal or informal the interviewer may appear during the interview process, you must exude confidence and professional demeanor.
Maintaining strength means nailing the first couple questions and all the subsequent questions thrown out at you. One of the most difficult questions can also be one of the easiest to answer. Most interviewers want to hear a strong answer to these four words, “tell me about yourself”. Often these four words may be the most important question asked during an interview. Consequently, the question becomes the most important one you need to know how to answer.
4. Value? Value? We Don’t Know Our Stinkin Value!
Knowing your specific value relative to the hiring authority is a big part of your preparation. More important is the ability to articulate your value in a concise, professional and intelligent manner. It boils down to good verbal and non-verbal communication skills. A couple of different ways to improve your communication skills in an interview: 1) prepare yourself — know your value, memorialize it through documentation and then practice. 2) ask for help -a professional sounding board being either a qualified (recruiter) friend or career professional, i.e., search recruiter or career coach, and 3) reflect on your self figuratively and also in the mirror (remember to smile and relax your words will flow smoothly) and then practice some more.
You will leap ahead of other the other competing candidates as they will most likely stumble their way through the interview process. You will be the coherent, articulate, intelligent candidate clearly expressing why you are the best choice. You’ll be remembered for all the right reasons unlike your competition.
5. Fake It Until You Make It?
Everyone going through a job search and interview process experiences a time when there may be at least one qualification that you don’t have — maybe its lack of industry experience, lack of a degree or a specific accreditation they’ve asked to see from you, it could be anything. If you do lack something they want or need, you need to be ready to address it and do so with confidence. Whatever you do always be direct and honest.
Unfortunately, during interviews we are often times screened out for something we lack rather than the other way around. So interviewers need to convinced that if you don’t have exactly what they seek, you can learn it quickly, or you’ll get it, or you have another skill that makes up for it. Don’t give them the opportunity to make a big deal out of something you lackÖbe poised and confident without showing any signs of being nervous. Find an answer that eliminates their concern and most likely they’ll select you based on what you can offer rather than eliminate you for something they deem important that you don’t possess.
Remember, a superior resume is valuable because it gets you the interviewÖbut superior interviewing skills will get you the job! Improve your interviewing skills, learn the best practices and strategies to succeed, and you will consistently get the offers you want.
Wishing You All Job Search and Interviewing Success! | https://medium.com/career-realted-article/dont-want-the-job-do-this-4c0b459040ed | ['Mohit Chawla'] | 2020-12-27 14:37:25.059000+00:00 | ['Money', 'Self Improvement', 'Love', 'Self', 'Dream'] |
Intuitive understanding of Gradient Descent | As we are moving ahead with rapid pace with AI technological software developments , we ignore the basic math implementation in future and aim solving the big problems. For the future generations who wants to understand what is happening under the hood, I am leaving the traces of gradient descent from a mathematical perspective.
Code Here:
Read more here: | https://medium.com/@shravankumar147/intuitive-understanding-of-gradient-descent-be887e1ca1d5 | [] | 2020-09-26 14:33:01.113000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Calculus', 'Gradient Descent', 'Machine Learning', 'Algorithms'] |
Lifestyle Changes and Decisions Adopted During Lockdown That’ve Saved and Ruined Lives | Spending Sit Down
Surprisingly, despite a higher rate of unemployment of 6.7% and savings increase, the CPI(Consumer Price Index), GDP(Gross Domestic Product), and PCE(Personal Consumption Expenditures) are all up as well. People are bored and need shopping therapy, a wrong outlet especially when families need real help. As we’ve seen over the few weeks prior to Christmas, e-commerce sales and delivery are up 70% from last year and the UPS from FedEx have never seen this much demand since Santa got a new workshop!
But this also means that there has certainly been unnecessary spending. There is no better time now to support local businesses but when it comes to brick and mortar, luxury goods, and discretionary items, yikes folks, Houston, we have a purchase.
Let’s go over the not thought after most regretful purchases that Americans have made thinking the pandemic will last forever:
Exercise Equipment
Peloton’s stock is 439% this year and has soared even more after its deal with fitness manufacturer, Precor this past week which will allow Peloton to get into spaces outside of home such as in the gym and also gain more physical space in warehouses. But after the pandemic, we will all crave connection, energy, excitement and interaction again. My family bought our SoulCycle bike during the pandemic because I’m obsessed with SoulCycle but once it’s over, I’m sure I will be selling it as I would rather spend more for a better quality class in person than on my own screaming at the screen with hot sweaty instructors.
Others might disagree. Sure, you could continue riding at home but not only it gets boring fast, you will also feel FOMO once regular life restarts again. Yet, due to Peoton’s success and as someone who’s tried Peloton bikes and switched to SoulCycle due to wobbling and quality issues, I understand the need to budget as a personal finance guru myself and the value of time it saves bundling up and getting situated for a class that you have to pay a class fee for if late. With the initial cost of around $1,895k and then a monthly subscription for an unlimited amount of life and on-demand classes to choose from for $39 a month, it is certainly a better deal than an in-person cycling class every day for $40 dollars plus water, shoe rental and cute merch, but it is up to the individual and some won’t be able to stand doing anything in their homes after this.
Huge Homes
Not only there has been extreme demand for homes especially in the MidWest where land is rich and space is abundant, supply is running out as home developers never anticipated this demand for the rich to flee. The suburbs is the hotspot, the other kind, where there is an abundance of land to finally have a reason to have a backyard with a grill and pool and more space with a separate office not facing your bed for optimal workflow. Along with the lack of homes on sale at an affordable price, back in ’08 during the financial crisis, Christmas trees weren’t being grown due to the lack of demand and now they are almost impossible to find at double the price.
As trees are guests in our cozy homes for a certain period of time until they become a fire hazard, homes on the other hand are the biggest purchases one will ever make and is something you seriously need to sleep on. My rule of thumb for purchases over $500 is 72 hours but with the lack of inventory and higher bids that go to those who can put more cash down on the down payment for a house, there is no time to the waste which makes it a risky move in itself.
Not being patient whether its in the market or with an impulse purchase is most usually always a regret. Many homebuyers during the pandemic who have the convenience of working from home and want to relocate permanently after evaluating the tax situation and overall lifestyle in their previous home, have decided to purchase homes without even setting foot into their desired property. Only through a tele-visit like with your doctor but in a palace you will need to live in for a great deal of time. When it comes to purchasing a property, taking into account the mortgage, maintenance, maintenance, possible renovations, taxes, furniture, etc. the list goes on and on the more you live there, if you aren’t going to reside there for more than 5 years, then it is not only 10x easier to rent but less expensive. Yes renting is technically money down the drain since it isn’t growing in value or an investment but compared to purchasing a property, it saves you more in the long run as a temporary house hunter.
Pets
I cannot think of a single friend of mine who hasn’t purchased some sort of animal these past few months. I’ve resisted the urge because it takes a lot of work! Small doesn’t mean easier! Yorkies are fiesty and messy! At home stocks such as Peloton, Zoom and Chewy have all been bullish due to the pent up demand WFH has brought and here to stay until 75% herd immunity predicted for next May. I predict that since we’ve tested the waters of both the office and home, companies have realized that in person meetings and commuting is really a waste of time and having a nice hybrid of both is best. Ahh, how I love hybrids. Skorts, vanilla and chocolate swirl and a treadmill standing desk. But when it comes to pets, there’s no hybrid. Either you have to potty train that pup or not, no in-between. There is a lot of responsibility that comes with a dog that a lot of people don’t realize they can handle after just scrolling through cute puppies photos on Insta or drooling at your local PetCo. From the overly expensive customizable dog leashes to organic kibble, it all adds up quick almost equivalent to a baby.
Before buying a pet, make sure you really will take good care of it. It is a good step to take before having a baby or babysitting a kid. It is the same responsibility that may be even worse since animals will ignore and bark at you more. If you know that you won’t be going fanatic about booking a trip after lockdown and post-COVID life circumstances will be somewhat the same, then go ahead and try it. Remember it’s a pet. You won’t have it for a day, but rather a few years. Always as a reminder. A goldfish will provide you the same love and be 10x easier. Just sayin!
Subscriptions
Here we go again, another at home stock! Netflix and Chill. Isn’t that a Ben and Jerry’s flavor or something? The media giant’s stock is up 65% to date and has done tremendously well during the pandemic as we are just binge-watching our way through Tiger King and Selling Sunset. Not completely the best use of our time but hey, we have to live a little. Taking a break doesn’t always mean being lazy, it is necessary for growth. Anyway, along with these subscriptions that you’ve signed up for years ago, comes with forgetting you had them. Every month I recommend if you don’t set up auto-pay with your credit card, check over the subscription you have. Everything from Food Digest magazine to Blinklist, do you honestly use them because as reiterated over and over, the small things are what matter the most because we overlook them until they affect us badly. Just with a basic plan of $9 per month for Netflix that is already $108 per year you could use to invest in a ROTH IRA to eventually compound to a million by retirement if contributed every month. Netflix won’t make you rich but saved up money will.
Tech
I don’t know about you but smart home speakers freak me out a little. We fell into the trap ourselves of buying an Alexa. Now Alexa and Siri are best friends and whenever I call Alexa, Siri gets confused and or jealous. These two ladies haven’t only caused more trouble and annoyance in our lives, security concerns are an issue as well. As a cybersecurity geek, I not only have to go through the trouble of unplugging and resetting them every time I speak in my own home, I have to remember to power them on and make sure they are set in English. You really don’t that much help. If you want to know the weather, get off your bum and check the window outside or your phone. The last thing you need is an assistant that drives you crazy in Spanish and listening to your private conversations.
Investing
Amongst Millenials and GenZers, the interest in financial literacy has never been this prominent due to the lack of activities around the house, not sports to keep them pumped and presumably extra cash sitting around. I’m certainly thrilled about this but not so much about Robinhood’s suspicious activity and recent controversy with the government over manipulating user’s behavior to let them place easier trades not always in their best interest. These actions allow Robin Hood to make more commission over the number of trades placed regardless if users make a profit or not. More users = more money. That’s all they care about along with social media.
Bitcoin has also risen at an all-time high last week which makes kids, in particular, more crazed about the crypto world and what it means for Terminator. But the problem with Robin Hood and zero commission trading fee retail investor trading platforms is that they are too easy and fun. Whenever managing your money, it should always be serious. You are using you hard-earned money to plan for your goals and achieve them long term, never short term. Rich quick doesn’t exist and if you want to learn about how to manage your money and what will keep you afloat fo the rest of your life, the last place you want to go is Las Vegas and gamble, what these platforms are essentially advertising. Instaed, you are better off reading articles such as this (quick plug), The Balance or Investopedia to name a few to really help you make more returns, not just fiddle with your cards as a day trader that gets you nowhere. Patience, diligence and experience will get you much farther and make you something too.
Image by Unsplash
According to what we’ve learned about our actions during this pandemic, it is safe to say we have made a decent amount of mistakes that will turn into regrets when life gets back to normal. Yet at least we can now stop and hopefully take in a mental note that this shouldn’t happen again. Regardless if you lost/ gained weight or turned $500 into debt on Robin Hood, there is always a way to out of this madness and it starts with identifying what you did wrong. Self-awareness and patience is key in recovering your mental state and especially wallet. We all don’t know how much longer we have in our nests, but hopefully, you can come out feeling proud of either learning, baking, producing or helping someone or yourself. That’s all our goal. Don’t set them too high, just be realistic and they will come back to you. | https://medium.com/@miagradelski/lifestyle-changes-and-decisions-adopted-during-lockdown-thatve-saved-and-ruined-lives-128f212ffaa | ['Mia Gradelski'] | 2020-12-23 23:59:46.901000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Lessons', 'Habits', 'Lifestyle', 'Pandemic'] |
How our tiny team beat Google | How we made something people want
If you want to be healthy, you need to eat your vegetables. If you want to build a great product, you need to speak to your users. Without immersing yourself in your users, it is impossible for a company to really understand the intricacies of their user’s problems.
The process we followed was rather simple, and it looked a little something like this.
Repeat forever.
You’d think I was exaggerating if I told you that we spoke to over a hundred of our potential users before we even begun building our product. I’m not.
Speaking to your users is something most good companies do.
Airbnb’s founders personally visited their users’ homes.
Tinder organised frat parties at college campuses to meet their users.
Adora Cheung, CEO of the now defunct Homejoy (once valued at over 150 million USD), personally cleaned her customers’ homes.
While we hadn’t quite nailed our unique value proposition at the start, after over a 100 different conversations, Florian and I were able to articulate exactly what kind of product our users wanted.
We spent hours a day on phone calls, we invited them for coffees and dinners, and we attended medical conferences. We even visited hospitals to really understand how they ran their practice. With each conversation, we learned new things, and adjusted our beliefs.
By the end of it, we had a better understanding of their problems, their motivations, and the constraints under which our solution would need to operate. Google’s direction had started to feel obviously wrong.
Always online?
Clinics we visited barely had a functioning wifi. And even when they did, their connections were too slow to upload images. With their patient crowds, the internet speed would make our product a bottleneck in their clinical workflow.
High image quality standards?
Many hospitals largely used trained technicians, instead of doctors, nurses, or other medical personnel, to capture patient images. One hospital even used high school drop outs for this role. Limiting our algorithm to picture perfect images just to obtain a better publishable accuracy only drastically limited its use case.
An eye examination we saw during one of our hospital visits
Be aware of your biases
There were many moments during our conversations where Florian and I had to face harsh, uncomfortable truths that made us question our original beliefs. And oftentimes, we nearly fell to our confirmation biases.
It is absolutely critical to not let this happen while speaking to your users. You need to have an open mind, and with any new information you get from those conversations, you need be willing to refine and adjust your original beliefs. If you choose to ignore all data that contradicts your beliefs, the exercise is futile.
As a friend eloquently put it - “I’ve seen so many people talk to their users, only to frame the feedback through their preconceived notions anyway.”
Do not let that happen. It’s perfectly okay to have the difficult conversations and face the harsh truths. | https://medium.com/@sosale151/how-our-tiny-team-outdid-google-81cdbaa2b86e | ['Bhargav Sosale'] | 2020-06-08 10:46:18.913000+00:00 | ['Entrepreneurship', 'Startup', 'Google', 'Competition', 'Product'] |
How to Compare 200+ Cryptocurrencies with Open-Source CoinScraper Module | A bit dramatic, I know, but it’s a pretty big deal if you are an overbought/oversold kind-of-trader. Most traders use technical analysis to and their favorite indicators to make smart decisions in the market. This could range from moving averages or exponential moving average, depending on the trader. Some may prefer Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) and others on-balance volume (OBV).
Everyone I know uses different tools and we all use some of the same tools as well, but this post is not about Bollinger Bands, Fibonacci Retracements, or Ichimoku Clouds. This post is about the coinscrapper, and while those tools are nice, you need the data before you can use any tool!
The coinscraper client was designed to compare the top 200 supported assets on Kucoin’s decentralized exchange. Each crypto asset’s historical and fundamental data is sourced from coinmarketcap.com. After all the data is collected, the data is preprocessed before calculating relative strength index. We end up with a summary table of the top 200 assets along with their relative strength.
The client has a few requirements/dependencies, please see requirements.txt file, or install the following:
import requests
import pandas as pd
import time
import random
import math
import numpy as np
from math import pi
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
# %matplotlib inline
from os import mkdir
from os.path import exists
To install the client module, download the .py file and the demo notebook for Google Colab. You can download the files from the repo here.
Connecting to Client
Now that you have the client module installed, open the Demo notebook and run this cell. The demo will walk through some errors and show you how to fix them if they happen to you while running this client.
from coinscraper import coinscrapper
today = 'YYYYMMDD'
client = coinscrapper(today)
The client module will require a google authentication, and will also require a selenium web-driver. I would suggest running the client in Google Colab to test it out. If you are experiencing any errors, please make sure you have uploaded the files to your Colab Notebooks folder on Google Drive.
Feel free to change the file path or change any functionality.
Pulling Summary
The coinscraper client is filled with various methods, but the all purpose one is the .summary() method. This function was designed to process all the actions from getting the list of assets that are traded on KuCoin; creating links for historic data; converting html tables to dataframes; munging the data; generating a .csv file, and an html table with all the results.
client.summary()
Access Saved Datasets
Using the client we can also access the datasets saved during the summary process. The datasets are saved in a python list, and will contain historic data for each asset. The fundamental data and the RSI dataset are separte pythonic lists of datasets.
client.technical_data client.fundamental_data client.rsi_data
Below is an example of how to access the saved datasets using the client.In [10]:
# Historic Price Data
list_of_historic_data = client.technical_data
print('Historic Price Data: ')
display(list_of_historic_data[0].head()) # Fundamental Data
list_of_fundamental_data = client.fundamental_data
print('
Fundamental Data:
')
display(list_of_fundamental_data[0].set_index(0).stack()) # RSI Data
list_of_RSI_data = client.rsi_data
print('
RSI Data: ')
display(list_of_RSI_data[0].tail()) Historic Price Data: DateOpen*HighLowClose**VolumeMarket Cap0Aug 20, 202091.25101.3191.25101.3115344164317903490141Aug 19, 202093.4794.4989.5591.2810936760116129313732Aug 18, 202093.3797.1592.0993.5211999836316524633993Aug 17, 202091.2294.6589.7993.368319201116495215074Aug 16, 202090.0791.3288.4191.22641774871611628957 Fundamental Data: Monero Price 1 $93.81 USD
Monero ROI 1 3,693.27%
Market Rank 1 #16
Market Cap 1 $1,657,837,591 USD
24 Hour Volume 1 $176,797,734 USD
Circulating Supply 1 17,672,780 XMR
Total Supply 1 17,672,780 XMR
Max Supply 1 No Data
All Time High 1 $495.84 USD(Jan 07, 2018)
All Time Low 1 $0.212967 USD(Jan 14, 2015)
52 Week High / Low 1 $105.52 USD /$26.70 USD
90 Day High / Low 1 $105.52 USD /$60.43 USD
30 Day High / Low 1 $105.52 USD /$70.89 USD
7 Day High / Low 1 $105.52 USD /$88.41 USD
24 Hour High / Low 1 $105.52 USD /$92.60 USD
Yesterday's High / Low 1 $101.31 USD /$91.25 USD
Yesterday's Open / Close 1 $91.25 USD /$101.31 USD
Yesterday's Change 1 $10.06 USD (11.02%)
Yesterday's Volume 1 $153,441,643 USD
dtype: object RSI Data: DateOpen*HighLowClose**VolumeMarket Capdate_RSIdate_ 2020–08–16Aug 16, 202090.0791.3288.4191.226417748716116289572020–08–1659.6750132020–08–17Aug 17, 202091.2294.6589.7993.368319201116495215072020–08–1762.4408222020–08–18Aug 18, 202093.3797.1592.0993.5211999836316524633992020–08–1862.6471052020–08–19Aug 19, 202093.4794.4989.5591.2810936760116129313732020–08–1957.8562802020–08–20Aug 20, 202091.25101.3191.25101.3115344164317903490142020–08–2069.210352
Access RSI Charts
Using the client we can access the RSI Charts saved during the summary process. The charts are saved in a python list, and also saved to your authenticated google drive. The plots are the matplotlib objects that just require the .show() method.
client.plots client.candle_sticks (coming soon)
Below is an example of how to access the saved datasets using the client.In [24]:
import os
In [29]:
os.listdir('drive/My Drive/CoinScraper/charts/monero/')
Out[29]:
['RSI-20200820.png']
In [37]:
img = plt.imread("/content/drive/My Drive/CoinScraper/charts/monero/RSI-20200820.png")
plt.figure(figsize=(32,18))
plt.axis('off')
plt.imshow(img);
Access the Log File
Using the client we can also access the log file saved during the summary process. The log file is a text file that shows which processes are running, or errors that occur.
client.log (Below is an example of how to access the log.)
[48] client.log
Here is the table html code generated for web: | https://medium.com/the-innovation/how-to-compare-200-cryptocurrencies-with-open-source-coinscraper-module-269d5d2e1f15 | ['Jacob Tadesse'] | 2020-08-24 18:18:34.263000+00:00 | ['Web Scraping', 'Python', 'Pandas', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Data Science'] |
How RALLY is Helping to Build Storytelling Capacity among Public School Communications Directors | How RALLY is Helping to Build Storytelling Capacity among Public School Communications Directors RALLY Follow Oct 4, 2019 · 3 min read
By Victoria Thorp
Two non-profit education organizations — the Colorado League of Charter Schools and the Georgia Charter School Association — asked RALLY to improve the capacity of member schools to communicate about their mission and programs. In response, a group of RALLY colleagues started thinking about how to create a training program that leveraged the expertise of RALLY and the network schools.
“We knew that we could not provide customized support to every school in these two geographically scattered regions,” Steve Mancini, RALLY Principal, said. “Instead, we wanted to foster learning communities where communications directors would be exposed to new approaches to storytelling and have a chance to learn from each other.”
Credit: Drew Charter High School
Seven public school communications directors each from Colorado and Georgia signed up to participate in this inaugural program. All of these participating schools educate a significant number of students from low-income families. Cohort members will participate in four one-hour webinars facilitated by RALLY. They will also be able to attend optional “virtual office hours” where they can problem-solve together with RALLY staff and their peers.
But as anyone who has ever sat through a webinar knows, creating a culture of learning and sharing among adults who may not know each other well in real life requires more than just scheduling calls and sending emails.
“The best practice for forming a learning cohort is to have both a clear purpose and criteria for participating,” RALLY Account Executive Kasey Iranon explains. “Our goal was to foster a group of school communications directors who are ready to proactively tell compelling stories, so we made sure the schools who joined had the capacity and mindset to put ideas into action.”
Rachel Van Brocklin, communications director of Rocky Mountain Prep in Denver, is one of the Colorado communications directors who are excited at the chance to learn and interact with each other.
“The opportunity to be in the RALLY cohort is fabulous because I can learn about the latest trends in communications, build stronger relationships with my peers, and use the strategies to drive my goal of sharing more positive stories about our schools,” Rachel said.
The RALLY Learning Cohort in Georgia was lucky to get started in August with an in-person meeting at the Drew Charter School in Atlanta. Cohort participant Charisse Richardson, who is Drew Charter School’s Strategy Director, said that Georgia schools are looking to RALLY to help learn new ways to address their unique media outreach challenges.
“We want people in Atlanta and beyond to better understand what our schools are doing to prepare students to succeed in the 21st century,” she said. “By working with RALLY, we can better tell stories that will reach elected officials, influencers, and other key decision-makers.”
When the two cohorts complete the first semester in December, RALLY hopes to look back and see thriving learning communities that will not only execute new skills for pitching stories but also continue to share ideas with each other.
“There are incredible things going on in public school classrooms across the country,” said RALLY Account Executive Claire Shipton. “We want schools to be able to share their work and stories with their communities, helping share educational opportunities available to students and parents, as well as building broader public support. Building communications capacity is the foundation of that process.” | https://medium.com/rallybrain/how-rally-is-helping-to-build-storytelling-capacity-among-school-communications-directors-b74867f88888 | [] | 2020-07-08 20:08:41.825000+00:00 | ['Marketing', 'Children', 'Rallytakes', 'Education', 'Teachers'] |
How likely is it that someone could guess your Bitcoin private key? | How likely is it that someone could guess your Bitcoin private key?
There are 2¹⁶⁰ possible Bitcoin addresses out there. And yes, that is a lot.
1,461,501,637,330,902,918,203,684,832,716,283,019,655,932,542,976 to be precise…
So if you wanted to get reassurance that you don’t need to panic sell your precious HODL’ed bitcoins, then I can tell you “Hakuna Matata”. No need to worry.
I found the answer on the Bitcoin wiki about the (un)likeliness of hash collisions not very satisfactory…
Because the space of possible addresses is so astronomically large it is more likely that the Earth is destroyed in the next 5 seconds, than that a collision occur in the next millenium.
Large numbers are fascinating, but there must be a better way to quantify the risk someone would randomly guess your Bitcoin private key. After all, computing power rises exponentially, so is it really correct to assume this will not happen in the foreseeable future?
“There are more Bitcoin addresses than atoms in the universe.”
There are an estimate 10⁸² atoms in the observable universe. That includes all galaxies and blackholes in a 46.5 billion light year radius. Even though it sounds plausible that there are more Bitcoin addresses than atoms in the universe, after all 2¹⁶⁰ sounds larger than 10⁸², the statement is in fact very wrong. It just illustrates how bad the human brain is at imagining vast numbers.
When writing out 10⁸² it becomes a little bit more visible
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
There are ~ 6.8 *10³³ less Bitcoin addresses than atoms in the universe. But again it is difficult to imagine how much less. Written in full, it might become a bit more clear : 6,842,277,657,836,020,854,119,773,355,907,794. But let’s face it, big numbers are hard to imagine.
To avoid being deceived when comparing large numbers it helps to express them on the same base : 2¹⁶⁰ =10^(log2)*160 ~10⁴⁸. Comparing the amount of Bitcoin addresses to the size of the universe does not really help to appreciate how large a number 2¹⁶⁰ really is.
Let’s imagine a lot of sand… 2¹⁶⁰ grains to be precise
For arguments’ sake, the other popular statement “there are more bitcoin addresses than grains of sand on earth” is indeed true. There is an estimated 2⁶³ (~ 9.2*10¹⁸) grains of sand on earth, so for each grain of sand there are 2⁹⁷ (~1.5*10²⁹) bitcoin addressess. Well that doesn’t make it much easier to imagine now, does it? Let’s try it in a different way.
Imagine you’re walking on a beautiful beach and you’re watching all those grains of sand. Now imagine all the grains of sand on the entire coastline, even those under the water, for as far as you can see . This is not even close to where we’re heading. Imagine you zoom out from where you’re standing to imagine all the sand from all beaches in the country, the continent and eventually the entire planet.
Now line up all these grains of sand in an endless row and imagine each grain of sand is an entire new earth with the same amount of grains of sand. Since earth has a radius of 6,371km, this row would be 3.1*10²¹ light years long. The observable universe has a diameter of 93 billion light years, so this row of earths would stretch 33.5 billion times the entire diameter of the observable universe.
Are we getting close? Not really… We now have reached 2⁶³ * 2⁶³= 2¹²⁶. This amount of sand would still only be 0.0000000058% of the amount of Bitcoin addresses in existence. The remaining part a factor of 2³⁴ (2¹³⁶*2³⁴ = 2¹⁶⁰). This would correspond to the surface of a square with a length of 2¹⁷ earths (131,072) stacked next to each other. This is ~11 times the distance between the earth and the sun.
So there we have it. The amount of possible bitcoin addresses would correspond to the amount of sand grains in a square of 131,072 x 131,072 earths next to each. One edge of this square would cover the distance between the earth and the sun ~11 times. Then stacking this square of earths on top of each other to reach 33.5 billion times the lenght of the entire observable universe. That’s the closest I could come to imagine how to visualize the vast amount of possible Bitcoin addresses out there.
I don’t know about you, but I actually enjoyed trying to visualize how astronomically large 2¹⁶⁰ really is. Maybe it’s because I like spending time on the beach…
How safe is your bitcoin address?
The risk of someone finding the private key of a wallet which contains any Bitcoin will depend mainly on two things : how many wallets with bitcoin exist and how many wallets can be generated in a reasonable time.
In February 2020 there were a reported 615,463,205 Bitcoin addresses with a non-zero balance. Since there will only be a total of 21 million Bitcoins each consisting of 10⁸ satoshis, the absolute maximum of addresses that can contain any Bitcoin at the same time is 2.1*10¹⁵. This is about 29 million times more than addresses currently in use.
For the sake of argument let’s assume this worst case scenario. The highest possible amount of Bitcoin addresses that can each contain 1 satoshi is 2.1*10¹⁵. This is 4392 times less than the amount of sand on earth.
Since the surface area of earth is 510 million km2, 1/4392th would be 116,120 km2. This is more or less equivalent to the surfce area of Greece (131,057 km2)
So the probability of finding a bitcoin address with 1 satoshi in a perfectly distributed situation, would be equivalent to the amount of sand in Greece on 1 of those earths in the vast beam of earths that streches 33.5 billion times the observable universe.
Now since you probably have only 1 or 2 bitcoin addresses with a substantial amount, the chances of someone randomly guessing the private key to your address, would be equivalent to finding 1 specific grain of sand.
Extremely unlikely.
… but wait, there is Moore !
Ok, bad joke. But I genuinly wondering with all the computing power we have right now which is growing exponentially, how safe are we really from someone accidentally stumbling on your unique grain(s) of sand?
The total hashrate of the entire BTC network stands right now at 144 EH/s = 144*10⁶ TH/s = 144*10¹⁸ H/s. Let’s assume that this is the rate at which bitcoin addresses can be generated and checked if they have a balance or not. In reality this will be a lot slower, because bitcoin uses a double hash and the checking of the balance also will take a bit of time. But anyway, let’s see where this would take us.
The approach to calculate the probability of any search generated key in an address containing bitcoin would be to assume we have a large bucket of sand with white and black grains. Each white grain represents an address with balance (max 2.1*10¹⁵) and each black grain represents a possible address (2¹⁶⁰).
Let’s calculate how many attemps would be needed to have a 10% change of finding at least 1 white grain of sand (address with a balance). This can be expressed as :
probability of finding at least one white grain
= 1- (probability of finding a black grain)^(number of attempts)
probability of finding a black grain
= 1 - #addresses with non-zero balance / # max number of addresses
= 1- (2.1*10¹⁵ / 2¹⁶⁰)
= 0.9999999999999999999999999999999986
10% probability of finding a white grain means(probability of finding a black grain)^(number of attempts) = 0.9
number of attempts = log(0.9) / log( 0.9999999999999999999999999999999986 ) = 7.52575E+31
Assuming all bitcoin miners in the world would start to generate addresses at a hashrate of 144*10¹⁸ H/s it would take about 16572 years to have a 10% chance of finding 1 address with 1 satoshi.
Using the same principle, finding the key of 1 particular address would a bit longer. It would take 4882 billion billion billion billion years for a 10% chance to find 1 specific key.
Moore’s law states computing power doubles every 18 months. The fastest miner currently achieves a hashrate of ~100TH/s. Let’s assume the hashrate increases another 100 fold in the next 10 years bringing it to 10000 TH/s. And now lets assume population has grown to 10 billion people and we give each person 1000 of these miners. This would bring the global hashrate to approximately 10²⁹ H/s.
How long would it take to find 1 address with 1 satoshi?
10% probability to find at least one address would take ~12 minutes
90% probability to find at least one address would take ~4.5 hours
Well there we have it. But then again this last scenario isn’t going to happen anytime soon. The current electricity computer of all bitcoin miners combined adds up to the power of ~7 nuclear power plants. Assuming the energy efficiency for the hashrate gets a 1000x more efficient, the above scenario would still require ~4.8 million nuclear powerplants each generating 1 GW.
Moreover, it would be far far easier if this were to become reality to fork bitcoin to an enhanced protocol using a different hash function bringing it for instance to 2²⁵⁶ …
How random is random?
One major consideration I do need to mention is the randomness of random. If the private key to derive the bitcoin address from is not purely random but only covers a subset of the 2¹⁶⁰ possible combinations, the probability of collissions would dramatically increase. Obviously simple passphrases like sha-256(‘bitcoin’) would be very easy to find.
To illustrate it you can try it.
from hashlib import sha256
passphrase = 'bitcoin'
sha256(passphrase.encode('utf-8')).hexdigest() >>>6b88c087247aa2f07ee1c5956b8e1a9f4c7f892a70e324f1bb3d161e05ca107b
If you generate a bitcoin address from this private key you get the address 1E984zyYbNmeuumzEdqT8VSL8QGJi3byAD … and yes this address is empty but it has been used in the past and we all have access to it. | https://medium.com/coinmonks/how-likely-is-it-that-someone-could-guess-your-bitcoin-private-key-6c0edd56fa1f | ['Bram Van Genabet'] | 2020-12-28 14:09:18.345000+00:00 | ['Cryptography', 'Bitcoin'] |
Tethered | Time is relative. We all live in this multi-dimensional universe filled with invisible walls. We are bound by tethers, holding souls together; strings that transcend time and space. They can cross barriers, keeping souls together in life, in death, in separate lifetimes, in different timelines. It sounds hokey, you might say. May think I’ve gone over the edge. But I believe this with every cell of my being.
I believe we are linked; rather, our souls are linked, to other souls, and not even death can sever those bonds. I believe once two souls imprint onto one another, eternity is their destiny.
Writing these words, my heart is so full that I feel it might burst at the seams. My eyes are, as well. Filled with unshed tears; tears of happiness. Of pure, unadulterated love. No, not the love you feel for a romantic partner …in comparison, that type of love fades drastically. This is different; it’s better. It’s stronger. Indestructible.
You see, when you think of the term ‘soul mates’, you almost always turn to romance. And that’s not the case at all. At least I don’t believe it is. A soulmate doesn’t have to be someone you want to marry…a soulmate is like…like another part of your own soul, tethered by that invisible string. Sometimes it takes lifetimes to follow that string; it’s a pretty vast universe after all. But sometimes, if you’re lucky (no, more like blessed!), the string pulls you together.
I’m writing this in a moment of overwhelming emotion because I cannot contain it within the restraints of my heart. I feel beyond blessed – I feel love beyond love…beyond the traditional definition of love…the word itself feels sadly inadequate to describe this emotion within me.
Though a small part of me fears that this might be perceived as obsession, I cannot dwell on such an unsubstantiated fear. For as someone recently said to me, this is a year of clear vision, and I can see clearly now.
I love, so incredibly deeply and completely. Not in a romantic sense, no. In a way that I have found the missing part of my soul. That the universe has been leading me to for my whole life, waiting for the moment I needed it the most. And now, feeling that I just can’t remember what life was like before, and couldn’t – refuse to – imagine what it would be like without.
Today, I feel like the universe has blessed me beyond belief, and I am so incredibly grateful. I wish this feeling of completeness upon every soul. If you have found it, you’ll know what I speak of. If you haven’t, I pray that you will. | https://medium.com/imperfect-words/tethered-d556eeae141 | ['Edie Tuck'] | 2020-01-09 17:21:56.916000+00:00 | ['Bound', 'Love', 'Soulmates', 'Soul', 'Universe'] |
How Your Data Is Shaping the Future of Music; Your Favorite Radio Hits May Go Silent | Your Data Is Shaping the Future of Music — pigeonsandplanes.com
If streaming data is the new metric for success, we are all A&Rs.
Why the last big music label against streaming caved in — www.irishtimes.com
The ECM record label was long a holdout against streaming, with boss Manfred Eicher believing in the integrity of the “album”.
Your Favorite Radio Hits May Go Silent — www.bloomberg.com
Songwriters threaten to withhold their music if stations don’t give them a bigger share of revenue.
Those ‘Fake Artists’ on Spotify? Epidemic Sound CEO Oscar Holland Says There Was ‘No Special Deal’ — www.billboard.com
After four months of quiet, Epidemic Sound CEO Oscar Hoglund has finally spoken out at length in response to allegations that his company was promoting “fake artists” on Spotify’s playlists, and undercutting licensing fees and royalty payouts to traditional labels.
Voise Platform Upgrades to Alpha 0.2; Token to be Listed on Aussie Exchange — medium.com
Voise, one of this year’s most exciting blockchain projects, has upgraded its music streaming platform to include new features and fix the old ones.
Beginner’s Guide to Music MetaData. — medium.com
All that you need to know about music metadata. What are recordings, releases, release groups, tracks, etc.
Sonos One users can now ask Alexa to play Spotify music — techcrunch.com
In October, Sonos launched the Sonos One, raising the bar on what is already the gold standard in wireless whole-home audio. The big new feature? An..
Spotify’s RapCaviar turned the playlist into a movement, now Viva Latino is next — www.theverge.com
Spotify’s biggest Latin playlist is rolling out video internationally.
Amazon Music app adds Chromecast support — www.androidpolice.com
Amazon and Google’s relationship over the past few years has been nothing short of an epic love-war popcorn-worthy chess battle. Amazon removes Chromecasts… by Rita El Khoury in Amazon, Applications, News
What The End To Net Neutrality Means For Internet Streaming — www.npr.org
NPR’s Elise Hu talks to former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler about what the FCC decision to end so-called net neutrality means and what it will mean to consumers of internet streaming. | https://medium.com/platform-stream/how-your-data-is-shaping-the-future-of-music-your-favorite-radio-hits-may-go-silent-f7144f5efea4 | ['Platform'] | 2017-11-27 16:03:32.698000+00:00 | ['Music', 'Net Neutrality', 'Streaming Music', 'Data', 'Spotify'] |
Housing Appreciation is Killing Housing | For the better part of a century, homeownership has been the foundation for the average Americans’ growth in net worth and the cornerstone of the government’s housing policy. But seventy years of consistent appreciation in housing values paired with stagnant real wage growth has caused a nationwide crisis of affordability in major cities and an intensification of wealth and racial inequality. In just two generations, homeownership in the United States has improved by 20 percentage points, but now young people are struggling to afford the same homes their parents were able to afford at their age. In cities like San Francisco and New York, a consistent 2.5% annual appreciation above inflation in housing prices and rents has resulted in a quadrupling of housing costs since 1950 and homelessness rates not seen since the Great Depression.
Housing, like student loans and health insurance, has fallen into a free market trap. There’s an inelastic demand — everyone needs housing, an education, and to be healthy — and people will pay almost anything to acquire these basic needs. In 1950 the median home price was 2.2 times the average yearly income, in 2013 — a few years after the worst housing market crash in a century — median home prices had already risen to 3.7 times the average income. Largely, this inflexible cost has been paid for with greater private debt — between 1949 and 2018, mortgage debt as a percentage of GDP grew from 15% to 80%.
As with higher education and preventive medicine, those with the earliest head start and least barriers to entry reaped the greatest rewards. While white Americans have increased homeownership rates from 50% to 70% since 1950, African American homeownership has only risen from 30% to 40%. As a result, the median white American family’s net worth is now 12 times that of the median African American family with two-thirds of that net worth attributable to home equity. And the racial wealth gap is growing: by 2053, African Americans will see their median household wealth fall to zero just from being on the wrong end of housing appreciation.
The real world consequences of racial income inequality are playing out in San Francisco, where African Americans represent 34% of those experiencing homelessness while only making up 6% of the city’s population.
Mr. D, an African American bay Area native, worked in construction in one of San Francisco’s booming neighborhoods. He built a life and a family in the city, but in 2015, lost his job due to a leg injury. As is often the case, a combination of losing his job and the mounting costs associated with an injury soon depleted his savings and got him evicted from his apartment. At fifty five years old, he found himself with no home to call his own, living between shelters and sometimes sleeping in cars or friends’ garages as far away as Sacramento. During this difficult time, Mr. D never lost hope — he went through a series of job training programs, started a catering business, ran for office, and volunteered with homeless community organisations. But after failing to find affordable housing for three years, he decided to pack up and move back to Texas, leaving his children and grandchildren in California.
The two institutions with the most to gain from housing appreciation, banks and the government, have fuelled the private housing market since mortgage terms were rewritten following the Great Depression. Banks have adeptly parlayed the human need for a stable home into trillions of dollars worth of profits. In the US, more than 90% of homes are purchased with a mortgage, and the average mortgage is worth 90% of the home. For banks, the monopoly of the mortgage market has allowed them to create a home-value arms race — the higher the value of the property, the higher the interest payments and potential profit. Even after the collapse of housing bubbles, government bailouts and favourable bankruptcy rules have limited the risk banks face from limitless home value appreciation.
Governments, especially local governments, have a vested interest in maximising property values. A booming homeownership market means rising net worths of the population and a steady source of tax receipts. For local and state governments, property tax is more important than income tax — in San Francisco, property tax accounted for 29% of the city’s general fund in 2017. By restricting redevelopment, building market rate apartments and condos, and allowing thousands of below market units to be converted to market rate units, property tax receipts have ballooned.
Case Study: San Francisco
ShelterTech is a San Francisco based non-profit that connects people experiencing homelessness with housing and human resources. They are building digital tools for underserved communities and have been studying the city’s housing crisis since their founder experienced homelessness firsthand in 2014. House prices, as well as median rents, in the city have been growing fairly steadily at 6.6% for the past 60 years — 2.5% when adjusted for inflation.
For Mr. A, an advisor for ShelterTech and lifelong San Franciscan who was recently living on the streets, that means the 3 bedroom apartment he used to rent with a roommate in 1980 for $750 a month now goes for $6,476, an 182% increase in 38 years after adjusting for inflation. Now that he’s 63, retired, and living on his social security income, he’ll be moving into a subsidised housing unit that costs 58% of his monthly income. For him, however, this is still an upgrade from the conditions at the temporary housing and shelters he’d been living in.
Pro-development advocates argue that massive new market rate housing development is the key to alleviating the housing crisis. It’s true: housing development hasn’t been keeping up with population growth at a regional level. But for San Francisco, the population in 2010 was only 3.87% greater than in 1950, while housing costs are nearly 400% greater. Housing costs have continued to increase regardless of the number of units built in a year or the fluctuation in the population. Put simply, appreciation and inflation alone are such powerful drivers of the cost of housing that San Francisco would need to double the number of new units added per year to keep housing costs flat, ignoring population growth, wage increases, lower unemployment, and other factors that raise housing costs. To return to 1981 housing costs, the city would need to add an additional 200,000 new units or suffer a 51% drop in employment or 44% drop in median wages.
Another issue not addressed by market rate housing development is extreme income inequality which is exacerbated by the relative inflexibility in rental costs. In San Francisco, the poorest 5% of the population earn just $650 per month, while the bottom 5% of rents is still $1500 per month. The city has built about 6500 new affordable housing units built in the last 10 years, but also lost over 4,000 affordable units due to owner move ins, evictions, demolitions, and conversions. In 2017, the city conducted affordable housing lotteries and received over 85,000 applications for just 1,210 units.
Where do we go from here?
Improving renter protections, expanding social housing, and more tightly regulating the mortgage market would slow down housing appreciation. Cutting down on short term rentals and vacation homes also has a dramatic impact on housing affordability: In a recent study, MIT, UCLA, and USC found that for every 10% growth in Airbnb listings, a zip code’s average rent increased by 0.4%.
Another solution would be to limit foreign investment and speculation. When Vancouver passed a 15% tax on all sales to foreign home buyers, the price of single family property dropped 20% before rebounding, giving housing appreciation a short term respite.
A more dramatic intervention would be to reverse the trend of corporations getting into the housing market and reintroduce public land ownership. From 2013 to 2015, corporations purchased almost $2 trillion worth of land and buildings in the world’s top 100 cities. Middle and lower class families aren’t able to compete with corporate property investors, but local governments and community organisations could use collective buying power to play an active role in repurchasing large quantities of housing stock. The Dutch constitution has a provision for providing adequate housing to its residents. As a result, the Netherlands currently has the highest share of social housing in the EU accounting for about 32% of the total housing supply and 75% of the rental market. As the largest housing supplier, the Dutch public housing system is well positioned to set market rates and address the growing housing needs of the country and is an interesting example of a functioning large scale social housing system in a developed country. | https://medium.com/shelter-tech/housing-appreciation-is-killing-housing-87e474e80441 | ['Derek Fidler'] | 2021-04-01 08:21:01.897000+00:00 | ['Housing', 'Politics', 'Civictech', 'Homeless', 'San Francisco'] |
What is Prism Live Studio? | Prism Live Studio, a.k.a. Prism, is a live-streaming studio app with easy setup and various effects.
Before I get into further details, let’s first take a little peek at the short clip down below! (Click here)
Prism’s Main Features.
First things first, I’m going to guide you through all the main features of Prism. Too many cool features to sum everything in one post, so I’ll leave the details for the next articles, and first give out the gist here. Then let’s dive right into it!
1. Select Camera Mode
You can select between LIVE, VIDEO, and PHOTO, and create your own special live feed!
2. Simulcast to Multiple Platforms
Your live-stream goes on air in multiple platforms. And of course, it’s free of charge for everyone!
3. Camera Effects
Mask Effects, Background Filters to change the entire mood of your videos, Touch Filters to show reactions, and Emotion Filters to express your emotions in various ways. Fun is all yours! Make it unique!
4. Add Media Files
You can add photos, videos, and music in your stream from My Studio, and share the fun with your audience!
5. Add Background Music
Prism provides five different theme songs for free to liven up your videos.
6. Screen Cast
Share your mobile screen with your viewers in real time.
7. Real-Time Conversation with the Audience
You can easily check the chat box while streaming. Interact with your viewers!
8. Edit Videos with Effects
With numerous effects, filters, speed control, and background music, you can easily make your own unique videos.
9. History (My Page)
Check your live-streaming history and videos. | https://medium.com/prismlivestudio/what-is-prism-live-studio-c82e99c2bd1c | ['Prism Live Studio. Official'] | 2020-04-27 03:35:23.871000+00:00 | ['Streamer', 'Twitch', 'Live', 'Live Streaming', 'YouTube'] |
100 Words On….. Education | Photo by Susan Yin on Unsplash
Cyber Security is a constant learning curve that changes daily. New threats are emerging while old threats continue to plague us. Entering the workforce after years of education, we are bombarded with reminders to be vigilant. I often think many have begun their cyber security awareness training too late. With nearly every child today not knowing a world without the Internet, smart phones, and millions of apps, are we finding more wilful ignorance or simply desensitisation? Experience and cyber smarts are best started from an early age to gain a crucial employment advantage, protect our valuable data, and remain secure. | https://medium.com/the-100-words-project/100-words-on-education-f3150e9ae478 | ['Digitally Vicarious'] | 2020-12-16 23:28:44.442000+00:00 | ['Information Technology', '100 Words Project', 'Cybersecurity', 'Information Security', 'Education'] |
Specialization Will be Killed by Automation | Specialization Will be Killed by Automation
There are no safe jobs, but lifelong learning can make you safer
Photo by Alex Knight on Unsplash
Companies prefer to hire specialists. You can trace the reasons for this back to The Wealth of Nations, the pioneering work of Adam Smith that remade the world of economics when it was released in 1776.
In Smith’s work he introduced the concept of division of labor — one of the greatest ideas in the history of economics.
From division of labor grew specialization — the idea that we would each train hard in a very specific set of skills that would last us our entire careers.
Clearly, Specialization has many advantages as well. If you spend 40+ hours per week for decades mastering a trade, only other specialists will ever be able to match your ability with that skill. Polymaths and generalists can’t hope to compete.
But this article isn’t about human competition. It’s about machines, and you can’t outspecialize a machine.
I Was Built That Way
For centuries, the word computer referred to a person that performed manual mathematical computations. Care to guess what device replaced them?
Farmers, factory workers, tax accountants, travel agents, and several other fields have already started to feel the impact of automation. When you need to book a flight, do you pick up the phone or go to Expedia?
None of these fields have entirely disappeared; few fields ever do. But you don’t want to be in a field that is shrinking. You don’t want to have 100% of the competition competing for 90% of the jobs — then 80%, 70%, and so on.
So what can we do? At first glance, it would seem that we need to find jobs that won’t be automated, but this goal is harder than you would think. No field is guaranteed to be safe from automation.
Harder Doesn’t Mean Safer
Some people rush to advanced degrees or complicated training programs. After all, if it takes 4–6 years of postgrad training to even start a job, it can’t possibly be first up on the chopping block, right?
Wrong.
Machines don’t think the way that we do. Some of the things that are hardest for us to do are actually quite easy for machines.
Compare doctors and nurses. I’ll let those in the medical field decide which one is actually the harder job, but let’s focus on the training time for now. Being a human doctor requires more years of training than being a human nurse.
Diagnosis, surgery, and many other tasks that doctors do are already seeing some level of automation. One of the biggest things doctors have going for them is the vast amount of knowledge that they carry and their ability to quickly expand that knowledge when needed — things that machines are also very good at.
Nurses, on the other hand, have jobs that involve a lot of direct patient interaction and empathy — tasks that would be harder (but not impossible) to automate.
How hard it was to train for your job is not a good indicator of how hard it would be to automate. A better indicator is the necessity of soft skills, creativity, and the like. But even that is not enough.
Machines Get Partial Credit
Photo by Wonderlane on Unsplash
To make matters worse, machines don’t have to do every task in a field to wipe out jobs. If 10% of the tasks that a doctor does are suddenly automated, you can bet that the number of jobs available for doctors will go down substantially.
People tend to focus on the parts of their jobs that they claim are hardest to automate when they talk about their future job safety. Even if they have properly identified the aspects that can’t be automated, it means very little if the other 90% of their job goes away.
Nearly every job involves aspects that are automatable. I’m a writer. You’d think that the creative aspect of that would make it hard to replace me. It won’t.
I know that I spend quite a bit of time doing research, editing, SEO, and other tasks that a machine could take away from me. I wouldn’t hate losing some of those, but if each writer can spend more time writing we would need fewer writers. The law of supply and demand always catch up with you.
Value Matters
The more valuable a field, the more somebody will want to automate it. Since the most specialized jobs tend to pay the most, this should scare specialists quite a bit.
Highly-paid specialists that lose their jobs to machines will take huge pay cuts. It’s inevitable. Your pay was based on the value of your specialization, but the value of that specialization also made it very sought after by automators. Now, it’s worth only as much as the cost of the machine that took your place.
The more specialized you are, the more unlikely it is that you will find a replacement career that is valued as highly as the one you have now.
This is Sad. Make It Less Sad
Okay, fine. I’m tired of the gloom, too. Let’s talk about solutions.
No specialization is safe, so safety must be found in a new — or actually very old — pathway: generalization. Division of labor doesn’t require that we all become hyper-specialized. Yet over the past centuries, we have continuously moved toward more and more specialization.
It’s time to bring back the polymath. It’s time to recognize that the only way to stay ahead of the machine is to stay nimble. You can’t compete with machine learning without human learning.
Polymaths are lifelong learners. We have focused on transferrable skills. Additionally, the skills that make for a successful polymath in the modern era are heavily weighted toward soft skills that are less automatble.
Our jobs are no more immune to automation than those of specialists. We are just ready to jump ship if needed. We have the necessary skills to stay one step ahead of automation.
If automation makes it hard for me to get a job as a writer, I’ll move on. I’ll miss this field, but I’ll find another creative outlet that gives me a similar level of satisfaction. I fear automation, but I find comfort in knowing that it will never trap me.
Final Thoughts
This is not the end of specialists, but it may be the beginning of their decline. Fields that have done nothing but grow for decades or centuries may start to shrink as automation trends onward.
I can’t close this article out without talking about what society needs to do to ease this process.
Specialists and polymaths alike will continue to lose jobs to automation. This is inevitable.
I am not convinced that automation will lead to mass long-term unemployment. At the minimum, though, mass career transfers will become commonplace. Our current societal safety nets cannot handle such events.
Hopefully, society catches up — because automation is not slowing down.
In the meantime, become a lifelong learner. It’s your best way to beat the machines. | https://medium.com/digital-diplomacy/specialization-will-be-killed-by-automation-9769107d08ba | ['Zak Kann'] | 2020-10-14 15:38:21.353000+00:00 | ['Work', 'Careers', 'Productivity', 'Automation', 'Advice'] |
Exnovation, the Iceberg Model, and Expertise is Over-valued | I want to share a few totally unrelated pieces of thinking that caught my eye. This will be a shorty but I think you’ll find it interesting.
1
I am taken with this concept of exnovation, which is the counterbalance of innovation. To constantly make something new, you have to dismantle the old; to organize your team around iterating and innovating you need to systematize the dismantling. This is from a post on Medium by the Politics for Tomorrow, who — in the same spirit of championing failure with slogans like “fail cheaply” or “move fast and break things” — demonstrate the necessity of embracing the phasing-out of stuff by showing it as part of a larger system of innovation.
They discovered that stabilizing the new is not enough to achieve systemic change. In order to embed innovation in an existing “regime” or status quo, non-sustainable technologies and the related systems, infrastructures and livelihoods around these technologies had to be phased out in a deliberate and socially responsible way.
Super cool.
2
Subject matter expertise in product design is over-valued. In his advice in hiring a head of product, Rich Mironov describes some of the biases subject-matter experts have in design decision making — usually having to do with lack of respect for the need for constant discovery. “I know about advertising, so I know ….” etc.
This should probably resonate with you all who value the process and rituals of user experience design, where good design is the result of disciplined practice. This then emphasizes the value of solid practitioners, an de-emphasizes the value of experts.
3
Perhaps the best way to sum-up my gripes with personas is that personas are easier to get wrong than right, and wrong personas are more likely to inspire resistance rather than empathy. This insight originated with a post from Christin Roman. In their conclusion they suggest alternatives — but honestly in my conclusion the value of any kind of user archetype is a red herring.
4
The near future of remote work is going to be very, very messy. It starts with the illusion that a remote worker moving somewhere with a cheaper cost of living will get to keep their salary, and then it will be encumbered by a struggle for privacy. I mostly just want to share this snippet from an article by the Economist (paywall):
Already the gig economy has shown that it is out of date. Now new prickly questions about workers’ rights and responsibilities loom: can firms monitor remote workers to assess their productivity? Who is liable if employees injure themselves at home? Any sense that white-collar workers are getting perks will create simmering resentment in the rest of the workforce.
5
What underlies patterns in user behavior? Structure. Specific touchpoints in an existing process, organizational pressures, policies and rules of thumb, or even rituals. I don’t know how best to credit this post without an author, but the folks at Eco Challenge (?) added levels of thinking to the familiar Iceberg model. This is interesting to me because I suppose I never really said aloud what this makes obvious: patterns are supported by the things we, or our predecessors, made. That means we can improve or unmake them. This is a powerful observation.
End
Consider liking (❤) this issue of Metric if this made you think.
Metric is a podcast, too. Subscribe to Metric on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, and all the usual places.
I write about design and philosophy in another newsletter called Stoic Designer. Read “Letter 76: Shirking Routine,” then subscribe. | https://medium.com/the-metric/exnovation-the-iceberg-model-and-expertise-is-over-valued-da217cb5e7a7 | ['Michael Schofield'] | 2020-12-21 04:49:01.835000+00:00 | ['Personas', 'Career Advice', 'Product', 'Design', 'UX'] |
How Does Your Digital Product Perform When Users Get Angry? | How Does Your Digital Product Perform When Users Get Angry? truematter Aug 5·3 min read
When people get frustrated by digital products, they become angry which impedes task completion. Understanding this common exasperation will help you make better sites, apps, and software.
Poorly designed, frustrating digital experiences make otherwise harmoniously calm people angry — really, really angry. This probably doesn’t come as much of a shock. Interface rage is something we’ve all felt.
Some hurl offending computers from windows. Others write exceedingly long research articles on the subject. We all cope in our own way.
I’m infamous around the office for, shall we say, colorful pronouncements when using maddening apps, sites, and software. My infantile rantings sail right past the PG-13 standard into Rated R land. I’m not proud of it. But at least I’m not alone. Apparently a good many of us confess to verbal or physical abuse of our computers.
The Downward Spiral of Digital Fury
The worst thing about getting worked up over bad digital products is once we surrender to anger, we create a self-reinforcing cycle that makes the problem worse.
Maybe we’re filling out an online form and miss a required field, instruction, or error. Perhaps the form is just plain broken. What should have been insanely easy becomes a time-sucking ordeal. Anger is a natural response, but it makes us harried and mistake-prone. When flustered, we miss obvious things we’d otherwise see. Problems multiply, making us all the more furious.
Even worse, sometimes we come to a digital product already angry, already irrational. Those of us who tackle the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (the dreaded FAFSA) know what it means to start at our wit’s end. In this case, the downward spiral begins immediately.
Death. Taxes. Anger.
User frustration is depressingly common. Online it is the rule, not the exception. The interface rage it generates is a fact of modern life. I get mad. You get mad. I bet even the Dalai Lama has lost his digital cool when trying to order new Warby Parkers. The question is, what exactly can you, a digital product maker, do about it?
Begin by focusing less on the anger itself and more on the commonality of it all. Instead of wondering what to do if someone gets upset when using your product, ask instead what you should do when they inevitably become blind with anger.
A Different Model for UX Success
People are naturally impatient online. Anger flows easily from this. Angry folks exhibit poor judgement, make rash decisions, and are generally irrational. Your software must be truly amazing if it performs well in the face of this emotional tsunami. Your fancy app might be wonderfully usable under calmer, even-keeled circumstances. Perhaps sturdiness under duress is a more legitimate measure of success.
Testing this hypothesis with users would be difficult to say the least. Fury is so dang subjective. And making people break blood vessels on purpose feels a tad unethical. So we’ll have to settle for the next best thing.
Agree with Reality
Assume everyone using your digital product is having an exceedingly bad day. They are upset, irate, and stressed. It’s doesn’t matter why. Maybe your app is the cause. Maybe not. Perhaps they have a hundred things to do and your thing is just one of them. Perhaps they just finished the FAFSA before turning to your app. Life’s not fair.
You can rely on people to be frustrated by technology. This is never going to change. Adopt a mindset that assumes perpetual user exasperation. It will revolutionize how you think about, build, and deliver your product. Everyone from the newest employee to the CEO will make better choices as a result.
About truematter
Our team has been doing the real work of user experience since the earliest days of the commercial web. We’re out to make your digital products a whole lot better.
That means ensuring they can withstand the endless onslaught of irrational human behavior.
Author: @ExperienceDean
Graphic: @djosephmachado
Image Source: Engraving by Martin Engelbrecht
Acknowledgement: Cian O’Connor for conceptual inspiration | https://medium.com/@truematter/how-does-your-digital-product-perform-when-users-get-angry-7f5dc4b8dfb6 | [] | 2021-08-05 20:42:54.726000+00:00 | ['Anger', 'UX', 'Technology', 'Users', 'Business'] |
Who do we think we are? | Who do we think we are?
The growing fascination with Family History is no secret. In 2014 Time journalist Gregory Rodriguez reported that genealogy (which was once a means of proving noble lineage) ‘is the second most popular hobby in the U.S. after gardening … and the second most visited category of websites, after pornography.’ In 2019 Anthony Regalado claimed that twenty-six million people have taken at-home ancestry DNA tests, and that as many people purchased these tests in 2018 as in the previous years combined. And yet, family history research is dismissed by some as a rather flimsy hobby pursued by ‘misty-eyed and syrupy’ conservatives driven by a nostalgic vision of the ‘golden age of family.’ (Evans, 2011:49–51) — a criticism which, as Liz Grandmaison notes, ‘is particularly cynical and dismissive of people of the African and Black diaspora who, as a consequence of the transatlantic slave trade, do not have the luxury of such romantic notions.’ Even those critics who concede that it is not all bad, tend to view family history as distinct from and inferior to history proper, that is, the rigorous (re)creation of the past by academics and other such ‘experts’. If, as such critics suggest, genealogy has no place in scholarly history what role, if any, might it play in history museums?
History Trust of South Australia
As employees of the History Trust of South Australia many of my colleagues are involved in genealogy either professionally, personally, or both. Discussions with a few of them, as well as my own experience of family history research, have led me to think of academic history and genealogy as not only less distinct than some might like to imagine, but more importantly, as potentially mutually beneficial. This position is shared by many, including historian and genealogist Elizabeth Shown Mills who claims that ‘genealogy is history. It is micro-history and historical biography.’ (2004:2). Mills argues that data about individuals is integral to macro analyses of historical structures, that, for example, ‘in order to determine political affiliations and migration patterns, [historians] need to know the relationships between the actors on their historical stages, because kinship so often fueled economics, politics, and migration,’ 2004:3). For me, this line of argument is not only theoretically compelling; it is also supported by my experience working in a social history museum where it is widely agreed that visitors connect much more readily with ‘history’ when it is presented through personal stories.
Migration Museum curator Corinne Ball’s account of the development and ongoing impact of an exhibition (In This Place) about the history of Adelaide’s Destitute Asylum, the remaining buildings of which now house the Museum, clearly illustrates the symbiotic relationship between history and genealogy, and historians and genealogists.
As with previous versions of the exhibition, we consciously looked to tell stories of the ‘indigent poor’, women, the working class and others who have historically been excluded from larger narratives of Australian colonial history. Working with families of Destitute Asylum residents was a vital part of the development of the gallery, as we chose to highlight personal stories as a way to unpick the complexities of the welfare system. Content for two of the four family-focused interactives came about because members of those families approached us about their ancestors’ lives. Other stories featured in the exhibition were supplemented by research, assistance, and input from family members. Without these stories our attempt to explain the development of the welfare system in South Australia would have been abstract, less engaging, and far less meaningful to most of our visitors.
In This Place. Image by Andre Castellucci
Interestingly, the work of family historians sometimes challenges the traditional notion of history as a set of fixed, objective facts uncovered by tertiary trained specialists. It can also trouble the museological practices that sustain this idea(l) as Catherine Manning’s account of an experience she had whilst working as a curator at the Migration Museum demonstrates.
After a visit to see a framed family tree that had been donated two decades earlier and was now on display, the donor’s daughter contacted me. Her three children, she explained, had not been born at the time the framed work was donated, and she would like to add them to the tree. Making changes to an object that is in the Museum’s collection would, of course, contravene best practice protocols. I queried whether I might not ‘bend the rules’ with then-director of the museum and was told no, we couldn’t make an exception, despite the fact that the original donor expressed every desire to see his grandchildren added to the family tree.
History Trust of South Australia, HT200.0161
Together, Catherine and the family came up with an alternative: the donor’s daughter donated a framed picture of her children which was hung next to the original family tree. But as Catherine notes, if the donor had held onto the family tree for a few more years it would have continued to grow, but once it came into the museum’s collection its status as a living entity was arrested; it became ‘frozen in time.’ This anecdote highlights a criticism that is often made of traditional museological practice and the idea of the museum that underpins it, namely that ‘museums kill objects’ (Witcomb, 2003:3) and petrify history, constructing both as singular, fixed and unchanging. The role of genealogy in this example is to question those assumptions, to show that meaning is always in-process, multiplicitous, and contested. What it also illustrates is the way in which systems of power and privilege function to reproduce dominant ways of knowing, being, and doing, and the role that museums play in this.
History Trust of South Australia, HT2012.0012
Corinne’s account of the development of In This Place also makes clear the important role that family historians have played in ‘questioning traditional and largely accepted historical narratives about Australia’s early colonial past’ (Evans, 2011:52), and exposing the politically forged ‘silences and denials’ (Zerubavel cited Hackstaff, 2010:666) that support them. As she explains, ‘For many families the untangling of shame associated with illegitimacy, poverty and destitution, and the re-centering of the historical narrative through publicly sharing stories in museums, on the web and at memorial events goes some way to righting the historical wrongs done to their previously marginalised ancestors.’
The articulation of eradicated histories and redressing of past (and present) injustices is, as Ashley Barnwell argues, ‘a means of gaining individual and transpersonal identity’ (2013:262–3), and this is made poignantly clear in First Nations’ curator Jade Turner’s account of her first encounter with aspects of her family history.
I remember the first time I saw a picture of my Aboriginal great-grandmother and great-great grandmother. It sits in a collection my white grandmother has meticulously kept over her lifetime. When I looked at the pictures, they both looked like such strong, proud and knowledgeable women. I had heard so many stories of them, but to see them was like feeling connected in different way to seeing photographs of my white ancestors. At a time when Aboriginal people were being forced from their family, forced into silence and even forced into denying their Aboriginality they still survived. It is something about the existence of these photographs that became a symbol to me of how these women still survive in my family now.
Despite my white grandmother having spent much of her life with her head in [the] sand about my grandfather’s Aboriginality these photos still had their place in her collection. It’s interesting to find that the very woman who has spent much of her time ignoring and denying this blak history is one of the only ones to have recorded it. This is just one layer of a family greatly affected by the complex legacy of colonisation and white ideals of race. However, I look at my mum, sister and nieces and I still see these strong and proud blak women in them. We have all inherited not a family history of denial, but one of survival.
John and Audrey Turner, courtesy of Jade Turner
The political import of First Nations peoples’ deployment of the radical possibilities of family history to reconstruct identity and challenge national ‘histories that ignore the construction of the nation through racist policies and brutal violence’ (Evans, 2011:5) cannot be underestimated. Such work clearly supports Hackstaff’s claim that personal genealogies not only play an integral role in political struggles for greater justice and for selfhood, they can also elicit ‘hope for a different future that inspires and is inspired by the study of the past’ (Hall cited in Hackstaff, 2010:667).
At the same time, however, genealogy can be — and is — used to ‘realign … white identity with the side of the oppressed in post-colonial debates’ (Barnwell, 2013:268). Nowhere is this more apparent than in Tom Hayden’s Irish on the Inside: In Search of the Soul of Irish America (2001). Like Cartman, who, in a cleverly satirical episode (episode 13, series 1)of South Park sets out on a quest to find his ancestral roots, and thus himself, Hayden, a fifth generation American, who both claims and aspires to be ‘Irish on the inside’ finds evidence of his latent identity in his affinity with Irish marches and protest songs, the Irish language, a resistance to British rule, the work of writers such as James Joyce, and the IRA (which he attempts to join). One of the most troubling effects of the genealogical naturalization of Hayden’s alleged ‘Irishness’ is the (re)construction of him as ‘no longer a white American, but a politicised “black” Irishman’ (Barnwell, 2013:265) whose implication in and responsibility for current postcolonial problems is thereby nullified.
Unlike an anecdote that was shared with me by my colleague Liz Grandmaison, this problematic approach to and use of family history functions in direct contrast to genealogical research that asks ‘provocative questions about identity, authenticity, history, responsibility, and belonging’ (Barnwell, 2013:261), and the complex ways in which they intersect to produce oppressions and opportunities. While reading a recent article in The Guardian, Liz, who was born and raised in the U.S and migrated to Australia in 2011, came across the following the paragraph which stopped her in her tracks.
Edward Stirling — member of the South Australian parliament and father of the SA constitution, pastoralist and director of the colony’s bank — arrived about 1839 with the silver spoon of £1,000 bequeathed to him by his father, Archibald, a Jamaican slaveholder (Daley, 2020)
Edward Charles Stirling, HTSA, GN01280
Clicking on Edward’s hyperlinked name took Liz to Legacies of British Slave-ownership, a website maintained by University College London, which states that Edward was ‘the son of Archibald Stirling of Keir [Scotland]…with a creole woman of colour, possibly called Jeanne.’ Further investigation revealed that Archibald was ‘awarded all or part of the compensation for the enslaved people’ on a number of Jamaican plantations including Grange Hill in Westmoreland. Liz’s biological father, a light-skinned Black man, was born in Westmoreland, Jamaica in 1920. She is yet to discover if the connection is any more direct, but says she finds it interesting that she and the father of the South Australian constitution should have had such a similar ancestry. At the same time, Liz recounts, ‘I use a less sanguine adjective to describe my thoughts and feelings about the fact that Stirling’s son, Edward Charles Stirling, gave himself the authority to populate the colonial archive with Aboriginal remains, collected by means of the most barbarous acts. Conversely, my ancestors in Jamaica were catalogued as property in imperial ledgers and the ancestors of Aboriginal people here were deemed suitable only as archival objects.’
Map of Jamaica, British Library, shelfmark DS9888c22
In conclusion, then, it is clear that family history comprises a broad range of practices deployed by an increasingly diverse range of people and pressed into the service of competing political ends. As such it shares much with the academic practice of history. Like history as it is commonly conceived, genealogy is shaped and limited by the hegemonic assumptions that underpin it — assumptions about family formation, heterosexuality and parenting, naming practices and property to name but a few. But at the same time, family history research as a practice that is heterogeneous, changing, and generative, can contribute rich ‘micro’ data to macro accounts of historical structures, events, and trends. More important still, it has the potential to offer critical insights into the narrative construction (and material effects) of history, identity, power and privilege, and to thereby challenge the inevitability of ‘truths’ we no longer wish to accept. Given this, as history museum professionals how could we not be involved in family history research?
References
Barnwell, Ashley (2013) ‘The Genealogy Craze: Authoring an Authentic Identity through Family History Research,’ Life Writing, 10:3, pp.261–275.
Daley, Paul (2020) ‘ The room of the dead: how a museum became a halfway house for bones and spirits,’ https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jul/05/the-room-of-the-dead-how-a-museum-became-a-halfway-house-for-bones-and-spirits
Evans, Tanya (2011) ‘Secrets and Lies: The Radical Potential of Family History,’ History Workshop Journal, 71:1, pp.49–73.
Hackstaff, Karla B (2010) ‘Family Genealogy: A Sociological Imagination Reveals Intersectional Relations,’ Sociology Compass, 4:8, pp.658–72.
Hayden, Tom (2001) Irish on the Inside: In Search of the Soul of Irish America
Mills, Elizabeth Shown (2004) ‘Bridging the Historic Divide: Family History and “Academic” History’, https://historicpathways.com/download/bridghisdivideivide.pdf
Parker, Trey & David Goodman (1998) ‘Cartman’s Mum’s a Dirty Slut’, South Park, episode 13, series 1.
Regalado, Anthony (2019) ‘More than 26 million people have taken an at-home ancestry test,’ MIT Technology Review, https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/02/11/103446/more-than-26-million-people-have-taken-an-at-home-ancestry-test/
Rodriguez, Gregory (2014) ‘How Genealogy Became Almost as Popular as Porn’, Time, https://time.com/133811/how-genealogy-became-almost-as-popular-as-porn/
Witcomb, Andrea (2003) Re-Imagining the Museum: Beyond the Mausoleum, London: Routledge. | https://medium.com/interactions-with-history/who-do-we-think-we-are-2bdd34d57723 | ['Nikki Sullivan'] | 2020-08-07 01:26:58.300000+00:00 | ['Museums', 'Family History', 'History'] |
ShibaRocket Dog : Shopping Like Never Before! | Use-Case Scenerio:
Before the use-case, we would like to introduce you to Shiba and Its Friends. The whole ecosystem will be build around these fictional characters.
Every friend has its unique story and lifestyle. Our users will be able to own these characters as NFTs and redeem discounts on the brands that favourite character are partnered with !
Own Yun Yun Panda and Benefits :
Let’s assume Ariana own Yun Yun Panda, one of the Shiba’s Friend. Yun Yun is the fashion queen of the meme world. She finds pleasure doing luxury shopping, maintain her body and health. She loves to wear unique style clothes and use best brands in her make-up kit.
Since Ariana earn this NFT so she can redeem heavy discount on the branded products that Yun Yun owns in the category of health, fashion and accessories. We are making this interaction between Ariana, NFTs and Gift Vouchers so easy that it can be automated in our dApp. The interaction between Brands and Ariana will be like never ever seen before.
So get ready to experience shopping online, or in your nearest brand outlet with our Yun Yun Panda, Musky Bear and many more characters !
Token Utility:
As a start ShibaRocket is a utility token and will be used for games within the app. Once we launch dApp, Shibarocket will be used to buy NFTs to redeem more gift vouchers.
We are building ShibaRocket Wallet and dApp. ShibaRocket token is the primary currency in the whole ecosystem. In the future ShibaRocket will also be used to pay for in-app purchases of rare NFTs with more utility in e-commerce segments than just gift vouchers. | https://medium.com/@shibarocket1/shibarocket-dog-shopping-like-never-before-9c9f26b99d81 | ['Shibarocket Dog'] | 2021-07-29 12:22:20.922000+00:00 | ['Shopping', 'Nft', 'Gift Cards', 'Discount'] |
Galactic Federation of Light — Love is Our Message | Galactic Federation of Light — Love is Our Message
The Alcyone Pleiadian High Council — Channeled by Artemis Pax, Ground Crew, The Galactic Federation of Light
People of faith all over your world our bound by certain fundamental principles: love, light, and service to others. Co-existence and mutual understanding are the keys to unity.
We would like to address some of the resistance our channel has been met with recently. Several people of Christian faith are certain that their way is the only path to God. They are intolerant of other religious and spiritual traditions and blame anyone who suggests there are other ways to commune with divine consciousness. This is limited consciousness thinking. The Christ is a consciousness that resides in many souls on your world, and not all of them, mostly for cultural reasons, identify as Christian in your conventional sense. That does not mean they are not loving, spiritual beings.
We know that it might appear partisan or overly political, as you say, but that is not the reality of our perspective. Our concern is your understanding of what is now unfolding on your planet, orchestrated by a group of global elites who do not have humanity’s best interests in mind. The elites have their own story to tell and have infiltrated many sources that are credible, but do not have a good understanding of the big picture. We will not name names, but we would like you to use your discernment when availing yourself of information about the current Earth situation.
As many of you know and have even felt, the global elites (the 1% as you call them) have an agenda. They are trying to whitewash their efforts with propaganda suggesting they are what you might call the good guys. They are pointing accusing fingers at others, people like Hillary Clinton and President Obama, to deflect attention away from facts and their actual agenda. They are rallying others behind their cause by blaming others and creating confusion. The elites are aligned with the dark and behind what you call the New World Order (NWO). It doesn’t matter what you call them: Cabal, Illuminati, Dark Hats, PowerMongers, Profiteers, Oligarchs, or Robber Barons. They do not have humanity’s best interests at heart. They are driven by monetary profit and power, which will be clear if you look into their pasts and their track records when it comes to human and civil rights. They are fundamentally in service to themselves and at this point will do or say anything to continue consolidating their wealth and power.
There are myriad news sources via your Internet that tell this story correctly. That the majority of humanity is suffering while others profit by exploiting them and planetary resources. But unfortunately, personal politics are playing a role in how people respond to these truths. Their primary goal of the elites has been to depopulate your planet, using whatever means necessary. They are also hoarding money, gold, and other precious resources. If you consider the violence, discord, poverty, and neglect of those in need on your planet, indeed most of humanity, you will see that this is true. Money is a sacred cow in your culture, and as such most of you buy into the myths of an unconscious capitalist culture that privileges power and prestige over individual merit and the idea that everyone deserves to live comfortably and without violence, disease, and other scourges of your civilization.
We are not drawing attention to this to frighten you, but rather to have you consider the big picture. We have said before that your world is in the midst of a humanitarian catastrophe, indeed a holocaust, of unfathomable proportions. We are benevolent extradimensional beings who know we must intervene and have been working on this effort for decades now in your time. Our effort is organized via a coalition of advanced spiritual races who have figured out, through trial and error ourselves, how civilizations function best, in a way that is equitable for each and every being that is brought into existence. We refer to ourselves as the Galactic Federation of Light or The Earth Alliance, as we are all unified around one purpose: to ensure the victory of love and light in your world, but also in the cosmos at large.
Our intervention efforts have included a significant awareness building campaign (sightings, crop and earth formations, channelings, etc.), as well as education regarding the need for individuals to develop spiritually. Consciousness is transdimensional and your collective Earth consciousness benefits from each individual developing and expanding their own consciousness. Forays into consciousness, via prayer, meditation, reflection or contemplation, are how we extradimensional beings are able to observe and interact with humanity. As our channel likes to say, the way out is IN. Challenging deeply held assumptions and belief systems is critical to your evolution at this time. This means educating yourselves and challenging your societal and cultural status quo. For instance, consider the possibilities if your world did not run on money. Imagine other economies, like those based on happiness and prosperity. Scarcity thinking rules your world, but abundance thinking and equitable distribution of resources is the way of the future. Indeed they are how our own advanced societies function:
In short, many of the systems of your world are currently upside down. But there are many reasons to be optimistic. Altruism is fundamental to our nature as divine beings of light. It is also fundamental to humanity, which is why so many of you feel worried, anxious, and depressed at this time. Our cosmic laws are very clear about what the right way to treat one another is and we operate on principles of service to others. These principles are not being adhered to on your world, which is why this intervention and humanitarian assistance have been ordered by our Prime Creator. Your very existence has been compromised, and this cannot continue.
We would like to address what some of you call occult or hidden teachings. This moniker is being thrown at anything the elites, and the dark cabal, want to remain hidden. The new age teachings, as you call them, are the baby that gets thrown out with the bathwater. So many of you are an epiphany away from knowing, indeed remembering, the truth. You are all divine sparks of creator light. Light and love are the fundamental truths of our existence in our cosmos and they are what we need you to focus your attention on and spread to others.
When using your discernment, look for the love and the light in everything you encounter. Look for tolerance and understanding, unity thinking, and consider disregarding voices that blame, attack and discredit sources in angry, hateful, and contemptuous manners. It does not mean not acknowledging what’s going wrong on your world, but it’s important to do so rationally and compassionately.
Many of you are on different pages, politically or via your other social beliefs. What we need now is unity. Try to understand other points of view, try to achieve agreement. But in order to do this you need to rise above the details of politics and those who play in those arenas. Look for the love. Look for the light. You will know you are on the right track when you realize that humanity is more similar than you are different from one another.
Many of you know well-meaning people with strong values who are so certain they know the truth. But too many of you cannot see the forest for the trees, as you might say. Religion and politics divide too many of you. What you need to do, and encourage others to do, is to look for the messages of love and light, without focusing unduly on who the messengers are. These messages of love and light are visible in a wide range of spiritual and yes, religious and even secular traditions on your world.
There is not just one way to evolve into higher consciousness — there are many paths and many different ways of approaching things. Each individual’s journey into higher consciousness is unique. Too much emphasis is being placed on certain extremist movements, including Muslims and those of other faiths. Well-meaning people are being taught to fear these other modes of being as a whole. But Muslims, for the most part, are as loving and caring as many of you. In fact, the Muslim God, Allah, is Prime Creator, as well. Jesus Christ is an ascended master and also recognized by Islam as the important prophet he was. Yes, some horrifying things happen in the Islamic world, but they are the exception and not the rule. Similarly, other communities, like your lesbians and gays, are also loving beings who are also Prime Creator’s children. What matters is the love. Please remember this.
The Pleiadian star system, also referred to as the Seven Sisters.
We Pleiadians have been a major driving force behind efforts to liberate your planet. But we have also been met with resistance. There are other beings, also part of our coalition, who have insisted that humanity rise up on their own, and invoke a people’s revolution to overthrow tyranny and injustice. We understand how difficult this is and how powerless so many of you feel, but there are small things each of you can do. For one, gravitating towards positive sources of news and inspiration will help raise your individual vibrations. Also, educating yourselves so you can educate others will help this movement become viral. There is a tipping point right around the corner, and we could use your help with this final push. Sharing content and perspectives that have helped you learn is also extremely helpful. We will give more advice in upcoming transmissions, but for now we thank you so much for your attention and your positive intentions.
Our intervention effort is well underway and soon we will all realize the fruits of our labor of love. In love and light, the Alcyone Pleiadian High Council, Channeled by Artemis Pax, Ground Crew, The Galactic Federation of Light.
More Reading: | https://medium.com/we-are-not-alone-the-disclosure-lobby/galactic-federation-of-light-love-is-our-message-91ae05ea843f | ['Dr. Lisa Galarneau'] | 2019-03-19 22:27:57.937000+00:00 | ['Spirituality', 'Consciousness', 'Ascension', 'New Age', 'Love'] |
Dave Majesty Releases New Album “Born Official” | Dave Majesty Releases New Album “Born Official”
Written by: Julz Mancini
When we think about today’s music industry it is apparent that it has changed drastically over the years. With the introduction of social media, an artist’s ability to remain independent, and forever evolving sound and presentation of music, many forget about the fundamentals of hip-hop. Although many of today’s artists sound alike, if we listen attentively, we can still pinpoint the utilization of primary techniques initially developed during the boom bap era. There are still rappers, however, whom remain true to the boom bap foundation, instilling strong messages into the minds of their listeners. Many of you reading this may not hear of these artists and I feel it is my duty and honor to bring them into the spotlight, ensuring they do not go unnoticed. Lyricism, word play, extended metaphors, samples…all imperative traits of a true hip-hop artist. Dave Majesty is a hip-hop artist whom puts his heart and soul into his music ensuring that he leaves his listeners in deep thought.
Dave Majesty had a pure love for hip-hop at an early age. Being located in places like New Jersey and New York, Dave was constantly surrounded by the culture. With persistence, consistency, and talent, Dave has made a name for himself as an artist whom remains true to Boom Bap. Working with lyricists such as, Royal Flush, Miilkbone, DooWop, and Jus-One to name a few, Dave Majesty has developed his album “Born Official”.
Dave Majesty introduces his album with the perfect overview which includes different samples and scratching giving the listener a taste of his style. Following the intro, the listener is met with the song, “Friends” featuring artists Miilkbone and Royal Flush. “Friends” discusses the realities of their lives, portraying the importance of remaining cautious of whom they keep close to them. The track also touches on political and socioeconomic issues in which we are all affected by.
“It’s all hypocrisy. Democracy’s a mockery, from government rapes and robberies that keeps us all in poverty.”
Royal Flush and Miilkbone certainly add depth to “Friends” as their seasoned abilities enhance the dynamic of the song.
“I pay a lawyer and judge to beat the institution. You leaving stripping on poles to credit card boosting. You gotta jump shot to sell rocks. Whatever you do, you gotta dodge cops.” “My best friend’s 11; nothing less than a blessing. The exception, he ain’t have a real life lesson.”
There are a plethora of gems and lessons within this song. The artists’ delivery and story-telling combined with pure lyricism, keeps the listener on their toes as they await the next line. “Friends” is definitely a personal favorite within Dave Majesty’s album, “Born Official”.
As I streamed “Born Official”, I came across the song titled, “Living in Reality” featuring Jus One. This song was captivating from the very beginning, expressing the struggle and actualities of a hard life. With excerpts and samples displayed throughout the track, the listener can hear politicians, media, and celebrities perfectly detailing the realities we are currently facing. Dave Majesty touches the listener’s soul from the first lyrics he spits.
“Dear mom and dad, I’m writing you this letter because I’m stressing. Did you ever really think about your children is the question. I wasn’t there when God became your adversary. Everything about your evil ways became hereditary.”
Starting the song with these lines immediately introduces the listener to the hardships Dave Majesty has been faced with. It is lyrics such as these that, not only lure in the audience, but also allow them to reflect on their own lives further proving that Dave conveys strong messages within his music.
“Goodbye Sis” featuring Ashley Cox relays a heartfelt vibe as the listener can hear a guitar in addition to the soft and beautiful vocals of the songstress. Experiencing the loss of someone close to him, Dave Majesty pours his heart out in this song. Music such as this is a necessity due to its ability to assist the listener in reminiscing and coping with a loss they have experienced also.
“As long as I am alive and breathing, you’ll always be in my memory.”
During my journey through, “Born Official”, I was happy to come across “The Way I Spit It” featuring Doo Wop. This track is a prime example of both artists’ lyrical ability. From line to line, I was captivated by their presence, delivery, and talent.
“I’m calm, collected. My craft is well respected. I bring the pain with so much energy when it’s injected.”
Dave Majesty’s confidence enlightens and excites the listener as they embrace his lyrics. The title of this track is a flawless explanation of the content. Doo Wop certainly adds a vigorous feel to the song as he shouts out Dave Majesty and himself during the beginning of “The Way I Spit It”; another favorite for sure.
When we reflect on music during the 90’s and early 2000’s, hip-hop and R&B were an immaculate partnership, enhancing the vibe of both genres. Dave Majesty included the voice of Anna Peterson in his song, “Show Me The Way”, inviting the listener into the partnership in which many of us miss dearly. The listener can hear Anna sing, “Lord if you could show me a sign, then I will follow it”. This song reveals a sense of loss and purpose while trudging through the mud yearning to find your way in addition to revealing the fraudulence of those whom surround you.
“Some people artificial when the human mind strictly superficial. Their words be cutting through your skin tissue.”
It is with great excitement and relief, that I share Dave Majesty’s “Born Official” with the reader. The project is filled with crucial components in which typically deems an album a success. Well-known features, skits, samples, and true lyricism all coincide astoundingly to take listeners on an adventure through the mind of Dave Majesty. I am a firm believer that music is medicine; not only to the listeners but to the artist as well. To have the ability to create music is a pure gift. To have the ability to share it without fear of the unknown is pure strength and courage.
Be sure to check out Dave Majesty on all platforms! Click on the links below!
Instagram
LUM- an app for artists!
Spotify
Bandcamp
LISTEN TO “BORN OFFICIAL”! | https://medium.com/@yourdailyjulz/dave-majesty-releases-new-album-born-official-7eb421ba34ff | ['Julz Mancini'] | 2020-12-10 22:02:18.248000+00:00 | ['Hip Hop', 'Boom Bap', 'Rap', 'New Music'] |
The Highs And Lows Of Being A Work From Home Mom | Since I started working from home, I have been able to be there for my kids when they needed me. I have been able to rearrange my work when they are sick or have field trips they want me to go on. I can be there for all of their school activities and I am home when they get home from school.
I like that I don’t have to get dressed up to go to work or that I don’t have to drive anywhere to get there. I can make my own schedule and work whenever it works for me.
There are no customers to deal with and I can do some cleaning or laundry in between my work sessions. I can still bake cookies and get a hot meal on the table for dinner every night.
I don’t have to pay for anybody to watch my kids for me. That right there is the main reason I found a way to work from home. Who could afford 3 kids in daycare? I can’t!
The Downside Of Working From Home
Image by Vidmir Raic from Pixabay
There are so many reasons why I would never want to go back to a “real” job. Right now, being home for my kids is the number one reason.
But there are drawbacks to working from home. It isn’t all that it is cracked up to be. It isn’t a dream come true, so to speak. I’ve had people express that I am so lucky to be able to work from home.
Yeah, so lucky.
You do realize you actually have to work when you work from home right? You don’t get paid if you don’t work; much like any traditional job.
Nobody is going to pay you to click around on the internet all day.
Sometimes it is really hard to find the motivation to work. Most times there are so many other things I would rather be doing. Like sleeping for one. I am great at procrastination. It’s a skill I have perfected.
It requires a lot of discipline to sit down, close all browser tabs on the internet, and concentrate long enough to actually get some work done. There is always something you’d rather be doing. You have to learn to keep yourself from doing it.
When I do actually get the motivation to work, my kids are a big distraction. Summer time is the worst. It was even worse when they were babies. There were times when I had to sit at the computer and nurse a baby at the same time.
Or try to bounce the baby in the bouncy chair while I tried to meet a deadline. Oh and “work when they are asleep” would be great advice if I could have ever gotten them all to sleep at the same time. Plus then when do I sleep? When do I get alone time? | https://medium.com/family-matters-2/the-highs-and-lows-of-being-a-work-from-home-mom-1d3a6b30fe39 | ['Jessica Hillis'] | 2019-09-30 23:13:03.374000+00:00 | ['Motherhood', 'Work From Home Mom', 'Parenting', 'Work From Home', 'Working Moms'] |
How I Became A Therapist Nomad At BetterHelp | After seven and a half years of school and two years of being a Registered Intern, I became a Licensed Therapist in January 2021.
If you have been following my Medium page, you know that in February 2021, my boyfriend and I decided to travel and leave our life in Miami behind for a few months (or maybe a year or two — still assessing). With my License in hand and opportunities to work remotely (due to COVID19), I felt more confident to follow through with this dream. I applied to a few jobs, but no one would support me outside of the US. Thus, I decided to explore BetterHelp.
Although BetterHelp seemed very promising and convenient, I became pretty skeptical of the platform after seeing some YouTuber therapists speak poorly about BetterHelp. However, I decided to give myself the chance to judge it with my own eyes (and I am glad I did). I did my research, assessed the pros and cons, and took the venture.
The application process took about seven days. The first step entailed filling out a form of personal information to give you more details. Once they verified my information, they sent me a “counselor clinical quiz.” This quiz includes seven questions where they present you with different client scenarios, and you have to respond to the best of your abilities. The next day, they approved my quiz and gave me access to my counselor account.
Once in the counselor’s account, I had to continue filling out some personal and professional information. In this part, they request your NPI number. If you do not have one, they let you type”0" for the sake of completing the application. However, I recommend you to apply for it right then and then.
Afterward, they ask you to read the counselors guide — which is pretty long, but I highly recommend reading every detail of it. The guide serves as a training guide to use the platform, and it also explains all of the company’s consents, rights, disclosures, and policies. If you are in disagreement on any of these terms, this platform might not be for you.
I know that some therapists have not liked to work with this BetterHelp because of their approach to recruiting clients and therapists. Another critic is around certain language that the company uses in the “rights and terms” (i.e., they claim to provide counselor services instead of counseling services). Other people dislike the amount of work that you have to put into it to make desirable profits — and so on.
The last step in the application process is to have a live interview with a BetterHelp Agent. I thought this would be a formal interview, so I was prepared to go to the battlefield. Yet, it was a pretty chill and honest interaction where the interviewer guided me through the platform. He made sure I knew how to use all the features. He clarified questions for me. Finally, he ensured that I was going ready to rock and roll.
At this point, I was able to “open my availability” for new clients. They let you have a “slow,” “medium,” or “high” caseload growth. I chose to start with “slow,” and I have noticed that at this rate, I get 3–4 new clients a day. I have not attempted to grow any faster, as I think that has been enough for me.
Image Source
Other incentives within BetterHelp include a referral program and bonuses for keeping clients long-term.
Currently, I am on my third week of doing BetterHelp, and I am at 35 clients. I absolutely love it and have no complaints so far! | https://byrslf.co/how-i-became-a-therapist-nomad-at-betterhelp-f39d94a6e2e3 | ['Daniela Marin'] | 2021-05-11 00:02:34.600000+00:00 | ['Therapist', 'Therapy', 'Digital Nomads', 'Lifestyle', 'Beyourself'] |
Twitter Sentiment Analysis using fastText | In this blog, we’ll be analyzing the sentiments of various tweets using a fastText library which is easy to use and fast to train.
Twitter sentiment analysis
What is fastText?
FastText is an NLP library developed by the Facebook AI. It is an open-source, free, lightweight library that allows users to learn text representations and text classifiers. It works on standard, generic hardware. Models can later be reduced in size to even fit on mobile devices.
Why fastText?
The main disadvantage of deep neural network models is that they took a large amount of time to train and test. Here, fastText have an advantage as it takes very less amount of time to train and can be trained on our home computers at high speed.
As per the Facebook AI blog on fastText, the accuracy of this library is on par of deep neural networks and requires very less amount of time to train.
comparison between fastText and other deep learning based models
Now, we know about fastText and why we’re using it we’ll see how to use this library for sentiment analysis.
Get Dataset
We’ll be using the dataset available on betsentiment.com. Tweets have four labels with values positive, negative, neutral and mixed. We’ll ignore all the tweets with the mixed label.
We’ll use teams tweet dataset as a training set while player dataset as a validation set.
Cleaning dataset
As we know, before training any model we need to clean data and it’s true here also.
We’ll clean tweets based on these rules:
Remove all the hashtags as hashtags do not affect sentiments. Remove mentions as they also do not weigh in sentiment analyzing. Replace any emojis with the text they represent as emojis or emoticons plays an important role in representing a sentiment. Replace contractions with their full forms. Remove any URLs present in tweets as they are not significant in sentiment analysis. Remove punctuations. Fix misspelled words (very basic as this is a very time-consuming step). Convert everything to lowercase. Remove HTML tags if present.
Rules to clean tweets:
We’ll clean this tweet
tweet = '<html> bayer leverkusen goalkeeeeper bernd leno will not be #going to napoli. his agent uli ferber to bild: "I can confirm that there were negotiations with napoli, which we have broken off. napoli is not an option." Atletico madrid and Arsenal are the other strong rumours. #b04 #afc </html>'
Remove HTML tags
Sometimes twitter response contains HTML tags and we need to remove this.
We’ll be using Beautifulsoup package for this purpose.
If there are not HTML tags present than it will return the same text.
tweet = BeautifulSoup(tweet).get_text() #output
'bayer leverkusen goalkeeeeper bernd leno will not be #going to napoli. his agent uli ferber to bild: "I can confirm that there were negotiations with napoli, which we have broken off. napoli is not an option." Atletico madrid and Arsenal are the other strong rumours. #b04 #afc'
We’ll be using regex to match expressions to removed or to be replaced. For this, re package will be used.
Remove hashtags
Regex @[A-Za-z0-9]+ represents mentions and #[A-Za-z0-9]+ represents hashtags. We’ll we replacing every word matching this regex with spaces.
tweet = ' '.join(re.sub("(@[A-Za-z0-9]+)|(#[A-Za-z0-9]+)", " ", tweet).split()) #output
'bayer leverkusen goalkeeeeper bernd leno will not be to napoli. his agent uli ferber to bild: "I can confirm that there were negotiations with napoli, which we have broken off. napoli is not an option." Atletico madrid and Arsenal are the other strong rumours.'
Remove URLs
Regex \w+:\/\/\S+ matches all the URLs starting with http:// or https:// and replacing it with space.
tweet = ' '.join(re.sub("(\w+:\/\/\S+)", " ", tweet).split()) #output
'bayer leverkusen goalkeeeeper bernd leno will not be to napoli. his agent uli ferber to bild: "I can confirm that there were negotiations with napoli, which we have broken off. napoli is not an option." Atletico madrid and Arsenal are the other strong rumours.'
Remove punctuations
Replacing all the punctuations such as .,!?:;-= with space.
tweet = ' '.join(re.sub("[\.\,\!\?\:\;\-\=]", " ", tweet).split()) #output
'bayer leverkusen goalkeeeeper bernd leno will not be napoli his agent uli ferber to bild "I can confirm that there were negotiations with napoli which we have broken off napoli is not an option " Atletico madrid and Arsenal are the other strong rumours'
Lower case
To avoid case sensitive issue
tweet = tweet.lower() #output
'bayer leverkusen goalkeeeeper bernd leno will not be napoli his agent uli ferber to bild "i can confirm that there were negotiations with napoli which we have broken off napoli is not an option " atletico madrid and arsenal are the other strong rumours'
Replace contractions
Remove contractions and translate into appropriate slang. There is no universal list to replace contractions so we have made it for our purpose.
CONTRACTIONS = {"mayn't":"may not", "may've":"may have",......} tweet = tweet.replace("’","'")
words = tweet.split()
reformed = [CONTRACTIONS[word] if word in CONTRACTIONS else word for word in words]
tweet = " ".join(reformed) #input
'I mayn’t like you.' #output
'I may not like you.'
Fix misspelled words
Here we are not actually building any complex function to correct the misspelled words but just checking that each character should occur not more than 2 times in every word. It’s a very basic misspelling check.
tweet = ''.join(''.join(s)[:2] for _, s in itertools.groupby(tweet)) #output
'bayer leverkusen goalkeeper bernd leno will not be napoli his agent uli ferber to bild "i can confirm that there were negotiations with napoli which we have broken off napoli is not an option " atletico madrid and arsenal are the other strong rumours'
Replace emojis or emoticons
As emojis and emoticons play a significant role in expressing the sentiments we need to replace them with the expression they represent in plain English.
For emojis, we’ll be using emoji package and for emoticons, we’ll be building our own dictionary.
SMILEYS = {":‑(":"sad", ":‑)":"smiley", ....} words = tweet.split()
reformed = [SMILEY[word] if word in SMILEY else word for word in words]
tweet = " ".join(reformed) #input
'I am :-(' #output
'I am sad'
For emojis
Emoji package return values for given emoji as :flushed_face: so we need to remove : from a given output.
tweet = emoji.demojize(tweet)
tweet = tweet.replace(":"," ")
tweet = ' '.join(tweet.split()) #input
'He is 😳' #output
'He is flushed_face'
So, we’ve cleaned our data.
Why not use NLTK stop words?
Removing stop words is an efficient way while cleaning data. It removes all the insignificant words and usually is the most common words used in each sentence. To get all the stop words present in the NLTK library
from nltk.corpus import stopwords
stop_words = stopwords.words('english')
print(stop_words)
NLTK stop words
We can see that if NLTK stopwords are used than all the negative contractions will be removed which plays a significant role in sentiment analysis.
Formatting the Dataset
Need to format the data in which fastText requires for supervised learning.
FastText assumes the labels are words that are prefixed by the string __label__ .
The input to the fastText model should look like
__label__NEUTRAL _d i 'm just fine i have your fanbase angry over
__label__POSITIVE what a weekend of football results & hearts
We can format our data using
def transform_instance(row):
cur_row = []
#Prefix the index-ed label with __label__
label = "__label__" + row[4]
cur_row.append(label)
cur_row.extend(nltk.word_tokenize(tweet_cleaning_for_sentiment_analysis(row[2].lower())))
return cur_row def preprocess(input_file, output_file):
i=0
with open(output_file, 'w') as csvoutfile:
csv_writer = csv.writer(csvoutfile, delimiter=' ', lineterminator='
')
with open(input_file, 'r', newline='', encoding='latin1') as csvinfile: # encoding='latin1'
csv_reader = csv.reader(csvinfile, delimiter=',', quotechar='"')
for row in csv_reader:
if row[4]!="MIXED" and row[4].upper() in ['POSITIVE','NEGATIVE','NEUTRAL'] and row[2]!='':
row_output = transform_instance(row)
csv_writer.writerow(row_output )
# print(row_output)
i=i+1
if i%10000 ==0:
print(i)
Here, we are ignoring tweets with labels other than Positive, Negative and neutral .
nltk.word_tokenize() converts string into independent words.
nltk.word_tokenize('hello world!') #output
['hello', 'world', '!']
Upsampling the dataset
In our dataset data is not equally divided into different labels. It contains around 72% of data in the neutral label. So, we can see that our model will tend to be overwhelmed by the large class and ignore the small ones.
import pandas as pd
import seaborn as sns df = pd.read_csv('betsentiment-EN-tweets-sentiment-teams.csv',encoding='latin1') df['sentiment'].value_counts(normalize=True)*100
percentage of tweets for each labels
sns.countplot(x="sentiment", data=df)
countplot for sentiment labels
As the NEUTRAL class consists of a large portion of the dataset, the model will always try to predict NEUTRAL label as it’ll guarantee 72% of accuracy. To prevent this we need to have an equal number of tweets for each label. We can achieve this by adding new tweets to the minor class. This process of adding new tweets to the minority labels is known as upsampling.
We’ll achieve upsampling by repeating the tweets present in the given label again and again until the number of tweets is equal in each label.
def upsampling(input_file, output_file, ratio_upsampling=1):
# Create a file with equal number of tweets for each label
# input_file: path to file
# output_file: path to the output file
# ratio_upsampling: ratio of each minority classes vs majority one. 1 mean there will be as much of each class than there is for the majority class
i=0
counts = {}
dict_data_by_label = {} # GET LABEL LIST AND GET DATA PER LABEL
with open(input_file, 'r', newline='') as csvinfile:
csv_reader = csv.reader(csvinfile, delimiter=',', quotechar='"')
for row in csv_reader:
counts[row[0].split()[0]] = counts.get(row[0].split()[0], 0) + 1
if not row[0].split()[0] in dict_data_by_label:
dict_data_by_label[row[0].split()[0]]=[row[0]]
else:
dict_data_by_label[row[0].split()[0]].append(row[0])
i=i+1
if i%10000 ==0:
print("read" + str(i)) # FIND MAJORITY CLASS
majority_class=""
count_majority_class=0
for item in dict_data_by_label:
if len(dict_data_by_label[item])>count_majority_class:
majority_class= item
count_majority_class=len(dict_data_by_label[item])
# UPSAMPLE MINORITY CLASS
data_upsampled=[]
for item in dict_data_by_label:
data_upsampled.extend(dict_data_by_label[item])
if item != majority_class:
items_added=0
items_to_add = count_majority_class - len(dict_data_by_label[item])
while items_added<items_to_add:
data_upsampled.extend(dict_data_by_label[item][:max(0,min(items_to_add-items_added,len(dict_data_by_label[item])))])
items_added = items_added + max(0,min(items_to_add-items_added,len(dict_data_by_label[item]))) # WRITE ALL
i=0 with open(output_file, 'w') as txtoutfile:
for row in data_upsampled:
txtoutfile.write(row+ '
' )
i=i+1
if i%10000 ==0:
print("writer" + str(i))
As of repeating tweets, again and again, may cause our model to overfit our dataset but due to the large size of our dataset, this is not a problem.
Training
Try to install fastText with git clone rather than using pip.
We’ll be using supervised training method.
hyper_params = {"lr": 0.01,
"epoch": 20,
"wordNgrams": 2,
"dim": 20}
print(str(datetime.datetime.now()) + ' START=>' + str(hyper_params) ) # Train the model.
model = fastText.train_supervised(input=training_data_path, **hyper_params)
print("Model trained with the hyperparameter
{}".format(hyper_params))
lr represents learning rate , epoch represents number of epoch , wordNgrams represents max length of word Ngram , dim represents size of word vectors .
train_supervised is a function used to train the model using supervised learning.
Evaluate
We need to evaluate the model to find it’s accuracy.
model_acc_training_set = model.test(training_data_path)
model_acc_validation_set = model.test(validation_data_path)
# DISPLAY ACCURACY OF TRAINED MODEL
text_line = str(hyper_params) + ",accuracy:" + str(model_acc_training_set[1]) + ",validation:" + str(model_acc_validation_set[1]) + '
' print(text_line)
We’ll evaluate our model on both training as well as validation dataset.
test returns precision and recall of model rather than accuracy. But in our case both the values are almost the same so, we’ll be using precision only.
Overall the model gives an accuracy of 97.5% on the training data, and 79.7% on the validation data.
Predict
We’ll predict the sentiment of text passed to our trained model.
model.predict(['why not'],k=3)
model.predict(['this player is so bad'],k=1)
predict lets us predict the sentiment of the passed string and k represents the number of labels to return with a confidence score.
Quantize the model
Quantizing helps us to reduce the size of the model.
model.quantize(input=training_data_path, qnorm=True, retrain=True, cutoff=100000)
Save model
We can save our trained model and then can use anytime on the go rather than training it every time.
model.save_model(os.path.join(model_path,model_name + ".ftz"))
Conclusion
We learn how to clean data, and pass it to train model to predict the sentiment of tweets. We also learn to implement sentiment analysis model using fastText. | https://towardsdatascience.com/twitter-sentiment-analysis-using-fasttext-9ccd04465597 | ['Sanket Doshi'] | 2019-03-05 21:56:51.758000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Sentiment Analysis', 'Supervised Learning', 'Fasttext', 'Twitter'] |
Sunny Side Updates — Week 14!. Hope you’re having a restful and fun… | The Brain is a Noodle*
*This is factually incorrect. Please absolutely do not go out and eat brains.
🍜 Piping Hot New(dle) Pieces of the Week
Challenge: *highlight* the ones you bookmarked/ read and make sure everyone gets highlighted at least once! ❤
so relaxing reading this list by Dr. Fatima Imam
words we all needed this holiday season — stay safe!!! ❄ by R. Rangan PhD
never too late to #supportlocalrestaurants! ❤ by Imad
inspired by Blackpink’s Lovesick Girls! 🧡💜 by Jen Eve
oh how beautiful a sanctuary the garden can be! 🌸 by Jenine Bsharah Baines
“I dedicate this poem to all the smart, beautiful, kind, and amazing souls who have shared their stories with me over the years.” (this is so beautiful) 🌈 by Kasun Ranasinghe
my mouth is watering after reading this piece tbh by Daniel A. Teo
something to warm the heart 💗 by R. Rangan PhD
something visceral, something beautiful by Yohanan Gregorius (please call me Greg or YG)
what a warm and beautiful piece! 💯 by Somsubhra Banerjee
that classic saying of “if life gives you lemons”… by Yohanan Gregorius (please call me Greg or YG)
such a beautiful response to the character sketch poem prompt!!! by Kim McKinney
a poem of hope, much needed as we wrap up this year! by Johannes Mudi
#EndOfYearReflections with this tanka! by Yohanan Gregorius (please call me Greg or YG)
calming words to soothe your senses by Dr. Preeti Singh
I may or may not have highlighted the ENTIRETY of this scrumptious poem, oops by Baye Amina
a short and lovely acrostic by Yohanan Gregorius (please call me Greg or YG)
what else are you bringing from 2020 into 2021? by Yohanan Gregorius (please call me Greg or YG) | https://medium.com/the-brain-is-a-noodle/sunny-side-updates-week-14-6d7822fc0ad1 | ['Lucy Dan 蛋小姐', 'She Her 她'] | 2020-12-27 16:39:25.303000+00:00 | ['Newsletter', 'Poetry Prompt', 'Tbin'] |
Trending: Keep Up with What’s Up | There is no doubt that wide adoption of applied cryptography is upon us but the space has a lot of room to grow, but journalistic integrity is not something every news website is committed to. As a consequence, the experienced social media user learned to avoid clicking external links in order to not get bombarded with intrusive ads, cookie notifications, AI assistants, newsletters subscription prompts and all other sorts of pop-up windows.
At the same time media coverage, however honest or clickbaity it may be, does to a certain extent affect the cryptoverse at large because people actually do care about what others say, sometimes with little or no regard for the credibility or source of information. Take, for example, the recent incident with a fake screenshot of Binance’s USDT delisting announcement that circulated the web and presumably caused a sudden downward spike in Tether’s price.
Learned today, short term, launching a fiat exchange that required months of work had less positive impact than FUD about USDT (a single photoshopped fake announcement) on BTC price. But I also know for a fact, long term, hard work wins. Keep building! — CZ Binance (@cz_binance) October 15, 2018
But how to keep up with the constant updates and remain confident about their credibility, especially if this is not your full-time job? There is a need for a special tool which can keep count of all mentions across the sources in real time.
Trending by Finrazor
Finrazor developed a tool that helps you keep your finger on the pulse of the space.
Finrazor analyzes over 180 crypto news sources from news aggregators to influencers’ personal blogs to keep you up to speed with what topics are trending at a given point. We have created a database of all relevant entities in the space, be it assets, ICOs, companies, funds, influencers, technologies, mining pools, wallets, and are keeping count of all topic mentions across the sources in real time.
Our goal is to focus not only on the number of the news provided but on their quality as well. It is not enough just to collect information and share it with users, the given information should be structured and organized. The information supported by figures gives the right to be objective and unbiased, therefore, we have created a tool that reflects changing of informational background in percent, so that users can choose what to pay attention to.
The Trending feature is one of the key elements of our News Influence Score, a more sophisticated tool that tracks the dynamic correlation between public interest in an asset and its price. Though we still have a lot of work to be done, we are proud of what we have already done so far and we will keep fixing bugs and rolling out new updates.
How It Works
Trending helps to navigate through the amount of news, to find a way to the most important information, to deliver value to your time spending in the infosphere.
We show trending topics over 1d/7d/1m, on a daily basis, which allows identifying the most discussed topics during these intervals. The number of mentions is an absolute value, and the percentage change shows the difference between the common media presence of the topic and its statistics in the given period of time.
Currently, Trending provides news divided according to the key topics of the cryptoindustry:
Let’s Dive in Examples
Have a look for yourself and go over to our Trending Companies page, for example.
ConsenSys results in Trending
As you can see Consensys is currently the most trending topic today with 70 mentions a month across our sources. If you click it, you will be taken to the Consensys page in our aggregator. Here you can see a short description of the company and all the recent news articles that mentioned Consensys. You can hop over to any of the articles and search for ‘Consensys’ to make sure we count mentions honestly. We do not favor any asset, ICO or company and strive to deliver real data that you can make use of however you deem fit.
Let’s explore some more prominent cases. For example, a massive amount of news in October was about Fidelity and NXMH.
According to our preliminary research, the topic with the biggest positive change in October was Fidelity. When you come to its page, you will see that Fidelity, the world’s fourth largest asset manager, announced its plans to launch a cryptocurrency trading and storage platform. This news immediately gained massive attention of the community. This indicates that space craves for recognition from the big players of the money world and seizes every opportunity to hype up each step of the way to the institutionalization of digital assets, which some may find as the opposite of Satoshi’s vision. Nevertheless, after last year’s $20K bull-run that was in many ways caused by the introduction of bitcoin futures, this year may seem like a huge letdown to many and people are in desperate need for every little hint at the ultimate — and some hope inevitable — bull run. In any case, the truth is Fidelity is the top topic of the past month and the conclusions are yours to infer.
Another big topic this October was NXMH — admit that the name of this company may not look like familiar.The reason NXMH became trending is the purchase of Bitstamp, and in the context of this connection it is much more convenient to study the information on the market participant who gained even more importance. Bitstamp, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, announced at the end of the month that it has been acquired Belgium-based investment company NXMH which in turn is owned by South Korean conglomerate NXC. The announcement is yet another possible indication of the growing institutional interest in digital assets. You may have missed this news if you are not a regular Finrazor visitor. But if you are, you can always go to the Trending section and see what’s currently hot in the space, for example, NXMH, a topic you wouldn’t otherwise have looked up yourself probably.
This two news was in the top because their percentage run up to thousands (namely, 5800% and 3400%). On other days indicators of trends hardly grew double or triple (as at the beginning of the current 45 week, for example), which also helps to draw a conclusion about the news background in general.
Screenshot of the main Trending page
On the one hand, trends help to find out the most important information in context using indicators of the popularity of news. On the other hand, they help not to miss the second most popular (perhaps not the least important) niche news.
The tool is new, we constantly calibrate indicators to provide accurate analysis. Feel free to contact us if you have any suggestions or questions.
Stay tuned! | https://medium.com/finrazorcom/trending-keep-up-with-whats-up-d7173f624be8 | ['Finrazor Team'] | 2018-11-13 08:43:21.069000+00:00 | ['Trading', 'Crypto', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Facebook', 'Fintech'] |
3 Ways to Disinfect Your Toothbrush | 3 Ways to Disinfect Your Toothbrush
1. Salt
Before modern toothbrushes and toothpaste, ancient civilizations used salt to protect their dental health. As such, salt has long been known to have excellent sterilization and disinfection properties. To disinfect your toothbrush with salt, sprinkle a small amount on your toothbrush and soak it in a cup of water for 20–30 minutes. After that, take out your toothbrush, rinse it with running water, and let it dry. Now your toothbrush is disinfected.
2. Baking Soda
Baking soda is an eco-friendly cleaner that can be used in many places, such as the kitchen, the bathroom, or any other room in your house. It can also be used to disinfect your toothbrush! Just like with salt, sprinkle a small amount of baking soda on your toothbrush and soak it in a cup of water for 20–30 minutes. After that, you can take out your toothbrush, rinse it, and dry it. Doing this once a week will keep your toothbrush clean.
3. Mouthwash
There is also a way to disinfect your toothbrush using mouthwash. Unsurprisingly, it can be used in the same way as salt and baking soda. Put your toothbrush in a cup of water and pour mouthwash into the cup until the head of the toothbrush is completely submerged. After 20–30 minutes, take your toothbrush out, rinse it with running water, shake off the water, and let it dry in a sunny place. | https://medium.com/misbloc/3-ways-to-disinfect-your-toothbrush-ec78016a0f66 | [] | 2021-11-30 05:25:15.438000+00:00 | ['Dentistry', 'Disinfectant', 'Blockchain', 'Advice', 'Misbloc'] |
Getting started with Bootstrap Structuring | Getting started with Bootstrap Structuring
If you’ve been building static websites for a while, it’s likely you would’ve come across Bootstrap.
Bootstrap is a CSS Library that is very useful to give basic styling to your website while making it responsive and mobile friendly very easily.
It is developed and maintained by Twitter, and is also known as Twitter Bootstrap.
There are 2 aspects of Bootstrap, which are-
Structuring Styling
In this post, we’ll go over the basics of Structuring.
Setup
First, let’s set up a basic project.
Now, let’s head over to getbootstrap.com.
You can either download all their styles, or use their CDN. It’s recommended to use the CDN for better performance.
To find the CDN, scroll till you see the HTML.
Copy both those lines and add them to the <head> of your HTML.
And that’s it! Now, you have Bootstrap! So let’s start using it.
Structuring
Bootstrap uses a 12 column grid system to arrange contents on your page. This means that on any platform, your screen’s total width is divided into 12 columns.
You can decide how many columns a certain element to take up and which elements are on the same row.
Understanding the Bootstrap Grid System
To begin understanding the grid system, let’s try to understand the following structure.
Here, we see 8 rows, each row consisting of a number of divs.
The first row contains 12 divs, each div taking up a width of 1 column.
The second row contains 6 divs, each taking up a width of 2 columns.
The third row contains 4 divs, each taking up a width of 3 columns.
If you’re starting to see the logic here, you’re starting to understand how the grid system works.
Let’s try to construct the first 5 rows.
A general good practice is to include all elements of your web page inside a container div. This adds a margin between the edge of the screen and your content.
So let’s make a div with class=”container”.
To see how this container works, let’s add some text inside and outside the container.
As you can see, the text inside the container has a margin from the edge of the screen. This improves the overall appearance of the website.
So from here on, let’s put all our divs inside the container.
Next, to demarcate each row, we will use divs with class=”row”. Since we wanted to make the first 5 rows, let’s make 5 divs with class=”row”.
Each row is made up of 12 columns.
So to make the first row, we need 12 divs of width 1 column. We can do this by using 12 divs of class=”col-1”.
This gives the following result.
To understand the output better, let’s give each column some styling.
Tip: Try adding the styles one at a time and see the output.
Now, let’s import this stylesheet into our page.
Note: Make sure to import your custom stylesheets after the bootstrap styles, so that your styles override the Bootstrap styles.
And now, our page structure looks like this.
So we’ve completed the first row. For the second row, we need 6 divs each of 2 column width.
And now we have,
I guess you’d have started to get the hang of how this works. Try to complete the next 3 rows by yourself, before you see my solution.
And you should have this.
You now know how Bootstrap Structuring and the Grid System work. | https://medium.com/@indiawalecoders/getting-started-with-bootstrap-structuring-83dc7960e5d5 | [] | 2020-12-21 09:35:26.657000+00:00 | ['Web', 'Website', 'Web Development', 'Design', 'Bootstrap'] |
Drawing A Comparison Between Local SEO & National SEO | What is the distinction between local SEO & national SEO? A reputed digital marketing service in Kolkata has all the essential tips to implement the right SEO practices.
Setting up the brand and the website is not all that you need to do. When people are looking for a similar business that you are providing they need to find you at the top of the search engine results. If you are going to hire the best digital marketing agency in India, you need to take care of the fact whether they are fulfilling all your SEO requirements.
What Is The Difference Between Local SEO And National SEO?
National SEO focuses on improving your site’s visibility on a global scale while the primary aim of local SEO is to capture local search territory to connect with people of a particular area. With Local, it’s important to have NAP consistency and a reputation management approach in place. With national SEO, it’s all about creating valuable content and increasing domain authority.
If you have a small business, you need to prioritize your local marketing game and for that local SEO plays a vital role.
Here is what you need:
Update Listing On Local Websites
Listing In The Local Websites Is Important: To reach a bigger audience you can take a resort to the local listing that will ensure consistency and availability of your brand and the business. You need to enlist your information in numerous third party websites. Search engines constantly search the website for a better understanding of local business. The Right Link Strategy Sharing links to the relevant websites will be the best option if you are thinking of coming at the top of search results. Share your link on social media as much as you can. Include the links in the website newsletter and other updates for customers. Adopt an authentic local SEO system that will make sure your small business experiences even bigger success. Optimize The Information In Your Website The website is the face that attracts the clients in the online world. To make it worth a try include the domain name that is relevant to your business. Add the right keywords that will support your website in the relevant keyword search.
Thus To Summarize The Main Strategies Of The Best Local Seo Companies Include:
Claiming and optimizing profiles of various organizations on local listing sites like Google My Business .
. Targeting relevant local keywords on websites
Creating location-specific website copy
Earning backlinks from reputed local websites
Adding essential details like name, contact number, email, address to your site and local directories
Earning and managing reviews on local review sites
It goes without saying the customers are going to search for keywords that prioritize the search for services in their own local area. These businesses that give importance to implementing local SEO tactics will gain more. Thus, for companies looking to attract and convert more local traffic, hiring affordable local SEO services in India should be the topmost priority.
Contact Avant-Garde Technologies, the best digital marketing agency in India to reach your target audience. | https://medium.com/@agtsindia/drawing-a-comparison-between-local-seo-national-seo-175ffaa8e24 | ['Avant Garde Technologies'] | 2021-11-11 11:26:09.044000+00:00 | ['SEO', 'Digitalmarketing', 'Google', 'Digital', 'PPC Marketing'] |
How to maximise profit by combining Bracket Order and Margin Trading | BTT Trading Ideas: How to Make Profit Using Bracket Order and Margin Trading
Dear Trader,
BTT prices have shot up by more than 200% since the launch. There is substantial volatility in BTT and that’s great news for a trader. We are quite sure you have also been looking forward to such a bright opportunity. So here are a few tips for you.
The first thing in any trade is to understand the risk it involves and how you can limit it. If you take 10 trades, and 5 out of them turn out wrong, you can still make more money with the remaining 5, than what you would lose from the failed trades, by efficiently limiting risk. Limiting risk is best done with Trailing Stop Limit, which is an inseparable feature of Bracket Orders available on Bitbns.
Let’s see how Bracket Orders can be used in upward and downward scenario.
Know what is bracket order means?
Please note that if your risk to reward ratio is, say 1:3, for every INR 1 you are risking, you stand to make INR 3 if your goal is hit.
Now let’s analyse this case by case.
How to use Bracket Order during uptrend
Let’s consider some price points that we will be using to explain different scenarios.
Current price of BTT is INR 0.08.
You can set a Bracket Order and enter the market at INR 0.08.
Expected price according to your analysis is INR 0.11. So you can set a target limit order at INR 0.11.
So you can set a target limit order at INR 0.11. Set a Stop Limit at INR 0.07 and set a trail of INR 0.01 (1 Paisa).
With these numbers in place, your risk to reward ratio is 1:3 as when you lose, you will only lose 1 paisa per BTT, but when you gain, you gain 3 paisa per BTT.
Now in this scenario, either of the three things may happen:
Case 1) BTT goes to INR 0.11
Your target price of INR 0.11 is hit and your target order is executed.
Here, the return is — (0.11–0.08)/0.08 = 37.5%.
So, if you invested INR 10000, you would get INR 13750 roughly.
Also, Bracket Order is easy to use and safe because you don’t have to monitor the market; everything is predefined, neither you fall prey to greed and fear, like most traders do.
Case 2) BTT price almost reaches the target but retraces.
In this case, you exit the market via Trailing Stop Limit.
What happens in this case is:
Market reaches INR 0.10.
Your Stop Limit also updates itself to INR 0.09 (since you set Trailing Stop Limit of INR 0.01)
Market then makes a U-turn and as it touches INR 0.09, your order is executed.
You make a profit of 1 paisa per BTT, which is about 12.5%, even when market did not touch the target price of INR 0.11.
Case 3) Market goes down from INR 0.08
If the market goes downwards from INR 0.08, the max possible loss you can suffer is 1 paisa per BTT, which is about 12.5%.
Now imagine the case where you set 10 Bracket Orders with different values, where 50% of them result in loss and the remaining 50% of them yield profit. Since the overall risk to reward ratio for all 10 orders is higher than 1:1, your net profit is bound to be positive. No doubt about that.
For instance:
If out of 10, 5 orders yield 37.5% profit each, then percent profit gained — 37.5% X 5 = 187.5%
And if the other 5 orders yield 12.5% loss each, then percentage loss incurred — 12.5% X 5 = 62.5%
Net Profit = 187.5% — 62.5% = 125%
How to use Bracket Order during downtrend
For this to work, you need to sell first and then buy back when price goes lower. This is also called Shorting.
For example:
You enter with Sell Order for 100,000 BTT @ INR 0.08.
Set Trailing Stop Limit — INR 0.09
Place a Target Buy Order of 100,000 BTT @ INR 0.05
Amount you get — INR 8,000 (100000*0.08)
Target Buy Order executes when market hits INR 0.05.
You get 100,000 BTT along with a profit of INR 3,000 (8,000–5,000).
This seems well and good but yeh dil maange more, right?
Here’s how Margin Trading helps you increase your profit.
Margin Trade comes with:
Slightly higher risk than Bracket Order
kX Gains (Where k can be any number. So if you are doing a trade with 10K BTT or 50K BTT, the number ‘k’ would change accordingly.)
Read in-depth about Margin Trading 👇
Using Margin Loan when:
(A) The market has downtrend
When you borrow during downtrend, your goal should be to::
Set a Bracket Order to sell immediately
Buy back at low when the market retraces.
Set Trailing Stop Limit to minimize loss or even earn profit when market rises unexpectedly.
For example, if Rohit has, say, a net worth of INR 100,000 on Bitbns in terms of crypto + INR, he would be able to borrow 80% of his net worth i.e INR 80,000 worth of BTT which is around 1,000,000 BTT @ INR 0.08.
Now what Rohit does is:
Places a Sell Order for 1,000,000 BTT @ INR 0.11 .
Puts a Trailing Stop Limit at INR 0.12.
Places a Target Buy Order at INR 0.08
With these orders in place:
If target is hit, then profit = (INR 0.11 — INR 0.08)*1,000,000 BTT = INR 30,000
If Stop Limit is hit, then loss = (INR 0.12 — INR 0.11)*1,000,000 = INR 10,000.
Plus, you get 1,000,000 BTT back.
This is a highly profitable situation because if you place 3 such orders and even 2 out of them fail, you still gain profit of INR 10,000. {30,000 — (2x10000)} = 10,000
(B) The market has uptrend
In this case, the trader can borrow USDT on margin because USDT is fairly stable and trader can take a long position.
When you borrow during uptrend, your goal should be to:
Sell at price higher than the price at which you borrowed.
For example, if Rohit has, say, a net worth of INR 100,000 on Bitbns in terms of crypto + INR, he would be able to borrow around 1049 USDT @ INR 76.2.
Now what Rohit does is:
Sells 1049 USDT to get INR 80,000 approx
Uses Bracket Order to enter the market with a Buy Order for 1,000,000 BTT @ INR 0.08 using INR 80,000
Puts a Stop Limit at INR 0.07
Places a Target Sell Order @ INR 0.11
With these orders in place:
If target is hit, then profit = (INR 0.11 — INR 0.08)*1,000,000 BTT = INR 30,000
If Stop Limit is hit, then loss = (INR 0.08 — INR 0.07)*1,000,000 BTT = INR 10,000.
This is again a highly profitable situation because if you place 3 such orders and even 2 out of them fail, you still gain profit of INR 10,000.
Read More: Have made losses and are HODLing ? There can be an alternative way out. 👇
No matter what the trend, Bitbns has the tools. And now that you have the wisdom on to make the best use of these tools, we hope you are all set to earn loads of profit!
Enjoy trading with Bitbns!
Best Regards
Team Bitbns | https://medium.com/bitbns/how-to-maximise-profit-by-combining-bracket-order-and-margin-trading-e802ed700d7e | [] | 2019-07-10 05:02:18.526000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency Investment', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Investing', 'Tips And Tricks', 'Blockchain'] |
Do Zombies Scare Democrats and Vampires Spook Republicans? | Image by Pxhere (public domain)
By Dan Sanchez
Zombieland: Double Tap is in theaters. And Donald Trump is president. Coincidence?!
Not according to one theory. In 2009, a “science and pop culture” blogger crunched the numbers and found a correlation between movie monsters and who’s president. When a Republican is president, zombie movies are popular. When a Democrat is in the White House, vampire flicks rule.
Every few years a click-hungry writer resurrects this story. (My turn!) In 2011, Cracked shared “6 Mind-Blowing Ways Zombies and Vampires Explain America.” And in 2017, Huffington Post asked, “Does The Party In Power Determine The Monsters In Our Blockbusters?”
The answer may not surprise you.
If this pattern is real, what does it mean?
Conformists Vs. Deviants
According to philosophy blogger S. Peter Davis, the dominant movie monster reflects the fears of the party out of power. Zombies symbolize what spooks progressives, and vampires stand for conservative anxieties.
Zombies are the ultimate conformists. They…
all act the same
move together in swarms
mindlessly attack anybody who is different, and
force anyone in sight to become one of them.
Talk about intolerance!
So maybe zombies reflect the left’s fear of conservatism stamping out cultural diversity and alternative lifestyles.
Vampires are at the opposite extreme. They’re enemies of “the normal.” As Davis points out, vampires are the ultimate deviants. They…
hate religion (they’re vulnerable to holy water and crucifixes)
seek bizarre pleasures
skulk around at night seducing others into their weird ways
have strange foreign names and accents.
So maybe vampires reflect the right’s fear of progressivism undermining tradition and self-control.
The Plot Thickens
Cool scary story, bro. But this theory is based on data from 2009. Has the pattern continued since then? I checked, using IMDb, like the blogger did.
The model would predict vampire movies outnumbering zombie movies throughout the Obama administration, with zombies making a comeback under Trump. But… it turns out zombies have reigned supreme throughout both presidencies.
Maybe people just like zombie movies better.
And anyway, if zombies and vampires are symbols of social fears, it may not split so neatly along partisan lines.
After all, conservatives also fear conformist “zombies.” For example, the wildly popular “NPC” meme depicts progressives as mindless drones who enforce politically-correct orthodoxy.
And progressives also fear deviant “vampires.” For example, what is “obscene wealth” but a “disgusting” deviation from “normal” wealth?
Order and Chaos
Humans fear crushing conformity on one extreme, and dangerous deviancy on the other. These fears are not partisan, but universal. And both fears have an important function.
As Jordan Peterson explains in his book Maps of Meaning, a healthy society needs a balance of conformity and deviation, tradition and innovation, order and chaos. Taoism represents this balance with the Yin and Yangsymbol.
Some traditions are worth defending. Without them, life would be an unpredictable mess. So we are right to fear deviant “vampires.” As Peterson wrote:
Degeneration into chaos — decadence — might be considered the constant threat of innovation undertaken in the absence of comprehension and respect for tradition.
But traditions can also become obsolete. Without iconoclasts and innovators, life would become a sterile wasteland. So we are right to fear conformist “zombies.” As Peterson wrote:
When conservatism destroys the capacity for individual creativity — when it becomes tyranny — then it works against life, not for it.
These fears have a function, but they can also be misplaced. That “zombie” traditionalist or progressive you’re arguing with on Twitter might actually be a heroic defender of timeless wisdom or basic decency. And that “vampiric” rock star or capitalist you see on Instagram might be heroic pioneer of new frontiers in culture or business.
It’s often wise to fear. But it’s foolish to dehumanize, as we so often do in today’s polarized political climate. Nobody is all zombie or vampire. And everybody has at least a little zombie and vampire inside them. We can all stand to be more open in some ways and more structured in others.
As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote:
If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.
So let’s keep that in mind and try to avoid a zombie/vampire civil war, shall we?
But, that would make an awesome movie.
Dan Sanchez is the Director of Content at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE.org). | https://medium.com/@FEE.org/do-zombies-scare-democrats-and-vampires-spook-republicans-fd1eac1fd810 | [] | 2019-11-01 18:01:02.603000+00:00 | ['Democrats', 'Republicans', 'Movies', 'Zombies', 'Vampires'] |
Marketplace Dynamics | Marketplace Version 1.0
What is a Marketplace?
It’s a platform where buyers and sellers can come together and interact.
Humanity has been built on marketplaces.
The earliest examples were the Greek Agora, the Persian Bazaars and the Arabian Souqs and the Latin Mercatus (the origin of the word Market)
They originated from a simple need. Humans needed many different products to survive and several different sellers to provide them.
Back then, you couldn’t get your eggs, chicken, bread and fresh underwear from the same seller.
The original Bazaars were thought to originate in and around Persia and the Middle East (as early as 3000 BC), typically near Palaces and Mosques, which provided them with large footfalls of people as well as a measure of protection.
These Bazaars (and Souks) tended to be large, open-air markets that played host to fixed sellers as well as a host of travelling caravans who would display their goods, creating the foundations of Trade as we know it.
Our New World
The New-ish Normal
The origins of e-commerce are numerous, but most sources agree that The Boston Computer Exchange, founded in 1982, was one of the first pioneers of e-commerce.
BCE served as a bulletin-board system where users could sell used computers.
Between 1982–1995 there were several smaller attempts at e-commerce, including Books Stacks Unlimited, an online bookseller that was acquired by Barnes & Noble.
The ball really started rolling in 1995 when Amazon and eBay opened their doors for business.
Pretty much it
The Whole Schbang
From 1995 onwards, the World has moved inexorably towards Marketplaces.
We interact with them on an everyday (if not every hour) basis.
Uber/Grab/Ola/Gojek are marketplaces allowing us to move from Point A to Point B with (hopefully) minimum fuss and maximum efficiency, connecting drivers to consumers.
Deliveroo/Zomato/Doordash and hundreds of others connect us with a variety of restaurants to sate our voracious appetities.
Expedia/Skyscanner/Makemytrip allow us to view various travel options and pick the cheapest one (you know it’s true).
Amazon and it’s like allow us to buy products from a variety of sellers, virtually globally.
Alibaba allows us to manufacture anything our business desires with a few clicks and an awkward phone call.
Airbnb lets us interact with a host of hosts around the world, renting their homes for our wilder vacations.
What characterizes a marketplace?
Jonathan Golden has put together a wonderful explanation of key marketplace characteristics here.
I’ll go into my key points a marketplace should cover:
#Trust: In my opinion a key element that a marketplace covers for consumers, whether a single customer or a business, is Trust.
Trust is one of the biggest barriers to conducting any form of commerce, and it comes in three distinct flavours.
Qualitative → One of my biggest concerns when looking to buy something, whether personally or professionally, is Quality. Who am I buying it from? Will they deliver the right product or a shitty knock off? Will I actually receive my product this decade?
One of my biggest concerns when looking to buy something, whether personally or professionally, is Quality. Who am I buying it from? Will they deliver the right product or a shitty knock off? Will I actually receive my product this decade? Financial → I’m about to send Mr Zhao’s Very Authentic Teapots a large amount of money to buy an ornate mother-of-pearl teapot. How do I know his business actually exists? That I can trust him enough to wire him money, aside from his kind assurances that he isn’t planning on using it all for a vacation, laughing at my stupidity?
→ I’m about to send Mr Zhao’s Very Authentic Teapots a large amount of money to buy an ornate mother-of-pearl teapot. How do I know his business actually exists? That I can trust him enough to wire him money, aside from his kind assurances that he isn’t planning on using it all for a vacation, laughing at my stupidity? Resolution → Assuming that Mr Zhao did actually send me a great quality teapot in a reasonable amount of time, but it was damaged in shipping.
Who can I reach out to in order to resolve this dispute?
A successful marketplace introduces several features to foster trust on the platform, such as
Verifying suppliers and buyers identities
Adding escrow/moneyback guarantees
Adding in reputable payment gateways to ensure transaction security
Displaying ratings/reviews for buyers & sellers
#Discovery: Are the products offered homogenous or heterogenous?
Marketplaces offering homogenous products are essentially offering easily replaceable products (think Amazon or Uber).
The base offerings (t-shirts, books, transport) are all replicable by other businesses hence the marketplace itself must add additional value in case of a homogenous marketplace (more about this later) to build a moat.
In case of a heterogenous marketplace (think Airbnb, Expedia), each experience is virtually unique. They are different homes, flights or hotels being offered for booking, hence the supply itself becomes one form of a moat of the business.
#Disintermediation: Most marketplaces face the inevitable threat of becoming obsolete to their customers, as buyers and sellers keep interacting they would tend to take their transactions off-platform (why pay someone commission once you have a relationship?)
Hence one of the hardest challenges faced by marketplaces as they scale is retaining users.
This is primarily driven by offering value propositions over and above Discovery such as: | https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/marketplace-dynamics-a954b7bcfb1a | ['Avik Ashar'] | 2021-03-19 07:56:46.756000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Venture Capital', 'Southeast Asia', 'Scaling', 'Marketplaces'] |
Exposed — A Lightweight Kotlin SQL Library | Queries
At this point, we have a database connection and have created tables, meaning we’re ready to store and retrieve data from the database. Thanks to the Kotlin extensions feature, we don’t need to do much work. The Exposed framework contains extension functions to perform database queries in the easiest way possible.
selectAll
This function is used to get all of the rows and columns inside of the table into a query format. We can use the Kotlin map function to transform the result into an appropriate format. Have a look:
Selecting a subset of columns
Now, it’s not always required to get all of the columns into the table. For example, to show a movies list, we only need a movie name and image. For this, Exposed has an inbuilt solution using the slice function. Have a look:
Inserting data
To create a row in the table, we can use the insert function. Have a look:
Actors.insert {
it[name] = "Actor name"
it[image ] = "http://sampleurel.png"
}
Updating data
It’s time to update the data that was already inserted in the database. Similar to insert , we have an update function. Have a look:
Actors.update ({ Actors.actorId eq 3}) {
it[name] = "Captain Marvel"
}
Deleting data
This is the easiest part; we can delete data with the deleteWhere method. This function deletes all the rows which satisfy the passed condition. Have a look: | https://medium.com/better-programming/exposed-a-lightweight-kotlin-sql-library-43f02fdd1eb | ['Siva Ganesh Kantamani'] | 2020-12-11 10:53:21.509000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Kotlin', 'Database', 'Sql', 'Android'] |
ATT&CKcon 2.0: A Look Back | Our keynote speaker, Toni Gidwani from Google’s Threat Analysis Group, spoke about how ATT&CK has helped to bridge intelligence and operations by empowering enterprises to evolve from indicators of compromise (IoC)-based intel to more forward-leaning adversary TTPs. Gidwani also highlighted that despite ATT&CK’s complexity, it enables a team consensus-based approach to defense.
Toni Gidwani, Google Threat Analysis Group
This collaborative focus on empowering defenders is a key tenant of ATT&CK and one that was echoed across many of the presentations this year. Our ATT&CKcon lineup featured contributors from across the community with tactics on how to ATT&CK better. Whether an organization is just starting to use ATT&CK or has been using it for years, ATT&CKcon presenters shared key observations, best practices, and approaches for teaming up across organizations to operationalize the framework.
Prioritization within ATT&CK was a theme we heard across regular sessions and the BoF conversations. This isn’t a new topic within the community, but it can present challenges for even the most resourced and mature organizations. Our contributors reinforced that prioritizing efforts and resources should be tailored to your unique environment and the threat actors targeting it. Key strategies were shared on ranking data sources and ensuring their accuracy, identifying gaps in detection capability, and visualizing coverage.
If you weren’t able to participate in the ATT&CKcon sessions, the recordings and slide decks are posted on the ATT&CK website.
Birds of a Feather
ATT&CKcon Birds of a Feather (BoF) conversations took place the day before the main conference during our pre-conference program. These dialogues enable community peers to meet for informal discussions on a common topic. Our topics ranged from emulation, machine learning, cyber threat intelligence, and cloud, to ATT&CK for ICS, threat hunting, and sub-techniques.
ATT&CK’s complexity was a topic we heard throughout BoF conversations. Contributors shared their experiences prioritizing techniques, harnessing a blend of contextual data sources, and consistently challenging defenses to validate coverage and detect gaps. We explored mapping controls to ATT&CK and using adversary emulation for the best metrics, as well as minimizing vulnerabilities through defense in depth strategies.
Some of our machine learning conversations highlighted challenges, including data tagging and showing the value of detection. We heard about the value of combining machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) to more efficiently categorize, ingest and describe threat behavior. The SIEM paradigm shift was explored and we discussed layering big data tools on top of SIEMs for more accurate correlations at scale. We talked about upping the defense game through predictive and compound analytics. We heard from the many of you about the need for a community-driven common data model and exchange format.
We reflected on adversary emulation providing more true positives to gauge effectiveness, along with using purple teaming for threat modeling and enhancing findings. Our participants promoted factors that contribute to purple team success (common goals, communication, collaboration, and transparency). Innovation and automation are also vital elements highlighted for taking purple teaming to the next level. We heard that continuous iterative testing is a key approach to validate detection and the value of countermeasures.
Our discussions explored the human aspect of actors. Key elements included understanding their reactions, the levers influencing their behavior, and predicting end points based on behavior chains. Legal infrastructure takedowns were up for debate — we talked about how they can halt progress by confusing the landscape and forcing adversary behavior change. We agreed that while contextual indicators still matter, moving towards behavioral analytics can lead to more favorable results. Attribution conversations touched on the challenging elements, including a shift towards public and commonly used tools and overlapping techniques. This led to a consensus that findings should be conveyed with confidence levels.
Information sharing conversations highlighted success stories, but also the challenges in this space. Some participants have success with “advance sharing” among vendors prior to publication and ATT&CK-based intel sharing. In information sharing situations, we the more sophisticated entities rarely receive the same level of benefit. Many teams are also struggling with making information sharing more scalable and useful.
Another conversation motif was using ATT&CK in tandem with other frameworks and methodologies — and we agree. ATT&CK was not created as one framework to rule them all and it has its own limitations. Participants shared their experiences with layering tactical and strategic frameworks for effective outcomes.
One of our favorite conversations centered on sub-techniques. We’ve heard from the community that the differing technique granularity can be a challenge, and that some organizations have started developing their own sub-techniques. As you may be aware, we’ve been working towards restructuring ATT&CK with sub-techniques and we had the opportunity to discuss this and minimizing the potential impact. You told us that a sub-technique roadmap and training would be helpful, and we welcome any other feedback that would make ATT&CK even more useful. | https://medium.com/mitre-attack/attackcon-2-0-f7c5556447cf | ['Amy L. Robertson'] | 2020-02-04 17:28:51.510000+00:00 | ['Mitre Attack', 'Threat Hunting', 'Information Security', 'Cybersecurity', 'Threat Intelligence'] |
When Ed-Tech Isn’t Ed-Tech | And why there are so many failures in ed-tech…
So, why did the hottest ed-tech start-ups from a decade ago — Schoology, Canvas, Edmodo — fail?
At IBM, an SVP once asked me (with that rhetorical annoyance that some SVP-types have) why ed-tech doesn’t scale like med-tech. To further complicate the question, he was specifically referring to China.
Education and healthcare have a lot in common, but education generally has two complicating factors.
1. Balkanization of funding (and related terms). Go from district to district, state to state, university to university, and you can’t always predict exactly who (or how) is paying for the product or what the terms may be. Idiosyncratic is a kind way to describe education funding and deal terms. Exactly who you’re invoicing and who’s receiving the services isn’t always the same entity, and term-sheet cacophony only gets worse from there.
2. Balkanization of standards (and customization). Again: district to district, state to state, university to university, and everyone’s got their own list of standards, requirements, regulations. Keep in mind we’re talking about deals within the same country. Going from country to country, standards, learning metrics/outcomes, etc., can differ wildly.
If you and I go to a bookstore and buy a “same” U.S. history book, we’ll both actually buy the same book and make the purchase with the same terms. That’s a scalable business.
But the U.S. history textbook you sell to Texas can’t be sold to California. You’ll need to negotiate changes, then negotiate terms, and, at the end, you fundamentally have two different deals. This causes friction, which translates into cost, time, resources.
In the end, these complicating factors massively drive up prices in education, but it also means something else: none of this is fundamentally scalable. Any business that has at least one of those two education-specific issues is an education company … and those issues means it’s not scalable. Which also means they’re terrible businesses. (Is there a textbook publisher that hasn’t gone out bankrupt at some point?)
Though med-tech funding and deal terms can get wonky, there’s a hard backstop to med-tech variability: the human body. The universal truths of biology mean that there’s only so much possible variation within healthcare solutions. The Chinese may have idiosyncratic ideas about A.I. image rec for cancer, but, at the end of the day, we’re still talking about the same cancer that Canadians get. That’s not true in education.
So who’s ed-tech and who’s not?
Google Apps for Ed (or “G-Suite for Education”) isn’t “ed-tech.” Google has entirely avoided the funding and standards issues in education. (So ‘Apps for Ed’ is just ‘tech’ not ‘ed-tech,’ which means it’s scalable — which is why it has scaled.)
Municipal Business Model
But what about, for example, Schoology? It’s an LMS that doesn’t really deal in the idiosyncrasies of education standards or even, generally, education funding/terms?
I’d argue that Schoology’s industry sector isn’t education but rather government. That’s an important distinction though there’s much overlap. Schoology was in something like 1,800 schools/districts with average revenue of about $19,000 per,[1] and yet they were never profitable (just as Edmodo, Canvas, etc. were never profitable).
Clearly, Schoology needs scale. Generally, when you need scale with municipal contracts, your entire business is driven by one thing: municipal budgets. That’s all. You can have a $2 value prop, convince everyone your product is worth $2, and demonstrate that your product is a great $2 value — but if the budget only has $1, then that’s all you’re getting. If $1 contracts aren’t profitable for you, then you wind up on the auction block.
Given municipal budgets (city, school, waste treatment plant — whatever municipal entity you’re selling to), you must build your entire business around being profitable at the typical budgeted amount at the smallest scaled customer. Most school districts in the U.S. are small (<5k students total), and those generally have no restrictions below $10k and restrictions above that amount; this means if you want to scale across all those districts (e.g. your broadest customer base) with minimal friction, you need to build a product that you can sell profitably for under $10k/year. Everything above that amount creates more friction and less scalability. The obvious chicken/egg issue becomes: more friction = more cost = higher prices = more friction. (Friction in government contracting means local salespeople, lobbying, state/local funding/reg experts, etc.)
A lot of ed-tech companies are really in the government contracting sector and don’t realize it, which means the feasibility of your entire business is built around its cost structure.
Retail Business Model
What about MasterClass or Coursera? They generally have no standards or funding idiosyncrasies and no municipal contracts.
Such companies are mostly or entirely general public end-user transactional (e.g. “come into my store and buy something”), and are therefore consumer retail companies. Their KPIs, customer acquisition costs/metrics, scalability are generally similar to other retailers. An online shoe store and MasterClass have roughly the same business model. (The substantive difference — if there is one — is likely in user acquisition costs; I suspect a lot of online retail ed requires repeat business to be profitable. Subscription services best survive high acquisition costs, so 1x purchase/retail with high acquisition costs are high-failure rate businesses.)
Retail means a possibly quick revenue ramp (unlike ed or municipal) and flexible pricing, but requires lots of marketing/hype/sizzle and suffers from low stickiness (with high CAC, which is lethal) and fickle customers. (In contrast, if you sign a municipal contract, your software can totally suck and the municipality will still be paying you for it a decade later … just ask IBM.)
The cases above define industries by the kind of business plan and financials they’ll produce, the way products are developed (e.g. whether the product is developed to solve certain educational problems or to be profitable at certain budget limits), the time required to become cashflow positive, and the way that sales are handled. None of it really considers exactly what the product is — which is the source of the confusion. People think “it’s educational so we’re in education,” yet that has nothing to do with the business model. Netflix may have documentaries, but they aren’t ed-tech. Further, while “educational” implies certain user experience features, most such features are the same or similar to other UX-dependent applications. (Are the UX considerations for Edmodo or Schoology substantially different from Facebook?)
Finally, surveying the landscape of failed ventures — Grockit ($45M raised, now dead), Learnist (“Pinterest for education,” dead but revised as Seesaw), Livemocha (hottest language learning app of 2010, murdered by Rosetta Stone), Infrastructure/Canvas (hobbled profit-less into private equity), Edmodo (auctioned to the Chinese), Schoology (snared by bottom-feeding PowerSchool) — there are other lessons aside from knowing which industry you’re really in.
First, an advertising business model doesn’t work, which we learned back in the 1990s from Channel One — too much friction (ads in ed), not enough scale. Ten million MAUs won’t drive enough advertising revenue. You just got to charge the people who use your product. (And no, selling data won’t work, PowerSchool.)
Second, selling into “education” is massively resource intensive and usually only worth pursuing (if at all) if the contract is very long (or, there’s a ridiculously massive moat around your contract). It’s conceivable that SIS’s are a reasonable business (they’re not, which is why PowerSchool gets passed around), but the average district holds onto their SIS for 18 years. To some degree, this is the cable model — very high user acquisition cost but decades of revenue. (For this reason, teaching & learning/classroom products are usually bad businesses whereas ed infrastructure can be good businesses.) Textbooks attempt this moat strategy (which is the only reason they might make sense) — textbook publishers aren’t in the content business; they’re in the standards/regulations business. And all those regs create the moat that justifies all that friction.
So why did IBM’s Watson Education fail? It was pitched as the impossible — a scalable education business. | https://medium.com/@nathan-a-allen/when-ed-tech-isnt-ed-tech-ecdabfb37d60 | ['Nathan Allen'] | 2020-12-19 18:54:49.610000+00:00 | ['Education Technology', 'Education', 'Bananos', 'Edtech Startup', 'Edtech'] |
Dear Gun Enthusiasts… | Last week I posted this picture of a billboard I spotted in East Austin.
As you can see, some imaginative individual or individuals with spray paint modified the word “firearms” to “fear.” Texas Fear Festival.
When I spotted the billboard, I did a double take. The alteration was subtle, and it took a minute to sink it. Typical Austin, I chuckled. Often referred to as “a blue dot in a sea of red,” this creative vandalism did not surprise me. The sign is located exactly one mile from The University of Texas at Austin campus, where tensions are currently rising over the recent passing of Senate Bill 11 — the campus carry law. Students plan to bring dildos to school on August 1st, 2016, the day SB 11 goes into effect, to protest the school’s ban on obscenity and not guns. (Note: August 1st is the day that Charles Whitman killed 14 people and wounded 32 others from the UT tower in 1966.)
Though I co-wrote a film called Loves Her Gun, which follows the story of a young woman who falls into gun culture as a means to feel safe after being victim to an attack, I’ve never spoken publicly about guns. My feelings are gray, as many people’s feelings are, avoiding either extreme. I’ve shot a gun at a range, my father owns a handgun and I applaud the responsible men and women I know who own one. I have no interest in the strategic plucking of guns out of of owners’ hands, but America’s system for gun accessibility is not working, and something needs to change. Period. I do not have the answers, and I don’t pretend to. (Here are maybe a few places we can start.)
I shared the photo to my social media profiles thinking that it would get a few laughs. It did get a few laughs, then a bunch of shares, and then an explosion of comments. The producers of the gun show had shared the photo in stride and with humor, but with the sharing came an influx of commenters, a few diplomatic and most not-so-diplomatic:
“Die in a fire feminazi. You could kill yourself.”
“Hmmm…maybe we should practice head-on-curb jamming.”
“Property crime is well done? Stupid libtard.”
“If I would have seen the people responsible for this i would have beat them with an inch of thier life then claimed protection under the good samaritan act.”
There was the gentlemen who claimed Sandy Hook was a hoax, and another who posted a photo of an individual with their head blown apart. There was the man who was proud to be an “ammosexual” over a “homosexual,” and several individuals mentioned how quick “libtards” are to defend black people but hate cops.
My favorites were the man who sent me and another woman a photo of Midol and a man who called me and others “wilted lettuce eaters.”
(It’s only fair to acknowledge that the gun control advocates also resorted to name calling on the thread but refrained from threats, homophobia and racism.)
Naively, as a person who has not publicly jumped into the gun debate, I was surprised at the response the photo received. My “Well done, Austin” was a nod to the creativity of the vandalism, not the vandalism itself. As a fan of culture jamming, I thought it was an excellent example of activism and a great conversation starter (Note: The billboard is now back to its original state). However, my three words angered many. I jumped into the debate on occasion, mostly to shut down any far out claims, but I found myself sad and frustrated.
There were reasonable, articulate pro-gun individuals on the thread, ones that enjoyed a respectable debate, but they were drowned out by a larger voice, a voice full of anger and hate. This voice spoke of hurting others, of telling others to kill themselves. We should all listen to both sides of every argument, that is how we grow and learn, but it becomes difficult to listen to words laced with venom; it’s not fair to the pro-gun individuals who are trying to make a rational argument.
I questioned writing this essay because, I’ll be honest, I was afraid. I was fearful of more wishes of death and fearful of personal attacks. Many of the threats were hard to take seriously, with their lack of adequate spelling and grammar (I received “your stupid” more than I can count), but some of them were real and alarming. And I know that if this post even gets a handful of eyes on it, there will be more of the same.
But I wrote this anyways. I wrote it to tell the loudest sect of the pro-gun movement that there are many of us who are for gun control who are also open to hearing what you have to say. It’s only fair. We may not agree and we may not change our point of view, but we can respect your opinion. We can disagree — with tolerance. It doesn’t have to be one extreme vs. the other extreme.
And if you don’t want to listen to me, please respect your pro-gun peers who are trying to have a rational debate. | https://medium.com/message/dear-gun-enthusiasts-fe98c264d5d9 | ['Lauren Modery'] | 2015-10-16 20:15:47.777000+00:00 | ['Guns', 'Gun Violence', 'Gun Control'] |
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Walk Through The Fire And Rise | Walk Through The Fire And Rise
I know I’m not what I once was: young, extremely thin, overflowing with so-called friends, untouched a paralyzing loss, or naive about the world, relationships, or my profession. The last year my life, as I knew it, went up in flames. So for Day 17 of my Christmas countdown, which is my birthday, I’m wearing my dumpster fire shirt.
I’ve learned so much about myself. I’ve gained enough confidence to know that I can get through extreme grief, cope with isolation, endure incurable pain, question my faith but retain it, shrug off career disappointments, and weather unexpected separations.
I’ve also discovered the power of saying “I love you” more, of saying “thank you” to those who go above and beyond for you, of saying “I’m sorry” to someone you hurt, of saying “I forgive you” to someone who needs it, of saying “goodbye” to someone who needs to go, of saying “i got you” to someone who is struggling, of saying “I need you, and of saying “no” when you don’t want to do something or simply can’t.
I thank God for allowing not only to grow a year older but wiser. Heck, this year I’m just grateful I was allowed to see another day given Covid, Cancer or anything else that could’ve taken me. I know that every day is a chance to be a better version of myself.
I’ve walked through so many fires and came out charred on the other side. But, I’m still standing, finding a reason to be merry and bright despite it all.
Happy birthday to me!
#dumpsterfire #olderandwiser #covid. #chronicillness #chronicpain #spoonie. #autoimmunedisease. #happyholidays #Birthdays #Christmas. #death #grief #coronavirus #christmascountdown #selflove | https://medium.com/@NikaBeamon/walk-through-the-fire-and-rise-2a2298306ee0 | ['Nika C. Beamon'] | 2020-12-17 11:59:07.613000+00:00 | ['Christmas', 'Resilience', 'Self Love', 'Birthday', 'Black Girl Magic'] |
CS50 Week 7: Movies | Some basics tips for those starting pset7.
This week I started working on Harvard’s CS50 week 7 and came up with some simple tips for those tackling the problem set for the first time. The following article provides the necessary tools for completing problem set Movies without providing answers.
SQL is helpful when it comes to data analysis. It allows the user to access data from a table, or series of tables, to answer some question. For example, if I imported a data table from IMDb (like in week 7’s assignment Movies) and wanted to find the names of movie produced in 2008. I would pose a query as such,
SELECT title
FROM movies
WHERE year = 2008;
The code above is based on a single table call “movies” that contains the variables title, year, and id. Id, in this example, represent a unique identifying number assigned to each row of data. These are important for identifying each movie and become even more useful when dealing with multiple tables.
The words, SELECT, FROM, and WHERE, represent commands and they are the bones of the query. SELECT is the desired output, in this case movie titles, FROM tells the location of the titles, found in the “movies” table, and WHERE is the constraint being put on the output. If I were to read the code in layman’s terms I would say, “SELECT the titles column FROM the table called movies WHERE the year produced is 2008”.
If the question ask to be more specific, for example to order the output alphabetically by title you can use the command “ORDER BY title” followed by ASC or DESC, meaning ascending or descending order respectively. Another useful feature is the LIMIT command which restrict the amount of output. I normally add limits when checking if my code complies or to see the top results from a set of output.
More Than One Table
Now that was breezy but what about dealing with two or more tables? Often times our data isn’t nicely ordered into one specific place. This is where the command JOIN comes into play. To generalize things I am going to step away from the movie example. Adding JOIN to your program is as follows,
SELECT variable_1
FROM table_1
JOIN table_2 ON table_1 . id = table_2 . id
I can JOIN as many tables as needed as long as their is a unique identifier common between the tables being joined. These identifiers may have different column names but their values should be the same. It is a good idea to check that the value, used to define one specific row, is the same in the tables you would like to join. Once you’ve joined the two tables, you can use variables present in either table for adding conditions or for ordering data.
Subqueries
Subqueries are the final tool that you will need to successfully complete assignment Movies. A subquery, also referred to as a nested query, is essentially a query within a query. It can be added to a number of commands including SELECT, FROM, or WHERE as well as other commands not mentioned in this article. Below is an example of one way to use subqueries.
SELECT variable_1
FROM table_1
JOIN table_2 ON table_1.id = table_2.id
WHERE variable_3 IN (SELECT variable FROM table_x WHERE condition);
Varaible_3 represents a variable in either table 1 or 2 the subquery that follows adds a condition on variable_3 that is applied to the output of variable_1. For example question 8 asked for the names of the stars featured in Toy Story.
SELECT name
FROM people
JOIN stars ON people.id = stars.person_id
WHERE movie_id IN (SELECT id FROM movies WHERE title = “Toy Story”);
In this example I am working with three tables: people, stars, and movies. The question requires the actors names which can be found in the “people” table. Because I am only concerned about the stars of the movie I will JOIN the “stars” table through their unique identifiers. Then, from the “stars” table I put a condition the movie_id’s to only give id’s where the movie title is Toy Story.
These are all the tools that I used to successfully complete assassinent Movies. | https://medium.com/@sarahhwozdyk/cs50-week-7-movies-4af211e90ca5 | ['Sarah Hwozdyk'] | 2020-12-07 10:45:12.988000+00:00 | ['Cs50sql', 'Sql', 'Beginners Guide', 'Cs50', 'Programming'] |
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Where to Buy Fake US Dollar money? | https://medium.com/@georgystef4/email-50euro10-gmail-com-buy-counterfeit-us-dollar-usd-money-online-5c4df4a4b1ba | [] | 2021-02-02 09:56:13.009000+00:00 | ['Style', 'Gadgets', 'Podcasts And Videos', 'Makers', 'Transportation'] |
VIC BUDGET: Good News for Startups and Investors | Last week’s Victorian State budget committed over $186M to the startup sector, in recognition of the importance that startups will play in the economic recovery of the state.
The most interesting is the Fund of Funds — the Victorian Startup Capital Fund (VSCF), which appears will invest alongside qualified VCs into startups. The fund is launching a raise of $60M of institutional, family office and sophisticated investor capital to be invested alongside the Government’s $60.5M stake to create a fund of $120M. These funds will be leveraged via VC’s into startups, which should have a catalyst effect of releasing up to $180M of funding into startups.
We would hope that the fund is targeted at pre-seed and seed-stage capital raises for Victorian startups, as this is the most difficult stage of capital raising for startups. Later stage funding is well serviced by existing VC’s and family offices for those startups who can show significant traction.
When we discuss early-stage investment with new angel investors we talk about ‘staying in your lane’ by investing in sectors in which the angel investor has particular sectoral knowledge. Everything looks new and interesting and easy to disrupt in industries that you have little or no knowledge about.
LaunchVic and the State Government have previously highlighted MedTech, SportsTech, EduTech and FinTech as areas of focus. We believe that adding SmartEnergy to this mix, to support the State’s net-zero targets and encourage Victoria’s place in the National Hydrogen Strategy would be ideal if the fund focuses on building the sectors where Melbourne has global competitive advantage, rather than spreading the fund thinly across all sectors.
VC Fund of Funds used to successfully grow startup ecosystems and realise economic gains for investors include Israel’s US$150m Yosma FOF Program (1993), New Zealand’s $195m Venture Investment Fund (2002) and Canada’s US$303m Venture Capital Catalyst Initiative (2018) of US$303 million. The Victorian fund is modest in comparison to these, and one hopes that this is but the first step in providing more capital support to Victorian Startups. If we are to be globally competitive in the ever-evolving digital world, then our startups deserve the support that other jurisdictions provide.
The fund is due to launch mid-2021 — this may be too late for some startups that are struggling post-covid, however, it is certainly a welcome boost to the ecosystem.
Venture Growth Fund
The Victorian government is also set to invest $25.7 million directly into the state’s startup ecosystem, via a new venture growth fund.
This fund structured as a loan will provide non-dilutive startup funding to startups. No details have yet been released on the fund, however one hopes that it is not designed to saddle the startup founders with large debts — the best practices here would be to provide non-recourse loans backed only by the startup and not the founders personal wealth.
The criteria for the loan is not yet defined, except that it is targeted at revenue-generating startups.
On the topic of loans, the Victorian Govt will also provide a facility to allow startups to draw forward R&D tax credits, with a low-interest rate. This is a good solution to smooth out cash flows for pre-revenue angel-backed startups and if managed carefully it can provide the startup needed funding to reach milestones necessary to launch the next funding round.
All in all this year’s state budget is the best we’ve seen in terms of startups funds and a great initiative to bridge the funding gap that many Victorian startups face. A nice way to round a tough year for so many entrepreneurs.
You can read more detail about these initiatives on LaunchVic’s website. | https://medium.com/@trevortownsend/vic-budget-good-news-for-startups-and-investors-abeb7c643df9 | ['Trevor Townsend'] | 2020-12-01 01:32:17.327000+00:00 | ['Investing', 'State Budgets', 'Budget', 'Startup'] |
Our notes from 3 talks in UN’s PRI Digital Forum | November 19th, 2020
This week we attended the UN’s PRI Digital Forum, where many topics related to ESG were discussed. We wanted to share what we think are the highlights of three of the meetings we joined.
SHAREHOLDER ENGAGEMENT IN THE US: POLICY UPDATE (POST-ELECTION)
How do you think changes in US policy in ESG and active ownership will impact your activities? What are your policy priorities and how would a Republican senate affect them?
Peter Reali — Nuveen
Have not dramatically changed our approach to the ESG integration process nor stewardship activities.
We are going to continue along the path we’ve been on for a long time.
We will likely see increased climate transparency and stress testing going forward.
Cory Klemmer — Domini Impact Investments
Some recent policies, if unchanged, would have a negative impact in the overall ecosystem in the longer term: Proxy voting issues, hindering the development of infrastructure and standardization, pushing small investors around/out, etc.
The factors that are used to measure a good workforce are the same vs what tthey were in the 90s (when the first guidelines were written). The data has improved, there is more to look at. Factors should catch up.
Ecological and worker issues are gaining relevance. ESG is now seen as part of systemic risk.
James Andrus — CalPERS
Pension plans require shareholder engagement in ESG issues.
The initial impact of poor policy seems small, but it can slowly intoxicate the environment of ESG.
We deal with rules in the ecosystem where we work: human capital, racial justice, systemic risk.
The pandemic has given focus to human capital, showing it’s not a political issue, but a humanitarian one. The stress coming from it has pushed employees to be more vocal in telling the truth about their labor conditions.
DRIVING MEANINGFUL DATA
Aaron Bennett — Jarislowsky Fraser
There is a systemic element with ESG risks, and we need disclosure in more than just emissions
Substantial group in Canadian asset managers involved with Climate100+ and saw its success, but it only caught some companies. This is a good framework that can be adapted to regional markets.
Catherine Banat — RBC Global Asset Mgmt
The trend in the US is markets are driving change, coming from investors and customers.
We as investors are demanding that corps provide a lot of data. In particular, there has been a lot of interest in S data in recent months.
Even when you standardize inputs, outcomes are different. The needs of each client are different.
SDG reporting is helping standardize because of its universality.
DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION: THE MYTH OF MERITOCRACY
One of the key obstacles to diversity is existing social bias.
In corporate America, women represent 40% workforce, of which women of color only account for 18% of the female total.
Studies show that white sounding names have 50% more callbacks in job interviews.
Discrimination is uniform across all industries, regardless of the companies saying that they are diverse.
Camilla Sutton — Women in Capital Markets
So far, diversity efforts have been focused on training individuals belonging to minorities. This is changing over to address systemic discrimination:
Firms leading the diversity fight are doing 6 core pieces of work:
Holding themselves accountable, recognizing structural inequities Increasing equity literacy (not the same as unconscious bias training), teaching the difference between equity and equality, race, etc. Measurement, reporting, and transparency: focusing on getting the right data across gender, race, sexual orientation, and more in the company Targets: where do we want to go, be specific. Reducing focus on individual: focusing on the system itself. What is creating a structural, systemic barrier, recruiting, feedback, promotions? Ensuring firms are free from harassment or discrimination with a zero-tolerance policy.
The recordings of the event will be available soon, and for anyone who wants to dig deeper into any of these topics (or the other topics discussed during the forum), we recommend you see them. Many of these discussions are not new, but the recent US election definitely fine tunes some topics and the most recent views from some of the most relevant participants in the discussion are always interesting to hear. A Joe Biden administration will very likely be more pro-ESG than the Trump administration has been. We should therefore expect that regulations and momentum will be in favor of more ESG reporting. Some further reading on this here.
I hope you found this interesting. As usual, if there is anything we can help you with, please reach out.
Best,
Marimar
Partner, Miranda ESG | https://medium.com/@marimartorreblanca/our-notes-from-3-talks-in-uns-pri-digital-forum-85c84cfd6a5e | ['Marimar Torreblanca'] | 2020-12-25 22:06:08.366000+00:00 | ['Consulting', 'United Nations', 'Esg Investing', 'Esg', 'Pri'] |
Making Money Matter. Dads’ Survival Guide: Providing — Our… | Dads’ Survival Guide: Providing — Our Finances
I caved. No backbone. Total capitulation.
Another COVID lockdown and I lost my resolve. On pet ownership.
We settled on a unique, designer breed. An unusual combination of minis. Hamburg Schnauzer mixed with Sterling Terrier. More commonly known as a Ham-ster.
They’re cute. Cuddly. Playful. Live on seeds. Require minimal care. Yet, enough of a lesson for the kids. The best part? Their habitat. Hamsters live in a fish tank. And never need to leave. Ever. That’s my kind of pet. Low maintenance.
Hopefully, I have more backbone when it comes to family finances.
Fretting Inside
Most of us Dads live comfortably. We have plenty enough. With portfolios on a decent trajectory. Markets at record highs. The economy sputtering back to life. Plus, investment advisors and tax guys keeping us on course,
On the surface, everything’s good. Below the surface, not so much.
Dads fret about our financials. A lot. Will the portfolio last? Cover retirement? Unexpected expenses? Weather a market plunge? Can we keep earning enough? If our practice dries up? The firm falters? Or we end up on the street? How would we land something new?
Sound familiar? Any Dad suggesting they’re immune to these thoughts is not being straight. We all have them. No matter our financial condition. Dads just never talk about it. Out loud.
Meaningless?
When it comes to money, a sense of peace is hard to find. No matter how many zeros in the bank accounts. Which seems ridiculous given all that wealth affords us. Nice homes. With offices, gyms and pools. Jacked-up Jeeps. Designer pets. Nights out for good meals. And fun-filled vacations. Special family experiences.
All this affluence delivers the happiness we seek. Yet, Dads remain unsettled inside.
How’s that possible? Could the stuff wealth delivers be so fleeting? Momentary? Meaningless?
King Solomon was unsettled. No peace. Despite being one of the wealthiest, and wisest men of all time. He ruled when Israel was the most powerful nation in the world.
In Ecclesiastes, his book of reflections, Solomon wrote, “I undertook great projects. I built houses for myself and planted vineyards. I owned more herds and flocks. I amassed silver and gold, the treasure of kings. I became greater by far than anyone before me in Jerusalem. I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure.”
“Yet, when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind.”
Meaningless. A chasing after the wind. From a man who had more than anyone. And, experienced it all. How’s that possible?
Solomon learned that chasing the desires of one’s heart will leave us empty. Wealth and achievement simply, don’t deliver. He discovered there’s a difference between happiness and joy. Between comfort and peace. And pursuing joy and peace is more rewarding.
Perhaps, King Solomon should have heeded one of God’s Great Commandments, instead.
Loving our Neighbor
While we have plenty, others in our community do not. They have legit reasons to fret. Going paycheck to paycheck. Family businesses at risk of collapse. Limited income options. Broken households. Stark living conditions.
Right here in our vicinity. Close by. Good folks. Experiencing entirely different lives. We see them at travel games. Tournaments. Or working in our towns. Manning store counters. Packing grocery shelves. Delivering packages. Driving the school buses.
These are our neighbors. Struggling to get by. Lacking peace about tomorrow. In a way we may never understand.
“Love thy neighbor as thyself.” A great commandment. In this season of giving. A means of making our money matter. And hopefully, I have the backbone to pull it off. Especially this year.
Giving Boldly
All of us are locked down for the holidays. Family vacations on hold. It’s a bummer for everyone. Yet, Dads are resourceful. So, let’s try something different. Something bold. Radical. Truly memorable. A special experience for our families. Potent enough to last a lifetime.
Loving our neighbors. Right here in our community. We know who they are. And Dads can lead the way. Handing out something special this year. More than pocket change. Or walking around money. Adding an extra zero. Or two. For our neighbors. An unexpected, impactful gift. Enough to cover the rent. Monthly food. Transportation. Tuition. Wi-Fi. Tech for distance learning. Impactful. From our family. To theirs.
Imagine the smile on their faces. The surprise. The joy in their household.
Imagine the joy in our hearts. Meaningful. Fulfilling. A memorable experience. One that will impact their family. And ours.
That’s passing the peace. Bold. Impactful. Loving. Like never before. And providing for our family. In a new and powerful way. Transcending financials. Changing hearts. By blessing our neighbors. For this holiday season. And beyond.
Go Dads, Go! | https://medium.com/@dave-46615/making-money-meaningful-5ef481bdfd50 | ['Dave Smith'] | 2020-12-20 13:35:00.814000+00:00 | ['Financial Planning', 'Parenting', 'Giving', 'Leadership', 'Dads'] |
Why Hiking is the Perfect Form of Exercise | Good news!
Not only is hiking one of the most fun activities you can do on your days off — it’s also insanely good for your health!
Physically speaking…
Hiking is a world-class cardio workout.
And, like any cardio workout, hiking protects the body from numerous life-threatening illnesses.
Heart Disease: According to the CDC, heart disease is the number one killer of both men and women in the U.S.
Heart disease claims an American life every 36 seconds — or over 650,000 American lives per year.
Heart disease is no joke — make the choices to live a healthy lifestyle (while having fun too!) to lower your risk.
Blood pressure: High blood pressure is running rampant in the U.S., with nearly one in three Americans having a hypertension diagnosis, or in layman’s terms, high blood pressure.
Hypertension can also lead to a heart attack, stroke, and other health complications — all while going undetected.
Regular physical activity, such as hiking, can lower your blood pressure by 10 points or more.
Bone Density: As people age or become increasingly sedentary, our body’s rate of calcium loss tends to accelerate, resulting in one’s bones becoming increasingly susceptible to breaking.
Because hiking is a weight-bearing exercise, it can help reverse this trend by strengthening your bones and boosting bone density when done regularly.
Strengthen your legs, core, and balance: Because of the uneven terrain, occasional (or frequent) uphill and downhill angles, and the few extra pounds you may be carrying in a day pack — hiking activates more muscles throughout your body than your typical walk.
Strong legs, core, and balance translate to so many other things — regular life will become easier.
And if you’re a calorie counter like me — check this out:
Hiking burns about 200 calories per mile (on the low end!).
Which is about 2x more than walking and 1.5x more than running the same distance.
Hit the hills to turn calorie burning into calorie scorching.
According to President of the American Hiking Society, Gregory A. Miller (PhD), noted that a 5% — 10% incline can burn an additional 30% — 40% calories.
Not only that, but you burn an additional 1% per extra pound of weight that you carry (i.e. if you carry a 15-pound day pack, you’ll burn an additional ~15% calories!)
Did someone say mental health too?
Yes, oh yes indeed.
Research has shown that hiking can help combat the effects of anxiety, stress, and boost your mood.
Miller reminds us, “Being in nature is ingrained in our DNA, and we sometimes forget that.”
Maybe it’s the beautiful views, maybe it’s the time spent with friends, or maybe it’s the satisfaction of pushing your body on a challenging hike.
Or maybe, even after all of that, there really is something deeper at play, deep in our bones and DNA, that makes hiking the perfect type of exercise.
Thanks, and happy hiking!
Erian Gutierrez
Follow me on Instagram here.
P.S.
If you’re gearing up for your next adventure or prepping for potential disasters, take a peek at our catalog and see if there is anything you need to complete your kit or stow away for the future.
—
Sources
Heart Disease Facts by CDC.gov
Hiking for Health by TrailKeeper.org
Doctors Tell Us How Hiking Can Change Our Brains by Marilyn Rogers | https://medium.com/@e.gut2014/why-hiking-is-the-perfect-form-of-exercise-dae920db569a | ['Erian Gutierrez'] | 2020-10-13 00:52:24.960000+00:00 | ['Nature', 'Workout', 'Health', 'Exercise', 'Hiking'] |
Questions For Every CIO and Board About Security | Questions For Every CIO and Board About Security
—
The CIO is in a unique position to communicate to the Board the information that helps them assess and evaluate security approach and activity, and incident response and recovery. The Board needs this information through direct and indirect vehicles: reports, sessions devoted to security, ongoing education, timely assessments and third-party input. In turn, the Board needs to help determine the internal checks and balances in place to ensure that they are receiving unbiased information. They need to know how management is thinking about security.
Photo by Art Wave
Together, the CIO and Board address several critical questions:
:: What should the focus of the Board be in regards to cyber-security?
:: How will the Board and Leadership interact?
:: Who is accountable for assessment and management of risks?
:: How are policies and procedures reflecting commitment to cyber-security?
:: What are the IT metrics that will comprise a new dashboard?
:: What is the incident response and recovery plan?
:: How will the Board receive ongoing education in cyber-security?
Cyber-risk is business-risk. Impact to the business is the focus more than impact to technology. The defense is in the details. The details are in the questions. | https://medium.com/@ciomastermind/questions-for-every-cio-and-board-about-security-27bef4f79b28 | ['Cio Mastermind'] | 2020-12-03 17:33:19.541000+00:00 | ['Security', 'Information Technology', 'CEO', 'Cybersecurity', 'Business'] |
Origin’s Mobile App Gets a Major Update | Earlier this year, we announced the release of our first mobile application, Origin Wallet. This introduced mobile messaging and notifications, as well as providing a means for users to interact with our platform without needing a desktop browser and wallet. The Origin team is placing a strong bet on our products being “mobile-first.” There are clear and simple reasons for this. Our mobile app is easier to use than Web3-enabled desktop applications like MetaMask. Over 80% of our traffic already comes from mobile devices. Finally, we believe mobile payments will drive the future growth of cryptocurrency and fintech overall.
We are pleased to announce that we have completed a major update of our mobile app, improving both its form and function. The first major change is that our app is now available on both Apple devices and Android devices. This was extremely important to us because the majority of our traffic comes from Android devices and also because we believe inexpensive Android smartphones will onboard millions of people from emerging markets onto decentralized applications utilizing cryptocurrency in the years to come.
Origin Mobile App now available on Android!
The second major change is that our mobile app is now a completely integrated cryptocurrency wallet. On our old mobile app, users had to switch back and forth between the app and a browser window to confirm transactions. Now, users can complete transactions from within the mobile app without having to leave the app or use any third-party software.
Previously, our mobile app only supported signing transactions and did not integrate browsing of listings, searching, or any of the other great features available in our marketplace DApp. It was difficult for users to post listings and purchase listings. This wasn’t good enough for us or our users. Now, users can easily buy and sell within the same app. Users will have access to all of the features of our DApp on mobile, giving them a much smoother and more secure experience. In order to make an impact, we believe we have to build decentralized applications that are just as easy to use and as the centralized applications that we are used to today.
Creating a listing for Amazon Gift Cards
You can buy world famous DJ 3LAU’s listing from your mobile app
Although most of these changes were made to make things easier for users who did not have deep experience with crypto applications, we wanted to make sure we were not adding friction to our advanced users. The Origin DApp is still fully compatible with desktop, MetaMask, and third-party mobile wallets like Coinbase Wallet and Trust Wallet. Users can choose to import their existing wallets from other applications into our mobile app if desired.
Create a new wallet or import an existing one
Please download Origin Marketplace today and give us your feedback. Origin is an open source company that maintains an equally open culture. Any comments, questions, or feedback you have for us are helpful, and we look forward to collaborating with our community members to improve our products.
Learn more about Origin: | https://medium.com/originprotocol/origins-mobile-app-gets-a-major-update-e8da4ad4b0cd | ['Tom Linton'] | 2020-01-17 19:16:25.375000+00:00 | ['Crypto', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Blockchain', 'Product', 'Ethereum'] |
You’re Disappointed and That’s OK | The minute my mom clicked on the phone, I could tell something was wrong.
“How are you?” I asked. She sounded muffled, like she had just woken up from a long nap, even though it was 3 pm in the afternoon.
“I’m…I’m a sad mom today.”
“What happened?” My stomach dropped, hearing the heaviness in her voice, like she was holding back a river and trying to not let the dam break inside her.
“One of my clients…” she said, then sniffed to try to pull herself together. A second longer and the tears came pouring through the phone.
My mom is a personal trainer for a gym, and most of her clients are over 50. With her degree in kinesiology, she has worked with men and women weathered by time, stooped over and dragging their feet, or people who struggle to stay mobile for their children and grandchildren. She strengthens their muscles, increases their flexibility, and in time, they re-gain their independence again. She gives them hope for living the last decades of their lives well, and in return, they have become some of her dearest friends and biggest cheerleaders.
And now, with a worldwide epidemic that is wreaking havoc on the oldest generations of our society, her work and her friends are under attack.
My mom is not a crier. Sometimes she tears up at a poignant Super Bowl commercial, and every once in a while I could catch her in the kitchen reminiscing on some old photos with a box of tissues. But when it comes to the big things, the heart-wrenching or thorny things, she deals with her pain privately, stowing it away like you would a jar of something precious, on a top shelf and out of reach.
She was usually the one being strong for me while I blubbered and ached, dipping my head into her neck while she held me tight. This time, I was the one clutching the phone, listening intently, trying to comfort her as she grappled with the loss of a friend, with the fear of losing more, and with the cold slap of shock that meets all of us on the news every day.
He was such a sweet soul.
It’s not fair, and I..I just hate this.
Why him? I just don’t understand.
“I’m so sorry, Mom.” I whispered. Despite wanting to soothe her sadness, to lift her spirits, or to somehow claim something good from this loss, there was nothing I had to offer. I didn’t have anything else to say.
Pain Tolerance
We’ve all lost something since the start of 2020. A few weeks back, one of my friends told me that a big vacation she had planned had been cancelled, and while she was extremely disappointed, she quickly followed the news with:
“But I can’t really complain, because so many other people are sick or in desperate situations”.
On a family video chat, my husband told siblings and parents that other than some cancelled plans, we were doing fine. We hadn’t been hit too hard by the chaos of the outside world and were thankful to have jobs and our health. He was right, and I agreed, but I couldn’t help but feel the burn of those words in my chest as he said them —
we’re doing fine.
Except for graduation, I thought. Days away from completing the most grueling, stressful, and mind-expanding four semesters of my life, I don’t feel anything. Where I thought I would be overjoyed to be done, excited to be celebrating with my classmates and family a freshly-minted Master’s degree and the end of a two hour daily commute, instead I can only contemplate final deadlines and moving on with my life.
If I’m honest, I’m really sad that I don’t get to wear a cap and gown, walk across a stage, and post a picture about how hard I have worked to get here. If I’m also honest, I don’t feel like I deserve to be sad or disappointed. I feel selfish for wanting recognition when so many are fighting for survival.
Photo by Eric Ward on Unsplash
And yet, despite how many times I have talked down my own disappointment, tried to fix my attitude about being cooped up indoors and forced down my need for a good ending, a celebration, a job well done, the cloud over my head hasn’t gone away.
“It’s okay to be disappointed. You worked hard to save up for your trip, and now it isn’t happening, and you should feel sad.” I told my friend. I’m starting to tell myself the same thing.
Some pain is deeper than others. I think about my mom, for the high school seniors who missed their prom, for the families who never got to say goodbye. I think about the doctors who haven’t seen their kids in weeks, the restaurants who are shuttering their doors. But discounting my own disappointment because someone is also hurting will not make their pain any more real to me.
In actuality, realizing that I’m broken and others are shattered wakes me from the numb world we’ve been living in. Realizing I’m hurting makes me also hurt for others. As I read on Instagram recently, “Unless we find concrete ways to weep over the brokenness, we will use the brokenness to break others. And ourselves.”
For Those Who Mourn
Grief is a hard thing to figure for the optimist in me. I want to see the silver lining, the bright spot, and the way forward — the good in every situation. Grief is also a hard thing to navigate when it is this far-reaching, this expansive, and this complicated.
For many Americans, grief is something private. Just like my mom, we learn to sift our groaning cries into bottles and only partake in solitude or with a few members of our closest circle. External and communal heartache makes us uncomfortable, especially if it is loud, or weepy, or unbridled. I don’t know if that is because emotion itself is uncomfortable and something we think should be tucked away, or if it is because when someone expresses their loss, we don’t know what to say or how to fix the problem.
That is what mourning is — admitting that something is wrong and coping with the fact that we can’t go back and change anything. David Kessler, an expert on grief, says:
“What everyone has in common is that no matter how they grieve, they share a need for their grief to be witnessed. That doesn’t mean needing someone to lessen it or reframe it for them. The need is for someone to be fully present to the magnitude of their loss without trying to point out the silver lining.”
I think this is true for our communities, our friends and family, and even ourselves. There is a time for grief, a time for weeping, and time for sadness. There is a time to pause for yourself and feel the weight of what you have lost — whether it was a concert you were looking forward to, the wedding you were planning, or the life of someone you loved dearly — and remember it. There is a time to hold another’s hand and listen and nod and do nothing else but ache with them.
Carried to Shore
Ever since I was old enough to plow through chapter books and ride a bike, I’ve been writing. I don’t know exactly why a blank sheet of paper holds the power for me that it does, but with any wave of the ugly, dark, or perplexing churns within me, that is how I deal with it.
It’s important to mourn, but it is also important to process. Hand in hand, we face the waves and we learn to swim in them, feeling the temperature of the water until it carries us slowly back to shore.
My mom has been writing, too. I told her she should write about her friend, to remember him and hold him close, if only in memory.
Everyone grieves differently, but everyone has to wrestle with it. For me, it’s writing, or taking a long jog through my neighborhood, or buying a floppy rose bush for my backyard and spending my afternoons nurturing it. But what does it look like for you?
Photo by adrian on Unsplash
Go for a walk, as slowly as you want.
Write it all down, sketch it all out, paint or sing or play.
Curl up next to someone you love and ask them to listen for a minute or two.
Cook, or bake, or do some pull-ups until your biceps start to shake.
Maybe even cry, cry hard, if it reminds you of what you lost.
And then, when the bread is baked, when the words are on the page, when the walls are painted and the lawn is mowed or you’ve stared at the ceiling and sighed long and loud, then remember this, too.
You also have a lot to hold on to. | https://blog.heartsupport.com/youre-disappointed-and-that-s-ok-d8db18b0e5d5 | ['Meagan Heber'] | 2020-05-02 14:01:00.919000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Mental Health', 'Relationships', 'Personal Development', 'Grief And Loss'] |
Striving for the Fourth Transformation: Expanding Access to Quality (?) Higher Education in Mexico | AMLO gives his first speech as President of Mexico. Image: gob.mx
In December, I joined 13 young professionals from across the United States in participating in the Center for American Progress’ U.S. Mexico Leaders program. We visited Mexico City and Puebla while meeting with elected and government officials and learning about Mexican culture. As a Dominican-American primarily raised in the United States, my knowledge of Mexico prior to the trip primarily included only what I had seen on television, movies and read in books. This was the perfect time to take my first trip to Mexico City, as the country was on the precipice of change.
The day before our delegation arrived, Andres Manuel López Obrador (“AMLO” as he is also known to the public) was elected the 58th President of Mexico. Considered by many as the Mexican Bernie Sanders, López Obrador’s progressive agenda is focused on eliminating corruption, expanding employment opportunities for youth and ensuring that all Mexicans have the opportunities to succeed. A signature of López Obrador’s platform is to move Mexico into its fourth transformation-following the country’s independence, revolution and church dominance. At the core of completing this transformation is expanding higher education access to more Mexicans than ever before.
López Obrador plans to create 100 new public universities during his six years in office. Through this effort, he hopes to eliminate higher education inequality in Mexico. As recently as 2016, only 3 out of 10 college-aged Mexicans were pursuing higher education. According to the plan, universities would be regionally focused and cater to the needs of the students and the economy of the area. Many critics are asking if it is possible to open such a large number of universities in a short time frame. And, if López Obrador succeeds in expanding access to higher education, how will the Mexican government ensure that the universities provide a quality education for all students? For example, will there be a process to ensure that Professors have adequate credentials to serve in their roles? Or, that degrees from the proposed 100 public universities will be valued by the public and private sector?
Ensuring access to a quality higher education is something that officials in the United States have grappled with over the past decade. President Obama worked to hold the for-profit industry accountable for not offering quality education to low-income students. Through the launch of a rating system, President Obama hoped to assess how institutions were serving students based on affordability, completion rates, and employability. In recent years, policymakers have shifted their emphasis from higher education quality to elevating technical education as a viable option for all students. While this emphasis expands access to higher education, it does not specifically focus on quality.
When President Andres Manuel López Obrador creates the 100 new public universities, he should ensure they are of the highest quality. This means hiring adequate staff, world-class professors and providing substantial financial support for students to attend. By doing so, President Andres Manuel López Obrador will truly make strides toward reaching the fourth transformation of Mexico.-A.G. | https://medium.com/@amilguzman/striving-for-the-fourth-transformation-expanding-access-to-quality-higher-education-in-mexico-68d703bd8bd0 | ['Amilcar Guzman'] | 2019-02-07 03:52:29.196000+00:00 | ['Education', 'Higher Education', 'College Access', 'Mexico'] |
Dear Crush… | Ever since we started talking, I feel some kind of a way,
I feel like I want to talk to you all the time,
You make an introvert feel like opening up without the fear of feeling naked,
I want to call you and ask about your fears,
Have deep conversations as I get to know you more,
Set up late dinner and take you to a poetry showcase in one of these evenings,
Hold arms in the auditorium,
I want to do those things that an introvert despises,
You’re beautiful and your thinking arouses me,
You’re outgoing hence sociable… I’m not sociable and you could teach me a lot,
There’s a lot I wanna tell you but as an introvert I have to reserve some for my self,
But I’ll write about it,
About how I thought you were the one,
How I always checked if you had texted me every morning,
How I’ve pictured the both of us crossing streets of Nairobi hand in hand,
How I’ve pictured us sited next to each other on a bus with so many empty seats,
How I’ve postponed dropping by your workplace almost every morning,
How I’ve thought your name could really match well with my middle name,
How my pulse beats with the sounds of your name every time I think of calling you,
The way I’ve fallen for you is not normal for humanoids like us,
That nigga Cupid shot an arrow through my heart and it’s now wounded by affection for you, 🌹,
You have the antidote but the pain sometimes makes it feel good so I wanna keep it,
I want to keep you but you don’t wanna stay,
My soul now feels like a ghost town,
The light that you shone on this heart is off and others can’t get in now,
What do I do to get the trust,
What do I do to stop pissing you off,
What do I do with this sprinkle of anxiety,
I’ll spend eaon writing about you,
Of how close I was,
To get what mama always asked me to take home,
A girl who’s a complete package,
From generosity, wisdom, patience and knows how to cook…
Now tell me you’ll tag along,
Now tell me I’m not circling in the desert,
Looking for an oasis that is you,
Tell me I’m not in a love triangle,
Tell me why you’re holding back,
Tell me where I’m miscalculating,
Tell me,
Tell me in deep details,
Tell me as we stare under the street lights in a quiet night,
Tell me on the rooftop as the stars stare enviously at your eyes,
Quench this thirst…
Cause I’m about to drain all my emotions, 🌹 | https://medium.com/geezer-speaks/dear-crush-30b184c2ce78 | ['Emanuel Mwangi'] | 2017-09-06 15:46:25.959000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Crush', 'Writing', 'Poetry On Medium', 'Love'] |
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