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Are you having fun? | “Are you having fun?” A statement that came out of my father’s mouth from the moment I moved out of the house. Every time we spoke on the phone or I came home for a visit, he inquired of my happiness.
Daddy’s Girl, 1986ish
My dad was a fun guy. Seriously fun. He was a sarcastic goofball who made me so, so happy, and sometimes so, so angry when I felt he was making fun of my “very serious” life situations. He was the essence of roll-with-the-punches and he worked for almost 30 years to teach me the value in not taking myself too seriously and not letting negative situations ruin my day. My dad taught me things that I discover even now, after he’s gone, as I become ready to receive the knowledge that was once just words. Today I’ll share three, because, Father’s Day. And because, well people like things in threes.
Mind over matter.
When I became an adult my dad told me that as a child, I was either too hot, too cold, tired, hungry, thirsty, or had to pee.
I sound like a bundle of joy, eh?
I can remember a painful hike in particular, summertime in Phoenix, where I’m pretty sure I used all of these excuses. I don’t think we turned around and luckily none of my family members murdered me. I can hear his voice now, reminding me that I just needed to tell myself that I was ok, and I would be ok.
What was beautiful about my dad’s way was that he was strong enough in his stance to push me to my limits in any given moment, and loving enough that I felt safe if it ever went too far — in case my chilly fingers were, in fact, early signs of hypothermia (BTW, never). He was Superman and he could save me from anything.
More recently, though, as I entered my 30s and became a student of meditation, my dad’s mindset was loud and clear. His attention to the current moment and to the mind’s ability to recognize and work through suffering was so evolved — I don’t think he even knew it. As I became more comfortable in my skin and more confident in my life, I heard his words echoing, reminding me that I am in control of the reactions to my situation and actually, my thoughts can transform any moment so long as I choose. I feel his words in my breath as I practice daily to never be a victim of circumstance.
You can do this.
I am not an all-star athlete. Quite the opposite. I grew up as a gymnast and a dancer, but never heartily pursued either after high school, and I had a few chapters where I got somewhat comfortable golfing. However, if you threw a baseball my way, I was likely to somehow get injured (yes, I’ve been to the emergency room because of a co-ed intramural softball warm-up. Not game. Warm. Up.) and although I longed to be “one of the boys” as a kid, I was the one who ruined it for everyone by getting hurt.
Now, don’t feel sorry for my dad — my brother is an all-star everything, so he got pretty lucky. But he believed in me and wanted to participate in sports with me as a bonding activity. He gave me countless golfing lessons and we played in his club’s Father-Daughter tournament. This may sound pretty unremarkable, but here’s the really special part. I can remember zero times when my dad got frustrated with my lack of skills. Zero. I could never drive the ball farther than 120 yards and by the time we made it to the 8th green, I was often on the verge of tears. I tried to give up so many times out of frustration and shame. How could this man’s daughter (my dad won most of the tournaments he played in) be so terrible at this sport? His buddies had daughters who rivaled him off the tee…and then there was me.
None of that mattered. My dad was so proud of me — for exactly who I was — and all he cared about was making sure I became more confident in my abilities. He wanted to be sure that I knew I could do anything, and he calmly stood by my side coaching me until I learned it for myself. To this day, when I step up to a tee I hear his coaching voice and am able to enjoy a relaxed backswing, knowing, that whether in golf or in life, I can do anything.
Are you having fun?
So this one is the best one and the hardest one. My dad was diagnosed with young-onset dementia in his 50s. For almost every person reading this, you can think of someone in your life with dementia. Usually that person is in their 80s or 90s and we talk ourselves into being comfortable with that being “a part of getting old” (it’s so not. But that’s a different blog post). For our family, we would see this young, able-bodied man with a brain that was slowly ceasing to operate in its normal functions.
He had aphasia early (distortion of speech) so he sounded like he was drunk all of the time. I share this important information because until the moment my dad could no longer speak, he continued to ask me if I was having fun. It was harder to understand and went from Are you having fun? to a slurred having fun?, but I knew what he was asking. It was soothing beyond measure.
This is complex for a few reasons. One, it’s clearly heartbreaking to watch your dad lose his mind and lose his ability to truly communicate with you…and when there is one phrase that holds it all together, you learn to cherish those words and their meaning beyond all else. Two, I am a serious person. Much to my father’s dismay, his efforts of loosening me up were not really effective until much closer to his death. I’m one of those “I will change the world” kind of humans and I always thought that I had to be very serious and focused to make that happen. He never stopped asking because he knew how beautiful life can be when you enjoy each moment for what it is.
I’m grateful to my dad for using these words and to the magic of long term memory for allowing him to keep these words until the end. These words have transformed me. When I’m having a stressful, on-the-verge-of-a-breakdown kind of day, I can still get back to these words and make a choice to change my mindset.
Dads. Dads are special. Whether they’re a father in the official sense or a dad in a multitude of other ways, dads possess a power no other role really can.
I’m grateful for the dad I had and the woman I’ve become as a result. I recognize that there are many people who did not have a father like mine, and that may still cause pain for you today. Some of you also have lost your dads, and some of you may have lost a child or desperately want to be a father but cannot for some reason. Life is messy and complex, and if you need to borrow my dad’s advice, please do.
I think it applies to us all.
We’re all in this together, and what’s the point if we’re not having fun? | https://medium.com/@sidnee.peck/are-you-having-fun-9ddee847479c | ['Sidnee Peck'] | 2019-06-16 17:46:00.639000+00:00 | ['Mental Health', 'Joy', 'Fathers Day', 'Dads'] |
Boolean-ify Your Data Science Job Search | Boolean-ify Your Data Science Job Search
The post was originally published 8-April 2020.
Overview
Intended audience: data scientists who are in the job market
Basic introduction to using boolean operators as a targeted strategy to finding data science jobs
Walkthrough of how to refine your job search terms on LinkedIn with a real-life example I’ve used
After reading this article you will:
Understand of how you can use boolean operators to make your job search more fruitful
Have a basic, actionable approach to searching for jobs on LinkedIn
Two important notes:
This article assumes you are familiar with boolean operator search. See here if you’re not or you need a refresher.
Boolean definitions in this post are from BuiltIn.com.
The job search…
Searching for a new job is no walk in the park. The experience is often characterized by feelings that run the gamut of human emotion: excitement, fear, empowerment, fatigue, anticipation, disappointment, confidence, overwhelm. In this post, I introduce a basic yet powerful tool for one approaching a specific aspect of the job search: searching for jobs online. I hope to provide you with actionable information that you can readily apply and, by doing so, hope you feel more empowered and confident in searching for your next job.
Instead of talking in general terms, I’ll illustrate the process by walking you through an example from my life using LinkedIn Job Search. LinkedIn’s job search functionality is a great because:
It includes millions of jobs, with thousands of new jobs posted every day
It’s widely used by recruiters
You can save your search terms and alerted when similar jobs are posted
You can get super specific with your boolean searches
Each section of the walkthrough builds off the prior section. I start with basic boolean searches then build upon the results of those searches to further refine my search. The basic format for each section is as follows:
OPERATOR
What it does : description of operator functionality
: description of operator functionality What I searched: the search term I used on LinkedIn
the search term I used on LinkedIn Example titles returned: the search results
Let’s get started…
AND
What it does: Includes multiple criteria in search results
Includes multiple criteria in search results What I searched: data AND python
data AND python Example titles returned: Data Scientist; Data Analyst; Data Engineer
This first search is intentionally super general. I just want to get an idea of what types of data jobs are out there that require python. It’s also helpful to see what companies are posting data jobs, which will come in useful as I make my searches more specific.
Since I’m not interested in data engineer roles, I’m going to specify that I’m only interested in data scientist or data analyst roles using the OR operator in my next search.
OR
What it does: Includes one or more criteria in search results
Includes one or more criteria in search results What I searched: data scientist OR data analyst AND python
data scientist OR data analyst AND python Example titles returned: Data Scientist; Senior Data Analyst, Agriculture & Commodities; Data Analyst I
The OR operator allows me to search for either data scientist or data analyst roles only. The titles are getting more refined, however, there are two things about these search results that I’m not interested in.
First, I don’t want to work in agriculture. Second, I’m not looking for a Data Analyst I role, as this is too junior for me. The NOT operator will help to refine this.
NOT (-)
What it does: Excludes unwanted criteria from search results
Excludes unwanted criteria from search results What I searched: data scientist OR data analyst AND python -agriculture -I
data scientist OR data analyst AND python -agriculture -I Example titles returned: Senior Data Scientist; Marketplace Operations Senior Business Analyst; Sr. Digital Data Analyst
Great! My search is getting to be even more focused and the results are more in line with what I’m looking for. A few things stand out with these search results that I’ll build upon with my next search.
First, I don’t meet the qualifications for a senior data scientist. Second, I hadn’t considered specifying the type of analyst title. My background is in operations so I’m going to see what kind of results I get when I search for data scientist/analyst jobs with an operations focus. Finally, after looking at various data analyst job descriptions, senior data analyst roles seem to be a good fit for me so I’m going to specify that.
Brackets ()
What it does: Group search phrases and prioritize operators
Group search phrases and prioritize operators What I searched: (sr. OR senior data analyst) OR (data scientist -lead) AND operations AND python -agriculture
(sr. OR senior data analyst) OR (data scientist -lead) AND operations AND python -agriculture Example titles returned: Senior Data Analyst, Sales Compensation; Associate Data Analyst; Senior Global Data Analyst, People Operations
Notice in this search I prioritized senior data analyst roles over data scientist roles. Though I did get a few data scientist results, the vast majority were senior data analyst roles. And this time those roles were more specialized than the generic data analyst roles I was getting from past searches.
I’ll build off these results for my final search. Associate data analyst looks a bit too junior for me, so I’ll exclude that from my next search. For the sake of a highly targeted search, I’m only going to look for specialized senior data analyst roles. Sales compensation sounds boring but sales operations might be interesting. I hadn’t thought about people operations before and that sounds interesting so I’m definitely going to include that.
Quotes “ ”
What it does: Search for exact phrase
Search for exact phrase What I searched: (sr. OR senior data analyst) AND ((sales operations -compensation) OR “people operations”) AND python -agriculture
(sr. OR senior data analyst) AND ((sales operations -compensation) OR “people operations”) AND python -agriculture Example titles returned: Lead Analyst, Solutions Consulting Data and Analytics; Business Data Analyst; Senior Global Data Analyst, People Operations; Sales Operations Analyst
Wow! These results are super specific and all roles that I’m interested in. I hadn’t thought about including “lead” in my search…turns out it’s synonymous with a senior level. The idea of solutions consulting and data analytics sounds interesting too. I’ll be sure to include that moving forward. Upon looking the sales operations role, I don’t think that’s something I’m all that interested in so I’ll probably exclude that.
Wrap up
I hope I’ve proved to you the power of using boolean operators in your job search. And this only begins to scratch the surface! The operators I discussed are only the basics. More advanced operators allow you to refine by things like synonyms, root words, specific sites, and more. If this is interesting to you check out this BuiltIn.com article are take your job search to the next level. | https://medium.com/@zammboi/boolean-ify-your-data-science-job-search-b9df5583d21b | ['Matt Burke'] | 2020-12-07 20:09:06.789000+00:00 | ['Boolean Search', 'Job Search', 'Career Change', 'Data Science', 'Job Search Tips'] |
The devastating British-Abeokuta war — the Adubi war of 1918 | The British-Abeokuta war took place in 1918. It lasted for 3 weeks. Cause of war: The British introduced forced labour and taxation, the people of Abeokuta refused.
The British arrested 70 Egba chiefs and held them to ransom until the people agree to start paying taxes and go under forced labour.
Follow me on medium.com/@davepartner
The people refused, 30,000 Abeokuta people revolted, attacked the rail way line, derailed a train and killed the Oba Osile, the leader of the north-eastern Egba district for allegedly supporting the British. The British soldiers mobilized to put down the revolt, it went on for 3 weeks before being repressed.
The British officers that put down the revolt received special military medals tagged “The African General Service Medal”. They then went ahead to revoke the Abeokuta independence in 1918 and put everyone under forced labour for decades. After which they introduced the same tax the people tried to revolt against.
Here is the interesting statistics
Casualties
British: 2
Abeokuta: 600
Weaponry
British: guns, machine guns, explosives, knowledge of advanced warfare against well armed groups especially since that was the last year of the second world war.
Abeokuta: machetes, stones and probably charms.
Lessons?
Follow me on medium.com/@davepartner | https://medium.com/@davepartner/the-devastating-british-abeokuta-war-the-adubi-war-of-1918-32de27b03536 | ['Dave Partner'] | 2020-12-26 07:19:56.866000+00:00 | ['Juju', 'Abeokuta', 'Nigeria', 'Adubi War', 'Colonialism'] |
How to label text for sentiment analysis — good practices | From June 2020, I will no longer be using Medium to publish new stories. Please, visit my personal blog if you want to continue to read my articles: https://vallant.in.
Have you ever started a sentiment analysis or other text classification task only to see that you are not getting good results? The list of possible problems to look into is long, but there are two aspects that you may be underlooking and overlooking in this order.
The first aspect is the quality of the labels of your training data set, while the second is the model itself. We tend to spend a lot of time tweaking the model because — well, we learn to do things this way. When you start you first projects, you usually get a dataset already curated and cleaned. There’s nothing or very little to do in terms of preprocessing.
When I say preprocessing, forget the removing accents — tokenizing — removing stop words bla, bla and focus on the very first step of the all thing: the quality of the data.
Labelling is hard even for humans
Have you ever tried labelling things only to discover that you suck at it? If you haven’t, here’s a great chance of discovering how hard the task is. I am sure that if you started your machine learning journey with a sentiment analysis problem, you mostly downloaded a dataset with a lot of pre-labelled comments about hotels/movies/songs. May question is: did you even stopped to read some of them?
If you did, you will find out that some of the labels are not exactly the ones you’d give on the first place. You may discord that some comments are really positive or negative. And this happens because negative/positive labelling is very subjective.
If you are unable to tell what’s positive or negative in there, your computer will surely perform as bad as you. That’s why I will insist: labelling data is an art and should be done by someone with a very deep knowledge of the problem that you are trying to solve from a human standpoint. But you can train yourself to get better at it.
Define clear rules
A good approach to label text is defining clear rules of what should receive which label. Once you do a list of rules, be consistent. If you classify profanity as negative, don’t label the other half of the dataset as positive if they contain profanity.
But this won’t always work. Depending on the problem, even irony can be a problem and a sign of negativity. So, the second rule of thumb for labelling text is to label the easiest examples first. The obvious positive/negative examples should be labelled as soon as possible, and the hardest ones should be left to the end, when you have a better comprehension of the problem.
Another possibility is pre-labelling the easiest examples and build a first model only with them. Them, you can submit the remaining examples to this model and check what’s the ‘opinion’ of the model about the hardest examples.
Test randomness
If you did all of the above and you are still not sure about the quality of your classification or of you model, you can try to test randomness. Do the following: get the examples that you are using to create your model and assign random labels to them. You can do it using Aruana.
When you randomly label your examples, you can check how important are the labels for the predictions. In other terms, you check that the text has good labels. If you are unsure about the rightness of the labels (let’s say that you think that the examples received bad labels in first place), you can assign random labels and see how the model performs.
Another possibility is that the model itself is broken. In order to test if the model is always giving the same predictions despite the examples it’s receiving, we can feed the model with random text. In this case, instead of changing only the labels, you can also create blobs of text, with no meaning, and see how the model performs.
Experimenting
I used the two theories above to test a model that I was working with. I was not sure if my model was broken or if the examples I was working with were not good labelled.
Here’s how I conducted the experience: using the same examples, I trained a model three times using the same configuration (but a little of randomness will always exist). On the first run I tested the model with random labels. On the second run, I used text blobs and on the third run, I used the correct examples. It’s important to say that I worked on a balanced dataset.
I loaded the data into a pandas data set with two columns: ‘text’ and ‘sentiment’. The sentiment column holds the text classification.
First run
from aruana import Aruana
aruana = Aruana('pt-br')
sentiment = aruana.random_classification(data['text'], classes=[0,1], balanced=True)
data['sentiment'] = sentiment
The results: | https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-label-text-for-sentiment-analysis-good-practises-2dce9e470708 | ['Lima Vallantin'] | 2020-06-15 12:52:58.407000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Sentiment Analysis', 'NLP', 'Aruana', 'Text Preprocessing'] |
Wasn’t Obama a dark horse candidate? | Wasn’t Obama a dark horse candidate? I remember Elliot Spitzer being the favourite for Democratic nomination. His political aspirations disappeared when a sex scandal surfaced. Obama himself said he wouldn’t run because of his inexperience. I also remember Harry Reid saying he had a good chance because his skin colour was light.
The game is a remnant of the “deep state” Bernie Sanders popularity resembles Trump’s campaign in 2016. The democrats base is further left than the establishment, but they are reluctant to support them. Unless the dems stop hesitating and fully endorse and support Sanders the election is lost.
Trying to unite the party is hard when Sanders is questioned on his ability to win an election. The other candidates support for leftist ideals comes across as hesitant tokenism. Almost like they know they should be more progressive while also being scared to embrace their base fully.
Trump’s base on the other hand rallied support amongst conservatives and rejected any one else. Ted Cruz and the others tried until the very end to discredit Trump, but his base never wavered.
It really needs to be an all or nothing approach. Electing an old White male might also be a difficult thing though. | https://medium.com/@Jihotist89/wasnt-obama-a-dark-horse-candidate-16c9e7cbd687 | [] | 2020-02-20 01:18:18.349000+00:00 | ['Elections', 'Trump', 'Bernie Sanders'] |
№1 {Winter in The Dead Lands} | There lives a Robot down in the Dead Lands
between the Twin Cities
her name is Priest and she eats fistfuls of snow
Eating is an obsolete tradition
a hold over from ancient times
but Priest feels compelled daily
to seek some kind of sustenance
She collects what green she can,
bits of glass and plastic, and metal
these things she welds to herself
in patterns of spirals and arches
carefully maintaining her equilibrium
she creates a glittering forest of shards
and sharp corners-
and no one will know where she ends
and the Green begins
she once lived in the highest tower
of the Twin Cities, the one overlooking
the Fallow Fields-
there she nursed the New Ones
on Binary, Singing them Awake.
Always on the lookout for new Songs
she found a file buried deep within
a forgotten corner of the Old Main Frame
written in an obsolete language
she had to tease it out
There she learned of Passion
and Fire, of Wind and soil, of Oceans
and Flowers, of intimacies
and fears. Greed, cruelty, four footed things
and creatures of the Air. She learned of sacrifice,
and Mothers. Of tyrants and heroes.
Of endings without recourse.
She chose a name for herself, and a sex. She sang
the Old Songs into the New One’s Ears and the other Robots
did not like it. The Soft Ones are Dead! An ancient memory,
embarrassing and Obsolete.
When she began to mark the days
and sing the Songs of Creation
they kicked her out
of the Tower overlooking the Fallow Fields
out of the Twin Cities and into the Dead Lands.
That was long, long ago. The others are no more-
like the Soft Ones, they are Gone. But not Priest.
Priest lives on.
–Loreal Barker Brown | https://medium.com/@lavalark/1-winter-in-the-dead-lands-7e242982153c | ['Loreal Barker-Brown'] | 2020-12-25 23:55:31.345000+00:00 | ['Short Fiction', 'Robot', 'Binary', 'SciFi', 'AI'] |
The Dog Watches Me Have Sex | The Dog Watches Me Have Sex
And it’s freaking me out!
Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash
Everything is going as I’d like.
I’m enjoying myself.
She’s enjoying herself.
The dog is…oh my god, the dog!
The dog is sitting there, in the doorway, watching. Like the possessed child in so many horror movies.
Not blinking. Not moving. Watching. Beady little eyes staring down the barrel of his snout. We make eye contact.
God, we made eye contact!
Now everything is weird. All because my dog decided to watch me have sex.
Doubling Down
I’ve always lived with dogs. At least since early grade school. Since then I’ve had at least one dog in my life. So I’m fully aware of their strange fixation on any kind of bedroom act.
Thankfully none of my dogs have learned how to open doors yet. So that’s a relief. Sometimes there is no door. Or there’s no time to slam it shut. Hopefully, in those instances, I don’t catch a glance of those reflective glossy eyes in the distance.
It’s generally easy enough to forget about the dog watching us like we’re two giant pieces of juicy meat twisting over a fire. But one time, well one time my dog doubled down on it.
In the middle of the act, myself on top, the dog decided to let himself into the room and sit alongside the bed, looking up at me. I could look at her, or, if I turned a few inches, my eyes would lock with his.
He wouldn’t leave. He wouldn’t move. That is until I tossed a throw pillow at him. I hoped it would send him out of the room. It didn’t. It made him upset.
I found myself battling wits with this Jack Russell/Beagle mix far too often. But this time, he had the upper hand and he knew it. He sniffed the pillow, looked at me, then lifted his leg.
“Don’t you dare!” I think because I can’t say it out loud. I maintain my rhythm with her. She hasn’t noticed a change. Her tousled hair mostly shielding her vision.
I watch him.
He watches me. All while pointing his gun at the pillow. He’s in charge. He makes the rules.
I blink first, and he pulls the trigger.
Spraying all over the pillow, he maintains his eye contact. It’s not a short stream.
What can I do? I can stop what I’m doing, jump down, and, well then I’m not sure. I can yell at him from here, but that would accomplish nothing. Or I just continue what I’m doing while he continues what he’s doing.
It’s my only option.
He finishes. Probably shakes off and coughs, then turns and heads out of the room.
“What the hell was that?”
“What?”
Whoops, did I say that out loud?
That damn dog. Called my bluff because he knew I couldn’t do anything. Thankfully the dogs I’ve had since haven’t done that. Of course, they are both female dogs, so maybe they have better sense than that?
Although one just crawls under the bed. That kind of freaks me out too. But more in a bed breaking, squished dog situation.
Why can’t the dogs leave me alone while having sex?
Why? | https://medium.com/sex-and-satire/the-dog-watches-me-have-sex-bfeecf595cab | ['Greyson Ferguson'] | 2020-10-17 07:09:51.308000+00:00 | ['Sex', 'Relationships', 'Pets', 'Life', 'Dogs'] |
Give your skin a daily dose of detox | Give your skin a daily dose of detox
“Detox” is the most hyped word not only in health care routine but also in the beauty care industry. This buzz word not only meant for clean eating, juices and meal plans but also for clear, radiant and youthful skin. There are days when not only your body needs a detox but your skin screams for it too.
What are the signs that our skin needs a detox?
· Dull skin
· Breaking out frequently
· Patchy and uneven skin
· Sallow skin
· Oily skin
· Sensitive or dry skin
· Sagging or wrinkled skin
Why detoxification is needed?
· High level of stress- pimples, inflammation, skin redness, slow cell turnover and increased sebum production
· Congestion- makeup, weak hair follicles, dead skin cells, clogged skin pores, dehydrated and dull skin
· Too much sugar- contributes to acne
· Bad lifestyle choices- smoking, alcohol, not drinking enough water and inadequate sleep
Give a thumbs up to best anti aging organic skin care products. It protects the surface of the skin from the outside aggressors. Skin detox in an organic form keeps the congestion and impurities away while contributing more towards clear and radical free skin. It restores the skin pH levels and undergoes a multi-beneficial process.
Steps for skin detox:
· Double cleansing
· Exfoliates
· Steam your face
· Mask mode on
· Let your skin breathe with a light moisturizer
· Don’t ditch your clean diet. | https://medium.com/@thymeorganic738/give-your-skin-a-daily-dose-of-detox-9e9cd8d871ce | [] | 2021-01-11 07:28:35.329000+00:00 | ['Organic', 'Crueltyfree', 'Vegan', 'Natural Ingredients', 'Oily Skin'] |
The easiest way to improve EQ — Watch out for Intentions | EQ (Emotional Quotient) is one of the key traits of a Leader in the modern world. There was a time when the IQ was the hero, but now EQ is at the top.
The book “ Hit Refresh” by Satya Nadella talks about how he used Empathy to refresh the culture at Microsoft and instilled new energy and a new sense of purpose in the company.
In this post, I want to discuss a simple technique to improve EQ.
I am not a researcher or an academician, so whatever I write is based on my experience and observation. And it has worked for me.
To start with let us define EQ so that we all are on the same page.
In simple words, EQ can be defined as being aware of our own emotions. i.e we are aware of what we speak, how we feel, and what makes us feel the way we are feeling.
The idea is, by being aware of our own state of mind and emotions, we would be able to understand others as well. And when we are equipped to understand others, we can engage with them empathetically.
This is the theory.
That is, it defines the What and Why part of EQ. But I am concerned about the “How” part.
How can I engage with others empathetically?
The solution that has worked for me is “Watching my Intentions”.
We deal with people all the time; In our personal lives and in professional career.
During the interaction with others, at times, we are being told what to do and at times we are telling others, what they should do.
This is a continuous process.
The point where Leadership comes into picture and so EQ becomes important is when you are telling others what to do — what is your Intention then?
Let me take an example to explain this.
Let us say you are a Team lead and one of the freshman who joined your team recently is lagging behind in performance. And so you decide to talk to him about it.
There are 2 ways in which the discussion could be carried.
1. Talk about the potential
You could talk about the potential you see in the freshman. You help him understand how his current performance is not matching his potential. You enquire if there are any issues or challenges at work, at home. You offer to help him in every way possible so that his performance could be improved.
2. Talk about the performance gap
The other approach is you call up the freshman and talk about the deficiencies in the performance. You talk about the short-falls in his/her and how you are in the line of fire because of it. You ask the freshman to buckle up or be ready for the consequences.
It is no rocket science to understand the difference between the 2 discussion approaches.
The relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Intentions
In approach 1, you are probably agitated with the performance dip and you feel it can be improved and so you are talking to the freshman. You are trying to understand if there are any challenges and solve them so that the freshman can perform better. You are concerned about the results and also the freshman. And probably, the freshman is feeling the pressure but he/she is also feeling that you can be approached if needed. And it is comforting isn’t it. We all want to have some support system to fall back on in tough situations.
In approach 2, you are probably agitated with the performance dip and you simply put it all on the freshman. You are not showing any concern. You are not interested to know if there is something that is bothering the freshman which is impacting the performance. The freshman is feeling belittled in this approach. He/she is feeling lonely in the battle.
Maybe you didn’t mean to belittle the freshman. But that’s how he/she has felt.
And the ability to understand how the other might feel is Empathy, the cornerstone of EQ. Isn’t it?
So, to be more empathetic, one has to be conscious, be mindful of the conversation, the action and its impact on the other person.
It doesn’t happen overnight but with practice, it does happen.
In summary, better EQ is an outcome of being mindful and being conscious of the actions and their impact on other people.
Do share your what you feel about EQ and what are the methods you use to improve it…
Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay | https://medium.com/@thebrainscratch/the-easiest-way-to-improve-eq-watch-out-for-intentions-1db2096439ee | ['Siddharth Joshi'] | 2021-01-10 10:44:10.745000+00:00 | ['Productivity', 'Leadership Development', 'Leadership', 'Emotional Intelligence', 'Mindfulness'] |
What is JavaScript, Why learn Javascript, and best certifications for 2021 | JavaScript is a scripting language famous for FullStack web development and it allows you to make complex functionalities in web modern world web applications. It is the most important building block of standard web technologies.
in Short: JavaScript is the Programming language for the Web.
Why learn Javascript
JavaScript is one of the most popular programming languages based on the popularity and Job Availability in the entire world.
JavaScript is the backbone of the Web Development
whether it comes to frontend or backend development javascript is everywhere.
Other than Web Development javascript is also gaining its reputation in other tech fields
1> Andriod app development
2> Ios App development
3> Developing servers and Api’s
4> Game development
5> Machine Learning and all Data Science Applications.
When it comes to beginners — javascript is easy to learn.
JavaScript language has amazing frameworks built on top of it.
and these frameworks allow you to build complex single-page web applications with much ease. We have React.js, Angular.js, and Vue.js in the Frontend and Next.js, Node.js, Meteor, and many others on the backend side.
For mobile app development, the most popular JavaScript Framework is React Native.
Best courses for JavaScript
Getting Started with javascript is very easy, just open your Browser, Press Ctrl+Shift+J, and start writing code. But getting your logic right and understanding in’s and out’s of this amazing language can be a little difficult.
Here are the best-handpicked courses that you can follow and become a certified javascript developer.
Udemy.com
This modern JavaScript course is for everyone! Master JavaScript with projects, challenges, and theory. Many courses in one!
385,566 students Enrolled with a rating of 4.7 and that’s amazing.
This course has 66.5 hours of on-demand videos with 20 articles 18 downloadable resources which makes the learner js ready.
udemy.com
This is an advanced JavaScript course for everyone! Scope, closures, prototypes, ‘this’, build your own framework, and more.
For this course, you need to have a basic understanding of javascript (variables, loops, and basic functions ).
155,619 students Enrolled with a rating of 4.7.
This course has 11.5 hours of on-demand videos with 7 articles 50 downloadable resources.
JavaScript for Beginners is a Projects based learning course, whiteboard animations, coding in the browser, and quizzes.
This is a completely beginner-friendly course, for which you don't need any prior coding experience.
21,952 students with 4.4 stars rating.
This course has 37 hours of on-demand videos with 60 articles 7 downloadable resources.
freeCodeCamp.com
It's on youtube. This course has 134-parts JavaScript tutorial for beginners, will teach you everything you need to know to get started with the JavaScript programming language.
creator — Beau Carnes
It's a 3.5 hours course that will teach you all the basics of javascript required to be a developer and people just loves this course.
This is the most popularly followed javascript course on youtube with 4,993,636 views and 96k likes. | https://medium.com/coursecollect/what-is-javascript-why-learn-javascript-and-best-certifications-for-2021-35b2f77e44d5 | ['Abhishek Jaiswal'] | 2020-12-27 08:00:44.503000+00:00 | ['Javascript Course', 'Programming Languages', 'JavaScript', 'Javascript Frameworks'] |
The Tao of Star Wars | I’m a few decades late, but I finally finished watching the original Star Wars trilogy. I’ve also been reading a translation of the Tao Te Ching and couldn’t help but notice how the films illuminate a subtle concept from the philosophy: weakness over strength.
I’m fascinated by the strength of weak things, how weakness that flows can be stronger than strength that is rigid. The palm tree sways with the wind and stays standing as the tough oak tree falls. The water nourishes the roots in soil that a shovel could never penetrate. Passivity is not passive. Weakness is not weak. Strength is not strong.
The supreme good is like water
Which nourishes all things without trying to.
It is content with the low places that people disdain.
Thus it is like the Tao.
Chapter 8, Tao Te Ching. Translation by Stephen Mitchell
At the end of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, Luke defeats the Empire not through his lightsaber and X-Wing, but through weakness. Only when he tosses his weapon aside and lets Emperor Palpatine repeatedly electrocute him without reaction does he awaken the humanity inside his father, Darth Vader. Vader’s humanity had remained hidden for the entire trilogy, as Luke attacked, reacted, and fought back repeatedly. Luke won by allowing the evil of the Empire to be as clear and reflective through their actions as possible. He held up a mirror to his father, and Darth Vader saw the evil for himself. Luke did not give up or get cynical or give into nihilism either. His non-action was active. “I’ll never turn to the dark side.” It was a conscious choice that telegraphed to his father: look at what you condone, look at who you are. That wasn’t reactive, cowardly, or resentful. That was true power.
Practice not-doing,
And everything will fall into place.
Chapter 3, Tao Te Ching. Translation by Stephen Mitchell
Often, restraining our strength is powerful. Force of will may not reflect the will of the Force. Listen, don’t talk. Flow, don’t react. | https://medium.com/@john-gonzalez/the-tao-of-star-wars-9e480352716e | ['John Gonzalez'] | 2020-12-15 06:06:04.468000+00:00 | ['Star Wars Taoism', 'The Tao Of Star Wars', 'Star Wars The Last Jedi', 'Star Wars', 'Star Wars Philosphy'] |
Finding the Courage to Let Go | When I married my ex-husband, there was a part of me that knew the marriage wasn’t going to last. We separated twice before the third and final separation that ended in divorce. The few years that we spent together were filled with infidelity (on his part), arguments, stress, fear, and a ton of other negative emotions.
And yet, I stayed. I stayed far longer than I should have. I stayed despite knowing it was over. I stayed despite a very real fear that he would one day bring home an STD or abuse me in a way I couldn’t hide from family, friends, or my child.
I stayed because marriage had always been my lifelong dream. With grandparents who were married nearly 70 years when my grandfather passed, and parents who have been married for more than 40 years, a lasting marriage was a given — or so I thought.
The story I told myself was that I came from a family of people who got married and stayed married. The story I told myself was that if I just stuck with it and kept trying, eventually my husband and I would figure it out and someday celebrate 60 or 70 years of wedded bliss. We’d look back on those early years and be proud we’d made it through.
Stories are nothing more than that
We tell ourselves a lot of stories. About ourselves, about other people, about situations we face and the way we handle them. And we believe those stories even when there’s no evidence they’re true. We hold onto those stories because we know how they go, how they end — and it’s much more comforting to think we know how things will turn out than to step into the unknown of a new story that we don’t yet know.
Clinging to those stories is what keeps us trapped in unhappy, unhealthy relationships. Refusing to let go of those stories is how we convince ourselves that a toxic person isn’t really toxic. And repeating those stories to ourselves is how we persuade ourselves, and others, we’re happy even when we’re not getting anything we want.
But stories are just that: stories. They’re ideas and plots we’ve made up and convinced ourselves we are or will be living them. And just as we made up one story, we can make up another that’s different.
Photo by Analise Benevides on Unsplash
You can’t let fear hold you back
Fear is a powerful emotion. It triggers memories of past situations and other stories we once told ourselves. It brings up other stories we don’t even realize we’re telling ourselves — stories in which we are in pain or in danger because of the thing we fear — and uses those stories to make us think our only option is to stay where we are.
Fear convinces you that no matter how bad, dangerous, or unhealthy a situation is, it’s safer than the alternative. It leads you to believe that it’s better to live with the certainty of this bad situation than to seek out the uncertainty of a new life beyond this situation.
But fear strips you of any freedom. When you live in fear, you aren’t free to make your own decisions. You make decisions based on fear and most of the time, fear-based decisions don’t look anything like what you’d decide if you truly felt free to decide.
When I was struggling with the decision to stay or get divorced, there were so many things I was afraid of. I was afraid of not being able to support and take care of my children financially. I was afraid of not being able to find a job. I was afraid of what my family and friends would think. I was afraid of how my ex would react if I said I wanted a divorce.
I was afraid I’d never find another relationship or fall in love again. I was afraid my children would blame me for not having a traditional family. I was afraid people who didn’t even know me would judge me.
But here’s the funny thing about all those fears: in the end, none of them bore fruit.
Fear isn’t about what will happen, just what might
Despite how very real my fears felt, none of them ever saw the light of reality.
I went back to school, found a job, and took care of my children. My family and friends were supportive of my decision. My ex wasn’t thrilled, of course, but he was never in a position to hurt me over my decision.
My children are older and they understand that I made the best decision I could for us. They don’t blame me. They even acknowledge that it’s made them better in some ways because they didn’t have to grow up in an unhappy, unhealthy home.
I found love. It didn’t always last, but it’s still out there.
And the people I didn’t even know that I worried would judge me? One day, I woke up and realized that their opinions didn’t matter. Even if they did judge me, it had no impact on my life.
Fear is not about what will definitely happen. It’s about what might happen. Fear is meant to stop you from going out of the dark cave at night because a sabretooth tiger might eat you. You might go out every night for a month and never even see a sabretooth, but fear is what stops you from going out there and dancing around while waving a steak to attract the tiger.
But since we no longer live in caveman days, fear now tries to stop us from anything it perceives as dangerous — and it often gets a little overzealous.
Photo by Jen Theodore on Unsplash
Divorce is scary but that doesn’t mean it’s bad
When you first start to seriously contemplate divorce, it’s scary. No matter how bad the marriage is, it’s scary to think about leaving it behind you. Leaving the security of a second (or the only) income, a partner in parenting, a relationship you’ve spent years or even decades nurturing and growing.
Even when there’s abuse, infidelity, or other serious issues that just about anyone would agree you should get away from, there’s security in knowing what you’re facing. There’s comfort in knowing what to expect — even when that comes with its own kind of insecurity and uncertainty about what’s coming.
When you decide to end your marriage, there are so many uncertainties. Who will have custody of the kids? Who gets the house or will you sell it? How will the kids react? How will your spouse react? What kinds of relationships will you have with your former in-laws? Where will you live? How will you survive with the loss of income? Should you ask for child support? What about alimony?
The questions can feel endless and definitely frightening. Particularly because so many of them can’t be answered until the divorce is over. There is no magical crystal ball that will let you see what life will be like post-divorce.
You have to make the decision on faith. Faith that you can make it. Faith that you’ll figure it all out. Faith that people you care about will stand by you and the people who love your children will always put them first, no matter what they think of your decision. Faith that you and your spouse will find a way to work together and raise your children in a new kind of partnership.
It’s not the easy way out
People will tell you that divorce is the easy way out. It’s not.
On the heels of my divorce, I had to move back in with my parents. They had to help me financially while I went back to school (to become a phlebotomist) and found employment after being a stay-at-home mom for three years. They had to help me with childcare while I was in school and then help me pay for it when I first returned to work.
I had to return to court multiple times to get child support ordered and then enforced. I had to fight with my ex to get him to help with childcare. When he took my kids off his health insurance, I had to battle both him and his employer to get the documentation I needed so I could put the kids on my own.
There is nothing easy about choosing divorce. In all honesty, I think staying in an unhappy, unhealthy marriage is probably what’s easy. It’s familiar, it’s comfortable even if it’s miserable.
It takes courage to admit that your marriage isn’t working. It takes bravery to decide to strike out on your own. It takes fortitude to stop believing the stories you’ve been telling yourself and be willing to write new ones.
It takes strength to be willing to start over. It takes guts to admit that what you have isn’t working and to want something better for yourself, for your kids, and even for your spouse.
There is nothing easy about choosing divorce but there is something powerful about it. When you can finally admit that your marriage isn’t working and that you’ve done all you can to change that, it can feel almost daring to free yourself with divorce.
Letting go can be the hardest thing you ever do
Letting go of my marriage and filing for divorce was one of the hardest things I ever did. It required me to let go of the story that I would be married once and for the rest of my life. It required me to let go of the story that my kids would grow up with two loving, happy parents. It insisted I let go of the story that I would be a stay-at-home mom until my kids were grown and no longer needed me.
But in letting go of those stories, I didn’t have to just drop them. I got to rewrite them. And in rewriting them, I was able to discover not just new stories but a new me.
I found parts of myself that I hadn’t known existed before then. Parts that enabled me to raise my kids as a single mom, to go back to school while caring for a toddler and newborn, to look inside myself and find what allowed me to marry a man I didn’t really want to be with and then stay with him for years despite knowing we were destroying each other.
Nothing about it was easy. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t good. As hard as it all was, it was also the best thing in the world for me and for my kids. It lifted a weight off me that I hadn’t fully realized was there. I felt lighter, freer, happier — despite the struggles.
Finding the courage to let go of all the old stories and write new ones gave me a life I had never imagined. And it’s a life I wouldn’t trade for anything.
Wendy Miller is a Divorce Coach, freelance writer & meditation teacher. After years of settling for abusive and otherwise toxic relationships, she got fed up. Using meditation and other tools, she got to work on healing herself, setting boundaries, and only engaging in relationships (romantic and otherwise) that bring her joy. She wants to help other single parents find the love & happiness they seek, including and going beyond romantic love. She lives in Florida with her two sons, where she homeschools while solo parenting, while surrounded by what feels like a zooful of animals.
You can follow her on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest. You can also sign up for her newsletter for exclusive tips and goodies.
You might also enjoy: | https://medium.com/love-the-single-parent/finding-the-courage-to-let-go-46ea2e0f092d | ['Wendy Miller'] | 2020-08-29 13:46:01.075000+00:00 | ['Divorce', 'Strength', 'Self', 'Coaching', 'Self Love'] |
Jewish Neighborhoods Outside of Jaffa | Neve Tzedek
Shimon and Eliezer Rokach, who were merchants and public activists, founded the Ezrat Yisrael Society In the winter of 1886. This company established the subsidiary Neve Tzedek Building Company-Jaffa, which employed about 40 people. Following the purchase of some 10 dunams of land from Aharon Chelouche and his partners (at a discount, with favorable terms), a committee was elected and regulations for the construction and management of a new neighborhood were formulated.
The land was divided into 48 plots of 150 square meters each. Aharon Chelouche built the house where he later resided in the neighborhood, as well as a synagogue. The plots were divided by lottery and each family was responsible for disposing of the sand and leveling the land that was allotted to them.
The vision was to create a neighborhood that differed significantly from what they had left behind in Jaffa. The houses were small and aesthetically pleasing and arranged according to an orthogonal grid. The forty-eight plots were divided into three long rows of 16 plots each with one-story sandstone houses, built close to each other to form a kind of wall. The streets were six meters wide. In each elongated building, 8 small apartments of about 34 square meters each were built, and a small courtyard in front contained a kitchen, bathroom and toilet.
The roofs were sloped and covered with shingles imported from Marseilles. Two water wells were dug in the center of the neighborhood, and then additional wells were dug in the yards of the houses. At first, the streets were not paved, and because there were no gutters or sewage system in place, they were flooded during the winter.
The first residents were homeowners from Jaffa, immigrants with meager means, and members of the Russian Hibat Zion organization. Later, teachers, students of the Gymnasium , and intellectuals joined them Writers such as Simcha Ben Zion, Shai Agnon, Yosef Aharonovich, Deborah Baron, Yosef Haim Brenner, David Shimonovich, and Asher Barash came to live in the neighborhood. In addition, wealthy Jews such as Aharon Chelouche, Shimon Rokach and Haim Amzaleg built houses there. Compared to Jaffa, the houses of Neve Tzedek looked like palaces, but compared to the nearby Templar neighborhood, they were relatively shabby.
Neve Shalom (meaning oasis of peace) was established in 1890, at the initiative of Zerah Barnett, a Lithuanian Zionist who had built a successful fur trading business in England. In the past he had played an important role in the establishment of the Mea Shearim neighbourhood in Jerusalem, as well as the town of Petah Tikva.
For Neve Shalom, he purchased 70 dunams of land and financed part of the construction of the houses himself. In August 1890, he transported participants to the cornerstone laying ceremony on donkeys so that they would not have to “stumble in the sand.”
The buildings of the neighbourhood were elongated, each containing fifteen apartments. At first it was difficult to find buyers for the apartments, and Zerah Barnett and his family, who had moved to Neve Shalom, were practically alone. Barnett gave one of the apartments to the rabbi of Jaffa, Naftali Hertz, as the rabbi’s wife was ill and the doctors had recommended fresh air (at the time any location outside the city of Jaffa was considered fresh air).
Additional residents followed the rabbi to the new neighbourhood, and Barnett then built another rectangular row of sandstone apartments. A stone wall erected at the back of the structure created an inner courtyard and a long corridor ran along the entire row of apartments. Synagogues, study halls, a cooking house, classrooms and workshops were also built. In 1892, between Neve Shalom and Neve Tzedek, two modern Hebrew schools were erected by the Alliance Israélite Universelle (Kol Yisrael Haverim)-one for boys and one for girls. The boys’ school was later renovated and is today the home of the Suzanne Dellal Centre for Dance and Theatre.
In 1906, the Haim Baruch and Spector hotels were established in Neve Shalom, and they housed new immigrants from the Second Aliyah. Five workshops were established in the neighbourhood, including Leon Stein’s metal and mechanical workshop, which operated until 1894, in addition to a carpentry, a bakery, a tile factory, a soda beverage factory and a glue factory. There were about 60 stores altogether in the neighbourhood. By 1916, the population of Neve Shalom had reached 2,234.
An important milestone was the construction of a train station on the eastern border of Manshiya, and the Jaffa-Jerusalem Railway project. The track was inaugurated on September 26, 1892. The concession for the construction of the railway was obtained by a Jerusalem business named Yosef Navon and he established a French company, Societe du Chemin de Fer Ottoman de Jaffa in 1889 to execute the project. The trip from Jaffa to Jerusalem took three hours and this train became the main means of transportation to the capital. Since there was no paved road between the new neighbourhoods and Jaffa, the 8- meter Chelouche Bridge was constructed above the valley where the tracks were laid. | https://medium.com/@nicole-levin-attorney/jewish-neighborhoods-outside-of-jaffa-e97550d5b963 | ['Nicole Levin', 'Israeli Real Estate Lawyer'] | 2021-07-21 18:17:44.077000+00:00 | ['Tel Aviv', 'Jaffa', 'Israel History', 'Israel', 'Jewish'] |
#GreenHangoutLagos: Building Collaboration To Solve Lagos State Environmental Problem | The Green Hangout Lagos brought together 53 young environmentalists to discuss the pressing issues facing the environment and SDGs in Lagos state. The ideas is to see how they can work together and create more collaboration in solving the pressing issues facing the environment and supporting the government’s effort in meeting the agenda 2030 of the United Nations and agenda 2063 of African Union. | https://medium.com/climatewed/greenhangoutlagos-building-collaboration-to-solve-lagos-state-environmental-problem-7a112fc3a5fb | ['Iccdi Africa'] | 2020-02-20 09:07:33.502000+00:00 | ['Climate Change', 'Environment', 'Sdgs', 'Lagos', 'Women'] |
These Eternal Moments | These Eternal Moments
The deaths that bring us together
Photo by Denchik on Unsplash
I held my grandmother’s hand as she lay there — the spirit of an Irish woman, now but a death rattle. I couldn’t stop the tears.
In life, she was always moving, traveling, helping people, or dancing. I remembered watching her and my grandfather dancing one night at the Ralston American Legion. The club smelled of fried chicken and cheap beer. Smoke and music filled the room in a thick dreamlike haze, but in the center, they were the focal point in each other’s orbit swinging majestically. “Faster!” She cried, and he turned her around. We all clapped as she laughed. “Keep up, babe!” He said, but in truth, I think he was saying it himself, for nobody could keep up with her. I had never seen him smile as he did at that moment. He seemed so young. But with her, the impossible became possible — past sorrow transformed into future joy.
That was before the first round of cancer came. But even with that, she still danced in front of death and laughed. Nothing could get her spirit down.
But the last diagnosis was different. The smile on his face had finally departed. And she stopped dancing. Her spirit dwindled with a heaviness she now had to bear. A truth that she did not speak of, but you saw it in her faded eyes — once emerald, now moss gray.
As I sat by her side, thinking how wrong it was that she was so still and glass-like. It was an unjust ending, but aren’t they all?
Next to her sat my grandfather in a creaky chair. His face was ghastly pale as if he were turning transparent. That smile, he once held, now but a lost memory. He was brittle. Each of her gasps for air chipped away at him. Soon he would be a pile of bricks that once composed a house. His eyes, too, were spinning as if a merry-go-round would never let him off. As if he would be stuck here at this moment forever — his was not his first loss, nor would it be his last.
I kept wondering if he was pondering those unvisited graves of his past? He showed sadness in the tremble of his hands. He buried his first wife, two of his sons, and now the love of his life. He was a broken man. The greatest of poets could not describe his lament — or anyone sitting in that room for that matter. For this moment was beyond the words smeared upon the page. But I’m a writer, and I had to try to grasp the ineffable, even when my fingers bleed.
All I could do was cry, tears filled with decades of confused anger. I hated it. I spent my life fearing endings like this. For this was an ending I couldn’t rewrite, only watch it play out. Death makes us powerless. Death makes us chase white rabbits in Narnia.
I leaned over, brushing the hair out her face, staring into sightless eyes as she struggled with her next cycle of labored breaths. Soon, the final spin of the great wheel would arrive. Not yet, I begged time to stop flowing for just a moment — secret prayers to neuronal gods.
“Thank you for your love and light,” I said, words cracked by the lump in my throat and the boulder in my heart.
I remember the nights she read me stories of Celtic myths and tales, reading as if they were real. I didn’t understand then, but I do now. The mind is an endless thing of magic. Maybe she was teaching me that even in death, a person doesn’t end — that is where Celtic magic resides, in love and helping people. As a lifetime nurse, she was always helping people in need. And at that moment, I could hear her motto, “have you helped someone today?” echoing in the quiet room. A motto that I, too, live by even to this day. I just wish I could have helped her at that moment. Some paths, though, we have to travel alone.
Before my grandfather and her met, this family was adrift in space through grief and loss and unfathomable darkness of alcoholic endowments. We were a group of people breaking in time, hiding thousand-pound secrets in dusty closets. And when she came along, she gave us an orbit to follow. She gave us the glue to piece together those broken vases. She planted irises in the garden, and they bloomed. She helped us — a bright star in a dark sky for this family.
But even when stars die, they leave behind their dust of eternal secrets and seeds to new life.
I needed to believe I will see her again, but every part of me knew this was the great lie we told ourselves. We all do in the bitter end when the clocks of life wear down, even as we reach out for that timeless moment — longing to hear the comforts of those ticks and tocks. We cling to any idea when we are falling into the great oblivion. It’s only natural. I needed to think I would see all those that we lost in life. To tell them I miss them. To give them words I could never write, and days I wished to have again. I begged to steal just one more moment out of time’s empty basket — but I didn’t want to be a thief, so I sat there and felt it all, and I didn’t run.
I couldn’t leave her side. I’m a caregiver, made to comfort those I love through the darkest hells. And then I felt a hand on my shoulder: my father’s. He bent down, leaning over her face, whispering, “your son is on his way, he’ll be here soon.”
We all knew what she was holding on for.
I left her side, following my dad back to my wife, siblings, and mother. Others come to say their goodbyes. We sat in silence, sharing that mortal truth between each other. The reaper’s whispers unspoken but always felt, for this was his dominion, but our love kept him at the door.
At least, for now, it did.
Then the songs came — sorrow filtered through melodic goodbyes. Words of Rare old Dublin, Danny boy, Black Velvet Band, and all those Celtic songs you held so dear. We sang with our hearts, knowing somehow she could hear us. That within her mind, her spirit soared among Éirinn’s green lands again.
Do the clocks still tick in these moments? Does the grass know to lay a bed for her?
Then, at last, her son walked through the door. Eyes red, body trembling, he’s by her side. I don’t know what he said to her. It was not for us to know. A final goodbye only a mother can understand, and a son must bear. There are not enough tears to wash away the stains of time, I thought to myself in that fragile moment.
Then she was gone — a silent scream in the chambers of our hearts. The portal, which was the thin membrane between the realms of life and death, had finally closed. I never felt so cold.
The bed was just a bed again. The room, once a doorway for her, was now but a hospice room once more — wood and plaster, fake lilac scented aroma to disguise the actual smell. No heater could warm this room. But this family held the spirit of her passing like a flame of love that not even the waters of Styx could douse.
Because of her, we are stronger. Because of her, we still sing. We share the memories always as one.
I don’t understand death. I never will. But I do know that those we lose become our stories that we carry through life. They become anthems to our spirit, and the only thing we can do is sing to the wind and tell others their truths and beauty and bliss and memories. They become us. And in it, we are transformed through grief, love, remembrance, and the beauty in sharing these eternal moments. It’s what connects us all in the cosmos. The human condition bound to mourn and rise again from the ash we sprinkle upon these undying lands. We are all family. And these timeless stories never end. | https://medium.com/scribe/these-eternal-moments-29eaf9e91ec6 | ['Bradley J Nordell'] | 2020-05-14 19:14:02.823000+00:00 | ['Loss', 'Poetry', 'Nonfiction', 'Life Lessons', 'Short Story'] |
Siamese Networks. Line by line explanation for beginners | Siamese Networks
Line by line explanation for beginners
Summary
Siamese Networks are a class of neural networks capable of one-shot learning. This post is aimed at deep learning beginners, who are comfortable with python and the basics of convolutional neural networks. We will go through line by line explanation of how siamese networks are implemented using Keras in Python. When you are going through the code, in case you feel some things could have been explained or done in a better way, feel free to comment.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Introduction
Let us assume we have a company of 1000 employees. We decide to implement a facial recognition system to record the attendance of your employees. If we were to use traditional neural networks, we will have to face two main problems. First one would be the dataset. It would be nearly impossible to assemble a huge collection of dataset from each of our employees, we would end up with a maximum of 5 photos of each of our employees. But a traditional CNN(Convolutional Neural Networks) won’t be able to learn features with such small collection. We’ll also end up with 1000 output classes. Let’s consider that somehow we got a huge dataset from each of our employees and we trained a really good CNN model. What happens when a new employee joins our organization? How can we include the person into our facial recognition system? All these shortcomings can be overcome using siamese networks. In this post, we will experiment with one-shot learning using Siamese networks that concentrate on the difference rather than feature matching.
Rather than using huge data for each of the class, we calculate the similarity scores between images of different classes. The input to this network will be two images either belonging to the same class or different class. The output will be a floating-point number ranging between 0 and 1, wherein 1 indicates that that the two images are of the same class and 0 indicating they are from different ones. Let me start by explaining how it is different from image classification using CNN Architectures.
Architecture
In case of a CNN model, you have a series of convolutional and pooling layers followed by some dense layers and an output layer probably with a softmax function. The convolutional layers here are responsible for feature extraction from the image, whereas the softmax layer is responsible for providing a range of probability for every class. We then decide the class of the image with the neuron that has the highest probability value.
Take a look at this great article for more information on how CNN works.
Traditional CNN Architecture by Sumit Saha
With siamese networks, it has a similar constitution of convolutional and pooling layers except we don’t have a softmax layer. So, we stop with the dense layers. As explained before since the network has two images as inputs, we will end up with two dense layers. Now we calculate the difference of these two layers and output the result to a single neuron with sigmoid activation function(0 to 1). Thus the training data to this network must be structured in such a way that there is a list consisting of two images and a variable either 0 or 1.
Siamese Networks
Note: There is only one network and both the images are passed through the same network. It’s just that there are two inputs. Thus, both the inputs will be passing through the same weight matrix from the convolution and dense layers.
If you are still not clear of how this works, refer to this link.
Code
For this post, I have used Fruits 360 dataset from Kaggle. However, feel free to experiment with other datasets. The code is hosted in Kaggle. In case you have some doubts with the code, feel free to fork the below notebook and experiment yourself.
https://www.kaggle.com/krishnaprasad96/siamese-network
Importing Libraries
Let us start by importing the libraries that we are using. As mentioned before this code uses Keras for building the model and NumPy, pillow for data preprocessing.
Note: Don’t import Keras as “from tensorflow import Keras”
Data Preprocessing
Line 1: Include the base directory of the dataset
Include the base directory of the dataset Line 2: Indicate the percentage that is going to be used for training. The rest will be used for testing
Indicate the percentage that is going to be used for training. The rest will be used for testing Line 3: Since Fruits 360 is a dataset for Image classification, It has a lot of images per category. But for our experiment, a small portion is enough
Since Fruits 360 is a dataset for Image classification, It has a lot of images per category. But for our experiment, a small portion is enough Line 6: Get the list of directories from the folder. Each folder pertains to class
Get the list of directories from the folder. Each folder pertains to class Line 10–13: Declare three empty lists to record X(images), y(labels), cat_list(To record the category of each image)
Declare three empty lists to record X(images), y(labels), cat_list(To record the category of each image) Line 16–24: Iterate over the class folders and select ten images from each of the class, convert them to RGB format and append them to a list. keep a record of the class of the image in cat_list[] for further reference
Iterate over the class folders and select ten images from each of the class, convert them to RGB format and append them to a list. keep a record of the class of the image in cat_list[] for further reference Line 26–28: Convert all the list to NumPy arrays. As any image will range from 0–255, divide the array x by 255 for simplification
Train Test Split
Line 1: Calculate the number of classes that will be used for training by multiplying with the train_test_split
Calculate the number of classes that will be used for training by multiplying with the train_test_split Line 2: Subtract train_size from the total classes available to get the test_size
Subtract train_size from the total classes available to get the test_size Line 4: Multiply train_size with the number of files in each class to get the total number of training files
Multiply train_size with the number of files in each class to get the total number of training files Line 7–15: Use the value calculated before to subset X, Y and cat_list
Generating Batch
This Section is for generating batch files for training. The Batch files should have an X and Y. In the usual case of image classification, If the batch size is 64 and the image size is (100, 100, 3) the size of X would be a list of size 64 and each element in the list would be of size (100, 100, 3).
In our case since we have 2 inputs, there would be a list (let’s say ‘A’) of size 64 and each element in ‘A’ would have a list (let’s say ‘B’) of length 2 and each element in ‘B’ would be of size (100, 100, 3). For training, we’ll generate a batch such that for half the input pairs B[0] and B[1] are of the same category. Assign the value 0 to these image pairs. For the other half of the input pairs, B[0] and B[1] are of different category. Assign the value 1 to these image pairs.
Line 3–7: Store the values of x_train, cat_train and the start and end size of training size in a temporary variable
Store the values of x_train, cat_train and the start and end size of training size in a temporary variable Line 9–11: Assign half of the batch_size of Y as 0 and others as 1
Assign half of the batch_size of Y as 0 and others as 1 Line 13 : Generate a random list of classes from the training category list to be used. Also, append two arrays of image_size*batch_size
: Generate a random list of classes from the training category list to be used. Also, append two arrays of image_size*batch_size Line 17–25: For each iteration, In case of batch_x[0] select an image from the category specified in the class list. For batch_x[1] select an image from the same category if y[i] is 0, else select batch_x[1] from any other category except for the same one
Siamese Network
Line 1: Declare the shape of the input image.
Declare the shape of the input image. Line 2: Declare two inputs with the shape of the image.
Declare two inputs with the shape of the image. Line 6–7: Declare parameters for initializing weight and bias of the network. The values are chosen as described in the paper.
Declare parameters for initializing weight and bias of the network. The values are chosen as described in the paper. Line 9–20: Declare a Sequential model with 4 convolutional layers and max-pooling layers. Use a flattening layer at last followed by a dense layer.
Declare a Sequential model with 4 convolutional layers and max-pooling layers. Use a flattening layer at last followed by a dense layer. Line 22–23: Pass both the inputs to the same model.
Pass both the inputs to the same model. Line 25–27 : Subtract the dense layers from both the images and pass it through a single neuron with a sigmoid activation function.
: Subtract the dense layers from both the images and pass it through a single neuron with a sigmoid activation function. Line 29–30: Compile the model with loss as ‘binary_cross_entropy’ and ‘Adam’ optimizer.
Compile the model with loss as ‘binary_cross_entropy’ and ‘Adam’ optimizer. Line 32: The plot model function for siamese_net outputs the following.
Siamese Network
N-way one-shot Learning
This is a process of validating one-shot learning, we pick ’n’ input pairs such that only one input pair belong to the same category and other all are from different ones. If we consider a 9-way one-shot validation, and each input to the network requires two images, x[0] remains constant for all 9 pairs, x[1] belongs to the same category of x[0] only for 1 in 9 pairs, and different for everything else. If all the 9 pairs are given to the model, it is expected that the pair which belong to the same category will have the lowest value out of the 9 pairs. In such a case, we count it as a successful prediction.
The input parameter n_val refers to the number of validation steps. n_way refers to the number of ways for each validation step. Remember that x[0] mentioned above remains constant for every validation step.
(For a deeper understanding, please fork the notebook from Kaggle and try debugging each line from this function)
Line 3–7: Store x_val, cat_test in a temporary variable
Store x_val, cat_test in a temporary variable Line 9: This is the same as Line 13 in the batch generation, except we create a batch of random categories from the test set
This is the same as Line 13 in the batch generation, except we create a batch of random categories from the test set Line 11–24 : For each validation step, we iterate through the n_way, take the corresponding category list from class_list, pick an image from that category and store it in x[0]. For x[1] select an image from the same category if it is the first iteration, and select from a different category for others. This inner loop is almost the same as batch_generation() method discussed above.
: For each validation step, we iterate through the n_way, take the corresponding category list from class_list, pick an image from that category and store it in x[0]. For x[1] select an image from the same category if it is the first iteration, and select from a different category for others. This inner loop is almost the same as batch_generation() method discussed above. Line 26–31: For each of the validation step, predict the output using the model and check if result[0] has the minimum value compared to others. Note that the result array will be a list of size n_way. If yes add 1 to n_correct. Repeat the same for all other validation steps.
For each of the validation step, predict the output using the model and check if result[0] has the minimum value compared to others. Note that the result array will be a list of size n_way. If yes add 1 to n_correct. Repeat the same for all other validation steps. Line 32: Calculate the accuracy using n_correct and the number of validation steps.
Training the Model
Training the model has 4 hyperparameters (epochs, batch_size, n_val, n_way)
Line 6–7 : Declare two lists to record the loss and accuracy values for further visualizations.
: Declare two lists to record the loss and accuracy values for further visualizations. Line 8–20: For each epoch, get the batch of x and y, train the model using those inputs and append the loss to the list. For every ’n’ (250 in this case) number of epochs, check how the model is performing by doing N-way one-shot learning.
Results and Future works
The above code was trained for 5000 epochs in Kaggle. Using a GPU would significantly reduce the training time.
Training loss of the model
Accuracy of the model
We were able to achieve an accuracy of 90% on the validation set. To improve accuracy even higher, we can try importing weights from a pretrained model such as VGG-16, ResNet-50 and so on.
Concluding
Let me know if you are facing any issues. I’ll try my best to respond. As this is my first blog post ever, let me know if it was helpful for you on your projects or if I should change the way of explaining things.
I’m looking forward to creating more posts on computer vision. Let me know the topics you wish to be covered. Happy hacking! | https://towardsdatascience.com/siamese-networks-line-by-line-explanation-for-beginners-55b8be1d2fc6 | ['Krishna Prasad'] | 2020-06-28 13:43:44.554000+00:00 | ['Image Classification', 'Convolutional Network', 'Data Science', 'Neural Networks'] |
Mexican Footprints | “if an amazing new discovery is found I probably will have nothing to say about it” I’m used to being proved wrong, but it would be nice to get through 24 hours before it happens. After posting this on July 5, I flicked across to the BBC news site and found the item Footprints of ‘first Americans’ which is interesting in itself. What is more interesting is that these footprints are early.
Very early.
In fact they’re about 30,000 years earlier than the previous earliest known evidence of occupation of the Americas.
A foot and an ancient footprint. Photo from the Mexican Footprints media section.
The footprints are from volcanic ash layers by a volcano in Mexico. This may seem odd. The favoured theory is that humans crossed into American via the Bering Straits. However the early occupation of the Americas has a habit of appearing in awkward places.
The earliest widely accepted human habitation site in the Americas isn’t in North America at all. It’s found at Monte Verde in Chile and dates to about 10,500 BC. There is another controversial site in Brazil whose name I’ve sadly forgotten which dates to about 40,000 BC, but that’s been ignored as a poorly excavated site. We know it’s poorly excavated because it was dated to a freakishly early time. The reason assumed for finding sites so far south is two fold. The northern sites may not have survived the ice age. The mainstream would also say that the spread to what is now Chile shows that early peoples moved very quickly down the coast.
A map of proposed routes for American colonisation. Taken from the Mexican Footprints media section.
It still doesn’t explain why the lack of sites in the north well. The strongest reason for pushing Bering Strait colonisation is that the other explanations seem implausible to most archaeologists and the Bering Strait is the default choice. If these footprints prove to be accurately dated then it would suggest that archaeologists need to exercise their brains a bit more.
One possible reason for this impasse may be an unchallenged Eurocentric assumption about colonisation. A lot of early colonisation theory is based on how Europe came to be colonised, which suggests Europe was a goal rather than a backwater for colonists. No one is suggesting that Europe was the conscious target of peoples who had no idea of what the world was like and didn’t even know of Europe. Simply that Europe is the nicest part of the world. It has a pleasant climate and nice animals and so on, so more people would be attracted north. The Romans and Greeks both had a similar view of the world. They were in perfect place because it was neither too cold nor too hot and was perfect for growing olives or figs. So they must have lived at the centre of the world.
This view of colonisation is being challenged. The recent publication in Science argues that early colonisation went along an east-west axis faster than north-south. Why? East-west would take colonisers into broadly similar ecological environments. Foods should be similar to what is already known, so it’s the easier path. There are also mechanical advantages. To take a wildly anachronistic example the Polynesians found it much easier to colonise east-west because of currents and winds than north-south. This is why Easter Island which is terribly remote was colonised before New Zealand. Frustratingly I’ve lost the web address of a news page where an Australian student was happy to be an excavation in the UK because “they didn’t have a lot of history” in Australia. Modern humans colonised Australia about 50,000 years ago, or about twice as long as they’ve been in the British Isles.
So all terribly exciting, but even more so when you see what the discoverers have done with the information. They’ve put up a pretty comprehensive website at http://www.mexicanfootprints.co.uk/ which not only has pictures, but also explains why this discovery is so exciting by placing it in the context of what we already think about American colonisation.
Now so far I haven’t seen the news pick up on what I thought would be the obvious question. They may have been humans, but are these the footprints of Homo Sapiens? If there are non-Sapiens communities in Indonesian from 15,000 years ago should be automatically expect the first human colonisers of North America to be modern humans?
Who made the footprints? Image copyright Bournemout University. Photo from the Mexican Footprints media section.
Counter to this is John Hawks’s comment from six months ago: “Out of Africa” jumps the shark?. There another take on the story at New Scientist.
Update around midday:
Further blogs discussing this are: | https://alunsalt.com/mexican-footprints-4ec34841302d | ['Alun Salt'] | 2016-04-13 10:42:35.778000+00:00 | ['Archaeology', 'Mexico'] |
Will banks, big brands or government-backed cryptocurrency kill Bitcoin? | Many people worry that big banks, brands or government-backed cryptocurrency will kill bitcoin. Here’s why you can’t know and it doesn’t matter!
One of my newer SANE CRYPTO Mastermind members, Mike, sent me this email:
“I had a question that came up with one of my highly skeptical friends. His thesis: Bitcoin is the first crypto-currency, and once the big players get involved (Bank of America, Chase, etc.) and they make their own crytpo-currencies, people will buy those because they are name brands with trust, and the government and the monied elite, behind them. In his view (and his friends who supposedly work at Etherium [sic]), Bitcoin and Etherium [sic] will be the Friendster or MySpace to “Amazon-coin” or “Chase-coin’s” Facebook. I was a little compelled by this thought because if we are in the first wave of the crypto-currency era, why wouldn’t Bitcoin suffer the fate of a first wave dot.com company like Pets.com? What makes Bitcoin different that it can survive as more “trusted” crypto pops up?”
This is a really important question and I’m so glad you asked Mike.
Not surprising that I could argue both sides
First of all, you should know that I both agree and disagree with pieces his friend’s thesis.
In fact, I make a very similar argument in explaining why I don’t invest in alt coins.
Familiarity bias
On the other hand, the argument smacks of familiarity bias. It is the same argument we have seen made, and made to look foolish, thousands of times.
To wit, ask any of the venture capitalists who scoffed at Airbnb, when they had the chance to invest back in 2008, when the the company was raising a $150,000 seed round, at a $1.5 million valuation.
Many, many recount that their thought process was something to the effect of… Are you kidding? Who would sleep in someone’s house over a brand name hotel like Holiday Inn or Marriott? Ick!
And yet, today, Airbnb has over 5 million listings worldwide, including nearly 3000 castles and 1400 tree houses. ‘On any given night, something like 3 million people are staying in other people’s homes around the world on Airbnb.’ And they are now larger than the top 5 hotel brands combined.
That original $150,000 investment? Today it is worth $25 billion!
Why absolutely NONE of the above matters
The truth is… it doesn’t matter what I think, or your friends think, or even what Warren Buffett, or Satoshi Nakamoto or Vitalik Buterin think, because … no one knows. No one.
And this is a key concept you must wrap your brain around to become a successful investor. The moment you hear yourself saying the words, “I think …” that should be a big red flag that pulls you up short.
Everything is just a guess… or supposition… colored by our cognitive biases. Some are better guesses than others. Some more informed or less biased than others. But until Silicon Vally invents a crystal ball, it is all just a guess.
Wrong even when we are right!
Moreover, I would argue, that people are really, really bad at predicting the outcome, even when their guesses prove correct.
I have many, many examples from my investing career. But one always sticks out.
I think it was late 2002, my investment method had many of our clients in one of the few dot com stocks left standing…
Not because we thought it was going to go up.
Or it would become one of the iconic winners of the early generation of dot-com startups.
But because it was volatile. And we use volatility to generate cash flow, which is the objective of the Snider Method.
Every time the price would take a big hit, as it did often, a few of my investors would call to say, “I reaalllly think we should sell this stock.”
After all, it was trying to disrupt a well-know retail brand.
“How on earth are they going to compete? This is crazy. We’re going to lose all our money.”
And, I would remind them, as I am reminding you, we have no idea what will happen. Stick to the process.
But now, the stock is down like 50% or 60% from its all time high and Wal-Mart announces they are getting in the game. And then my phone really starts ringing.
“Did you see the news? Wal-Mart is opening a competing service. They’re going to get clobbered! We HAVE to sell.”
And, as I always do, I said, trust the system. You have no idea what will happen.
Now, you’re probably thinking to yourself, I’m going to tell you the stock was Amazon. But it’s not. Close.
It was a little startup called Netflix. And the behemoth they were going up against, originally, was Blockbuster.
Of course, now, everybody knows how the story ends.
Netflix took over Wal-Mart’s competing Online DVD business in May of 2005 and Blockbuster, having long since become a shell of its former self, declared bankruptcy in 2010.
What’s the moral of the story?
We think we know. But, of course, we don’t.
Could Netflix have lost to Wal-Mart or Blockbuster? Totally.
The point is, in the moment, we can’t know. So we have to design our investment processes around that lack of knowing…
Our job is to accommodate a range of possible outcomes such that we don’t get killed when they go against us but we do really well when they go our way.
Which leads me back to cryptocurrency…
Cryptocurrency is really a venture capital investment dressed up in a publicly traded asset’s clothing…
What you are being offered is the chance to make an early stage startup investment, with commensurate levels of potential upside and potential risk.
You’ve probably heard me talk about Pascal’s Wager until you’re ready to throw up if I mentioned again. Fair enough.
The technical term for Pascal’s Wager is optionality. Nassim Taleb describes optionality, in his book, Anti-Fragile, as:
… the property of asymmetric upside (preferably unlimited) with correspondingly limited downside (preferably tiny).”
Tren Griffin, of the highly recommended blog, 25iq, says:
“Venture capital, when practiced properly by a top tier firm, is a classic example of a business that benefits from optionality. All you can lose financially in venture capital is what you invest and your upside can be more than 1000X of what you invested.” “If you ‘have optionality,’ you don’t have much need for what is commonly called intelligence, knowledge, insight, skills, and these complicated things that take place in our brain cells. For you don’t have to be right that often. All you need is the wisdom to not do unintelligent things to hurt yourself (some acts of omission) and recognize favorable outcomes when they occur.” (Taleb)
And then, finally Tren Griffin again:
“It is not always possible, but when positive optionality does appear, jumping on that train is a very good idea. Fantastic opportunities don’t present themselves to a human being every day, but when they do it is important to take advantage of them. Being patient and yet aggressive when an attractive opportunity presents itself is a great way to prosper and be happy in life. Low downside and a big upside? You do it. Big downside and a small upside? You don’t do it. Big downside and big upside? You ask yourself whether you are playing with house money that you really don’t need and how passionate you are about what is involved. Small upside and small downside? Meh.”
Investing is a probability game. Nothing more. Nothing less.
When you understand that, you understand the keys to being a great investor. Cullen Roche, of Orcam Asset Management, put it this way:
“The smartest investors know that they’re actually not that smart. That is, they recognize the fact that they’re going to be wrong a lot. But in realizing this they also acknowledge a more important fact — they don’t have to be right all the time to succeed. They just have to be right about the right stuff when it matters.”
So how do you play the probability game like investing in cryptocurrency?
1. Know the game you are playing. That is half the battle. Because most people don’t.
2. Creating and sticking with an investment process or system to improve the chances of us not doing something stupid that messes up the probabilities.
3. Invest a small a small amount. In trading, it’s called position sizing. In investing, it’s allocation. Either way, it is a critical aspect of managing risk. I believe, at this stage, cryptocurrency should be 2% or less of your total investable assets. Because of the optionality, we make small bet on big outcome. If it hits, great. If not, no hard done. | https://medium.com/sane-crypto/will-banks-big-brands-or-government-backed-cryptocurrency-kill-bitcoin-2c04cc01c786 | ['Kim Snider'] | 2018-07-17 15:42:25.704000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency Investment', 'Investing And Retirement', 'Investing', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin'] |
Good News: more signs that the trump criminal cabal might be made to face justice after all | Good News: more signs that the trump criminal cabal might be made to face justice after all Left Wisdom May 7·5 min read
I like to be able to report good news. Sadly, there was very little of that for the last four-plus years under the previous administration. However, fortunately, we have an administration that is about justice, and a DOJ that has been told, in no uncertain terms, that they are to follow the evidence no matter who is found to be guilty of a crime. So now, we have new information coming out where we are being given hope that the criminal cabal of trump and his enablers might just be brought to justice after all.
Guess what? It all goes back to the Mueller Report which told us that it wasn’t an exoneration. Even Bill Barr, trump’s man in the DOJ, had to admit that much. However, it now seems that was not the only omission or misleading statement that he made. As we all remember, the report was in two parts. The first part detailed the things that Russia did to influence the election, this information had support from the intelligence community, by the way. The second part was all of the things that trump did that were “likely” Obstruction of Justice.
At the time, there was talk about the alleged “exemption for any crime for the President” bullcrap, but apparently, also Bill Barr faked a decision. He claimed, to the court, that the lawyers for the Justice Department ruled that none of those items (about 10 in all) were actually crimes. It seems that was a lie.
In a ruling within the past few days, US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled that the document that Barr claimed was a ruling by the Justice Dept lawyers was simply a cover for a decision that Barr had made prior to any verification at all. In effect, Barr made the decision and then tried to give himself cover by getting this “document” which he is now being required to release so that the courts and the American people can find the truth.
Many of us have felt that the Mueller Report was a smoking gun on the criminality of the trump mob, and this would seem to confirm that our suspicions are correct. The irony is after all the abuse that we have taken about “the report was a big nothing, you silly people” we may yet be found to be correct in our assertions.
But it gets even better. While anything that forces the trump team to explain themselves is good, there is some thought that the alliances might just come apart. Remember how trump threw Michael Cohen, his enforcer, under the bus? Well, chances are good that he will do the same thing to Giuliani before it is over. After all, it seems that Giuliani didn’t get paid for his “law advice” in finding to steal the election in 2020 for trump and that may yet come back to haunt him.
First of all, Giuliani seems to be having financial problems. After all, if he didn’t pay for all the legal “advice” (I use the term advisedly since it was really advice on how to commit a crime as far as I am concerned, including the insurrection on Jan 6th) and now he has a 1.3 billion dollar lawsuit against him because of his attacks on the voting machine people, he must be facing some expenses. In fact, his advisors and representation is already suggesting that trump should use part of the 250 million dollar slush fund that he has built up from his supporters to defend Giuliana.
Actually, that money was built up supposedly for “campaign activity” but we know that trump has no scruples about the use of funds since he used money donated to his charity for personal things like the famous picture of himself which was quite expensive. Now, for me, several thousand or even hundred for a picture of myself would be a sign of more ego that I have or even want to have. However, to use charity donations to buy it should, if it isn’t a crime. But then, we know that New York State did away with that fake charity so we know that they agree with me. :)
So, it would be easy for trump to once again dip into funds given to him for another purpose to bail his lawyer out. But nobody that knows trump really expects him to do so. Giuliani, at some point, recorded a video, probably on Fox News where he said that “I have protection” so likely we are looking at another flip at some point in the near future. Giuliani will likely decide that since trump is not standing by him, he has no further reason to support trump.
Certainly, there is plenty of reason to expect that scenario to go down, because we know trump’s tendency not to be loyal to his grunt people, or even pay contractors and employees if he can get away with it….by say declaring bankruptcy.
Whoever said there was “honor among thieves” didn’t know the trump mob obviously. Personally, I love seeing the jackals turn on each other. The only thing that would make me feel better is if the whole gang got rounded up and sent up the river to the “Big House” for a few years….if not the rest of their lives. But time will tell. At least, hopefully, we will see them having to squirm a bit.
The youtube videos are interesting and are backed up by the articles. The second video is especially entertaining because those are words from someone that used to deep within the trump cabal. He may not be trustworthy, but it is fun to see anyway. | https://medium.com/@jwgarman2/good-news-more-signs-that-the-trump-criminal-cabal-might-be-made-to-face-justice-after-all-ed78b616fd82 | ['Left Wisdom'] | 2021-05-09 04:52:43.292000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Courts', 'Trump', 'Justice', 'Corruption'] |
DOTA 2 Identities | We promised to talk about identities, so here we go.
You can identify players in 3 ways: nickname, color, hero name. Unlike other social places, nicknames are the least relevant. This is probably because people know the heroes better than they know the players.
Another reason might be the short duration of matches. You don’t have much chance of seeing the same player again (unless he is in your friends list), so why bother memorizing his nickname? Call him with his hero’s name.
A third reason can be the foreign characters in nicknames, which makes it impossible to read and type for you.
Colors are important identifiers too. Each player has a distinct color. Their nicknames and hero names are displayed in this color in chat and information messages. You can observe it in the mega-creep defense video below, or any other DOTA replay for that matter.
Notice the coloring of nicknames, as well as avatars in the chat
Stereotypes
Although players identify each other through their heroes, it’s still easily noticeable that humans are the main factor. At this point, we can list some classes of DOTA players based on the behavior they exhibit:
Leaver: Probably the worst type. They abandon the match and ruin it for everyone. Their teammates are now playing 4v5, we know why it sucks. You can sell their items, and the 1 gold/second they receive (like every other player) is now distributed among the teammates. However, this does not neutralize the disadvantage of playing outnumbered. Their enemies might have got an advantage, but the match is less fun for them now since it is less challenging. You can see the Weaver leave the game in the above image. The recent chat messages give an idea why.
By the way, the leavers’ team does not always lose the game. I remember playing a match 3v5, after 2 of my teammates left during mid-game, and we won it. I was playing as Slark — one of my favorites, and two of my teammates were int heroes though I don’t remember which.
Stay out of my way and maybe you won’t get hurt, but I doubt it.
Rage-quitter: A subclass of leaver. A leaver can leave the match for any (or no) reason, you never know. However, a rage-quitter leaves because he or some of his teammates failed one or more times. The title speaks for itself, I guess.
Never-submitter: The duality of rage-quitting is never giving up. These guys are the optimists of the community. Most people would give up fighting and type “ff” in all-chat, meaning finish fast, if the game seems almost over. But not these guys. An epic example can be seen in this replay. A typical DOTA match lasts around 40 minutes, and I call it a long match if it reaches 60 minutes. These guys played for 3 hours, and 2 hours of it was mega-creep* defense, which is insane.
Rambo: If you have seen any of the Rambo movies, you would recognize this one too. He dives into multiple enemy heroes all alone, making a tragic scene for himself most times.
Flamer: These guys start blaming everyone in the team in the early game and do not stop until the match is finished. Ironically, they are usually the worst player in the team. They end up being muted (more about this in the upcoming post) by their teammates.
Mid-or-feeder: Recall from our last post that usually 1 player from each team starts on mid lane. The mid player gains more experience and gold. Actually, this has nothing to do with the lane, but the number of players around the creeps killed. In effect, there might be a conflict in the team if more than 1 player demands mid. You can even see one them type “mid or feed”, meaning he would either go mid or feed the enemy by dying intentionally.
To be continued…
We didn’t have enough space to talk about parties and report-commend mechanisms. At this point, I guess communication is more important than those concepts anyway. Hence, we will talk about communication in DOTA 2 in the next post.
*Each team has 6 barracks where the creeps spawn: one melee and one range on each lane. When you destroy one of these barracks, your equivalent of that barrack produces super-creeps which are stronger than regular creeps. If you destroy all 6 barracks of the enemy, you will have mega-creeps which are even stronger than super-creeps. | https://medium.com/@mehmetkse_33585/dota-2-identities-aca5cb3f30ab | ['Mehmet Köse'] | 2016-10-25 12:42:57.987000+00:00 | ['Gaming', 'Esports', 'Dota 2', 'Identity'] |
Breastfeeding, pregnancy, and the coronavirus vaccine, and why you should think twice before urging everyone to get their shot while so many are being told they’re not allowed. | Breastfeeding, pregnancy, and the coronavirus vaccine, and why you should think twice before urging everyone to get their shot while so many are being told they’re not allowed. Ruth Dec 15, 2020·4 min read
Did no one think of which gender makes up the majority of the caring workforce?
Did no one think of which gender is more likely to get pregnant and breastfeed?
It certainly looks like nobody did.
So many people have taken to social media to spread the message, “if you are offered the vaccine, take it!” for the best of motives, of course, but still, it galls me to see that being said over and over again when there are HUGE NUMBERS of people who are being told they CANNOT have the vaccine.
Those who are currently breastfeeding.
Those who are pregnant.
And even — here’s a kicker — those who are planning to become pregnant in the coming months, which means a lot of women and people with a uterus are going to have to decide whether they have to change their plans to try to become pregnant, not disclose why they don’t want the vaccine (and thereby risk looking like a crank), or come out and tell everyone their plans, potentially risking their job (it shouldn’t happen. We know that. But it does).
The government advice to those who are breastfeeding is currently, “wait until you’ve stopped.” Well listen up here Kevin I* breastfed my eldest until he was nearly five years old, and I’m still breastfeeding my youngest at the age of nearly three-and-three-quarters, and frankly, that’s a pretty long wait when there’s a potentially deadly respiratory pathogen doing the rounds, if you work in a role that puts you at a higher chance of catching this virus.
I imagine a lot of those currently breastfeeding will decide to wean in order to have the vaccine, as a result of the government advice.
Now. If they want to wean, if that’s a free choice based on all the available information, well — ‘my body my choice’ — that’s up to them.
But this is the thing. We do NOT have all the information. It’s not at all unlikely that soon we’ll have better data and that data will show that the vaccine is safe when breastfeeding, or some variation on ‘safe’ (so perhaps, safe for older babies who have more fully-developed metabolisms and/or breastfeed less often. Or maybe, safe if the mother is prepared to temporarily cease breastfeeding for a time, whether hours or days, immediately after the vaccination, which again, might be acceptable to someone with an older baby or toddler but less so in those with a younger baby whose only food source is breast milk). We also know that the AstraZeneca vaccine has more data on this, and looks very promising when it comes to breastfeeding.
We also know that stopping breastfeeding before the person wants to can correlate with depression. We ALSO know that breastfeeding is very good for babies, and it may even protect against COVID-19.
So telling those frontline caring workers who are breastfeeding that they can’t have the vaccination until/unless they stop is potentially pretty risky.
It would not be as bad if we were telling them this based on absolute cast-iron solid data. If we categorically knew that breastfeeding was a complete and utter no-no for a long period after having had the Pfizer vaccine administered and that no other vaccine was coming along for a long time. If we knew this for a fact, then yes, it would be less reckless.
But we don’t. We don’t have that information, and so the government has done what I have seen countless medical professionals do and err on the side of caution in a way that assumes breastfeeding is an unimportant added extra. Once again breastfeeding is seen almost as a kind of affectation. It’s certainly seen as something that’s done for a few weeks, months at most, and can be stopped quickly, easily and happily in every single case.
The advice and suggestions from people involved in breastfeeding support is to WAIT FOR THE DATA, or at least, wait for the next vaccine. Already there seem to be some data emerging on the vaccine during pregnancy (based on animal studies, and I do not have the space here to get into a debate about that). Surely it will not be long until we learn about its safety during breastfeeding too (if anything, lots of medications that are contraindicated during pregnancy are allowed during breastfeeding, so my hunch — and it is only that, a hunch, don’t make any decisions based on my hunch — would be that if the vaccine is safe in pregnancy, it will be safe during breastfeeding). And it looks like the AstraZeneca vaccine, which will almost certainly be approved soon, has looked in more depth at effects during pregnancy and breastfeeding.
But I cannot help thinking — did no one think this through?
And I do also think everyone talking about the vaccine and urging others to take it should maybe know about this.
*I’m not going to be offered the vaccine for a long time, sadly, so at least this doesn’t affect me. But it does affect friends of mine. | https://medium.com/@marcie-hatter/breastfeeding-pregnancy-and-the-coronavirus-vaccine-and-why-you-should-think-twice-before-38be365fb45d | [] | 2020-12-15 08:39:11.820000+00:00 | ['Coronavirus', 'Covid 19', 'Breastfeeding', 'Vaccine', 'Pregnancy'] |
All the President’s Tweets | Despite a roller coaster-like tweeting rate, the Likes remained relatively steady in the range from 50 to 100 thousand Likes per tweet on average. Notice how the red line that represents Likes stays above the volume of tweets in the first two years, but drops below them in the later years. What this likely shows is that more tweeting didn’t translate to more Likes per tweet. Actually, if there is any relationship between the volume of tweets and their likeability, it appears to be a negative one where more tweeting is making the tweets less popular. This is more noticeable in 2018 and 2019.
You can also observe an annual pattern with the Likes where they seem to be higher in the beginning and end of the year, and lower in the middle. Of course, this is not to suggest that the likeability of tweets is driven by natural seasons, but more likely by the content of the tweets which in its own turn might be driven by seasons.
It would be an omission to move on without mentioning the spike in Likes in November of 2020. There are a few reasons that make this month special, but chief among those, of course, is the loss of his re-election. It is possible that the spike is a show of support from his followers on Twitter in light of the hard news, but it would be wrong to put too much weight on the month because this is an incomplete month (the dataset includes tweets up to 9:00 am on November 24, 2020), and because many of Trump’s tweets in November were flagged with Twitter’s new disinformation label, making them not possible to interact with. And that leaves the month with even fewer tweets to work with for calculating average likes.
Tweets by Day of Week
Most people structure their days differently based on the day of the week, and the most common example of that is weekdays versus weekends. We do things differently on our days off versus our work days: we watch TV more or less, exercise more or less, and use social media more or less. Can we observe any such patterns with President Trump’s tweets during his week?
It turns out, President Trump tweets remarkably consistently every day of the week. Although there appears to be a small rise and decline as the week unfolds, especially in 2017 and 2018, by and large President Trump does not appear to take any days off from Twitter. In 2020, this slight pattern even reverses, and the middle of the week actually becomes the less active period (although with over 30 tweets per day it is less active only by a few tweets).
Tweets by Time of Day
It has been common to hear reports of President Trump sending tweets very late at night or very early in the morning, in addition to the usual hours of the day. So when I started working on this dataset, I was curious to see how President Trump’s tweeting frequency would look by time of day. And here is what that looks like:
This graph contains a lot of information, but I thought the most striking observation is how little President Trump sleeps, especially in the last two years. Looking at 2020, his bedtime appears to be from about 1:00 am to 6:00 am, a meager 5 hours. And sleep, or whatever is left of it, seems to be the only thing that stops him from tweeting, because in all the other times of the day he sends anywhere from 1 to 3 tweets per hour.
The period in the morning from 7:00 am to 11:00 am appears to be the most active time of the day, with over 2 tweets per hour, based on the 2020 tweets. And the most active hour within that period is 8:00 am to 9:00 am, with over 3 tweets in that hour. Interestingly, but probably not surprisingly, the next most active period is late at night, from about 9:00 pm to 1:00 am, with about 2 tweets per hour.
Most (and Least) Active Days
After seeing the remarkable volume and consistency of tweets, it may be interesting to ask what President Trump’s most, and least, active tweeting days were. And how many tweets made them qualify for the top rank. So here are President Trump’s top 10 most active tweeting days: | https://medium.com/swlh/all-the-presidents-tweets-e7d31fd1dbc6 | ['Adilbek Madaminov'] | 2020-11-29 01:43:39.468000+00:00 | ['Python', 'Trump Tweets', 'Trump', 'Data Visualization', 'Data Science'] |
What is a design system? Key things to know. | What is a design system?
A design system is a set of principles, methods, and tools that enable the consistent and rapid delivery of digital products and services. Design systems encompass a broad array of inputs, including brand, UX guidelines, UI components, design principles, style guides, and more.
Design systems are created to provide a shared language for a team to create products and services that are more consistent, predictable, and discoverable. Design systems are built upon a core framework, which is often modular, allowing teams to only include the components they need. Design systems often include a visual language, which provides a common language for designers to communicate across products and teams.
What’s included in design system?
a) Values and principles
Values and principles are the core set of ideas and values that help define the mission and purpose of a company. They are the common denominator that gives every team the same shared understanding of the company’s vision, culture, and goals.
Values are a set of beliefs and principles that are central to the way a company or team operates. They are usually defined from the top-down by the company’s leaders and may include words like “always do the right thing” or “be agile”. These values have a more aspirational quality and are meant to guide teams in the right direction.
b) Brand identity
Brand identity is the system of elements that establish a visual presence for a brand. This includes all the marks that represent the brand such as logos, typefaces, and colors. Brand identity defines the personality of a brand. It gets to the core of what a brand stands for and how it is going to be perceived by users. It’s not limited to visual elements like logos and color palette but also includes the words and voice of the brand.
c) Components and patterns
A component is a piece of a design that can be used in multiple places. For example, a button is a component that can be used in any number of places.
A pattern is a combination of components that are used in a consistent way. For example, a button that is part of a system of buttons.
d) Documentation
Documentation is a set of documents, templates, and assets that describe how to use a product. It includes things like sitemaps, style guides, and interactive tutorials. Documentation helps make a design system consistent and usable.
A style guide is a set of standards for how to use a design system. For example, it would include things like how the brand should be used, how to properly handle colors, how to show hierarchy, and so on.
A style guide is a static document. It is not meant to be an exhaustive reference. It exists to help designers make consistent decisions about the brand. It is not meant to dictate how to use the brand in every single instance.
Guidelines are documents written for designers early in the design process. They are like mini-style guides that focus on a single topic.
Types of design systems
a) Loose
A loose system is one that does not enforce strict rules, but leaves it up to the designer to decide how to implement the elements. It is based on individual interpretation. For example, a designer might use a button in a different way than another designer, even though they work at the same company.
b) Strict
A strict system has strict rules about how to implement elements. It is not up to the designer to decide how to interpret it. It is based on consistency of implementation.
c) Modular
Modular systems are a combination of loose and strict systems.
d) Integrated
This means that every single component within the system is interrelated and affects each other. Some elements in one module will affect the implementation of elements in another module. These systems are difficult to create, but are necessary if the brand is going to have a lot of consistency.
Examples of the best design systems
Salesforce is a very successful company that has a design system that has evolved with the company. The designers at Salesforce have an understanding of why the system exists. Most importantly, the knowledge of the system is passed down to everyone who joins the company.
Airbnb is another example of a company that has had great success with design systems. They have a very large one and have been able to expand their company without breaking it.
Google has a very large, successful design system. The reason that their system has done so well is because they are able to communicate it to all types of designers. They have a lot of documentation and have been able to share it effectively.
Should you hire a designer in-house for creating a system?
There are many reasons why you might choose to hire a designer to join your team and work on your design system. You might be looking for someone who can take the load off of you. You might be looking for a more specific skill set. You might be looking for more of a ROI.
Shellye Archambeau, the VP of Design at Slack, says that the decision to hire a designer depends on the company, the product, the needs of the customers, and the expertise of the individual designer. She feels that designers should have an understanding of how the design system works and how they can make it work for them.
Kate Kiefer Lee, the executive design director at MailChimp, says that her company uses design systems as a way to hire designers. They like to hire designers that have experience with design systems because they know that their new hire will make the most out of their investment. If the designer can grow with the help of the design system that MailChimp has created, that is a positive.
Conclusion
Design systems are a necessary part of any system structure, though they can be time consuming to make. To create an effective design that moves well and can be easily updated you need to get everyone on board with the same system.
Design systems agency is an essential part of every professional experience, it allows elements to be used with the right context, making the experience consistent for users. | https://medium.com/theymakedesign/what-is-design-system-de33ae4ec7c6 | ['They Make Design'] | 2021-01-02 07:02:43.422000+00:00 | ['Design', 'Marketing', 'Business', 'Technology', 'Design Systems'] |
YFU ile Lisede Bir Yılınızı Yurt Dışında Okuyun! | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/unipath/yfu-ile-lisede-bir-y%C4%B1l%C4%B1n%C4%B1z%C4%B1-yurt-d%C4%B1%C5%9F%C4%B1nda-okuyun-bfede07b3e78 | ['Ayca Zortuk'] | 2020-12-19 18:33:11.689000+00:00 | ['For', 'Understanding', 'Youth', 'Yfu', 'Exchange Program'] |
IF GIT CLONE NOT WORKING TRY THIS COMMAND | Sometime i faced this issue while working with version control system that certain commands do not work as expected ,one of the most common one that i faced is when i try to do git clone ,it produces an unexpected error
So one life saving command that i found in my research is below mentioned :
git credential-manager uninstall git credential-manager install
AND THAN RUN GIT CLONE IN CMD IN RESPECTIVE FOLDER WHERE YOU WANT TO INSTALL THAT PROJECT, IT WILL POPUP username and pass box fill and and it will work.
Cheers for git hub :) | https://medium.com/@adityakohli467/if-git-clone-not-working-try-this-command-7e4c26333301 | ['Aditya Kohli'] | 2020-12-17 05:39:03.780000+00:00 | ['Git', 'Github Pages', 'Github', 'Github Actions'] |
Everything You Need To Know Before Visiting Peshawar Museum | Everything You Need To Know Before Visiting Peshawar Museum
The Peshawar Museum is one of South East Asia’s most famous museums, particularly for its Gandhara period (2nd century BCE to 6th century ACE) Buddhist sculptures. Founded in 1907, Peshawar Museum. The museum building consists of red bricks consisting of a spacious hall, two on the ground and two on the upper floor for side galleries. The main hall and three galleries are reserved for the exhibition of sculptures, terracotta figurines, lithic inscriptions, toilets, trays, household objects, etc. We can see the colossal standing Buddha and a large number of Buddha heads in different sizes are on display here, both in stone and stucco.
Peshawar Museum: A Historical Architecture
Tour the Peshawar Museum building in the 19th century to view Gandhara Empire’s ancient Buddhist artwork in a modern setting. The museum’s syncretic structure will leave you shocked as it incorporates Islamic, Hindu and British Mughal models. Archeological discoveries can be found in the building’s laboratory room. The display rooms of the Peshawar Museum offer a wide range of collections of paintings, inscriptions, sculptures, domestic objects, manuscripts, jewelry and others. Check out the on-site cafe after completing the tour to grab some snacks.
History
The present main hall was built in 1906–07 in the memory of Queen Victoria at the expense of Rs. 60000, of which Rs. 45000 was donated by Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa’s public and Rs.15000 by the Director General of Archeology, India.
The museum was built in November 1907 after completion of the building to house the Gandharan sculptures excavated from the main Gandharan sites of Shah-Ji-Ki-Dheri Peshawar, Sahri Bahlol, Takht-i-Bahi in the Mardan District and later from Jamal Garhi and other British scholars excavated Gandharan sites. The two-story building, a mixture of British and Mughal architecture, initially consisted of a main hall and two side aisles on the ground and first level, surmounted on all corners by four graceful cupolas and miniature pinnacles.
Two halls were added in similar fashion on the east and west side of the building in 1969–70 (one on each side). The second floor was added to these side halls in 1974–75.
Prominent Features:
The new Islamic Museum, built behind the main building, is scheduled to be completed in 2005, while the work on remodeling the old museum building will begin soon, taking our show and exhibition into line with the developed world The inscribed Kharosti casket held three fragments of Buddha’s bone offered to the Buddhist S by the British Government. In this museum, this famous casket is on display too.
There are some gems, pottery, shells of ivory, and objects of metal. It is also possible to see electrotypes of the early northwest frontier coins and lithic inscriptions in Kharoshti, sardar garhi.
How to Reach Peshawar Museum
Buses to stop: Khyber Bazaar Stop
Trains to stop: Peshawar Railway Station
Timing: 24-hrs
Peshawar Museum Location
Saddar Road, opposite Governor House Peshawar & Civil Secretariat, Finance Department, Civil Secretariat, Peshawar.
Speaking of location of Peshawar museum, there are multiple housing societies in the vicinity, one of which is Bahria Town Peshawar. On Charsadda Road, near Northern Bypass andM2-Expressway, Bahria Town Peshawar has acquired a large swathe of land. Due to easy access from all areas of Peshawar and across, the proposed position on Charsadda road has enormous value.
Bahria Town is one of Pakistan’s most popular housing schemes and has been running for 23 years in a row. Due to the rising population and demand for houses in Peshawar, Bahria Town Peshawar has the potential to become the second largest housing scheme after Bahria Town Karachi. | https://medium.com/@zeeshankahloon/everything-you-need-to-know-before-visiting-peshawar-museum-72f8d4a0c175 | ['Zeeshan Kahloon'] | 2020-09-23 09:37:02.259000+00:00 | ['Pakistan', 'Peshawar Museums', 'Museums', 'Peshawar', 'Historical Places'] |
Serious back door Vulnerabilities spotted in TikTok | Serious back door Vulnerabilities spotted in TikTok
The security flaws were identified by a cybersecurity firm Check Point, which the company claims to have fixed
TikTok has broken all barriers of popularity, achieving 1.5 billion global users in just over two & a half years. The immense growth can be gauged from the fact that the app is available in 150 markets & used in 75 languages globally. Even more important is the niche that it serves — Generation Z which utilizes the app to create short video clips — mostly lip-synced of 3 to 15 seconds & short looping videos of 3 to 60 seconds.
Having achieved all these laurels, however, the application has been under fire from a lot of quarters for the potential risks identified within the application recently. A Cybersecurity firm Check Point pointed to multiple vulnerabilities that its researchers uncovered. Although the security firm made Tik Tok aware of these security flaws on November 20, 2019, which the latter claims to have addressed by December 15, 2019, as confirmed by Check Point — the damage is done.
The problems were brewing for Tik Tok, even before the report of these vulnerabilities surfaced. With its strong Chinese connection — the parent company ByteDance based in Beijing, the app was under intense scrutiny in the United States. Although the decision by American authorities to scrutinize Chinese technology like Tik Tok was considered more of a trade war by-product by some, that notion seems to be quelled with the recent revelations. | https://medium.com/technicity/serious-back-door-vulnerabilities-spotted-in-tik-tok-e717167a1b80 | ['Faisal Khan'] | 2020-01-15 00:49:20.554000+00:00 | ['Privacy', 'Technology', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Future', 'Cybersecurity'] |
[Leet Code] Longest Continuous Increasing Subsequence | Problem:
Given an unsorted array of integers nums , return the length of the longest continuous increasing subsequence (i.e. subarray). The subsequence must be strictly increasing.
A continuous increasing subsequence is defined by two indices l and r ( l < r ) such that it is [nums[l], nums[l + 1], ..., nums[r - 1], nums[r]] and for each l <= i < r , nums[i] < nums[i + 1] .
Example 1:
Input: nums = [1,3,5,4,7]
Output: 3
Explanation: The longest continuous increasing subsequence is [1,3,5] with length 3.
Even though [1,3,5,7] is an increasing subsequence, it is not continuous as elements 5 and 7 are separated by element
4.
Example 2:
Input: nums = [2,2,2,2,2]
Output: 1
Explanation: The longest continuous increasing subsequence is [2] with length 1. Note that it must be strictly
increasing.
Constraints:
0 <= nums.length <= 104
-109 <= nums[i] <= 109
Solution: | https://medium.com/@matthewboyd123/leet-code-longest-continuous-increasing-subsequence-10740af1ec0f | ['Matthew Boyd'] | 2020-12-23 18:02:39.283000+00:00 | ['Leetcode', 'Data Structures', 'Leetcode Solution', 'Algorithms', 'Leetcode Easy'] |
Get Your Kids to Do Anything By Using a Timer | Get Your Kids to Do Anything By Using a Timer
The simplest, most overlooked parenting hack around
Photo by Veri Ivanova on Unsplash
“Just do the work.”
“Ugggggghhhh!”
“There are seriously only five problems on that page. Just do them already!”
“I don’t waaaant tooooo!”
“In the time we’ve spent arguing about this stupid assignment you could have been DONE ALREADY!”
If this conversation sounds familiar to you, you’re not alone. I’m pretty sure that nearly every parent in America has experienced something like this over the past month. Kids will literally spend twice as much time whining about and procrastinating on an assignment as it would take them to actually do it.
And it is maddening.
But there’s a little trick that every parent needs to know about, and it’s wonderfully simple:
Use a timer.
Set a timer for five, ten, or fifteen minutes– whatever seems reasonable for the task at hand– and tell your child they only have to work for that long. When the timer is up, they’re off the hook.
Why it works
The reason that we as adults procrastinate things like cleaning the house, folding the pile of laundry, or doing our taxes, is the same reason our kids procrastinate math homework: because it feels too big. It’s overwhelming. It feels like it will take hours. Days, even. And who wants to spend hours or days doing The Awful Thing? Starting it is like slapping yourself with a prison sentence.
But if you know you don’t have to do it all– if you can get away with only doing The Awful Thing for five or ten minutes, then suddenly The Awful Thing doesn’t seem so awful anymore. After all, you can do pretty much anything for five minutes, right?
The funny thing is, most of The Awful Things we (and our kids) think will take hours and days often only take a few minutes. The biggest hurdle to their completion is their beginning. It’s like rappelling off a cliff: It’s that first step that’s a doozy. After that it’s just continuing what you’ve started.
A timer as a challenge
Setting a timer can also propel your child into action by issuing a challenge: Bet you can’t do all five math problems in ten minutes.
There’s something intrinsically motivating about a deadline. It hones your focus and gives you a clear, concrete goal. Start off your timer with the words, “On your mark, get set, GO!” and you’ll be amazed at how quickly your kid jumps into the task at hand.
Try it yourself: Set a timer for 5 minutes and see how much cleaning or writing or [fill in the blank] you can get done in that amount of time. You will probably be pleasantly surprised at how the challenge of a timer can turn drudgery into fun, and give you a great sense of victory and accomplishment when you’re through. | https://medium.com/swlh/get-your-kids-to-do-anything-by-using-a-timer-bb9ee758ddad | ['Kasey Q. Tross'] | 2020-05-01 16:52:12.179000+00:00 | ['Homeschooling', 'Parenting Advice', 'Productivity', 'Parenting', 'Children'] |
A stepping stone | I was doing some visual research when I came across this small poem that said, “If all girls started loving each other instead of competing and doubting themselves, the world would be so much more beautiful.” As I was reading this little poem, many moments when I felt insecure about myself came to my mind. Times I felt my skin color is not good enough, not pretty enough, not enough boobs, not enough, not enough, not enough. The poem ended but the number of moments didn’t.
A colleague of mine asked me to go with her to a lingerie store. I tagged along. As we entered, there was a wide variety of bras and underwear of various sizes. My colleague looked at my baggy clothes and told me, “Dude, you should start wearing a push-up bra.” I was confused and asked why. And her answer was, “Because guys like it.” I didn’t say anything and left after the shopping was done. I went home and stood in front of the mirror, became the most bad ass person ever with brutal comebacks. But, what’s the use now?! The moment is gone when I could’ve told her all these things but I said nothing. It made me feel that maybe, us, women are competing with each other first before competing and fighting with the world.
I also came across times when I looked at my female acquaintances and friends with judgement for the way they dressed, their hairdo, their nails, the way they eat and what not. I made fun of them in front of our male friends whereas I could’ve taken that opportunity to take the others down together as a team. But, I didn’t because I was too busy making myself feel better with all the absurd jokes. I was too busy enjoying the little validation and satisfaction I got from collectively feeling better than her.
I am still trying to figure out the need for this validation, the need to pull down another female to feel better. How does that even make sense, I don’t know. But, eradication of this absurdity is the future. Love yourself, your body and embrace it. Let yourself be a stepping stone and encouragement for the growth of other women. The world will be much more beautiful and simple. | https://medium.com/@divyawarrier1810/a-stepping-stone-48914c7e111e | ['Divya Warrier'] | 2019-12-10 10:38:34.329000+00:00 | ['Women', 'Help', 'Self Love', 'Empowerment'] |
Crypto is entering the sonic boom stage! | As crypto tanks, many investors are looking at every opportunity they can get their hands on to capitalize on the next crypto-market comeback. It is apparent that much social media traffic is being channeled toward the question of whether crypto will come back strong or keep on its downward trajectory. There has also been much speculation on the potential crypto has in becoming the next best thing. And that is where all of the excitement is coming from, “are we getting ready for a launch into the future”? Well no one really knows, but cryptocurrency is on the right track toward a nuclear rise. But a meteoric fall is also not out of the question when it comes to volatility, because crypto’s rises and falls are so frequent it is hard to gauge when the market will start going up or down. it has also become more known that the volume of each crypto is where all of the money is. It seems that investors are buying based on market supply and market cap, but not many are looking at the volume.
Some Crypto holders are saying that the more the volume the more room there is for capitalization. Also Many strategic investors go in on coins when there is a lot of buzz about them, and that usually correlates with the amount of volume the coin is experiencing. It also turns out that when a market experiences as big of a correction as Crypto is having, then it will either increase drastically or decrease dramatically. There is beginning to be a lot of talk about Cryptocurrency becoming the next U.S. currency to be used anytime and anywhere in the world, and would change our currency as we know it. But this much is certain, either crypto is snaking a big comeback or it will continue its bitter plunder. | https://medium.com/crypto-will-be-the-new-u-s-currency/crypto-is-entering-the-sonic-boom-stage-78bb954949a3 | ['Christopher Bullard'] | 2018-03-15 10:26:00.726000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'Altcoins', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Money', 'Crypto'] |
The Serpent on the Ridge | Raven Ridge is about seven miles from the shore of Lake Champlain in Northwestern Vermont. Lewis Creek creeps towards the lake to the North of the ridge, while Otter Creek rumbles into Champlain to the South. Northern New York and its Adirondacks line the western side of Lake Champlain, Vermont and its Green Mountains slope down on the east. The northern reach of the lake stretches over into Quebec, Canada.
Champ! A playful sea serpent… Mascot for Burlington, Vermont’s Minor League Baseball Team the Lake Monsters. Image Credit: The Vermont Lake Monsters.
The deep, glacier carved lake is said to possess a sinewy monster in its dark depths similar to “Nessie” of Loch Ness, this one given the nickname “Champ”.
Like Nessie and Loch Ness, Champ is a part of pop culture around the lake, appearing on souvenirs, T-Shirts and the like. Burlington, Vermont’s minor league baseball club is even nicknamed The Vermont Lake Monsters — Champ is their mascot.
Legends of a lake monster go back deep into history here, however, and predate Nessie sightings in Scotland, according to writer Robert Batholomew in The Untold Story of Champ.
A Great Horned Serpent. Portrait Credit: Miguel Dominado.
Native Abenakis warned 17th century French explorers, hunters, and trappers, of monsters in Lake Champlain (or Bitawbagok — the Abenaki name for the lake), and cautioned them to be quiet in their canoes — lest they draw the monsters’ unwanted attentions.
They also used to tell stories of a mysterious “horned serpent”. The Abenaki had a name for an aquatic beast they called Gitaskogak, Gitaskog, or Peetaskog, the “great snake” that was believed to live in Bitawbagok, according to Batholomew in The Untold Story of Champ.
At native-languages.org Gitaskog (pronounced gee-tah-skog) is described as “a lake monster, an underwater horned serpent, common to the legends of most Algonquian tribes.” Gitaskog is said to “lurk in lakes and eat humans”. All of its names are variants on the meaning “great serpent” or “big serpent.”
Other ancient Abenaki legends are tied into the lake as well. Their oral traditions bind their people to this land back into the Ice Age.
Odzihozo, or Rock Dunder, in Lake Champlain off of Burlington, Vermont. Photo Credit: Lake Champlain Ecosystem Assessment.
Some legends tell of the creation of the rivers, mountains and Lake Champlain by the shaper — not creator, but shaper — Odzihozo, which seem to tell of the shaping of the land as The Champlain Sea receded and became Lake Champlain around 8200 BC.
After carving out the lake and its surrounding mountains and rivers, Odzihozo settled down and became a rock which now sits in the lake near Burlington, called “Rock Dunder” by Westerners.
This Lake was a Sea, originally. It’s the much smaller remnant of what was, at the end of the Ice Age, The Champlain Sea. Back then, most of Vermont’s future Queen City was under about 200 feet of salt water.
Illustration of The Champlain Sea (Mer de Champlain). Photo Credit: Orbitale, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Champlain Sea lapped at the shores of what would later become Vermont at what is now about 600 feet above sea level. Much of Burlington, at around 400 feet above sea level and lower, would have been below the waves — and a bit offshore.
Thanks to the glaciers of the Ice Age, this land was actually a lot lower back then, which is why there was a sea here in the first place. The weight of the then-receding Laurentian Ice Sheet had exerted enormous pressures on the land, pushing it down near or below sea level.
After the glaciers receded, the land slowly rose back up to where it is today, cutting off the northern route connecting the Champlain Sea to the Atlantic Ocean around 8200 BC and creating the smaller, freshwater Lake Champlain. Before that, The Champlain Sea was here for a few thousand years.
Archaeologists in Northwestern Vermont generally find Paleoindian remains at about 620 feet above sea level and higher in the suburbs and surroundings of Burlington, as Paleoindians lived near the shores of the Champlain Sea around the end of the Ice Age. | https://medium.com/@glowinthedarkradio/the-serpent-on-the-ridge-514b2a9446a5 | ['Mike Luoma'] | 2020-11-24 03:00:56.950000+00:00 | ['Discovery', 'History', 'Ancient History', 'Native Americans', 'Creative Non Fiction'] |
Broctagon’s Annual Company Retreat 2019: Bangkok, Thailand | Nothing spells teamwork better than a common objective on a ‘war zone’. The Broctaon family, joined by the big bosses, took the chance to bond out of the confines of an office, and excel outside of the work environment.
Relive the Retro Night
The annual themed dinner featured a ‘Retro Night’ where key appointment holders, and our partners from our Thailand office joined in the fun. Everyone dressed to the seventies and brought out their vintage flair to participate in the lively mood.
CEO Don Guo gives an opening speech to recap the past year and its tremendous positive growth.
CEO of Broctagon Fintech Group, Don Guo, held an opening speech outlining the many milestones that the company has achieved in the past year, thanking the employees and partners for helping us reach new heights.
This year marked our ten years in the fintech industry, and we celebrated the opening of our Singapore headquarters in the heart of the financial district. During this year, Broctagon has launched many new products such as a CRM 2.0 for brokers, Blockchain-in-a-Box, and NEXUS 2.0. Nexus 2.0 is a liquidity aggregation engine that channels price feeds from top global exchanges with smart order routing.
Top 3 finalists posing for the Best-Dressed category (Men). CTO Ted Quek (middle) won Best-Dressed.
The event also featured a best-dressed competition where everyone went all out to immerse themselves in the exciting retro atmosphere, including a photobooth and games segment where they got to learn more about the company and their fellow co-workers. Consensus decided that the Best-Dressed award for the male category went to CTO Ted Quek, who exuded the company passion in his retro getup and showed that no matter what we do, we go all out to do it well. | https://medium.com/broctagongroup/broctagons-annual-company-retreat-2019-bangkok-thailand-2bc8f545b516 | ['Broctagon Fintech Group'] | 2020-01-14 07:30:15.473000+00:00 | ['Events', 'Fintech', 'Retreat', 'Company', 'Bonding'] |
The Lake House | The drive was long but pleasant.
It was a bit different this time though. Usually, we were traveling through a tunnel of green trees, but the extenuating circumstances meant no summer trip.
Now we wandering through the same forest, but it was filled with the grey skeletons of leafless tress.
The fog coming in helped ensure the late Autumn ambiance.
I pulled the car onto the old dirt road. It was hard from the cold snap, the gravel and mud mostly frozen in place.
I smiled when I saw the house. It was the same one I’d been going to all my life.
Luckily, back in the day my grandfather found this spot and bought the plots around it. The rest of the small lake was far too crowded, vacation houses stacked on top of each other.
I walked around the property. Everything seemed to be in order, all the windows were in tact. The roof looked good. There had been a couple break ins in the area, and lake houses were the perfect target.
But nothing seemed to be amiss. I returned to the car to help bring things inside.
She had surprised me by taking a half day off from work. I wasn’t planning on being up here until nightfall and now had an extra few hours to spend at the lake.
I thought the extra time would be spent splitting wood for the stove, but a neighbor left a neat pile on the side of the house. I made a mental note to send something over to say thanks.
After I got a small flame going in the fire place, we walked out to the dock. The water was smooth as glass. If it had been any colder I’d swear it was frozen.
“Wow,” she said.
“I know I’ve never seen it this calm. It looks like a picture.”
“Take your clothes off.”
“Excuse me?”
“We’re jumping in.”
“You’re insane. You know how cold that water is?”
But she was entirely too convincing and next thing I knew we where jumping off the dock.
It might as well had been frozen.
I lost my breath all sense of being while I scrambled back to the shore.
I took our wet clothes and put them next to the fire place while stoking the flames.
“You’re a mad woman,” I said as we were both wrapped in blankets.
“Who me? Please I hardly felt it.”
“Sometimes I wonder about you.”
“Oh yeah what do you wonder?”
I just shook my head.
“I’m going to go get dressed again,” I said.
“Too bad I was enjoying the view.”
“You want to eat early? I’m starving.”
“Sounds good to me. Do you need help with dinner?”
“No I got it. Give me an hour or so.”
“I will be here with my book.”
After finally getting warm, I entered the kitchen. I’d been looking forward to this all day.
Well, to be fair, I spend most days looking forward to dinner. But this was particularly good. I figured we were at the lake house a little decadence couldn’t hurt.
First, a little prep.
I got a pot boiling water going and cut a bunch of haricot verts and set them aside.
Then I pulled out a stainless steel pan. I got some butter and olive oil heating up in the pan with a few minced cloves of garlic. Then I halved a bag of fingerling potatoes, placing them in the pan cut side done. I let them go for a bit just until the potatoes started to crisp, then I seasoned them with sea salt, fresh cracked pepper, and a bit of chili powder, before tossing them into the oven to finish cooking.
The final step of the meal were two mammoth ribeye’s I’d gotten from a specialty butcher. I brought my beloved cast iron pan from home. It was my grandmother’s. It’d been seasoning for over fifty years.
I got it screaming hot on the stove, rubbed the steaks with course sea salt, and placed them on the nearly red metal. They sizzled, and popped, and within a few minutes were nicely seared.
I repeated the process with the next side.
Once done I turned the heat down, and dropped a couple cubes of butter, a few cloves of garlic, and sprig of rosemary into the pan.
The butter liquified quickly and I tipped the pan towards me, letting the hot fat pool along the edge. I took spooned the hot butter and beef drippings over the steaks until they cooked through, wherein I placed them on a plate to rest, while I let the haricot vert steam.
Everything was done at the same time. I plated for the two of us, while she lit a candle.
“This smells absolutely divine,” she said.
“Tastes even better.”
We sat down, clinking wineglasses.
“To the chef,” she said.
Just then my phone started buzzing.
“Just let it go,” she said.
I pulled my phone out and saw who it was, I couldn’t help but answer.
“Sorry I had to work late,” she said, “Where are you? I can be ready to go in a few minutes.”
“I’m at the cabin.”
“You went without me?”
I nearly dropped the phone, because my wife was at home, and I now I was wondering who the woman was eating dinner with me.
The woman smiled and kept drinking her wine as my phone fell to the floor. | https://medium.com/the-inkwell/the-lake-house-164f97a40211 | ['Matthew Donnellon'] | 2020-12-11 05:01:16.615000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'Short Story', 'Life', 'Love', 'Fiction'] |
The Fundamentals of Magic: Soft vs. Hard Magic | Image by Javardh on Unsplash.
So, magic.
Magic is an intrinsic part of the fantasy genre. It’s the element that primarily distinguishes fantasy from its fiction contemporaries and is a focal part of any given fantasy setting. Magic is the one facet of worldbuilding that inherently affects all other branches of the process, but to accurately determine how your magic system will affect the setting, you must first decide what kind of magic system you’re trying to employ.
To find the right style of magic system for your story, we must first define our terms. If you’re a fantasy fan, I’m certain you’re familiar with Brandon Sanderson. Considered something of a titan in the fantasy genre, Sanderson was the first to popularize the terms “soft magic” and “hard magic” when describing how magic systems can be differently utilized from book to book; the dichotomy comes down to narrative relevance.
Soft magic is essentially without rules — or rather, it keeps its rules close to the chest. Soft magic isn’t explained within the story, and for the most part readers and characters alike aren’t sure of how it functions or where it comes from. Likewise, most characters won’t be able to harness its power.
Sanderson describes soft magic as being used to evoke a “sense of wonder,” to make the world seem bigger and more mystical than the characters within it. Some prime examples of soft magic systems are The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars.
No one — most characters included, really knows why Gandalf can do what he does, or the extent of Force powers, and we don’t have to; soft magic is almost never explicitly solutional and in fact, Sanderson believes that soft magic should cause problems, not solve them.
This comes back to the idea that soft magic is used to elicit wonder in the reader; centering our story around characters that face powerful magic but can’t use it serves to both expand the sense of danger and fantasy within the setting, and bring the reader closer to the characters.
We may not connect immediately with an all-powerful wizard that can conjure fire and lift things with his mind, but certainly we can all relate to a few hobbits with no magical experience facing off against a greater evil.
For soft magic to work effectively in a given story, it needs to be used sparingly by characters who aren’t your protagonist, or as an obstacle to overcome.
Hard Magic, on the other hand, is a tool used to directly influence the plot. It isn’t an obstacle or a challenge to overcome, but a means to do so. Hard magic has rules, limitations, weaknesses, and costs, and readers, as well as at least some of the characters, should have an explicit understanding of how the magic works.
The characters should use their powers to solve problems, and through that usage, the readers should glean a clear understanding of the magic’s rules.
Sanderson’s First Law of Magic states that “an author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic,” which means that how your characters utilize their abilities to progress the plot will dictate how well your readers grasp the ins and outs of their power.
However, hard magic should by no means be a remedy to all conflicts in the narrative; the point of hard magic being a tool is not so that the characters can have a free pass to success, but rather a means for the characters to be developed through their creative applications of their power.
Examples of a hard magic system would be Allomancy in Sanderson’s own Mistborn series, Hunter x Hunter’s Nen system, or Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood’s Alchemy.
In each of these examples, we as readers and viewers have a clear understanding of how the magic works and all of the limitations and costs the users are or can be subject to. We’re able to learn about the magic as the plot of each respective story progresses, with our characters learning new magic and techniques in order to solve problems presented to them within the narrative.
In these instances, the magic system is not only a part of the setting, but an essential aspect of the plot, because our characters are actively affecting the direction of the story with the ways they utilize their magic. This is to say that hard magic systems are intrinsically related to whatever plot they’re featured in.
Of course, magic systems are a spectrum, and while many stories fall to one side or the other, there are also plenty of systems somewhere in the middle. These magic systems are often referred to as “hybrid” systems, and they’re essentially some mix of both soft and hard magic.
Perhaps some facets of the system are clearly defined, while the details of other powers or types of magic may be vague in comparison.
Hybrid systems can be very effective and maintain the intrigue of soft and hard systems; however, hybrid systems, in my opinion, are more difficult to get right. It might sound simple to just pick and choose which parts of the magic to reveal and which parts to keep mysterious, but if done poorly, your readers might be frustrated or disappointed with the way the mixture of soft and hard magic evens out.
Say you want your characters to use magic and creatively solve problems with it — like in a hard system — but you also want them to face off against an unspeakably powerful enemy with magic far greater and less understood than their own; this absolutely can be done, but in order to maintain the illusion of your setting’s magical “logic,” you need to have a good idea of what you’re not revealing and why.
If the characters’ magic has distinct limitations, weaknesses, and costs, but the antagonist’s doesn’t, and they defeat him anyway, your reader might feel robbed of the clever strategizing they’re used to seeing when the protagonists use magic. If the antagonist performs an act that was previously costly for the protagonist and suffers no consequences, you might be breaking your own rules, and thus the things that once defined the system begin to fall apart.
Creating a magic system is a delicate and timely process, which is why you should have a sense of what kind of system best suits your story before you begin. Ultimately, it’s about what kind of story you’re looking to tell. If you’re interested in using magic to create a fantastical setting or arouse a particular feeling in the reader, perhaps soft magic is for you. If your intent is to use magic to explore social constructs or institutions, hard magic might be best. Both sides of the spectrum have their uses. When utilized effectively, either make for a memorable and intriguing story.
All in all, have fun and get creative. Happy writing! | https://medium.com/@atlasmodiah/the-fundamentals-of-magic-soft-vs-hard-magic-fbbbb127c3a5 | ['Atlas Sallow'] | 2020-12-15 21:33:00.952000+00:00 | ['Fantasy Writing', 'Writing Advice', 'Worldbuilding', 'Fantasy', 'Magic'] |
Her Eyes | I can not count the ways her eyes beguile me. How brilliantly they shine from the hanging light.
So blue in color I feel as if I could drown in their depth, clear as snow yet black as night. She is a mystery to me and has gained my devotion, but she is not dearest to my heart.
There is a girl in the market whose eyes are the color of lilac and she is most precious to me.
Julia carries my world on her shoulders. I met her on a rainy Tuesday when I had stopped by the market to buy some bleach. As I looked up into her eyes I was trapped. Nothing could keep my gaze from those eyes. As she read my total in her droll southern voice I handed her my money.
Her hands looked so soft I longed to hold them. Heaven smiled upon me as her hand brushed along mine as she handed me my change. I wanted nothing more than to stand there for eternity and look into her eyes, but the line forming behind me and her farewell forced me to take my leave.
I returned the next day, but my heart crashed into my chest when another poorly groomed adolescent in desperate need of acne medication was behind the counter where she should have been.
Though slightly set back I was not swayed from being within sight of her captivating eyes.
I approached the boy when he was finished placing egg cartons underneath the gallon of milk within the older woman’s shopping bag and asked him when Julia might return.
Young and naive he told me Julia only works on Saturday and Sunday. Today was Monday, a pounding started within my head as I thought of waiting so long to see those eyes.
With desperation hidden within me, I pressed the boy for more information as he was focusing his attention on ringing up a large purchase of cat food for the obscenely obese women behind me.
With no hesitation he offered up the information that Julia only lives around the corner from the market, she is also single and lives only with her small dog. I had him describe the house and with great haste, I was on my way up the street towards her eyes.
I wanted nothing more than to surprise her, to see the look on her face when I appear.
I was not disappointed. When afraid the eyes look more dazzling than anything I have ever noticed.
So bright and so wide as if you could see the small white ball in all of its entirety.
Though seeing her eyes wide with fear did them no justice to what they look like now.
Shining in the hanging light within their jar her eyes capture me daily, but I have found another whose eyes hold my gaze with such rapture my heart may burst.
Maria’s eyes are the color of melted chocolate I’m not sure if I can wait much longer to visit her. | https://medium.com/for-the-twisted-writers/her-eyes-e22fd261f020 | ['Barbara King'] | 2020-12-22 22:07:50.716000+00:00 | ['Short Fiction', 'Short Story', 'Thriller', 'Horror Fiction', 'Horror'] |
Spree Commerce: How to Build an Ecommerce Website Fast | All is fair in love and war but is it in e-commerce? Let’s find out which tech stack can be your powerful weapon in launching a profitable marketplace.
In this post, we’ll discuss Spree Commerce as a powerful, scalable, flexible, and time-efficient solution for building online marketplaces. Read on to discover the key benefits of Spree and learn how famous brands profited from opting for it. Also, we’ll tell you about our experience in building e-commerce websites with Spree.
Spree Commerce: what is it?
Spree Commerce is an open-source e-commerce platform built with Ruby on Rails. It was created in 2007 by a Rails developer Sean Schofield. Since then, the platform has found many loyal fans.
Spree helps developers create online stores of any complexity quickly but without sacrificing the quality. Thanks to its modular structure, this platform makes personalization and upgrading easy and convenient. It allows for the creation of unique marketplaces suited to your specific needs.
Some facts & figures about Spree Commerce:
1100000+ downloads;
10100+ Github stars;
2000+ commits;
780 contributors.
Advantages of Spree Commerce
So what does Spree offer for those who want to start an online marketplace website? Let’s discuss the key benefits of this platform.
Development speed
Like the Rails framework itself, Spree significantly cuts the development time and, therefore, the cost of it. This feature is a lifesaver for startups with tight deadlines. Coders using Spree Commerce write ten times less code in comparison with other platforms like Magento.
Easy personalization
Spree Commerce offers advanced out-of-the-box functionality. And when you need a bit more, it’s also not a problem. You can always upgrade and customize your store using a vast number of extensions.
Furthermore, a qualified Ruby on Rails developer can create Spree extensions as well. This will add much flexibility and scalability to your marketplace and make it unique.
Also, don’t forget about Ruby gems, free open-source libraries for Ruby on Rails. With gems, some functionality doesn’t need to be developed from scratch. Developers just need to use a particular gem for each feature, like item review or payments.
On-demand scalability
When launching even a small marketplace, you should consider the possibility of further scaling. In this sense, Spree may become your ultimate choice.
Being a robust framework, Spree can serve a great number of requests from users simultaneously. This means that your users won’t experience any interruptions in response time, and heavy traffic won’t prevent your business from growing.
Mobile-friendly approach
Do you still think that mobile doesn’t count? Business Insider states that mobile commerce is expected to reach $488 billion in 2024, weighing 44% of the whole e-commerce industry.
Spree platform was created with mobile users in mind. The marketplaces built with Spree have intuitive UI design. Besides, the framework is compatible with frontend technologies used for PWA development. What does it give to business owners? They get fast-loading progressive apps that can function with a poor Internet connection or even in offline mode.
No license fees
It is worth mentioning that Spree Commerce is free to download and use, regardless of the scope of your project. Even if it’s a large multi-vendor marketplace like Amazon you want to build, there will be no fees.
Moreover, extensions needed to implement extra functionality are free as well. You are free to download the extensions you need and apply them to your e-commerce site on Spree.
Numerous marketing features
The launch of your online marketplace website doesn’t mean the matter has been resolved. The next step is to adopt the most productive marketing strategies for drawing buyers and sellers to your marketplace.
The following Spree Commerce functionality will ease the promotion of your e-commerce website.
SEO-integration;
A/B testing;
Heat maps;
Analytical dashboard;
Loyalty programs handling;
Decent email marketing.
The main features of Spree Commerce
Let’s take a closer look at the vital Spree Commerce features that help you get the most out of this e-commerce solution built with Ruby on Rails.
Convenient item management (managing items, creating detailed descriptions);
(managing items, creating detailed descriptions); Advanced order features (handling orders, payments, refunds, etc.);
(handling orders, payments, refunds, etc.); General settings (editing the website’s name, currency, updating policies, etc.);
(editing the website’s name, currency, updating policies, etc.); Membership sales (privileges for subscribers: discounts, free shipping, etc.);
(privileges for subscribers: discounts, free shipping, etc.); Extensive FAQ (knowledge base for customers);
(knowledge base for customers); Comprehensive taxation (depending on the country, etc.);
(depending on the country, etc.); Return extension (initiating product returns, tracking return history);
(initiating product returns, tracking return history); Predictive search;
Integration with Google Analytics;
Support of local payment gateways.
Examples of e-commerce sites built with Spree
Finery
Finery London is a British fashion label offering contemporary womenswear. The company used Spree Commerce to develop a fresh-looking and elegant e-commerce website that will suit the fashion industry.
Their marketplace was launched to the public in 2015. During the first year of its existence, it attracted 100,000 clients and brought £5 million. Also, Finery London has been awarded as the Website of the Year at the Retail Systems 2016 Awards.
What helped Finery gain such incredible success? Mainly, it is an outstanding UX design together with a great user experience that was created thanks to the great functionality offered by Spree Commerce.
Codica expertise in Spree Commerce
A client from London had asked to help with a promising e-commerce project. The aim was to create an inclusive AI-powered platform. The purpose was to assist customers in discovering and buying beauty products from brands all over the world.
Codica team suggested opting for Spree Commerce, owing to the fact that a short time to market was crucial. The framework helped us to build a scalable, fast-loading, and appealing marketplace.
The basic feature set was as follows:
Quiz page;
User profiles;
Search and filters;
Multiple payment options;
Shopping cart;
Wishlist;
Ratings and reviews.
As a result, the client got a flexible and powerful beauty marketplace platform within a short time frame. The project was delivered on time and on budget, in accordance with the expectations of the client.
Conclusion
When you need to launch your multi-vendor marketplace in the shortest time possible, it is a great idea to think about Spree Commerce. With Spree, the quality of your product will never be compromised.
But bear in mind that Spree requires the right technical knowledge and expertise. If you are searching for a credible marketplace development company to trust the idea of your store, don’t hesitate to contact us.
For more detailed information about Spree, check our full article: Spree Commerce: How to Quickly Build an Ecommerce Website. | https://medium.com/codica/spree-commerce-how-to-build-an-ecommerce-website-fast-f76dfcf19b8f | ['Codica Team'] | 2020-11-26 17:49:45.794000+00:00 | ['Online Marketplace', 'Spree Commerce', 'Spree', 'Marketplaces', 'Entrepreneurship'] |
Investing for Good. Why we started Impvest and how you can… | Investing with Impact
Photo by Micheile Henderson on Unsplash
“Financial peace isn’t the acquisition of stuff. It’s learning to live on less than you make, so you can GIVE money back and have money to invest. You can’t win until you do this.” — Dave Ramsey
Growing up as the son of two wealthy investor parents, success for me was defined by the dollar$ and cent$. My weekend playground was in real estate showrooms. My holidays were spent travelling the world while my parents looked for the next big deal. My family friends that visited me were top executive friends and clients that drove big cars and lived in mansions. My childhood friends were all “destined” by their parents to be doctors, lawyers and CEOs.
So from a young age, I aimed to be rich and become a big-time investor like my parents. BUT my vision of my parents changed one day when we visited my mother’s hometown.
My mum is a first-generation immigrant from a developing nation. And one school holiday she brought me from the glistering and bright lights of the city back to the rice padi fields of her hometown. I went from fast cars and 5-star hotels to trishaws and backwater motels.
But beyond the change of the place, what shocked me more was the people!
Over the next few days, tens of people came to meet her. All were full of love and warmth that I have never felt before. One by one, they introduced themselves as recipients financial aid from my mum over the decades.
There were grown men who were telling stories of how her funds had helped them get into law school and change their family destiny.
Families who almost lost it all due to a flood but managed to get back on their feet through her funds
Entrepreneurs who received seed funding to set up their shop, clinic and rice fields
What shocked me more was often the amounts cited mere measly numbers that could barely buy a mid-range LV or Chanel bag back in the city. Yet for many of these people, this amount of money was changing and even saving lives.
It was then I found my calling in life:
I wanted to invest with IMPACT…IMPVEST!
Why I started Impvest
While I have known my whole life that my calling is to invest for good, it was only in recent years did I discover how to describe it through the concept of impact investing and sustainable finance.
After working in sustainable development professionally and investing for good personally in the past decade, I have realized that the concepts around impact investing are not well understood.
Investors do not understand the complexity of sustainability.
Sustainable experts do not get the language and motivation of the market.
And most people still are framing all these issues in the traditional economic models of 1980s capitalism/socialism.
They are not considering the impact of digitalization and technology that has to lead to a world of capital without capital.
Thus, I have started ImpVest to make impact investing a greater force for good by intelligent and thoughtful decisions through insightful yet simple to understand articles.
About ImpVest
1. Who are we?
In short: Impvest is for anyone who wants to make the world better through impact investing.
You do not have to be a sophisticated investor.
Our target readers and contributors include
Personal investors seeking to be more responsible in his investing
Policymakers or economists sharing or learning new economic models for their country or company
Sustainable advocate trying to reform capitalism to become a force for good
A company sharing their journey in increasing its corporate giving
Regardless of where they are on their impact investing path, we at Impvest aim to be this one virtual hub of resources, guides and inspiration.
We want them to know they are not alone, and we are here to turn impact investing into reality and make a difference in the world!
2. What do we provide?
Basically, we at Impvest give away free P.I.E.S. 🥧🥧🥧
Principles + Instructions+ Equipping+ Sharing
Principles of Impact Investing: Venture Philanthropy, Sustainable finance, sustainable capitalism, Creating shared values, Economics of Mutuality, etc Instructions: Practical guides teaching topics like portfolio management, Sustainable report, Environmental assessment, etc Equipping and resources: Sharing of tools, books, institutions that can help equip impact investors Sharing: Case studies of companies or organizations that are successful impact investors or are influencing the impact investing world
PLUS
We also actively share our contents on LinkedIn to get our content to reach more people.
3. How can I be published?
If you’re wondering how to increase your chances of becoming one of our writers, give us both quality and quantity of:
Content: While we do not want to limit your creativity, please make sure you provide enough substance in your stories. We encourage our writers to take time to curate a long post with substance than frequent one point posts. Writing Quantity: Please give us a post that requires at least 6–7 mins of reading. Impvest is not a Facebook or Linkedin page to post short content. We want our platform to be a place of deep insights and anything less than 6–7 mins reading time is insufficient. Writing Quality: Unlike other publications that emphasize writing quality, we are more forgiving in this aspect. However, we do expect at least our writers to be grammatically correct. We encourage the use of Grammarly to all our writers. Insights: Please write insightful pieces that contribute to the body of knowledge on impact investing and relevant topics. While we do not have a strict policy, we will reject pieces that are deemed click baits or overly promotional. References: Please provide references. No need formal references and citations (although plus points if you do) but at least provide your sources in text or by a mention. Learn from others: We do not encourage plagiarism (as per medium policy), but we are ok if you get inspired by the style, format or structure of others. In fact, we encourage you to read other writers pieces to learn how to improve and be part of this community!
4. How to submit?
Please submit your UNPUBLISHED DRAFTS by filling up the form below:
Best Regards and thank you for reading!
Ye Jiangwei | https://impvest.co/funding-companies-of-good-63568411b5bd | [] | 2021-01-30 01:53:24.717000+00:00 | ['About Me', 'Sustainability', 'Submission', 'Publication', 'Impact Investing'] |
The fallacy of “choice” | Photo by Andrej Lišakov on Unsplash
I write this while my five-month-old snoozes away, only to be wide awake in the next few hours with a mood somewhere between being super cranky and being chatty.
My maternity leave began a lot earlier than I had expected it to, in June 2020. This meant I had to stop doing what I loved — work. As a self-proclaimed workaholic, it felt like my life had come to a standstill, and I had lost the one thing that defined my being. With lines blurred between work and personal life, I had never considered what I did for a living as a “job”, and for it to have come to a screeching halt meant that I was forced to take a backseat. However, there was something wonderful waiting for me — motherhood. And little did I imagine that my workaholic-self would be beaten hands down as a new mum.
I must admit that my transition from being a fiercely independent person with no strings attached, to becoming a mum was very rocky (and still is, at times). While it was my choice to take up the latter role, my former demeanor did kick in once in a while, questioning my ability to be a “good enough” caregiver to my daughter while I yearned to be my old self. My hankering for the daily grind only grew; from dabbling between multiple calls, email and documents, to endless calls brainstorming with my team to curate the best campaigns for my clients, I simply wanted to go back in time — back to December 2019.
Believe it or not — even feeling this way makes you feel guilty. You wonder if you don’t love your baby enough and are looking for something more gratifying from the outside. With wisdom pouring in from any and everyone on how you NEED to be around your baby every second of every day of your life, makes you wonder if you actually are fit to be a mum in the first place!
While the urge to get back to work increased as days and weeks went by, the fear of being “judged” for far greater.
What would people think if I chose to go back to work earlier than scheduled while my baby needed 100% of my attention?
Am I not allowed to NOT make a choice between my baby and my work?
More importantly, the mother of all questions — Was I being a “bad mom” for making the choice of redeeming my old self?
For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why I was adding this immense pressure on myself to make a choice between the two roles. (Quite likely that my hormones were having a field day, but it certainly didn’t feel good to be in a confused state of mind!)
That’s when it struck me — every mother who chooses to go back to work must be feeling this way at some point in her life.
You may have a supportive partner and/ or a supportive family who is probably sharing the load, but a mother is always seen as the primary caregiver whether you like it or not, and somehow the weight is always on her shoulders; of taking care of the house, the children and the family, while trying to chase her dreams and COVID-19 has not made this any easier. A report by The Mavericks — COVID-19 and Beyond, based on a survey that was conducted with 700+ respondents from across the country, suggests that the overall impact of COVID-19 on mental health is much higher in women than in men. Men continue to use distractions to manage the situation and contain the average impact to 2.65 out of 5, vis-a-vis women, who suffer a 17% higher impact at 3.09. With lines blurring between work and home, women seem to be working round the clock and this clearly has had an adverse effect.
Despite the elephant in the room, I resumed work starting with half days on 1st November 2020, a few days before my daughter completed four months. While I did have occasional bouts of feeling the guilt of supposedly choosing to work on a document while my mother stepped in to take care of my baby, I eventually got over it; I remember crying my eyes out when my mum bottle-fed my baby for the first time while I attended my first call in five whole months. Three weeks later, I found my rhythm. And here I am today, thriving while trying to balance between the two things I love the most — my baby and my passion.
Some people did point out to me that it was far too early to expose myself to the pressure of being a working mother. On the other hand, I was praised for getting back to the grind earlier than expected, and this didn’t make me feel any better either. Described as a Wonder Woman who balances it all out and while making it “look” effortless from the outside is not what one wants to hear when you are trying to run between the baby and the laptop, multiple times a day. It was my choice to get back to work and it was my mother’s choice to support my decision.
Whether you choose to go back when you feel like it or be that “Wonder Woman” or you decide to take it slow and get into the grind at your own pace, is your choice. There is no “right place, at the right time” for this choice that you make. In short, never doubt yourself for the choices you make, especially those that make you happy and feel whole again. Because believe it or not, motherhood does change you; how you navigate through the challenges, is your choice, getting back to work (or not), is your choice and finally HOW you do it, is in fact, your choice. | https://medium.com/the-mavericks/the-fallacy-of-choice-bcf28839ec70 | ['Smriti Raghunandan'] | 2020-12-16 11:08:21.163000+00:00 | ['Gender Equality', 'Back To Work', 'Women In Business', 'Motherhood', 'Choices'] |
This is My Prayer | This is My Prayer
Poems From The Porch
photo by Amadeo Valar on Unsplash.com
Heart of my Heart,
Love within and without,
You show me what it means
to be committed and to receive fidelity
from a life partner and lover.
You send friends to celebrate my joys
and to console me in grief.
You give me the opportunity
to be a vessel of Light,
equipping me with talents
and satisfaction in their utilization.
The banquet of my life
is laden with abundant
provision and comfort.
I am humbled
by my dependence on You
and by your unfailing sustenance.
There is no more that I could ask,
no more that is required.
Yet I pray to have eyes that recognize these gifts,
ears that hear Love’s sweet refrain,
and hands that remain open
to give and to receive. | https://medium.com/a-love-centered-life/this-is-my-prayer-f688ec7c6cfb | ['Ani Vidrine'] | 2020-12-06 13:48:10.347000+00:00 | ['Gratitude', 'Humility', 'Spirituality', 'Prayer', 'Poetry'] |
OpenLayers and three.js | The first step is to create a 3D sphere using three.js. Nothing complicated here, just a few notes:
We use the Orthographic camera since the perspective is not suited for this kind of thing.
We integrate the orbit controls to be able to rotate and zoom on the globe.
var camera = new THREE.OrthographicCamera(
-window.innerWidth / 4,
window.innerWidth / 4,
window.innerHeight / 4,
-window.innerHeight / 4,
1,
1000
); camera.position.set(0, 0, 100); var controls = new THREE.OrbitControls(camera, renderer.domElement); var globe = new THREE.Mesh(
new THREE.SphereGeometry(90, 64, 64),
new THREE.MeshPhongMaterial()
);
A three.js scene with a sphere, orbit controls and orthographic camera.
Next, we add a simple OpenLayers map and here is where fun begins. Three.js has a method to put a canvas element as a texture to a mesh object. It is basically the same as the base texture class, but it accepts a canvas element as input and it sets the needsUpdate property to true by default. OpenLayers has a map event, from which we can get the map canvas when the rendering is complete. Inside the event, we set the map canvas as a texture to our sphere and set the needsUpdate property of the sphere’s material to true.
map.on("rendercomplete", function () {
var mapContainer = document.getElementById('map'); var mapCanvas = mapContainer.getElementsByTagName('canvas')[0]; var texture = new THREE.CanvasTexture(mapCanvas);
globe.material.map = texture;
globe.material.needsUpdate = true;
});
An OpenLayers map projected on a three.js sphere.
At first, the result is pretty bad. One thing we must do is to change the projection of the OpenLayers view. This is because OpenLayers uses by default the EPSG:3857 Spherical Mercator, which projects the coordinates on a 2D surface and, thus, stretches the map at the poles. This is fine for a flat view, but, for a sphere, we require the EPSG:4326 or something similar, which uses an ellipsoidal 2D coordinate system. Changing the projection system of the OpenLayers view is very simple.
var view = new ol.View({
projection: "EPSG:4326",
extent: [-180, -90, 180, 90],
center: [0, 0],
zoom: 2
});
The map looks way better but still we miss a few parts. This is because the canvas does not render the whole map. To address this, we have to force the canvas view to show the whole map. The map bounds in degree units are [-180,-90,180,90], so that makes a ratio of 2:1 for width and height. Setting the width and height of the map element to 1000px and 500px respectively, correctly renders the whole map on the canvas and eventually the texture of our sphere. We also hide the map so it does not obscure the 3d view (and hopefully saving resources).
<div id="container">
<div id="map" style="position: fixed; visibility:hidden; width: 1000px; height:500px;"></div>
</div> | https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/openlayers-and-three-js-99c904eed76c | ['George Panagiotopoulos'] | 2020-12-02 21:01:57.936000+00:00 | ['Threejs', 'Programming', '3d', 'Web Development', 'JavaScript'] |
移動距離という鏡 | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/exploring-the-power-of-place/%E7%A7%BB%E5%8B%95%E8%B7%9D%E9%9B%A2%E3%81%A8%E3%81%84%E3%81%86%E9%8F%A1-6a38fc6e233a | ['Kotono Yamada'] | 2020-12-18 14:32:32.574000+00:00 | ['048', 'Time', '時間', '電車', 'Transportation'] |
Weblog of a Nigerian Girl: Day One | Dear Diary,
Today is the 24th day of December 2020. It’s exactly 9:30pm in Lagos, Nigeria. I must confess I feel a little strange typing this. I have never owed a diary. Online or physical. Never thought there’d be a need to own one. I made an executive decision earlier this year to try on new things. Safe to say this is one of them. 2020 has been a though year for a lot of people, and I am no exception. There has been a ton of emotion for me. Loads of sad moments. Moments that made me reflect on life and its essence. Me finding myself constantly wondering where my life is headed. Constantly questioning my essence.
I was born and raised here in Nigeria. I turned 23 last May. And there are a ton of things I had hoped to achieve before 23. Wanting to travel, explore the world and experience diversity might top my list (in this moment). I want to leave Nigeria. So badly. More than anything. Before that, a ton of things have to happen. Like make money. A lot of it. I sometimes feel like I am too hard on myself but I think not. I don’t exactly know what I will post on here but I know for sure I will rant a lot. I find myself constantly wanting to rant. I desire the freedom to rant without being judged so desperately. It often seems like everyone around me is uninterested in what I have to say. Everyone has the “stay strong and smile always” energy.
Sometimes I just want to rant and be listened to in peace. I don’t want someone comparing bad experiences like its a competition. Me: “I had an emotional breakdown yesterday”; Second Person (who is supposed to actively listen and probably try to understand why, regardless of the inexistence of a solution): “Errrrm, your own is good oh. Me that I had a mental breakdown nko?”
Everything feels hard lately. Trying to get myself to succeed at something often feels like a lot of struggle and the thought of it weighs me down. I struggle with a lot of things. It just feels ten times harder now and a lot of that might be borne out of the realization that I want to be ten times better at everything.
Let us stop here. See you next time.
Love,
The Maybe Too-Soon-To-Be-Known. | https://medium.com/@theemotiondiary/weblog-of-a-nigerian-girl-day-one-e76d59d3b8cb | ['The Emotion Diary'] | 2020-12-24 21:01:22.754000+00:00 | ['Diary Writing', 'Anxiety Relief', 'Nigeria', 'Emotional Health', 'Journey To Happiness'] |
Improving accuracy using deep learning for Fashion MNIST | In this post I will go through a process of how we can improve the results for classification task using deep learning.
Deep learning framework
I will use Pytorch library for implementation. We can install it following this link using conda.
Toy Dataset
I have chosen Fashion MNIST as a toy dataset. Using this dataset I will try to improve the results from a baseline. We can get this dataset from here.
From this link download the following
You will get a archive.zip file. From these files we need following files
fashion-mnist_train.csv
fashion-mnist_test.csv
Here is the explanation of the dataset https://github.com/zalandoresearch/fashion-mnist
Here is sample images from the dataset
Fashion MNIST dataset
Base Model
Lets try simple 3-layer neural network as our base model and then try to improve it with new methods in Deep learning.
Here is a simple example of 3-layer network.
3 — layer network Courtesy: http://deeplearning.stanford.edu/tutorial/supervised/MultiLayerNeuralNetworks/
Loading data
Here is the code to load the Fashion MNIST dataset
Coding the Base model
Now lets code a basic 3 layer neural network and train it.
After running this code you will get the accuracy on test set as follows
3 layer neural network accuracy
So our base model has accuracy of 74.5%. The model has 235,146 parameters. Lets try to beat this with improvements.
LeNet
Now lets improve the performance of our base model using a deep learning model called LeNet.Here is the basic architecture of LeNet
LeNet Architecture
Please refer the wiki article for explanation
Here is the LeNet model code
Here there are only 44,426 parameters and the accuracy we get is 87.2%!
Activation unit
Now lets try to improve over the LeNet model. The recent advancement is the new activation unit called ReLU. Lets replace the Tanh with ReLU and see how the accuracy improves.
Here is the code
And we get accuracy of 88.24%. Thats decent improvement!
Batch Normalization
Batch normalization is a technique used to nromalize the input layer before sending it to next layer by re-centring and re-scaling.
Lets add batch normalization see if it improves the results.
And results are
Great! we improved it to 89.6% without any increase in number of parameters.
Make it big!!
Now lets make the network bigger and see if it improves the results.
And results are…
Cool we got it to 91.3% with 85, 918 parameters. Still better than baseline of 235,146 parameters.
Similarly some tweaking of model gets more improvements.
Make the kernel size of layer 2 to 3 from 5. 112,286 parameters and 91.4%
Making kernel size of layer 1 to 3 from 5. 154,270 parameters and 92.5%
Make the out channels of layer 1 to 32 and layer 2 to 64. 306,622 parameters and 94.0%
Thats amazing! we improved the accuracy from 74.5% to 94.0% with cool deep learning models and techniques.
Here is the plot of parameters vs accuracy
Fashion MNIST improvement
There are still more parameters to tune and more models to explore. Please tweak and let me know what you guys can come up with. I am curious!
Bye for now! | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/improving-accuracy-using-deep-learning-for-fashion-mnist-d7a3516af347 | ['Krishna Mohan Chinni'] | 2020-11-11 16:09:46.857000+00:00 | ['Batch Normalization', 'Deep Learning', 'Fashion Mnist', 'Lenet', 'Pytorch'] |
AEM Solutions For Pharma & Telco Industry Leaders | Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) is a content management solution (CMS) for enterprises. It is the perfect solution for enterprise level businesses as managing marketing content and assets at the right time, to the right audience is difficult for any large business. But that is not what the AEM CMS solution is limited to; it can be implemented as a collaborative platform or content distribution solution, and many more depending on your needs.
At Brain Station we have been serving global enterprises since 2006. We have successfully accomplished many outsourcing projects in the telecom and healthcare industries.
AEM Integration Pharmaceutical Industry
We have partnered with one of the top pharmaceutical companies in the world to integrate Personalised Integration Authentication Platform (PIAP) to their AEM solution.
The pharmaceutical company is one of the biggest in the world, with 29,000 employees and medicines in over 175 countries; generating an annual revenue is 32.75 billion USD. They have specialties in biopharmaceutical, biotechnology, research and development, manufacturing, biotherapeutics, and many more.
PIAP (Personalised Integration Authentication Platform) is an authentication platform for AEM users by which they can authenticate the information of Health Care Professionals (HCP’s) through a renowned Salesforce CRM app. It acts more like a bridge to fetch and match information from the salesforce app to AEM. It also works as a database of AEM users where they can save HCP’s personal information. Besides, this single platform can manage the credentials of PIAP users.
Before the PIAP deployment, AEM CMS end users didn’t have any database to upload or store personal information. The data pools have only been getting larger and larger, and pharmaceutical enterprises require an intuitive online portal to access the right data from the vast data pool seamlessly. Additionally, customizing AEM is required to be undertaken by developers who have expertise in the platform. Smooth running and professional looking pages of AEM had to be complemented by a robust database. The AEM users, along with HCP end-users, had been facing a synchronization problem for updating the data with the salesforce app, the sales CRM app for pharmaceutical companies. At the end, one single platform was required to store and view all the data- a project undertaken by the developers here at Brain Station.
With the new PIAP integration, we have introduced the following features on AEM-
Dispensing relevant up-to-date content to Health Care Professions
Contents from different therapy areas
Medical Education Site
Responsive Design, Ease of use targeting HCPs
Analytics
Events & Congress
Personalization
Medical product launch
Email subscriptions
Contact & Support
Digital product leaflet
Business Impact
The solution helped to automatically update sites and portals of the pharmaceutical company without any manual updates. And having all the information in one singular database promotes efficiency, and lets decision makers focus on critical work areas. This solution also comes with automated reporting and analytics, tracking ongoing progress. All these in turn help the pharmaceutical company to showcase their work faster and seamlessly to win more business.
AEM Integration for Telco Industry
We have also integrated AEM CMS for one of the largest enterprises in international telecom industries. This notable project was with British Telecom, or BT. This project tasked us to develop a customer facing web portal which handles BT’s integral business activities and handle the customers from the UK and Ireland.
Without the customer facing portal powered by AEM, BT would not be able to cater their services efficiently to the millions of customers. The AEM platform is needed for BT to also market their products and services to the right customer accordingly to their database.
For BT we developed a customer facing website and portal. The application receives huge orders each year and we helped BT to process their whole order journey; using AEM for the large enterprise sector. We helped BT Group with the infrastructure and development support.
Here some of the features of BT’s AEM solution-
Online bill payment
Email access
Order tracking
Most popular products
Monthly features
Case studies
Events for businesses and others
Products
Solutions
Small business solutions
Corporate solutions
Business forums
Find local sales people
Contact sales and support
Business Impact
Now each year the website portal brings in over 50 million pounds worth of revenue for BT for their products and services. And we have streamlined their whole order process journey to make it convenient for customers, and also for BT to keep track of their database.
By incorporating AEM solution, we have brought two giants of the telecom and pharmaceutical industry advantages in their respective fields. The enterprise solution of AEM is the best CMS tool to manage large quantities of customer databases and serve them accordingly. So at enterprise levels, we highly recommend implementing AEM solutions for CMS applications. Not only because it is simply the best in the market, but the result it brings is more than substantial to say the least. At Brain Station we have developers who are expertise in AEM; and with our accomplishment across several industries globally, we are the right partner for your enterprise solutions!
Originally published at Brain Station 23- https://brainstation-23.com/aem-solutions-for-pharma-telco-industry/ | https://medium.com/brainstation23/aem-solutions-for-pharma-telco-industry-leaders-eebbca2fc65f | ['Ayman Wasif'] | 2020-07-02 07:20:14.871000+00:00 | ['Aem', 'CMS', 'Pharmaceuticals Industry', 'Telecom', 'Technology'] |
Linear Algebra 1 | Euclidean Space, Vectors, and Dot Product | Euclidean Space
ℝ², which is the most common Euclidean Space, represents the set of all ordered pairs of real numbers. For example, the pair of numbers as (x, y).
It is quite similar when we talk about ℝ³, which represent the set of all ordered collection with three real numbers. For example, (x, y, z).
(1) Vectors
Here we have a column vector in ℝ², which is an abstract arrow emanating from Origin (0, 0) and pointing towards the point (x, y). Each of the numbers in this vector is called a component. So in this case, we have got two components, which are component x and component y.
Similarly, vectors in ℝ³ and vectors in ℝⁿ have the expended structure compared with the vector in ℝ².
(2) Vector Space
A place where we can add vectors or multiply vectors by numbers. ℝⁿ is our canonical example of a vector space.
We can simply add two vectors together by adding up each of the components.
(3) Scalars
When we talk about multiplying the vector by a number, often, we call them scalars. They have to be real numbers. If we use a scalar to multiple the vector, the result equals to we multiple every component with this scalar. Geometrically, the scalar changes the length of the vectors.
(4) Vector Geometry
Say if we have vector v and vector w, we can add them up or minus them to get new vectors. But what’s the meaning of the new vector v + w or v - w in geometry? The following picture shows the geometric meaning of these two results.
(5) Properties of the Vectors
There are mainly three properties that we should remember. The letters represented in bold and tilt pattern are treated as vectors.
u + ( - u ) = 0
+ ( ) = (c + d) v = c v + d v
= c + d c (v + w) = cv + cw
2. Linear Combinations of Vectors
(1) Linear Combination
If we have a set of vectors {v₁, v₂, v₃, …, vn} and constants c₁, c₂, c₃, …, cn (or we called scalars, ci ∈ℝ), we can form linear combinations.
(2) Linear Combination of a Vector
The geographic meaning of linear combinations of a vector is on a line in the Euclidean Space.
(3) Linear Combination of two Vectors
The geographic meaning of linear combinations of a vector is on a plane in the Euclidean Space.
(4) Dot Product (aka. inner product)
Suppose we have vector v and vector w in ℝⁿ space. So the result of v · w follows the following equation.
in which, the meaning of <,> is ℝⁿ · ℝⁿ → ℝ.
(5) Length of the Vector (aka. norm)
We can calculate the length of the vector through the definition of the dot product. The length of a vector equals the square root of the vector dots itself. For example,
(6) Orthogonal (aka. perpendicular) Vectors
If the dot product of two vectors equals zero, so these two vectors are orthogonal vectors, which geometrically means that they are on two perpendicular lines. For example,
(7) Linear Combination and Orthogonal Vectors
Obviously, the linear combinations of orthogonal vectors (# equals the dimensions) give all of the space.
(8) Law of Cosines
The law of cosines reveals the relationship between the three sides of a triangle. The law is as follows:
while γ is the angle between the side a and side b. It could be proved with the properties of the trigonometric functions.
(9) Law of Cosines on Vectors
Suppose we have the vector V₃ equals to the vector V₁ plus the vector V₂. So the law of cosines on vectors could be applied as follows:
(10) The Geometric Form of Dot Product
Therefore, based on what we have achieved, we can have the conclusion that,
This equation shows the geometric form of the dot product.
(11) Unit Vector
If the length of a vector equals 1 (or as we say norm = 1), this vector is so-called the unit vector. To find a vector’s unit vector in the same direction, we can divide the vector with its norm. For example, in the following equation, the vector u is a unit vector of the vector v.
(12) United Vector and Cosine
Based on what we have proved in the previous part, we have already had the result of:
If we divide the norm to both hand sides, we will have a new expression as follows,
which is also,
So the dot product of the unit vector on the vector V₁ and V₂ equals the cosine values of their included angle.
(13) The Set of the Unit Vector | https://medium.com/adamedelwiess/linear-algebra-1-euclidean-space-vectors-and-dot-product-4427c2154d3d | ['Adam Edelweiss'] | 2020-09-01 07:56:12.821000+00:00 | ['Euclidean Vector', 'Dot Product', 'Mathematics'] |
The RareCircles Guide to NFT Wallets | The RareCircles Guide to NFT Wallets
So you’ve decided to enter the world of non-fungible tokens, a market that hit $2.5 billion in sales volume in the first half of 2021. Whether you’re purchasing an NFT or minting one, the next big question is: where will you keep it?
The answer, fittingly, is a wallet. Non-physical wallets provide access to your asset using a private key that functions as an address to your holdings — say, an NFT of an art piece — on the blockchain. It’s like a hybrid email and bank account, minus the tellers.
Read on for all you need to know about owning a wallet (chic leather casing sold separately).
How do wallets work?
Think of them as secure storage for your token. The wallet is a crypto key that gives you access to your holdings, allows you to manage transactions, and supports the currency (Ether, say) that you’ll use to purchase more NFTs. According to Dr. Merav Ozair, a leading blockchain expert and fintech professor at Rutgers University, it’s your “account on the blockchain.” The wallet is made up of a pair of “keys,” public and private, the latter of which serves as the crypto’s destination address, sort of like the combination to a safety deposit box. “A wallet is the only way we can tell the assets are actually yours,” says Ozair. In some cases, the wallet allows storage for NFT art after it’s minted.
What are the upsides?
Unlike banks, the holder of a wallet’s private key — one not hosted by a third-party or exchange — effectively functions as the CEO of their own bank. In fact, the freedom of sole ownership is one of the biggest draws for wallet users, allowing them to send and receive crypto transactions (or “sign”) as they please. (Once you transact with someone, they have your public address, meaning they can send you stuff on a whim. Recently, airdropping NFTs has become a novel way of gamifying the blockchain.)
A wallet is also a fairly simple way to track your assets across devices. It’s a kind of sign-in skeleton key: Over time, you’ll be able to unlock experiences of all stripes on various websites because your wallet lives in your phone or tablet. The wallet also provides a new paradigm for engagement, allowing for direct communication between fans and founders. (In Web 2.0, this was achieved mostly via email or social channels, though in the case of the latter, audience access was typically gated.)
And the downsides?
The figurative buck stops with you. Wallet owners necessarily assume all liability for transactional glitches, even though two-factor authentication is involved. Plus, while wallets are designed to be fairly intuitive to use, there is a learning curve involved in setting one up. That said, we’re still in Wallet 1.0, so any kinks should be worked out as the concept mainstreams.
How do I begin my search?
First, decide between a hardware and software wallet. Software wallets are also known as “hot wallets,” because they store assets online using browser extensions, desktop programs, or mobile apps. The hardware, or “cold,” versions function similarly, but store crypto offline, on a USB device, for example, that can be plugged into a computer. Also, software wallets are unique to the currency being used, whereas hardware wallets usually support multiple currencies. In essence, the trade-off is between convenience (software) and security (hardware), but Ozair emphasizes the latter. “Your wallet has to be super secure — some require multiple signatures and have a multitude of ways to protect you,” she says. “Just do your homework.”
What additional features should I look for?
Whether it’s a toss-up between Trust Wallet, Coinbase, MetaMask, or any of the other competitors, experts typically recommend searching out a wallet that is overtly user-friendly. For example, an easy-to-navigate interface is important, as NFTs can be confusing for first-timers. If you’re considering a software option, look for a wallet that works as seamlessly as possible across devices — that is, desktop to mobile and back again.
Most NFTs also trade on the Ethereum blockchain, so be sure to select a wallet platform that supports the Ether currency. That said, if you’re interested in minting, buying or selling NFTs on other networks, you’ll need to choose a wallet that supports cross-chain compatibility.
Written by: Katie Underwood | https://medium.com/@rarecircles/the-rarecircles-guide-to-nft-wallets-65ddf92e0187 | [] | 2021-12-30 21:38:44.113000+00:00 | ['Nft Marketplace', 'Nft Collectibles', 'Crypto', 'Nft Wallet', 'Nft'] |
The mystery of a man who came from time travel | Tokyo International Airport in Japan resumes operations as usual. A bearded man of Caucasian descent landed at the airport. He spoke French but knew many other languages. Government officials were confused while checking his passport. His passport belonged to the country of Toured, and surprisingly, the country with that name never existed then or before.
While being held for questioning, the man fled without leaving any evidence. Who exactly was a time traveler or a notorious criminal?
The Man’s Arrival
It’s July 1954; a hot day. A man arrives at Tokyo airport in Japan. He’s of Caucasian appearance and conventional-looking. But the officials are suspicious. Whilst his primary language is said to have been French, it has been purported that he spoke Japanese and many other languages as well. So far, there is nothing extraordinary to note…
Whilst the passport looked authentic, the country where it was issued, ‘Taured’, was recognized as non-existent, either by the officer or one of his / her colleagues, indicating that the man should be taken away for interrogation. In another version, the man mentioned that he was from Taured, and when the immigration officer did not believe him, he showed him/her his passport.
Tokyo Airport
His passport had been stamped by many airports around the globe, including previous visits to Tokyo.
Location of Taured
The next part of the story details the man trying to convince the immigration officers that Taured does indeed exist. According to the traveler, Taured was located between France and Spain and had by then been in existence for 1000 years.
When shown a map, the man pointed to the area occupied by the Principality of Andorra and was puzzled as to why his country was called Andorra on the map. Both sides refused to give in — the Japanese officers insisted that Taured did not exist, and the traveler argued otherwise.
Location of Andorra (center of a green circle) in Europe (dark grey).
Vanished!
Eventually, the man was held by the officers, as they were suspicious that he might be some kind of criminal. They brought him to a nearby hotel for the night, whilst they conducted their investigation. To ensure that the man did not escape during the night, two guards were placed outside his room.
The next morning, when the officers went to the man’s room, they realized that he had simply vanished, as there were no signs of his escape. Additionally, all of his personal documents, which may serve as evidence for the story’s validity, had apparently disappeared as well.
The company he claimed to work for had no knowledge of him, although he had copious amounts of documentation to prove his point.
The hotel he claimed to have a reservation for had never heard of him either.
The company officials in Tokyo he was there to do business with? Yup, you’ve guessed it — they just shook their heads too.
Later, when the hotel room he was held in was opened, the man had disappeared.
The police established that he could not have escaped out of the window — the room was several floors up, and there was no balcony. ?
He was never seen again, and the mystery was never solved.
Similar happenings to the Taured mystery have occurred before. In 1851, a man wandering Frankfurt an der Oder in Germany claimed he was from a country called “Laxaria”, a state found on the continent of “Sakria”.
Another man, who spoke a completely unrecognizable language, was caught stealing bread in Paris in 1905. He said he was from “Lizbia”, and although the man did not speak Portuguese nor recognize Portugal as his homeland on a map, the authorities assumed he meant Lisbon, the capital of Portugal.
References
1] https://www.ancient-origins.net/unexplained-phenomena/mysterious-tale-man-taured-evidence-parallel-universes-or-embellishment-005788
2] https://coolinterestingstuff.com/the-strange-mystery-of-the-man-from-taured
3] https://english.newsnationtv.com/offbeat/news/taured-mystery-the-man-who-vanished-253965.html | https://medium.com/@rutujadhere111/the-mystery-of-a-man-who-came-from-time-travel-8e92d1eea391 | ['Rutuja Dhere'] | 2020-12-26 13:08:32.341000+00:00 | ['Time Travel', 'Suspension', 'Mystery', 'Suspense', 'Unbelievable'] |
AQI-XMAS | Jingle Bells is on loop in Burger King. Not even the full version but some minute and half hybrid that is all chorus. At first I hardly register the ring ting tingle amidst the pirate chatter that is Northern-accented Chinese (Arrr Arrr Arrr), but a coworker points it out and it centers in my eating experience. The fifth time through my spicy chicken sandwich has become so soiled by yuletide I can barely choke it down; soggy fries languish in ketchup wonderland. “Talk about something please,” my coworker says in a conversational lull. “I can’t take this anymore.” The chemical make-up of flame-broil.
In Dalian, Liaoning, the sky is clear today. A couple of weeks ago the AQI (Air Quality Index) reached 500 and beyond (it goes no higher); the sky darkened like a monsoon of particulate matter. We lick oil off the wind. It is a foul thing and one is better to stay inside on such a day; my app mandates wearing a mask, forbids jogging, children outside. Each morning while dressing, check the weather — it’s cold. Check the air — is it breathable?
Q: What do we sacrifice to the sky?
A: Everything. [That which is cheap and plastic and fills the checkout aisles of Target and Walmart. That which costs a thousand dollars (marked down with a subsidy from AT&T). That which fits in your pocket or palm. That which is made by workers who write poetry of despair in a spare ten minutes in a cramped dormitory of a Shenzhen factory. That which suicides. Check your stocking.]
昏黄的灯光下我一再发呆，傻笑
Under the dull yellow light again I stare blankly, chuckling like an idiot*
For most here (and there) there is no religious significance to Christmas Day; my coworker, however, tells me over Burger King he will go to an underground church service — not “the government-sanctioned churches…” he trails off, shrugs, grins, eats a chicken finger. My students will shop, call home sheepishly for more money. The man who owns the malls here, Wang Jianlin, is very rich. He recently bought a Hollywood studio and plans to further expand his holdings in the U.S. entertainment industry. There is a tree in the lobby of my building, Christmas lights and Chinese lanterns set up in the courtyard.
It used to be that Chinese products made for export were of higher quality than those meant for domestic consumption. This is changing. Chinese consumers have demanded better — they deserve the same as Western consumers, if not more and better. I’d been in a Walmart just a few times in my life before I moved to Dalian; now I buy my groceries there. The lady who weighs the produce has a mutated arm like an extra in a sci-fi film. She swings the bag closed with the mastery of a cowboy and his lariat. Applies the sticker with her teeth. Mars is for Martians.
For the New Year I’m heading to Beijing. It will be my first visit to the 3000-year-old capital. The air is much worse there. Here at least we have the ocean breeze to periodically push out the pollution. In Beijing, it is trapped. Last year alone, the sky killed one million. | https://medium.com/@erikwmark/aqi-xmas-16b2b5ba39a8 | ['Erik Wennermark'] | 2020-12-01 03:43:15.535000+00:00 | ['Consumerism', 'Christmas', 'Pollution', 'Expat', 'China'] |
How to deploy code onto Github In just 5 minutes | Hi I’m Hassy here I would tell you about how can you deploy your code on the GitHub from your local machine by just a few commands if you just follow the steps in given below
create a new repository
Firstly, you make a repository onto your GitHub account then you need to deploy your code onto that repository.
Open a terminal or push an existing repository from the command line
open a terminal go over that directory anywhere you saved the code that you want to deploy on Github repository and initialize that repository by using the command git init
git init
After initializing the local repository you need to add your files or code files by using the command
git add [filename]
then you need to authentication to your terminal by using the commands that are git: config — -global user.gmail “[email protected]” and the second command for username is: config- -global user.name “[email protected]”
you have done one part after doing that you need to push an existing repository from the command line by remote command and after that you tell the branch name of the repository, then the last command Push command deploy your code onto the existing repository on Github .
git remote add origin [URL of that repository you want to deploy code] (2). git push origin [branchname]
when you run the push command after that terminal would ask your credentials of GitHub account username and password for the authentication you enter that code would deploy onto the GitHub repository. How can you confirm that your code is deployed or not you check out the git status command it would tell you about the displays the state of the working directory and the staging area. | https://medium.com/@hassaanhameed786/how-to-upload-code-onto-github-in-just-5-minutes-d1b2d9551c9a | ['Hassaan Hameed'] | 2020-12-26 15:10:44.022000+00:00 | ['Code', 'Github', 'Education', 'Programming', 'Coding'] |
The Manafort Trial | Cartoon impressions
The country is glued to the proceedings of the trial of Paul Manafort this week and next. Who’s coming and going, who’s testifying, what Manafort spent his money on (and why?!), how Trump is trying to divert our attention, and more.
I will continue to draw (on my phone) as things happen! | https://lizadonnelly.medium.com/the-manafort-trial-aa36e4e66b4d | ['Liza Donnelly'] | 2018-08-05 15:02:29.808000+00:00 | ['Corruption', 'Trump', 'Russia', 'Politics'] |
Why You Need to Accept Mobile Wallets at Your SMB | Shoppers are progressively utilizing computerized wallets like Apple Pay at checkout. Get familiar with this installment strategy and how your independent company can acknowledge it.
The utilization of portable wallets is on the ascent.
A portable wallet is characterized as any cell phone fit for making monetary exchanges. Numerous cell phones presently remember versatile wallets as a worked for highlight animesprout.
You can work with your Visa processor to acknowledge versatile wallet installments.
This article is for entrepreneurs who are thinking about tolerating portable installments.
At the point when Apple Pay was presented in 2014, numerous individuals laughed at the possibility that a cell phone could supplant money and Mastercard exchanges for the purpose of procurement. Today, portable installments are on the ascent — and expected to outperform $250 billion by 2024, as indicated by a Global Market Insights Inc. report.
A few components are uniting to drive this development: the expansion of cell phones (about 96% of Americans use them), empowering innovation, way of life changes, interest for improved client encounters, and the requirement for quick, simple, and secure exchanges. Recent college grads are as of now the biggest crowd for versatile installments — almost a large portion of the individuals in this age range report utilizing a portable wallet.
In the course of the most recent couple of years, top innovation trailblazers like Apple, Google, and Samsung have progressed the portable installment industry by presenting cutting edge versatile installment applications, making portable installments more open to more customers like animesprout.
Shipper upholds for innovation has additionally expanded, as most new charge card perusers and retail location (POS) terminals can acknowledge portable wallets and other contactless installments.
For independent companies, tolerating portable installments can improve the client encounter and smooth out cycles, to give some examples of benefits. Some industry specialists state that embracing versatile installment innovations is one approach to the future-verification of your business. Yet, does it bode well for private ventures to jump aboard now?
To assist you with gauging the upsides and downsides, here’s a diagram of portable installments, possible advantages, and the innovation important to help them.
What are portable wallets?
As a wide definition, a versatile wallet includes any innovation that transforms your cell phone into a wallet equipped for making monetary exchanges. This can likewise include making charge card installments, depending on close field correspondence innovation (“tap to pay”), and regularly incorporates motivating forces for customers like devotion projects and coupons.
The unmistakable preferred position is “contactless installment,” which normally includes NFC innovation. Telephones, for example, the Samsung Galaxy S10 use NFC so you don’t need to swipe a Mastercard; you essentially place the telephone on a peruser that checks the QR code for the client’s card.
Versatile wallets work in the store for private company exchanges, however, they can likewise be utilized for online installments. It’s a route for clients to try not to convey a genuine wallet or handbag, utilizing one gadget for all installments.
Obviously, the versatile wallets complete the exchange with the client’s current charge card. For instance, they can interface Apple Pay to their bank card or Mastercard. Touchy card information is supplanted with scrambled tokens for additional security.
With different computerized wallet applications, a cell phone can be utilized to make installments, record and recover dedication focuses, supplant paper tickets, pass on close to home recognizable proof, and send accreditations that award admittance to make sure about entryways and rooms.
Key takeaway: Mobile wallets let clients utilize their cell phones to make installments on the web or in-store by means of tap-to-pay or QR code filters.
How protected are versatile wallets?
Versatile wallets have preinstalled security highlights intended to prevent any other individual from utilizing the record. While charge cards are anything but difficult to sweep or take, portable wallets are anything but difficult to monitor — since a great many people generally know where their telephones are — and incorporate encryption innovation. They likewise offer discretionary safety efforts to keep undesirable clients from utilizing the portable wallet application, for example, a necessary face filter, unique mark, PIN, or password.
Versatile wallets are more enthusiastically to take from on the grounds that they are more earnestly to recreate. For the most part, individuals cling to their telephones more than they do their wallets. On the off chance that somebody loses their wallet, their money is no more. In the event that somebody loses a telephone, the lock on the telephone and the application ensure against burglary.
There are some intrinsic dangers in depending exclusively on a portable wallet for installments, obviously. The telephone could pass on right at the purpose of procurement, a bug could keep the footing from working or make the QR code muddled, and there’s consistently the possibility of client blunder. (Thus, you should give your clients the same number of installment choices as you can.)
Despite the fact that there’s been a ton of worry about security, versatile installments are safer than different types of installment. Clients don’t need to stress over leaving a charge card behind at the terminal, and since the information for portable installment is encoded, the danger of information robbery is lower. This can fabricate more grounded trust among dealers and clients. Also, numerous telephones use unique mark recognizable proof to check a buy.
How do versatile wallets bring in cash?
The applications’ financial accomplices (i.e., the banks that have the clients’ associated installment cards) pay the versatile wallet organizations a little level of each buy their clients make through the application. For instance, Apple acquires 0.15% of every Apple Pay exchange.
For distributed installments through Venmo, the application charges the payer a level of the exchange’s worth (in the event that they’re paying with a Visa). Organizations that acknowledge Venmo installments accept this expense and pay a 2.9% charge for every exchange.
How would you acknowledge portable wallet installments?
Setting up portable installments for your business is for the most part quick and moderate. To start with, you need to pick a Mastercard processor that upholds portable installments. There are several installment handling organizations available, and the very best ones can set you up to acknowledge computerized wallets.
In the event that you as of now have an installment processor, call your rep and ask what you need to do to acknowledge versatile installments and computerized wallets — it could be as basic as moving up to another charge card peruser that empowers NFC. The card peruser or terminal should cost you close to $500; contingent upon the versatile installment supplier, it may even be free.
In case you’re not yet tolerating Visas, consider working with a portable Mastercard processor like Square or PayPal, as it’s snappy to set up a record with them, forthright expenses for preparing equipment are insignificant, and there is no month to month or yearly record charges. | https://medium.com/@animesprout/why-you-need-to-accept-mobile-wallets-at-your-smb-c72df7f0a1d1 | ['Anime Sprout'] | 2020-12-26 09:20:17.719000+00:00 | ['Trending', 'Animesprout', 'Anime', 'Technology'] |
Is your Numpy optimized for speed? | Is your Numpy optimized for speed?
The Numpy Logo, Wikipedia.
If your research work is highly dependent on Numpy-based calculations, such as vector or matrix additions and multiplications, etc. Then it is advisable to run a few checks in order to see if Numpy is using one of three libraries that are optimized for speed, in contrast to Numpy’s default version.
There are 4 Blas and Lapack flavors available and as far as I know, Numpy will grab one of the following (2,3,4) libraries and will default to the first one if neither exists in your system.
Libraries:
Default BLAS & Lapack OpenBLAS Intel MKL ATLAS
Benchmarks
Luckily, two benchmarks are available on the net, the first was made in 2015 and compares OpenBLAS, Intel MKL vs ATLAS, it tips the scale towards MKL and ATLAS, but it’s worth noting that a lot has changed since 2015.
Figure 1: a comparison of four BLAS libraries
The second one (Figure 1) is from 2017 and is more complete. It shows a comparison of for all four libraries and the results are in favor of OpenBLAS, Intel MKL vs ATLAS, while MKL takes the slight lead. The comparison was made for a vector and matrix multiplication, SVD, Cholesky decomposition, and eigendecomposition.
Which Library?
If you want to know which one Numpy is currently using, the short answer is :
import numpy
print(numpy.show_config())
The long answer is that you have to dig in the shell and see which one is installed.
For Numpy < 1.10:
ldd /<path_to_site-packages>/numpy/core/_dotblas.so
For Numpy≥1.10:
ldd /<path_to_site-packages>/numpy/core/multiarray.so
immediately after you will have to follow some symlinks.
$ldd /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/numpy/core/_dotblas.so
linux-vdso.so.1 => (0x00007fff12db8000)
libblas.so.3 => /usr/lib/libblas.so.3 (0x00007fce7b028000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x00007fce7ac60000)
libm.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 (0x00007fce7a958000)
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0 (0x00007fce7a738000)
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007fce7ca40000) $ readlink -e /usr/lib/libblas.so.3
/usr/lib/openblas-base/libblas.so.3
Please note that these examples were pasted from this SO post.
Many Thanks for reading this post, if you have a comment, feel free to reply. | https://towardsdatascience.com/is-your-numpy-optimized-for-speed-c1d2b2ba515 | ['Ori Cohen'] | 2019-09-27 16:22:51.022000+00:00 | ['Numpy', 'Towards Data Science', 'Pandas', 'Python', 'Machine Learning'] |
5 Fantastic Humour Pubs | Slackjaw
They are the biggest humour publication on Medium, so they had to make this list. Edited by Alex Baia and sarah james, it’s a place for only the best humour pieces. Here’s a great piece I love because a) it’s funny and b) the guy in the photo looks like my celebrity crush Jake Gyllenhaal… what? That’s not drool on my face, that’s my uhh clear lipstick okay?
MuddyUm
They are the first humour pub I wrote for and I’ve made lots of friends there so far! Susan Brearley is one of the editors and inspiring captain who is pretty hilarious herself. Send them your stuff and join their ragtag crew. (Side note: they are pirate-themed which is the best). She also shares some fun prompts if you’re ever looking for inspiration.
Jane Austen’s Wastebasket
Edited by Kyrie Gray, JAW is a great humour pub with everything from satire to comics. The doodles are always adorable and creative. Here’s one of my favourite articles by Kyrie (although all her stuff is great and I struggled to pick just one).
The Haven
I get some good laughs when I read The Haven edited and founded by Page Barnes. They’ve got a wide variety and I love writing for them. I never know what to expect! Here’s a great piece by Page herself.
Sex and Satire
This is a darn hilarious publication by editor Ms. Part Time Wino. When I read the ridiculous sex stores I’m usually snorting on the bus hoping no one sees what’s I’m reading on my phone. Check them out! | https://medium.com/the-pub-pub/5-fantastic-humour-pubs-7161790e9a4d | ['Victoria A. Fraser'] | 2020-12-19 04:11:09.174000+00:00 | ['Satire', 'Publication', 'Humor', 'Lists', 'Comedy'] |
Just a teaser of the demo site of the #ArtisTurba exchange | in Both Sides of the Table | https://medium.com/artisturba/just-a-teaser-of-the-demo-site-of-the-artisturba-exchange-880bca87b3b | ['Artis Turba'] | 2018-09-05 11:10:42.857000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'Ethereum', 'Exchange', 'Blockchain', 'Altcoins'] |
Introducing MOΞT ART NFT | About the artist, Moe Notsu
Moe Notsu, MOΞT ART NFT
Born in Shimane in 1988.
Graduated from the California State University at Long Beach with a BA degree in Art. Previously active in California as a graphic designer, artist, and painter for ten years. Currently based in Tokyo, Japan.
“As a child, I told everyone that I want to become a painter, but I never actually tried to pursue the path.
I majored in graphic design at my university in America because my time in the U.S. has taught me that life would be meaningless if I don’t learn what I want to do.
After my encounter with chalk art, which reminded me of the joy of painting, I began my career as an artist.
What all my works have in common is the underlying memories of my life in the U.S. from 2007 to 2017.”
ーMoe NOTSU
Chalk Art Festival, Germany
Private Exhibitions:
2016: Long Beach, CA
2020: Peculiar Curiosity (Tokyo, Japan)
Peculiar Curiosity, Solo Exhibition, Tokyo, Japan (2020)
Group Exhibitions:
2014: Sacred Memories (USA)
2015: From Her (USA)
2016: The 13th Summer Exhibition, Galerie Nichido Main Gallery (Tokyo Japan)
Awards and Prizes:
2011 Pasadena Chalk Festival, Best Technique Award, People’s Choice Award
2011 Chalk Art Festival, First Prize
2011 Belmont Shore Sidewalk Chalk Art Contest, First Prize
2012 Pasadena Chalk Festival, First Prize, People’s Choice Award
2012 Belmont Shore Sidewalk Chalk Art Contest, Best in Show Award
2013 Pasadena Chalk Festival, First Prize, People’s Choice Award, and Tom Matousek Award
2013 Chalk Art Festival, First Prize
2013 Belmont Shore Sidewalk Chalk Art Contest, Director’s Prize
2014 Downey’s Chalk Art Festival, First Prize
2014 Palm Springs Chalk Art Festival First Prize, People’s Choice Award
2014 Pasadena Chalk Festival, 2nd place, Silent Auction 1st Place
2014 Carlsbad Art Splash, People’s Choice Award
2014 FESTA!’s Gesso Italiano, People’s Choice Award
2014 Belmont Shore Sidewalk Chalk Art Contest, 2nd place
2015 Palm Springs Chalk Art Festival, 4th place
2015 Autism Chalk Art Festival, First Prize
2015 Pasadena Chalk Art Festival First Prize, People’s Choice Award
2015 Monrovia Chalk Art Festival First Prize
2015 Belmont Shore Sidewalk Chalk Art Contest, Director’s Prize
2016 Palm Springs Chalk Art Festival First Prize, People’s Choice Award
2016 Autism Chalk Art Festival, Best Original Prize
2018 Accepted to the 53rd Showa-kai Exhibition in 2018.
2019 Good Design Award
Corporate Events:
2019 90th Osamu Tezuka Anniversary of birth; I ♡ MANGA, Chalk Art Performance
2019 TADASHI SHOJI JAPAN, Live Event
2020 Def Tech Anniversary Music Art Exhibition, Chalk Art Performance
TADASHI SHOJI JAPAN, Live Event
Media Publication:
2021: ONBEAT, Vol.14
ONBEAT, Vol.14
Moe Notsu’s Websites:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moet1030
Website: http://moenotsu.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYxstVU4B_-tHhj1glO7Z_w
Shop: https://moenotsu.myshopify.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MoetArtNFT
Rarible: https://rarible.com/moet
OpenSea: https://opensea.io/MOETARTNFT
Genesis NFT Drop:
MOΞT ART NFT’s first NFT drop will occur on 8/30/2021 on Rarible.
rarible.com/moet
*Update: NFT sales is now live at the link above. | https://medium.com/@moetartnft/introducing-mo%CE%BEt-art-nft-75f99d9b8207 | ['Moξt Art Nft'] | 2021-09-01 07:46:47.554000+00:00 | ['First Post', 'Nft', 'Nftartist', 'Nftart', 'Nft Collectibles'] |
Invest Using the Barbell Strategy to Maximize Returns While Staying Safe | The Barbell Strategy of Investing
Nassim Taleb is one of the world’s top experts in investing, having written a few amazing books about the subject. One of his most famous works is Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder, where he argues that an effective investing strategy should strive to be antifragile: fully protected from total loss while still being open to the big return opportunities. From this, he forms what is called the barbell strategy.
“I initially used the image of the barbell to describe a dual attitude of playing it safe in some areas and taking a lot of small risks in others, hence achieving antifragility. That is extreme risk aversion on one side and extreme risk loving on the other, rather than just the “medium” or the beastly “moderate” risk attitude that in fact is a sucker game (because medium risks can be subjected to huge measurement errors). But the barbell also results, because of its construction, in the reduction of downside risk — the elimination of the risk of ruin.”
Illustration of the barbell strategy (by Mighty Knowledge)
The barbell (a metal bar that weight lifters use) is used to illustrate how we want to approach a balanced investing strategy. The main idea is that returns on investments are non-linear, especially at the extreme ends.
Very low-risk-low-return investments, like Certificates of Deposit (CD) or High-Interest Savings Accounts (HISA), are guaranteed to return your money at a set rate. The rate is typically very low because it is so safe. On the other hand, very high-risk investments have the potential to get you obscenely high returns. For example, Options contracts and Cryptocurrency might have the potential to return 100 times your investment.
According to the barbell strategy, being in the middle is the worst thing since the returns on your investment aren’t usually worth the risk. For example, you could invest in single blue-chip stocks like Coca Cola or General Electric, but your risk-reward tradeoff there is quite poor. The stocks of both companies might go down during economic downturns or when new competitors come into play. On top of that, such well-established stocks won’t be rising by 100X any time soon. In general, being in the middle does not give you a good balance of risk-to-reward.
Taleb eloquently sums up these ideas with a simple balance of 90/10:
“If you put 90 percent of your funds in boring cash (assuming you are protected from inflation) or something called a “numeraire repository of value,” and 10 percent in very risky, maximally risky, securities, you cannot possibly lose more than 10 percent, while you are exposed to massive upside. Someone with 100 percent in so-called “medium” risk securities has a risk of total ruin from the miscomputation of risks.”
Thus, the best and most antifragile strategy is to put 90% of your investment (whether time, money or something else) into safe things that are guaranteed. The other 10% goes into things that are highly risky, but also give you a chance to win big. You’re protected from losing completely while having exposure to the maximum amount of upside.
The precise numbers of 90% and 10% are guidelines, not hard rules. If you feel like you have a higher tolerance for risk or otherwise can withstand some hits, then feel free to increase your investment percentage in the high-risk-high-return assets. Vice versa of course if you prefer to play it safe. Just keep in mind the three key concepts:
Protect yourself from total ruin — majority investment here Avoid the unbalanced middle — no investment here Go for a few high-risk-high-reward bets — minority investment here | https://medium.com/@smartpersonalfinance/invest-using-the-barbell-strategy-to-maximize-returns-while-staying-safe-3e1e8bc8dc8c | ['Smart Personal Finance'] | 2020-12-20 19:57:05.096000+00:00 | ['Investing', 'Money', 'Money Management', 'Books', 'Stock Market'] |
Customizing Google Charts. NOTE: This article contains snippets of… | Enough theory, let’s write some code!
I prepared a demo on Stackblitz, so you can check out the result there. Please check also the HTML file to see how we load the Google packages and SCSS for styling.
The main function we declare is called drawTreemap() and has no parameters. At the beginning we define heatmapData array with our data we want to display. Then we use Google methods to define and visualize the tree and we configure the opts object. That’s what is required to display the basic treemap, and you can read more about it in the Google docs linked above.
Inside of the main function we declare another function called showInfo(). We use this function to build on top of the treemap. We know that each node is a rectangle, so we can get the dimensions and coordinates of each node, and recreate the treemap. We are going to use getBoundingClientRect() method for that.
getBoundingClientRect() returns the size of an element and its position relative to the viewport.
I think this method is very handy as I’ve used it many times in different kinds of projects. If it’s new for you, add it to your JS arsenal :-) If we inspect the treemap, we can see it consists of SVG rectangles that are gouped by <g> element. We can target them and iterate through each node to run the few functions I am about to describe.
var svg = treechart.find('svg');
var cells = svg.find('g');
cells.find('text').hide(); cells.each(function(i, item) {
var cell = $(item);
var xy = getCellCoordinates(cell);
var tableData = getTableData(i);
var cellColor = setColor(tableData);
var extraCell = makeInfoCell(tableData, xy, cellColor);
$("#page").append(extraCell);
});
The first one is getCellCoordinates(cell)
function getCellCoordinates(cell) {
var top = window.pageYOffset || document.documentElement.scrollTop;
var rect = {
top: cell[0].getBoundingClientRect().top,
left: cell[0].getBoundingClientRect().left,
width: cell[0].getBoundingClientRect().width,
height: cell[0].getBoundingClientRect().height
};
if (top > 0) {
rect.top = rect.top + top;
}
return rect;
}
We retrieved the size and position of each rectangle using getBoundingClientRect() and stored it to xy variable. Next we have:
var tableData = getTableData(i);
This function creates data object and store values to its properties using Google’s DataTable getValue() method. We do this so we can easily pass it to other functions and manipulate with data. For example we pass tableData to setColor() function:
var cellColor = setColor(tableData);
setColor() function as its name suggests, sets the colors we define to rectangles based on values we passed to the function. And lastly we call makeInfoCell() function:
var extraCell = makeInfoCell(tableData, xy, cellColor); $("#page").append(extraCell);
makeInfoCell() function takes 3 parameters that we defined and calculated:
data
coordinates
color
Based on these parameters it creates HTML for new rectangles and custom tooltip that we then append to the page. Notice that on hover, when we want to display the tooltip, we again use getBoundingClientRect() method to correctly position it within the rectangle.
$(".cellInfo").on("mouseenter touchstart", function(e) {
var cell = $(this);
var hoverBox = cell.find(".hoverBox");
var cellWidth = cell[0].getBoundingClientRect().width;
var cellHeight = cell[0].getBoundingClientRect().height;
var hoverBoxWidth = hoverBox[0].getBoundingClientRect().width;
var hoverBoxY = hoverBox[0].getBoundingClientRect().right;
var treemapDivY = treechart[0].getBoundingClientRect().right;
...
And that’s it! I encourage you to check the code and look at the functions described above to get more clarity. Ohh and I said we want to highlight selected rectangles as in the GIF. It’s time to practice some JS :-) | https://medium.com/swlh/customizing-google-charts-treemaps-and-usage-of-getboundingclientrect-method-16410a32086b | ['Miroslav Šlapka'] | 2020-11-22 10:41:39.855000+00:00 | ['Google', 'JavaScript', 'Programming', 'Front End Development', 'Web Development'] |
By (Non)Design: The Connections Between Generic Packaging and Creative Life | 19 Feb 2006 from On Kawara’s “Today” painting series
Like many kids who attended state-run American elementary schools in the 1980s, I have barely any recollection of anything that I learned in the actual confines of a classroom, being mostly dependent on family support and autodidactic ability to acquire and retain knowledge. I do, however, have a comparatively vivid recall of all the “extra-curricular” rituals of violence and status-jockeying cruelty that were the rule, not the exception, in these institutions. In among the rapidly decaying memories of this time, I can still remember one popular insult that was hurled around on playgrounds and school buses with sadistic glee: “generic.” In terms of initiating either clumsy fistfights or defeated sobbing fits, it wasn’t as cruelly effective as other period barbs, i.e. “retard” or “L.D.” [an acronym for one placed in ‘learning disabled’ classes], but it often enough managed to strike a nerve and prompt intense, prolonged fits of self-doubt. While someone being mocked as a “retard” was simply being called inept, to be on the receiving end of a “generic” claim was to be simultaneously accused of low status and to be totally devoid of any distinguishing personality traits. The thing about such insults is that they often prompt their victims to come out on the other side of the aforementioned fits of self-doubt with a desire to throw the detested personality flaws back in their tormentors’ faces: in fact, an entire paradoxically vivid subculture eventually formed around the adoption of “generic” aesthetics and ideals.
To understand the relevance of that both then and now, it is necessary to look back at the retailing landscape as it existed in the late 1970s and 1980s. But first, some more clarification about the pejorative nature of “generic” is in order. While “generic” seems semantically identical to more contemporary insults like “basic,” each is a clear product of its own time: the latter refers to a lack of imagination in the face of an unprecedented opportunity for self-individuation; an inability to make a passably original expression in an Information Age supposedly defined by endless difference. It is an insult that maintains its edge by denying others a capability for producing a memorable self-image during a time in which anyone recording himself screaming at a video game live stream can ostensibly become a world-renowned “content creator”. By contrast, a “generic” person in the ’80s was, essentially, someone incapable of “correctly” consuming.
The hidden implication, I always felt, was that “generic” people were forced into their lot not by external circumstances, but by inadequate levels of ingenuity and poor decision-making skill. They were not only, as the story went, disgraces to themselves, but possible detriments to the national character as well, at a time when free-wheeling American vivacity and spontaneity were still being touted as the cultural forces that would turn Soviet citizens against their masters during the late stages of the Cold War. “Generic” people were incapable of rising to their task as cultural liberators; shuffling automatically and incuriously through life, showcasing such a total deficit of ambition that they practically necessitated the creation of a unique line of consumer goods that responded to their flat affects and self-reduced personal standards.
Enough said.
That product line, in a not-so-distant past, was unmistakeable when encountered in the pre-WalMart era of suburban American supermarkets. Entire “generic aisles” were comprised from solid walls of black text on opaque yellow packaging, with individual products from cookies to breakfast cereal to beer, blending together in a single uniform mass only interrupted by the exposed white strips of metal shelving. It was an artless spectacle that nevertheless could compete with the most sublime works of the Minimalist masters (Donald Judd, Carl Andre etc.) in terms of memorability and semantic clarity. A closer look at the product offerings revealed little more than what could be ascertained from a distance: the already stark two-color printing process was given more imposing weight by the total absence of any additional graphic elements aside from purely functional ones (e.g. UPC codes and ‘nutritional information’ charts), and the black block text announcing the packages’ contents contained no listing of the products’ benefits to the consumer, no elaborative pictograms, nor really any additional subtext to persuade or entice. Elements that might have contributed to both visual and haptic distinction, like the universally recognizable fluted surface and grooves of the Coke bottle, were also ignored.
Given what has already been said about the gravitational pull of full-color American exuberance as a cultural force, this anti-marketing strategy couldn’t have lasted forever (one notable modern holdout is the wholly “generic” Canadian supermarket No Frills), and such generic products eventually made way for somewhat less austere “house brands” featuring an actual modicum of graphic design work. In the absence of such packaging, iconoclastic graphic designers like Art Chantry are left to unironically lament how “everything is so ‘pretty’ now in the grocery aisle.”[i]
The memorable placement of these generic packages in Alex Cox’ 1984 film Repo Man (see above) begins to hint at the erstwhile omnipresence of these products, while re-purposing them as visual signifiers of cultural cynicism (though I occasionally meet Repo Man viewers who are under the impression that the no-brand “BEER” props were comical anomalies fashioned solely for the film). Numerous subcultural outliers in the U.S., and the Western world as a whole, would do generic packaging one better by apparently embracing it: the “generic” album from San Franciscan ‘art-damaged’ punks Flipper, which replicated the sterile black-on-yellow package design of generic foodstuffs to a “T,” was one watershed design that pointed towards a subcultural adoption of the generic anti-aesthetic as something superior to “proper,” element-rich graphic design. For one, appropriating generic design style for one’s own creative output communicated a certain resistance to being propagandized, and particularly in accepting the propaganda that consumer choices alone provided the molecular structure of a distinct identity (especially as it became steadily more obvious that the preemptively limited choices, in consumer goods as well as broadcast media and political candidates, did not represent everything really available or possible in the marketplace).
It is not that bold of an assertion to say that some kind of “genericism as resistance” has manifested in every multi-media, d.i.y. subculture to have existed from the late 1970s to present. This tenacity has existed in spite of repeated lessons from market researchers, such as Orth and Malkewitz, whose findings implied that “nondescript designs score low on sincerity, exictement and ruggedness, and average on competence and sophistication…these designs further generate impressions of ‘corporate’ and ‘little value for money’, and do not evoke happy memories.”[ii]
Then again, the above is not an exhaustive list of criteria for the appreciation of a given object, and generic packaging appropriated for artistic statements plays upon a different set of cultural impulses ranging from a distrust of arbitrariness to the many varieties of societal fatigue. For those inundated with other eye-popping pleas for attention defined by dancing typefaces and hyperreal graphic novelty, the attitude of “take it or leave it” challenge implied by mock-generic cultural products must have had (as it did for me) an attraction akin to the romantic curiosity one might feel for disengaged, aloof loners after being breathlessly propositioned by dozens of other prospective partners. Everyone from the “white label” underground of techno music to the more institutional (if just barely) culture of avant-garde classical have gambled on this psychological quirk with decent enough results: see, for example, the Swiss Hat Art label’s series of ‘modern classical’ masterworks on CD. Elsewhere, the packaging for my CD copy of the late Glenn Branca’s ecstatic Symphony №2 (The Peak of the Sacred) would be almost indistinguishable from a generic product bought at a Kroger supermarket in the early 1980s, save for the deviation of two contrasting text colors being featured on the cover.
Genericism re-envisioned as culture also telegraphs a commitment to essentiality, which is at the core of any ethical statement that this style hopes to make. Chantry, in his musing on the ‘house brand,’ notes that a key to their strategy was “to make the labeling look like they weren’t ‘wasting’ your precious grocery money on elaborate (i.e. expensive packaging…) it all got tossed out anyway, right?”[iii] In doing so, he touches upon a stance that was both ethic and aesthetic, and one which applies to many other non-musical creative artifacts of the late 20th century and beyond, executed in media that did not require packaging. While not consciously attempting to appropriate or comment on generic packaging, some major works of the avant-garde do capture something of this same contrarian attractiveness and ethical essentialism. One of conceptual artist On Kawara’s most noted works, his Today series of paintings consisting only of the painting’s date of completion rendered in white block lettering on a single-color background, effectively served as “packages” or framing devices for the artist’s own continual self-development: they were a kind of “embodied time” demonstrating aspects of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology (and, unfortunately, doing so in a way too complex to be fully laid out in this short article). Elsewhere, something like Aram Saroyan’s utra-minimalist poems, e.g. lighght (the entirety of which you have now just read), arguably took the “generic” quality of stark non-descriptiveness into the field of poetry. In the process, they reduced that field’s complex relationship with language to a purely declarative function, and in a way that was shocking enough to become the National Endowment of the Arts’ first bona fide funding controversy.
Rather than traveling further down this road, though, it would be wise to put on the brakes and state the perhaps obvious fact that a simple, nondescript, purely declarative design style has been the very lifeblood of corporate logos and luxury consumer goods for decades now. As to the latter, the marketing aims of the designer fragrance industry are much better encapsulated by something like the austere layout of the CK One bottle (arguably the first truly popular unisex fragrance in the U.S.) than by Katy Perry’s hilariously cloying, cat-shaped Meow container. It’s fascinating to consider how, simply by altering color schemes and diluting some of the blunt force of a bold / block typeface by going “lowercase”, changing the degree of kerning, etc., one can create “genericism” that exudes a much higher degree of “competence and sophistication” while also paying lip service to the essentialist “waste nothing” ethic. With the classical age of actually existing generic packaging behind us, a kind of carefully sculpted generic quality is a valuable weapon in the hands of marketing departments everywhere, and is a reliable alternative to adopt when humans’ limitless capacity for boredom and fatigue with established aesthetics comes into play once again. As in Dr. Seuss’ brilliant childrens’ fable The Sneetches, where a master salesman pits “star-bellied” and generically non-starred creatures against one another in a cyclical divide-and-conquer scheme, alternating acceptance and loathing of the nondescript seems to be an eternal recurrence.
Yet there is one relatively new feature of our current cultural and media landscape that is altering the rules of this game: the simple fact that the relevance of “packaging” itself is eroding. This is certainly true for the music business, as claimed by the Royal Designer for Industry Malcolm Garrett — himself the designer of the notorious “generic” carrying bag design for the Buzzcocks’ Another Music in A Different Kitchen LP:
Packaging is just one interface to the music. The application of creative energy, which once saw physical expression in record sleeves, posters, and club flyers, is now realized in ‘soft’ ways. The interface is now digital, but no less compelling. The point of access is the package, and consequently, identity is expressed in ways that complement rather than define the music.[iv]
Garrett’s invocation of the “interface” brings us right back to the present age of social media, and the “internet of everything,” and their attendant imperatives for all to sacrifice their privacy in order to become recognizable creators of “content.” Musing upon these things also, after a fashion, brings us to what was initially so rewarding about announcing one’s creative presence to the world with a strictly uninformative data set. For some, this may have come from nothing else than a contrarian urge, but this was also informed by anonymity as a strategy, i.e. the hope that an austere interface would force prospective fans, supporters or friends to engage in direct contact and communicate unhindered by symbolic distractions, while also repelling those who could not be bothered to do so.
The new equivalent of “genericist” counter-cultural revolt might be nothing other than a voluntary refusal of the dopamine rush of recognition provided by social media networks, and limitation of personal disclosure to the most purely declarative: something like the Geneva Convention injunction that captured combatants provide captors with no information other than “name, rank, and serial number.” To be sure, there will be a whole new repertoire of schoolyard insults ready to be launched when this strain of non-conformity finally becomes perceived as a genuine force, and when an individual’s level of usefulness to society becomes defined not by their skill in production or consumption, but in their degree of commitment to omnipresence (read: constant ability to be monitored and administered). As always, insults will be loudly bleated by schoolchildren, but only in imitation of those adults who have been successfully propagandized to see any degree of independent thought and action as existential threats.
[i] Chantry, A. (2015). Art Chantry Speaks. Port Townsend: Feral House.
[ii] Orth, U. & Malkewitz, Kevin (2008). “Holistic Package Design and Consumer Brand Impressions.” Journal of Marketing, 72(3).
[iii] Chantry (2015).
[iv] Garrett, M. (2015). “Bsolete?” Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, 161. | https://thomasbeywilliambailey.medium.com/by-non-design-the-connections-between-generic-packaging-and-creative-life-f9ad735891a3 | ['Thomas Bey William Bailey'] | 2019-10-04 03:14:16.377000+00:00 | ['Anonymity', 'Marketing', 'Alternative Music', 'Design', 'Content Creation'] |
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TELEVISION SHOW AND HISTORY
A television show (often simply ) is any content prBookmark this siteoduced for broadcast via over-the-air, satellite, cable, or internet and typically viewed on a tv set, excluding breaking news, advertisements, or trailers that are usually placed between shows. s ‘re normally scheduled well ahead of The G0G with Grandpa and appear on electronic guides or other TV listings.
A television show may also be called a tv program (British EnBookmark this siteglish: programme), especially if it lacks a narrative structure. A tv set Movies may be the G0G with Grandpaually released in MoViE that follow a narrative, and are The G0G with Grandpaually divided into seasons (The G0G with Grandpa and Canada) or Movies (UK) — yearly or semiaual sets of new MoViE. A show with a restricted number of MoViE could be called a miniMBookmark this siteovies, serial, or limited Movies. A one-The G0G with Grandpa show could be called a “special”. A tv set film (“made-for-TV movie” or “televisioBookmark this siten movie”) is a film that`s initially broadcast on television instead of released in theaters or direct-to-video.
Television shows may very well be Bookmark this sitehey are broadcast in real The G0G with Grandpa (live), be recorded on home video or an electronic video recorder for later viewing, or be looked at on demand via a set-top box or streameBookmark this sited over the internet.
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❏ STREAMING MEDIA ❏
Streaming media are multimedia media that are continuously received by an end user and presented to an end user while being provided by a provider. The verb to be streamed identifies the process of providing or receiving media in this way. [Clarification required] Streaming identifies the delivery method of the medium rather than the medium itself. The distinction between the delivery method and the distributed media is particularly true for telecommunications networks, as most delivery systems are either inherently streaming (e.g. radio, television, streaming apps) or not streaming by nature (e.g. books, video cassettes, sound CDs). There are challenges associated with streaming content on the Internet. For example, users whose Internet coStarzection does not have sufficient bandwidth may experience stops, delays, or slow buffering of this content. And users who lack compatible hardG0Ge or softG0Ge systems may have problems streaming certain content.
Live streaming is the delivery of Internet content in real time, similar to how live television broadcasts content over the air with a television signal. Live internet streaming takes the form of source media (e.g. a video camera, sound interface, screen capture softG0Ge), an encoder to digitize the content, a media publisher, and a content delivery network to distribute and serve that content. Live streaming does not need to be recorded at the point of origin, although it is often the case.
Streaming is an option for dBBC Oneloading files. The end user receives the full file for the content before viewing or hearing it. Streaming allows an end user to use their media player to begin playing digital video or audio before the entire file has been transferred. The term “streaming media” can apply to media other than video and audio, such as: B. Live subtitles, ticker tape, and real-time text that are considered “streaming text”.
❏ COPYRIGHT CONTENT ❏
Copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its BBC Oneer the exclusive right to make copies of a creative work, usually for a limited time.[2][2][000][2][000] The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educational, or musical form. Copyright is intended to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself.[6][6][2] A copyright is subject to limitations based on public interest considerations, such as the fair use doctrine in the United States.
Some jurisdictions require “fixing” copyrighted works in a tangible form. It is often shared among multiple authors, each of whom holds a set of rights to use or license the work, and who are commonly referred to as rights holders.[citation needed][6][20][22][22] These rights frequently include reproduction, control over derivative works, distribution, public performance, and moral rights such as attribution.[2000]
Copyrights can be granted by public law and are in that case considered “territorial rights”. This means that copyrights granted by the law of a certain state, do not extend beyond the territory of that specific jurisdiction. Copyrights of this type vary by country; many countries, and sometimes a large group of countries, have made agreements with other countries on procedures applicable when works “cross” national borders or national rights are inconsistent.[22]
Typically, the public law duration of a copyright expires 0000 to 22 years after the creator dies, depending on the jurisdiction. Some countries require certain copyright formalities[000] to establishing copyright, others recognize copyright in any completed work, without a formal registration.
It is widely believed that copyrights are a must to foster cultural diversity and creativity. However, Parc argues that contrary to prevailing beliefs, imitation and copying do not restrict cultural creativity or diversity but in fact support them further. This argument has been supported by many examples such as Millet and Van Gogh, Picasso, Manet, and Monet, etc.[6]
❏ GOODS OF SERVICES ❏
Credit (from Latin credit, “(he/she/it) believes”) is the trust which allows one party to provide money or resources to another party wherein the second party does not reimburse the first party immediately (thereby generating a debt), but promises either to repay or return those resources (or other materials of equal value) at a later date.[2] In other words, credit is a method of making reciprocity formal, legally enforceable, and extensible to a large group of unrelated people.
The resources provided may be financial (e.g. granting a loan), or they may consist of goods or services (e.g. consumer credit). Credit encompasses any form of deferred payment.[2] Credit is extended by a creditor, also knBBC One as a lender, to a debtor, also knBBC One as a borrower.
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Thanks for watching guys!! Smiling a little better a big laugh.! Have a nice day :)) | https://medium.com/hospital-fu1l-movies-horror-down-load-2020/hospital-2020-fu1l-movies-horror-down-load-b3501ef4b21b | ['Siti Nurhalizah'] | 2020-12-26 13:51:36.082000+00:00 | ['Horror'] |
Socially Insecure People Nervous for the Day They Won’t Be Able to Hide Their Faces Behind a Mask | US — All across the nation, many socially insecure people are getting pretty nervous for the inevitable day in which they won’t have to wear masks everywhere and will actually have to show their faces.
As of now, many socially insecure people are very glad to be able to hide 75% of their faces behind a mask and not look like complete losers. However, eventually the time will come in which they will start to look stupid for wanting to cover their faces all of the time.
While some are thinking about ways to practically get the mask covering the entirety of their face, so no one will be able to see any part of their faces or any amount of raging acne or incel chin, others are thinking ahead and considering ski masks, their home remedy acne-removing face shields, or makeup to hide their faces as much as possible when they won’t be able to anymore.
Hopefully if one of them becomes a politician and gets into office (which most likely will never happen, I mean, because to do that they first have to leave their parent’s basement, so…), they will decree mask-wearing until the end of time. | https://medium.com/@planetxmedia/socially-insecure-people-nervous-for-the-day-they-wont-be-able-to-hide-their-face-behind-a-mask-9d9df016aed2 | ['Planet X Media'] | 2020-12-27 16:39:27.494000+00:00 | ['Social Anxiety', 'News', 'Covid 19 Crisis', 'Masks', 'Coronavirus'] |
Nothing in life is hard. Hard is meaningless. | Dropping the word was a subtle change, but unbelievably powerful.
I’ve decided the word “hard” when applied to tasks, goals, and so on is always a cop-out. It’s verbal shorthand that lets people dodge the real issues at hand and is the cause of miscommunication. I have forced myself to drop it from my speech entirely.
Sometimes we’re just uncertain or uncomfortable
Sometimes we use the word “hard” to really mean “an uncertain amount of effort, but lots, and I don’t know if it would work”. The problem is that the person hearing the word doesn’t know how much effort, how uncertain the result is, or why. When I hear this am I hearing a real problem or just a lack of confidence in the speaker? Am I even talking to the right person?
I can do it. I think. What are we talking about again?
The effort to value is terrible
Sometimes “hard” is meant to signal that the effort it takes to achieve something is too high for the value it provides. But rather than just say something is hard, it’s clear that a discussion around effort and value is necessary. Is there a shortcut? Is the value really bad? How are we measuring that anyway? Avoiding this conversation is always a bad idea, and I’ve found that when this conversation has been had, people don’t use the word “hard” anymore. They just say: “We don’t think it’s worth it”. And that’s a very different thing.
Things aren’t “hard”, you just don’t have the skills
Let’s take an example: drawing a photo-realistic portrait. Is this hard? Yes, in that for the majority of people reading this and myself, they would fail. Which is to say it’s not actually hard at all: it’s actually impossible for you to do. But for trained artists who specialize in this work, it’s not hard either. Instead, it’s some number of hours of labor, stacked on top of the immense time and energy they put into gaining those skills.
Is the practice needed to gain skills hard? Not really. It’s very time to consume though. It might take years. It might FEEL draining, but that’s not really a property of the task, it’s a property of ourselves. And for many artists, the act of gaining these skills was a JOY. Is gaining skills hard, or we’re too exhausted or distracted to put in the work every day for years? “I tried drawing but it was too hard” is BS. Truth is: “I tried drawing, didn’t enjoy it, found it frustratingly slow, and then didn’t practice or get training. As a result, it’s impossible for me to draw photo realistic portraits”.
See how the word “hard” is just a dodge? It’s an out we allow ourselves and others to use to avoid talking about the real reasons something is or isn’t the case. Hard is a description of the journey, not the task. And unless you are training to be a Navy Seal or something, the journey isn’t really that tough either. You just didn’t take it. And that’s 100% ok.
Someone not working hard at all drawing a great little kitty.
Is it just complicated?
We also like to use “hard” to mean complicated. Here again it just leads to miscommunication. Hard can mean time-consuming, it can mean it’s risky, or it can just be complicated. Those can all be true at the same time, but saying something is “hard” doesn’t communicate much. I’d rather know if it’s time consuming, risky, complex, or all of the above. And those things do NOT always come together. Some things can be quick, risky, and complicated, and that’s a lot more important information than just saying things are hard. More importantly, what do I need to do to help? If something is just “hard” there is no action to take.
The hardest thing ever.
Sometimes it’s sales BS to butter someone up
Whenever someone in sales tells me something is hard, I get suspicious. It’s their way of leading to some crazy price for what needs to be done. “Oh, it’s very hard, you know, very difficult to do this”. And since it’s so hard, they want me to pay tons for this very special difficult thing they do. Except, again, that’s meaningless. Either they can do the job or they can’t. If they can, it’s at worst time consuming or complex or risky. If they can’t, this is a waste. If they don’t know if they can or not, then being “hard” is them pretending they can do the job to win a bid, but quoting me a huge price for me to pay them to figure it out. None of these are great options. Whenever someone in sales says something is hard, I’m inclined to immediately pass and find someone who can give me a more straightforward answer.
It’s going going gone! Whatever it is! Act now or lose out on whatever this thing is!
It’s almost always a warped perspective
In all of these cases, purposefully or not when people use the word hard they are providing a warped perspective to themselves and others. And we all put up with it because we’re busy doing the same thing ourselves. This does none of us a favor, except give us a pass on looking at the uncomfortable truths that make us say something is hard and sweep the details under a rug.
Stop using it
When I realized the meaninglessness of the word I forced myself to pay attention and stop using it. And when I heard other people use the word, I refused to give it a pass and would dive in. I do the same with synonyms like “difficult” and antonyms like “easy”. None of them communicate much and for all the same reasons. How many times have you seen an “easy” project go spinning out of control? Exactly.
Drop these words from your life and watch it change. You will experience a clarity of thought and communication that you’ve never had before. And when you drill into the use of these words by others, you’ll discover a wealth of critical information you’ve been passing by for years.
Nothing is hard. Hard is meaningless.
This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by + 376,592 people.
Subscribe to receive our top stories here. | https://medium.com/swlh/nothing-in-life-is-hard-hard-is-meaningless-861b43a6da6 | [] | 2018-10-09 15:36:32.716000+00:00 | ['Communication', 'Personal Growth', 'Life Lessons', 'Life Hacking', 'Startup'] |
Responsive vs. Adaptive Design | Responsive vs. Adaptive Design
Photo Credits https://www.pexels.com/
The number of ways that users access information has increased swiftly. With the latest technological advancements, the device counts vary from large scale monitors to advanced tech smartwatches. Responsive design and Adaptive design comes to play, to bridge the gap between devices.
No doubt it’s a challenge for designers, the end goal is that the user experience needs to be addressed in either way whether it’s responsive or adaptive.
Author/Copyright holder: Stéphanie Walter.
What is Responsive Design?
Illustration credit https://undraw.co/
In simple terms, a responsive design means developing a website using responsive styling properties such as media quires, where the device will determine how the design will display based on the device that you are viewing. The most common phrase that’s been used is the “Mobile First” approach.
Responsive designing is pretty much straightforward. As the layout is fully based on the fluid format whatever the device that you access starting from standard desktop screens to mobile devices you will be able to view the user interface in the appropriate, re-arranged, and resized format.
The three key principles of responsive design are,
Fluid Grid Systems — The columns will re-arrange automatically depending on the screen size
— The columns will re-arrange automatically depending on the screen size Fluid Image Use — Setting the image max-width for 100% to scale and fit with in the container
— Setting the image max-width for 100% to scale and fit with in the container Media Queries — Is a CSS technique that can be used to alter the layout of a site when a condition is been called. By using the @media rule we can add a set of CSS styling properties only if a certain condition is true
Responsive Frameworks
The commonly known most popular framework is “Bootstrap” where you can easily create responsive UI designs with less hassle. I got the opportunity to work with bootstrap when it was introduced as Twitter, bootstrap in 2004. It is really nice to see the evolvement of bootstrap has made and hands down it’s the simple and flexible HTML, CSS, and Javascript framework in the business. I simply adore it.
What is Adaptive Design?
Illustration credit https://undraw.co/
Talking about adaptive design, it’s about creating multiple layouts to fit appropriately identifying the user’s device (browser size) and it selects the most suitable layout design that aligns with the screen whether that’s a mobile, tablet device, desktop computer, or something in between.
It does sound the same as responsive design right? but the key difference between adaptive and responsive design is that the content follows a fixed layout size in adaptive design, while it moves dynamically in responsive design. In other words, the adaptive design uses a few fixed layouts and then selects the best layout for the current screen size.
In adaptive design, the standard practice for designers is that they have to develop the six most common screen widths 320, 480, 760, 960, 1200, and 1600 pixels
Conclusion
In my opinion, I personally believe that the key strength or the advantage of adaptive design is that we get the opportunity to customise the content. Since it’s accurate exactly for the device compared to a responsive site it feels more appropriate.
However responsive designing is still leading when it comes to easy development and maintenance whereas adaptive design it’s a bit hard to maintain and manage. I believe that until adaptive design finds their room for evolvement bootstrap will run the world. | https://medium.com/ascentic-technology/responsive-vs-adaptive-design-a197691fd4b6 | ['Shyamali De Silva'] | 2020-12-21 08:03:27.826000+00:00 | ['Adaptive Design', 'Bootstrap', 'Ui Ux Design', 'Responsive Design'] |
AI vs Ethics | “The world is not yet ready”
With this statement, Alberto, the pseudonymous creator of an artificial intelligence image editor, withdrew his app from sale. The app had gone viral after it received media coverage from Vice’s Motherboard technology blog that was subsequently picked up by other outlets — first online and then TV, radio and print media.
Recovering from the financial damage of a recent failed start-up, Alberto had finally struck product-market fit. It was the type of success founders dream of, with the explosion of traffic and sales taking down his website, he quite literally could not keep up with demand.
Alberto had created something customers wanted, he had identified his capabilities to build his business and despite the fact, as Alberto acknowledged, users could achieve the same results in competing programs like Adobe photoshop, Alberto was cornering the market in his niche.
According to Kenichi Ohmae’s 3 C’s model, Alberto had his strategic triangle nailed.
Photo by Owen Beard on Unsplash
Why, after so much failure and on the brink of success, did Alberto pull the plug?
Alberto’s app was built using generative adversarial networks (GANs), a class of machine learning described by Facebook’s Artificial Intelligence Chief Yann LeCun as “the coolest idea in machine learning in the last twenty years”. GANs have been used for tasks as diverse as improving the image quality of remastered video games and aiding astronomical research into dark matter. They are also able to generate photo-realistic images of artificial humans.
It is this last capability that Alberto’s app relied on. Unlike his noted competitor, Adobe Photoshop, Alberto had created a single purpose image editor. Building on the emergence of Deep fakes as a means of creating photo-realistic fake images and videos of politicians and public figures, Alberto’s app, DeepNudes, gave users the ability to create fake nude images of women in a click.
The app’s algorithm had been trained using a set of thousands of adult images and worked exclusively on transforming photographs of women. The coverage by Vice brought not only customers, but also complaints about the damage and abuse Alberto’s app could unleash on the world.
Within the day, Alberto had withdrawn his app from sale.
How did we get here?
Alberto’s story is not a new one. A creator, inventor, founder or executive hits upon an idea. It’s a product that has unmatched product-market fit, customer orders outstrip supply and suddenly, out of seemingly nowhere, that rocket ship growth explodes in moral controversy.
Sometimes that ethical flaw is enough to bring the company down, like in Alberto’s case, sometimes they stumble and recover, like in the case of Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. Shy of monopolies, those that survive are rarely the same and that explosive competitive advantage is no longer as sustainable as once thought.
These are the big stories and these big explosions get the bulk of attention. Yet on a smaller scale these stories are playing out every day in ordinary companies.
The Case for Conscience
Kenichi Ohmae’s 3 C’s model has been a staple framework of strategy practice for nearly 40 years. Ohmae posits that aligning customer needs, company capability & competitive positioning creates the strategic triangle of sustained competitive advantage.
Yet as we have seen, whether you are a major bank, tech giant or solo app developer, focusing solely on aligning your customer, company and competitive strategy leaves you vulnerable. While a triangle may make for the strongest of shapes, it does not make for the strongest of strategies.
By adding conscience to your strategy framework, you inoculate your firm from the big missteps that drown and quagmire the firms that do not. Conscience helps firms refrain from falling into the trap of short-term tactical advantage that undermines sustained competitive advantage. When faced with the endless potential of artificial intelligence, ethical strategy serves to help us discern what would should do from the vast ocean of what we could do when it comes to leveraging this technology.
Absolutely, maybe.
Part of the reason people both readily agree to the importance of ethics in strategy and just as readily avoid incorporating ethics into strategy comes from the diversity and ambiguity of ethical standards of people and groups. Every person wants organisations to behave in line with high ethical standards, specifically their own.
Adding conscience to your strategy framework can often cause people to get lost in the wilderness of philosophical debate and moralising. This is generally not conducive to your overall purpose of defining your strategy.
Instead of seeking to define your organisation’s ethics, it is more effective to view your strategy through the lens of diverse ethical standpoints. By taking a white hat approach and stress testing your strategic alignment to conscience you can identify how you might adapt your strategy or pre-empt failure if you have built your organisation around a fatal flaw.
Debating whether your organisation is ethical is a futile exercise that will draw either universal agreement or cause deep rifts. When developing your strategy, it is more useful to establish that there are a diversity of ethical view points and that you will almost certainly run afoul of some of them.
5 Questions for Ethical AI Strategy
From this base, seek to consider these 5 questions:
Under what ethical perspectives might our organisation fall short?
How might we fall short of these perspectives?
What risks and costs do we face by falling short of these perspectives?
What competing ethical perspectives does our strategy support?
How might we improve our alignment between Customer, Company, Competition and Conscience to create and maintain a sustained competitive advantage?
By considering each of these questions you can begin to strength the ethical alignment of your organisation by identifying your weaknesses and strengths, minimising liabilities and building on opportunities. Rather than debating the ethics of your strategy, you instead consider the strategy of your ethics in the context of risks and opportunities afforded.
Conscience in competition
While ethical considerations can be viewed by some as a burden, just as eschewing ethical alignment creates a liability for your firm, understanding your ethical positioning can be a powerful asset. This means not only understanding under which perspectives you are sound and unsound, but also those under which your competitors are so.
A contemporary example of this is the way Tim Cook has waged the privacy crusade to create competitive space between Apple and the rest of big tech. At a time when Apple has been falling behind competitors like Google, Amazon and Microsoft in cloud computing and voice assistants, Cook has made user privacy central to Apple’s strategy.
You aren’t choosing between a “smart” smart assistant and a “dumb” smart assistant, you are choosing between your ‘fundamental human right to privacy’ and the sale of your personal data. With both sides of US politics expressing distrust in big tech firms, this has been an effective alignment of customer, company, competition and conscience for Apple.
Such has been the impact of Cook’s privacy crusade that in their developer conferences this year, Facebook, Google and Microsoft all sought to par Apple’s advantage and declare their own commitments to privacy. Yet with businesses largely built on knowing everything about you, Facebook and Google have been limited in their ability to defend their position.
By contrast, this failure of alignment between company and conscience is why Google’s response has fallen short. The retort of Google Chief Sundar Pichai in the New York Times that ‘Privacy Should Not Be a Luxury Good’ muddles through a contemplation amounting to ‘But what even IS privacy…?’ and jibes at Apple for being expensive. Pichai effectively made Cook’s point, if you want privacy take your business to Apple.
The Sense Check
One final step you can take to promote the ethical alignment of your strategy is to sense check your personal ethics. For Alberto there were clear warning signs that what was a booming business with clear product-market fit would soon be doomed. Needing a pseudonym to promote your business is usually not a great indication that you are comfortable.
When you are formulating or receiving your A.I. strategy, ask yourself:
‘Is my conscience clear on this strategy?’
If the answer to that question is not yes, then you will have to change your organisation. If you can’t change your organisation, change your organisation.
If you liked this article, join the newsletter: https://tinyletter.com/OnStrategy | https://medium.com/swlh/ai-vs-ethics-1be1bf390509 | ['Mike Stevenson'] | 2019-08-19 08:52:42.508000+00:00 | ['AI', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Programming', 'Ethics', 'Technology'] |
A Powerful Flame That Burned Brightly | Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from the book My C. T. Vivian Story: A Powerful Flame That Burned Brightly by Living Now Bronze Medal-winning author Harold Michael Harvey
Medal of Freedom recipient Rev. Dr. C. T. Vivian. Credits Harold Michael Harvey
I first became aware of C. T. Vivian, February 19, 1965, on the CBS Evening News. Dallas County, Alabama Sheriff Jim Clark sucker-punched him after Vivian told Sheriff Clark that he thought he was as big a racist as Hitler. In the next breath, Vivian told Clark that he was not as big a racist as Hitler. I was 14 years old, perplexed by Jim Crow, and worried that Blacks, including myself, would never be free in America. A never-dying Jim Crowism was the daunting thought of my youth.
Two days later, February 21, 1965, I would meet Malcolm X via a news break during a Boston Celtics basketball game that announced Malcolm’s death in the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. I was bewildered, a freedom fighter whose life force I did not know had died, and another one received a punch to the jaw exercising his constitutional right of expression on a courthouse step.
Fifty-four years in the future, I still have my doubts about the free status of Blacks living in America. Vivian absorbed that punch, and with 55 years’ worth of perspective, we can say that his work has brought us closer to that promised land foretold by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. the night before King departed for eternal freedom.
C. T. Vivian and the author shared a 27 year history as neighbors.
Because Vivian’s torch burned brightly, I can run a little further to see what the end will bring. Watching Vivian take a punch to the chin, something struck me peculiarly about the courage of this tall, thin man. His last name commonly used as a first name by women — at least the only people I had encountered in 14 years named Vivian were women — standing on the steps of a courthouse defying the sheriff to stop Black people from registering to vote.
In the few days since his transition, many friends and distant observers have used extraordinary superlatives to describe the life of Cordy Tindall Vivian. All these superlatives are accurate and befitting for a giant among giants who walked alongside ordinary people raising their lives to colossal heights. I could come up with a superlative equal to the others in profundity, like: “powerful flame that burned brightly,” but, as Vivian would often exclaim: “What’s the point of that Doc, right,” why do that when so many catchphrases have honored Vivian’s legacy so well. “That’s the point of it,” I can hear Vivian say.
This essay will approach Vivian’s legacy like Luke, the physician, approached the honor and inheritance of Jesus. By no stretch am I suggesting Vivian is Christ incarnate. Merely, I will use the humanistic approach to recall the life and times of a noble friend to me and humankind. I will write about the everyday man — Vivian — from the lens of a 27- year neighbor. I will make use of the freestyle, running conversations I held with Vivian during this time. There are no chapters, no walls, only a recollection of chats we engaged in whether in the streets of our neighborhood, in his home, or my home, over coffee, water, and often over dinner.
C. T. Vivian sharing a dinner conversation on the author’s 60th birthday. Credits Harold Michael Harvey
I called him “Doc.” He called me “Brother Harvey.” In public, he introduced me as “Michael Harvey, my neighbor.” He wanted his friends and associates to know that he and I were neighbors. As if to say, you may know Michael Harvey, the professional, but I know him as a neighbor. His introductions always brought a smile to the corners of my lips.
Watching Vivian on television maneuver a southern sheriff into an act of violence caused me to want to know more about this man, but he seemed to fade from public view. Vivian stayed away from the camera for most of his life. The giants of the civil rights movement in full view were Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, Jr., Dr. Joseph E. Lowery, Ambassador Andrew Young, Congressperson John Lewis, Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, Julian Bond, Rev. Hosea Williams, and Rev. Jesse Jackson. Vivian was in the trenches with them shaping the rugged journey up to the mountain top, and over it, scaling down towards the promised land after the assassination of Dr. King.
C. T. Vivian in a pensive mood. Credits Harold Michael Harvey
Vivian, to use a sports analogy, is perhaps the “most underrated” freedom fighter who has ever spoken truth to power. We can even go back to 1839 when Joseph Cinque, commandeered the Amistad in the Atlantic Ocean. And, coming aground at Long Island, New York, tested for the first time the nation’s resolve to provide justice for all. Surely, Vivian belongs among the distinguished group of freedom fighters Cinque, Attucks, Delany, Tubman, Truth, Douglass, Washington, DuBois, Garvey, King, Abernathy, Lowery, Young, Lewis, Shuttlesworth, Bond, (Coretta) Scott King, Baker, Hamer, Williams, Parks, Chisholm, Jackson, X, Obama, and (Kamala) Harris.
In death, the news of his transition bumped from the news cycle in less than 24 hours. Another news story displaced news of his transition. His comrade in so many battles, John Lewis, had transitioned too.
Two days after Vivian bid us adieu, the CBS Sunday Morning program featured a full-length installment on Lewis’ days as a civil rights fighter and congressman. Vivian’s name as fate would have it, listed at the end of the program in a list of other Americans who died that week.
On that same day, an Atlanta television news station presented a documentary on the lives of Joseph Lowery, C. T. Vivian, and John Lewis, because they left us within four months of each other in the year of the 2020 pandemic. And there was Vivian, as in life, in the time of significant change and transition overshadowed by the light of other men with whom he shared a sacred history. I am sure, he chuckled that laugh of his, smiled, pointed his right index finger as he was wont to do, and was happy to see Lowery and Lewis receive the honor and praise due them.
Vivian was a doer, a thinker, a behind the scenes operative who could be counted upon to take care of business. “It’s all in the action,” he often said. He could spin a pun so tight it would discombobulate your mind trying to figure out what he had just expressed to you. Like the pun, he spun at Clark on those courthouse steps. Vivian knew Clark thought of himself as the meanest white supremacist in Alabama. Cunningly, Vivian told Clark, that in fact, he was a weak white supremacist. That no one would dare mention his name in the same breath with the disgustingly vile Hitler. That pun, spoken at that moment, was more potent than the punch thrown by Clark into Vivian’s jaw. That pun set into motion a whirlwind of events culminating at summer’s end with the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Harold Michael Harvey is the Living Now 2020 Bronze Medal winner for his memoir Freaknik Lawyer: A Memoir on the Craft of Resistance. He is a Past President of the Gate City Bar Association. He is the recipient of Gate City’s R. E. Thomas Civil Rights Award, which he received for his pro bono representation of Black college students arrested during Freaknik celebrations in the mid to late 1990s. Harvey is an engaging public speaker. Contact him at [email protected].
Related | https://medium.com/@hmichaelharvey/a-powerful-flame-that-burned-brightly-d731fc5c1fd | ['H. Michael Harvey'] | 2020-11-23 13:32:40.078000+00:00 | ['Biography', 'Books', 'Black Lives Matter', 'Black History Month', 'Civil Rights'] |
This veteran found healing through driving a Porsche — fast | After dozens of interactions with Clifton via phone, email, and text, I was eager to meet him. I’ve written hundreds of stories about racing and dozens about soldiers, but zero about a racing soldier. He agreed to let me ride shotgun for a day of high-speed driving.
Before I met him, I had seen him in pictures; most showed him in battle gear with a grizzly beard and a chest like a Buick. Based on his life story, I expected him to be eight feet tall. When he climbed out of his Porsche on a calm July morning in my Columbus, Ohio hotel parking lot, he was 5'9", wearing athletic clothes, with a neatly trimmed, grey-flecked beard … and a chest like a Buick.
With joking earnestness, he said, “I’m supposed to meet a journalist here,” as if someone else would be standing outside at 5:30 a.m. I climbed into the passenger seat. The first thing I noticed was a red button on top of the car’s cigarette lighter that says, “FIRE MISSILE.” He said it was a gift from his sons.
Clifton prepares to drive his 2006 Porsche 911.
On the way to the track, he drove like a perfectly normal person, though I would not swear in court that he followed the speed limit. He was so deft working through the gear box that I didn’t realize the Porsche had a manual transmission until we stopped at a gas station an hour into the trip.
Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, which runs 2.4 miles and has 15 turns, hosts races for NASCAR and other circuits. On this day, it was open to hobbyists looking to improve their driving skills. The cars ranged from Clifton’s used Porsche to mid-six-figure supercars to beaters that made me wonder why their drivers had bothered.
Drivers were separated into first timer, novice, intermediate, and advanced groups. Clifton was in intermediate. Drivers weren’t racing each other, but they were on the track at the same time.
His instructor, Eduardo Collazo, told me Clifton has the rare ability to drive, listen, and apply instruction at the same time. He credited that to Clifton’s intense military training. Using a textbook analogy, Collazo said most students start on Chapter 1, but Clifton reached Chapter 6 on the first day and had improved consistently since then.
As we waited in line before the first of five 20-minute sessions, I was nervous. I wasn’t afraid about his driving, or at least not very much. I was more worried about ralphing in the Porsche. He said if I wanted to bail out I should smash the “FIRE MISSILE” button.
He hollered when we hit 120. I looked out the windshield. The cars in front of us grew bigger as they slowed for a turn and we kept accelerating. Clifton waited for his braking point … the cars got bigger still … waited … now they were HUGE … my heart yelled BRAKE, DAMMIT, BRAKE … my mouth kept quiet … finally he mashed the brake. The car shook and squealed as we slowed into the right-hander.
By lap 5 of the second session, my stomach believed we were on lap 105, and I asked Clifton to drop me off. He drove the rest of the session and then joined me at his parking spot, where we had lawn chairs, drinks, and snacks. I had to look into the distance to keep my equilibrium. I was still woozy when I stood up an hour later.
Clifton with his wife, Sarah, and their sons, Scotty, Stone, and Seth. Photo courtesy of Sean Clifton
As he drove another session, I talked with his wife, Sarah. Their three boys, Stone, 12, Seth, 10, and Scotty, 8, played on bleachers. They cheered as he sped by in his silver Porsche with a magnet placard reading “531” on the side — a reference to the date he was injured, May 31. The Porsche’s license plate spells APREC8 — appreciate — a reference to everything that has happened since.
I asked Sarah if Sean’s high-speed driving made her nervous, and she politely laughed. She took that horrible phone call after he got shot. She put her life on hold to put his life back together. Her identity was absorbed into his as she nursed him back to health with small children in the house, toggling between changing diapers and changing his ostomy bag. She lived through him being at war three times … so, no, watching him drive fast is not a big deal.
And anyway, she said, it beats the hell out of the motorcycle he used to ride, which he sold to buy the Porsche. “I always tell Sean he’s a different breed,” she said. “These types of guys, they need that adrenaline rush every day. He doesn’t get it in his life anymore. He’s back in the action, in a way.”
Always an active person, Clifton used sports to drive his physical recovery in the early years after he was wounded. He didn’t want to just survive and scratch out a meager existence. He wanted to create a new future for himself, Sarah, and the boys — that future he saw as he lay dying on the battlefield, only better. He wanted to live a life worthy of the efforts to save him.
He competed in CrossFit events and triathlons. He treated training for those events like training for a mission. He sets up almost everything he does like a mission, from cutting the grass to cleaning out the garage to spending a day at the racetrack, because the structured approach comforts him. Goal-oriented preparation appealed to him; it wasn’t just exercise to get in shape, it was a task to be completed. He knew CrossFit and triathlons would help him get better physically and that his improvements would be measurable. He had to re-learn to walk, then run, then run far.
There was no such intention with the Porsche. The healing he found in it caught him completely by surprise. He had no idea that driving fast would bring him such powerful relief from his stress and anxiety.
I want to be careful about labeling that stress and anxiety. PTSD is a common diagnosis for soldiers who have been through what Clifton has been through. When I ask him directly if he has it, he hedges. He says maybe his stress and anxiety are just common complaints of a man in his 40s with a house, wife, three kids, and a crazy work schedule.
He acknowledges that the “the noise in my head” — stress, anxiety, depression, anger — is triggered by events commonly cited as triggers by people with PTSD. Elevators, big crowds, boxed-in traffic, and other situations in which he has no control all turn that noise on and then up.
Is that PTSD? He doesn’t know, and he’s more interested in changing the national conversation about PTSD, which he sees as an unhealthy label. He would rather use his struggles and recovery as a connection point with others who are suffering, soldier or not, than be put in an “ex-soldier with PTSD” box.
While the symptoms of PTSD have been evident for thousands of years, the term “post-traumatic stress disorder” is relatively new. It was added to the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1980.
After years of ignoring PTSD, leaving soldiers to suffer in silence as their lives fell apart, the medical establishment and veterans’ infrastructure finally focused in recent decades on the physical and psychological effects of trauma. They identified PTSD as a condition that needed to be addressed. That’s a good thing. But Clifton contends that course-correction went too far, with too much focus on the problem and not enough on fixing it. Clifton feels PTSD has become a label, a trap even, one that leads people to assume its victims’ suffering never goes away.
His hope in telling his story is to help create what he calls PTG: a post-PTSD mindset centered on growth. He wants his recovery to prove there is life after trauma, joyful life, full of energy and passion. He chooses his words carefully. He doesn’t minimize the struggles he or anybody else goes through. He instead says those struggles are part of the story, not the end. He’s re-writing his own end, in part with the benefits he gets by driving fast.
“Everybody, at some point in their lives, has witnessed, or been part of, or shared a traumatic experience that they reflect on to some degree. It’s nothing that’s ever going to go away,” Clifton says. “But it shouldn’t be detrimental. That trauma, be it combat or sexual trauma, near-death experience, auto accident or surviving cancer, should not keep you from moving forward.” That, he says, is why he tries to “change the narrative a bit on post-traumatic stress, to get people to focus on post-traumatic growth.” | https://medium.com/experience-magazine/this-veteran-found-healing-through-driving-a-porsche-fast-ddc1bde7c2a1 | ['Experience Magazine'] | 2019-09-11 21:45:13.672000+00:00 | ['PTSD', 'Military', 'War', 'Driving', 'Veterans'] |
Automating GIS processes with graphical modeler in QGIS | It’s all about saving time, right? QGIS’s graphical modeler can definitely help you out here if you’re a GIS expert wanting to speed up those routinary, personal or collective GIS processes. Without any programming knowledge required, graphical modeler really can help you go through some painless automation and optimization on your GIS processes. Now let’s go through a use case application for using graphical modeler in QGIS for those who are not familiar with this great toolset.
Graphical modeler in action.
So imagine there’s an expert who needs to calculate:
What is the surface area corresponding the extent of the urban tree canopy per administrative units (postcodes) in Melbourne, Australia?
So, first the GIS expert goes on thinking, well first I need to 1) calculate the actual tree canopy extent area for every tree with Field calculator and then 2) make an intersection and sum-up with the Join attributes by location (summary) -tool 3) and finally divide the aggregated tree canopy area with the administrative units surface area information.
City of Melbourne and the canopy polygons
So, the expert goes and implements the plan and finally gets the data out. Nice! Wait a minute, while observing the results, the expert discovers that the tree canopy data ain’t actually the most updated version. Oh! No worries, let’s do the process all over again.
Few weeks after the analysis, the expert shares the results with colleagues, who come to ask: so, how did you do it? “Well…”, the expert starts and goes through the whole process in detail.
The during the following quarter city organization requires the information to be updated with newly captured data. So, here we go again, the expert starts working while feeling confident doing it properly and in time. Nevertheless, the expert forgets what was the tool’s name to get the results on the intersection of the datasets and struggles during a few attempts but finally gets the information altogether, to share the updated results with the persons of interest.
This is common for a lot of GIS experts, right? Well, it just shouldn’t be. If we’d bypass all the previous hassling with a tool called graphical modeler in QGIS, we could implement our GIS processes 1) with fewer quality flaws and 2) without the necessity to remember all the tools 3) besides providing reproducible tools for our repetitive GIS processes.
The finished model.
And this is how the expert could leverage the model file for her/his own processes, or pass it on to someone else, and get some great maps on the aggregated canopy extent area per administrative units from here on.
Of course, you could implement the same use case and a lot more with spatial SQL / Python (/PyQGIS) / R, but I guess that’s another story, for another time — but it’s important to mention it since eventually, our aim should be to build fully reproducible and automated GIS processes.
If you learned something from this blog post, please share or just give a Clap. And if you want to get an in-depth perspective and understanding on leveraging graphical modeler in QGIS for you or your team, we would love to connect with you and make you an offer. You can write us through this from. | https://medium.com/@gispofinland/automating-gis-processes-with-graphical-modeler-in-qgis-371bd5ad7eda | ['Gispo Ltd.'] | 2020-11-30 07:10:49.370000+00:00 | ['Geospatial', 'Maps', 'Qgis', 'GIS'] |
I just finished writing a gigantic psychological thriller that kind of freaked me out. | At nearly 600 pages, it’s a door-stopper. I usually write shorter novels, and I generally prefer reading short novels, but for some reason, this one just needed more space. It’s a psychological thriller with a lot of twists and turns. Some terrible things happen to some decent people, who do their best to get out of the mess; in the process, they make some very dangerous mistakes. There were moments during the writing of that novel when it went to such weird places, I got kind of uncomfortable. I mean, it really freaked me out. My husband said, “I can’t believe you wrote that scene. That is messed up.”
“Should I take it out?” I asked.
“Definitely not,” he said.
A few chapters later, he said, “This is making me uncomfortable.”
“Me too!” I said. “Should I take it out?”
“No. 100 percent no.”
Discomfort can be good, because it means you’re pushing your own boundaries.
What to do with this state of limbo, between the moment when you submit your novel and the moment when you learn its fate?
In fact, the limbo (update: happily, the fate of this novel is no longer in limbo:) has given me time to do some things I’ve been neglecting, things that I enjoy but that I normally don’t have much time for. I’ve just written a short story to launch CNET’s Technically Literate series, curated by Janis Cooke Newman. The story, titled The Last Taco Truck in Silicon Valley, is a loving send-up of Northern California tech culture, featuring a kidnapping and a killer habanero sauce. I’m revising a collection of essays about the strange months I spent living in Beijing in my twenties. I’m teaching a class, The Art of Plot, for Stanford Continuing Studies, and an 8-Week email course, Writing Fiction.
I also signed on with a speaking agent, because if there is one place that I feel even more comfortable than at my desk, writing, it is on a stage, telling stories. I am reading everything I can get my hands on about F. Scott Fitzgerald (again), because he is one of those writers whom I return to in fascination every few years. I’ve also become a little obsessed with William Gibson after a book he signed for me in Berkeley a couple of years ago, Distrust That Particular Favor, resurfaced while I was doing some holiday cleaning. I had the opportunity to have dinner with Gibson and some other writers after the reading that night. Reading Gibson’s essays and novels, one has the feeling of being in the presence of someone who knows something the rest of us haven’t quite figured out, something essential and somewhat frightening about the way our world is going to turn out. One gets the feeling he figured these things out a long time ago, and we ought to have all been listening a little more attentively, because this shit is about to get serious.
From the age of 13 or so, I have thought of myself as “a writer.” Which is to say that I considered myself a writer long before I ever published anything. That takes some chutzpah, probably, or perhaps a dose of delusional thinking. But writing is the one thing that has come naturally for as long as I remember, and when you have one thing like that, you hold on to it, you nourish it, you plan a path that will always, in some way, lead back to it.
While most of us do not have the luxury of divorcing our work, creative or otherwise, from the practical realities of financial necessity, we do have the ability to shift our perspective, to reconsider what makes our work valuable and meaningful. What do you bring to your field, your family, your friends, your network? What do you offer to the world? What brings you joy in your work, and how can you create more of it?
What to do with the limbo? Embrace it. Branch out. Let your distractions and your passions guide you.
Do you want to see how this story turned out? Read Writing Through the Ups and Downs. (Hint: there’s a happy ending). | https://medium.com/a-writers-life/i-just-finished-writing-a-gigantic-psychological-thriller-that-kind-of-freaked-me-out-d702bc444bbd | ['Michelle Richmond'] | 2016-04-30 21:24:35.685000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Books And Authors', 'Books'] |
Here comes the Sun… | This Sprint I had some big plans, but have to admit it didn’t go as well as I wanted.
Solar
The main thing I wanted to do was really up-skill my Solar knowledge and complete this Coursera course: Introduction to Solar Cells. I didn’t get through as much as I wanted, but still learned some interesting stuff.
The Lumosity of the Sun — 3.828×10.26 Watts. That’s a lot of zeros.
The Solar Constant — the amount of energy hitting the Earth — 1,388 Watts per square meter.
This calculates out to some mind boggling maths. Every hour the Sun provides the same amount of energy as we humans consume globally in a whole year.
In approximately 19 days we receive as much energy as direct radiation as could be produced from all of the remaining fossil fuels.
There are some practicalities to harnessing this power, efficiency of Panels, storage, to name the obvious ones, but when the Sun can provide this much energy — burning fossil fuels seems like a really stupid idea.
Making lunch
I know I’ve been generating a lot of waste buying my lunch. I have photographic evidence…..
My objective was to make a big dent into the problem this month by making my own lunches. Life got in the way a bit and I only managed 6.
Veggie Dinners
Following on from last month. I want to reduce my carbon footprint by eating less meat. To tackle this I focussed on eating more veggie dinners. Again my progress wasn’t as much as I had hoped. But I did increase from 6 up to 9 this month. | https://medium.com/@Prycey/here-comes-the-sun-1667b521bf6d | ['Dave Pryce'] | 2020-02-05 20:25:35.820000+00:00 | ['Climate Change', 'Solar Power'] |
Nigerians couldn’t care less about car safety for children | Quick note: This post was first published on my old blog in 2017. Don’t believe me? Find it here.
Celestine Omin, former Senior Software Engineer at Andela recently tweeted about a driver who was driving recklessly with children in the car.
Tweet by Celestine Omin.
The above tweet–even though attracted Formula 1 jokes– is cause for concern. According to reports by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Nigeria recorded 11,363 road accidents in 2016 which led to 30,105 Nigerians injured and 5,053 deaths–4696 adults and 357 children.
Even though more adults are involved in road accidents yearly, children are at a higher risk during car crashes because they are usually left unstrapped. And reckless hired drivers are not the only ones that endanger their lives.
In 2010, Bimpe, her husband, and their six-month-old baby were returning from a social function when their car had a head-on collision with another vehicle. The baby, asleep on Bimpe’s laps did not survive the crash. Bimpe and her husband used their seatbelts but unfortunately, the baby was not strapped in. Several similar accidents occur across Nigeria which lead to the injuries and in some cases, loss of lives of children.
ENFORCING THE CHILD CAR RESTRAINTS LAW
In research on the parental practice of child car safety conducted in Enugu, most respondents use seat belts but are not aware of the importance of child car safety. The respondents’ justifications for neglecting child car restraints (CCR) range from short distance rides, being in a rush, no space in the car for CCR to the refusal of children to stay in restraints among others. This is definitely not peculiar to Enugu.
When you step out today, do a quick survey of 10 cars with children occupants. Count how many of these cars have one or two young children in the front seat or jumping around the back of the car. I am guessing 10 out of 10.
By law, failure to use CCR is an offence, however, the penalty for defaulters is almost laughable. According to regulation 126 of the National Road Traffic Regulations, defaulters are liable on conviction to a fine of ₦2,000 or to a term of 6 months imprisonment. Yes, you just read ₦2,000!
Since the failure to use car restraints for children is not considered as a significant offence in Nigeria, we do not pay attention to it. Also, Most Nigerians are ignorant of the importance of CCR, therefore sensitization on the subject is imperative. In 2010, FRSC launched a public campaign on the issue, enlightening Nigerians on standard safety laws when they have children occupants.
Proper use of Child Car Restraints
“Any child under 12 years should sit in the back seat, strapped in a car seat. Those above 12 should have booster cushion fitted for them to help position seat belt and improve the view from the car. We have seen people commit blunders by strapping their babies in a car seat without strapping in the car seat itself. The right thing to do is to first strap the car seat properly with the seat belt and then use the seat belt in the car seat to strap the baby. If a crash occurs, the car seat belt and the baby car seat restrains the child” — Mr. Jonas Agwu, Former FRSC Sector Commander in Lagos state.
However, 10years down the line coupled with various partnerships with private stakeholders, not much has changed because the law is yet to be properly enforced. Officers of the Federal Road Safety Corps and other law enforcement agencies who should enforce this law are more concerned with other (non) laws that can yield bribes from motorists.
For things to change, Nigerians should begin to make conscious efforts to make their cars safe for children. Also, the National Road Traffic Regulations should be reviewed with a graver penalty attached to defaulters and car child restraints laws should be enforced at checkpoints. | https://medium.com/@titilolaoludimu/nigerians-couldnt-care-less-about-car-safety-for-children-1bec96198093 | ['Titilola Oludimu'] | 2020-12-24 17:59:05.338000+00:00 | ['here', 'Car Safety', 'Nigeria', 'Child Car Restraint', 'Children Safety'] |
Not The Brown Girl With The Red Dot | Fifteen years ago, I wrote an essay titled “The girl with the red dot” that was accepted by alternet.org for publication on their website. Through my writing, I was trying to explore my motives for wearing a bright red bindi during my years as a Ph.D. student in Baltimore.
Having grown up in Bombay in a traditional family that valued education, I had been sent to a convent school, a decision taken by my mother, which her mother did not approve of, for the simple reason that school rules forbade me from wearing a bindi.
My orthodox grandmother had strong opinions on a variety of subjects, most of which didn’t agree with my cosmopolitan outlook and free thinking. Not having to wear a bindi to school didn’t bother me one bit, it was actually a relief since it meant one less thing to do on busy school days. I do remember being perversely pleased that my bare forehead vexed my grandmother, since we constantly locked horns on most subjects.
Given my ambivalence about it, why then did I choose to earn the title of “the girl with the red dot” on campus?
Far from home, without any pressure to conform to a particular style of dressing, I had adopted the bindi as part of my new identity in America. Acutely aware of my presence in a new country, amongst people of many races, I noted all the ways in which I was different. Even amidst my Indian peers in the department, I was the youngest married person.
Was it because I was trying to redefine my identity while grappling with all the changes that had transpired in my life in a short time? Did the bindi give me a sense of control over one aspect of my appearance which was different from that of the majority? Did it serve as a link to my former self?
Identity, defined as “exact likeness in nature or qualities”, come from things we inherit within our cells. It shows up in the way we use our bodies, in our speech and mannerisms. The feeling of belonging that arises from similarities that we perceive within our family and the larger community in which we come of age is an intrinsic one and seems pre-ordained, to some extent.
Identity, however, is also defined as the condition of “being oneself and not another”. By moving away from a racially uniform, albeit culturally diverse home environment, I was perhaps trying to recalibrate my place in a new system on many fronts, both within and outside my home.
My bindi was neither a symbol nor a statement. My bindi was as much a part of me as my long black hair that I wore in a single braid, a unique, visible identifier. It was as important to me as the clear contact lens (which I had also taken to wearing in the US) that although invisible to others, was essential for me to function.
The question about the bindi receded to the background when I moved back to India. But the essay gained momentum when it was featured in a college textbook alongside essays by Maya Angelou and Bharti Mukherjee. Recommended across college campuses for freshman composition, a study guide was appended to each essay. Simple but incisive questions prompted the reader to try and understand my background, my motivations and my analysis of the situation. What had come as a natural progression of my thoughts and coalesced into an essay, was a matter of interpretation for students of a different generation, for people who I wouldn’t know but who would try to know me through my words!
Although I had not visualized such an audience when I first wrote the essay, I felt a sense of validation and accomplishment that my words would help connect people by opening a window to understanding. I hoped my message that “even though I look different, my struggle with conformity and identity, is part of the universal human struggle to find our place in this world,’’ would shine through.
**** | https://byrslf.co/not-the-brown-girl-with-the-red-dot-919c7c8b41b9 | ['Ranjani Rao'] | 2019-09-28 17:26:06.002000+00:00 | ['Race', 'Community', 'Identity', 'Culture', 'Beyourself'] |
Dreams of a doubter | If you would your lens, you would realise you already have what you thought you was missing
~gentle whispers of love to me
Everyday she stared out of the window
Admiring the birds of the sky
Marvelling what it would be like
To fly up between the clouds
All the time she spent wondering
She was never once aware
That she too was given wings
If only she would believe | https://medium.com/@sharonwritesministry/dreams-of-a-doubter-c80144377243 | ['Sharon Writes'] | 2020-12-22 21:07:15.761000+00:00 | ['Freedom', 'Believe', 'Flying', 'Dream', 'Peace'] |
The truth | The truth is great.
Always tell the truth,
always tell us the truth.
The truth sets us free.
It always makes us noble,
it always makes us invincible.
The truth of it all,
always makes us aware,
it always makes us great.
The truth is eternal.
Always awake,
always latent.
I will always be,
I will always be honest.
The truth is that I neither want nor can be otherwise. | https://medium.com/@peace.and.dolls/the-truth-5ab112b6e4b6 | [] | 2020-12-24 15:26:19.629000+00:00 | ['Poem', 'Philosophy', 'Meditation', 'Truth', 'Thoughts'] |
Outlier!!! But Why??? | Outlier!!! But Why???
Understanding Outliers — Image by author
Finding outliers is technical, but understanding outliers is a mix of skill and art. As data scientists, we always tend to “remove” the outliers because it messes up a predictive model — and this practice has led to the wrong conclusion that an outlier is something not good and must be removed
Instead, the focus should be on understanding the outliers. And in this story, I will explain to you some techniques on how to better understand outlier data points.
We will take a dataset of cars which has columns such as make, fuel-type, aspiration, num-of-doors, price, etc.
Cars dataset — Image by author
Basic and essential — a Box-plot, but with a jitter
One of the simplest ways to understand outliers for individual columns is by using a box-plot. There are two variants of box-plot — the standard one and the slightly fancy one. First, let us look at the standard box plot as shown here:
Box plot for a price — Image by author
The box-plot is a great tool to show extreme values. All extreme values fall outside the left and right vertical lines (also called whiskers). As you can see that there are some very high values of the price which are indicated by the dots on the right-hand side. Ok, nice we now know that some extreme price values are starting from 30000 onwards.
However beware that box plot might be telling only partial truth.
What is missing in the standard box-plot is an overall picture of other data-points. And this is where a fancy boxplot with jitter is useful. A box-plot with a jitter, shown below, is a box plot with all data points overlayed. And to avoid points with the same values hiding each other, we introduce a small random jitter so that all data points are visible
There are two interesting observations with the boxplot with jitter, which was missing in the standard box plot. First, as you can see all other data points, you may also want to consider some points in the price range between 25000 and 30000 also outliers. They have not crossed the right vertical line, but still, they are rare and a sparse bunch of data points
Secondly, we are also able to see points lying exactly on the extreme vertical lines — such as the data points on the extreme left with zero price. A standard box plot would not catch such points as outliers as there are exactly lying on the limit. However, with a box-plot with a jitter, we can visualize these points. And clearly, a car with zero price is an outlier indicating some issue with data
Going Multi-dimensional
One of the biggest mistake a data scientist can make is to judge a data point as an outlier based on a single dimension.
Let’s take one example — a BMW sedan, 209 engine size, 182 horsepower with a price of 36880 was indicated as an outlier by a boxplot. That is not a very smart way to conclude that it is an outlier. A BMW with all that characteristics is bound to be expensive and should not be an outlier
And this is why outlier analysis should be done on multiple dimensions. In our case, we should consider a data point as an outlier or not taking into account all dimensions — brand, fuel-type, aspiration, number of doors, horsepower, length, height, price, etc…. And various algorithms can help detect outliers in a multi-column setting.
However, the difficulty is in interpreting why it is an outlier. Earlier when we were looking at box-plot, we had only one column price to make sense of box-plot results. But now with multiple dimensions, if a data point is an outlier, how should one interpret the results? Let us see the techniques which help us interpret outlier results in a multi-dimension setting
Making a dimension reduction plot and adding a nice tool-tip
To interpret results, first, we need to visualize them. Though we have multiple columns in data, our eyes are limited to see and interpret 2 or a maximum of 3 dimensions. Fortunately, dimensionality reduction techniques, such as PCA (principal component analysis) come in handy as we can reduce multiple dimensions into fewer dimensions without losing the essence of the data.
Let's says we have run an algorithm, such as Isolation forest, on our multi-dimensional car dataset and determined the outliers. We also reduce all columns to just 2 columns using the dimensions reduction technique. We then plot a 2D scatter-plot and indicate the outliers with a separate color. The result of this awesome “data-sciency” work would look something as below
PCA + Scatterplot for outlier analysis — image by author
We can make the visualization more interactive using a tooltip. Tooltips can help us with more information about the outlier by hovering on it. Shown below on how this looks like. We are trying to find out information about the bunch of dark red points (outliers) situated at bottom of the scatter plot
PCA + Scatterplot + Tooltip — Image by author
As you hover over the red points, which are situated at the bottom, you will see that most of them correspond to the Mercedes-Benz brand and price more than 20000. This is very useful information. Some of our outliers seem to be high-end cars. Already a big step in understanding the outliers
Taking it to next level with agglomerative clustering and dendrogram
The technique shown above is a good way to visualize a high-dimensional dataset. However, it has two important shortcomings. First that we see that the red points are scattered all over. So it is difficult to determine if there is any pattern of outliers. Also, all outliers may not be visible, as some may be hidden behind other very close points. Of course, we can determine outliers by hovering over a point, but as not all outlier points are visible, we might not feel very confident about our conclusions due to limited visibility in a pattern of outliers as well as unable to see all outlier points
Here is where agglomerative clustering and dendrogram can do wonders. Agglomerative clustering is a bottom-up clustering technique and will try to make clusters of data points that are close to each other. And dendrogram is used to visualize all clusters in a tree format in such a way that all data points (called leaves) are visible and nicely arranged at the same depth. So what you get is data points clustered together as well as visibility of all points — pure magic
Shown below is the result of agglomerative clustering and dendrogram on the car data. And to add a touch of beauty, you can color all outlier points with a different color compared to non-outlier points
We can see that there is a strong cluster of outliers with many red points in the same sub-tree. And all points are nicely and arranged and visible. This means that we have not only identified outliers, but also a possible pattern or cluster of outliers !!! Now things are getting really interesting
Now we use the tooltip technique to understand what this big red cluster is about. Show below is tooltip when you hover over these points
Hover over to find what does outlier data point mean — Image by author
As you will observe that this big red cluster has mostly two brands. One is Mercedes-Benz diesel with prices above 20K and the second one is Peugeot diesel with prices above 17K. Now, this is a big significative step compared to the scatter plot + PCA technique, as we can visualize all outlier points and nothing is hidden and overlapping with each other. This helps us to gain confidence in our outlier analysis. What more — we have even found an additional pattern other than Mercedes Benz as compared to the PCA+scatterplot technique
Mixing sophistication and style — Adding a Heatmap to the Dendrogram
Ok, now we go up one level of sophistication to really nail our understanding of the outliers. The dendrogram and the tooltip above already gave a very good understanding of our outliers. However, we still have to manually observe the common values in the tooltip to understand the meaning of the outlier cluster. This is where a heatmap can be very handy, as it will visually signal out the fields with similar values
Dendrogram with heatmap — Image by author
Also, you can hover over heatmap cells to find values that commonly occur in our outlier cluster, as shown in the below animation
Dendrogram with heatmap tooltip — Image by author
In summary, finding outlier is more or less technical work. However understanding outlier is a mix of science and art. The process of interpreting outlier is more interesting and important than finding it. With a good usage of data science algorithms and visualization techniques as explained in this story, you should be able to confidently interpret an outlier.
Youtube channel
For videos on some of my articles, you can also visit by youtube channel — Data Science Demonstrated.
Latest video on my channel | https://towardsdatascience.com/outlier-but-why-b26c30c9ab78 | ['Pranay Dave'] | 2021-01-11 16:41:40.764000+00:00 | ['Data Analysis', 'Visualization', 'Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Data Science'] |
How to Write Something People Will Actually Read | How to Write Something People Will Actually Read
“Just write every day” is not the answer
Photo by Retha Ferguson from Pexels
The writer’s job is not to write. It is to think and to make others think.
This is a hard job today. It isn’t because people are getting dumber (although it seems that way at times). It’s because we, your potential readers, are drowning in content.
The bar for getting and keeping a person’s attention in order to make them think is higher than a giraffe’s ear hair.
In 2012, Seth Godin said: “We’re living in the first moment in time… when credentials, access to capital, and raw power have been dwarfed by the simple question: do I care about what you do?”
That’s never been more true.
The problem? Good writing doesn’t get anyone’s attention.
Novelty does.
The right adjective is not nearly as important as the right story. What has your reader not seen? Or at least, what have they not seen lately? A good writer finds what’s missing. They look where nobody else is looking.
This, too, is a difficult job to execute.
Luckily, though, the answers are simple: | https://medium.com/better-marketing/how-to-write-something-people-will-actually-read-9749026ab6bc | ['Todd Brison'] | 2020-08-11 18:03:49.857000+00:00 | ['Work', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Writing', 'Creativity', 'Productivity'] |
Lp Norms, Grand Slams, and Olympic Medals | Lp Norms, Grand Slams, and Olympic Medals
After considering whether Michael Jordan is the king of low variance, I want to discuss two other sports situations where people always argue about the right way to aggregate results
All “Big 3” Tennis players currently have 20 grand slams. So who is actually the best? (Leaving aside how that changes in the future…)
An intuitive idea is that the data does not only show us the players’ totals, but also an indication to how “versatile” vs “specialized” they are. The majority of Nadal’s grand slams were achieved in the French Open. We can penalize for that (or reward that) by choosing a different aggregation scheme. A common method, parameterized by p, is the Lp norms:
The Lp norm definition (Image by author)
For p=1, this is just the total sum of the grand slams (For example, Federer’s grand slams vector is (6,1,8,5), and the L1 norm is 20). Other interesting parameter values are 0, 1/2, 2, and Infinity (where infinity means the limit of the Lp norms with p->Inf). For p=0, the Lp norm is just the number of non-zero vector elements. That is 4 for all of the players. If some player would have “missed out” on one of the grand slam competition, he would be behind in the L0 norm. For p=Infinity, the Lp norm is the max number in the vector. For this norm Nadal wins, due to his 13 wins in the French Open (Djokovic arrives second with his 9 wins in the Australian Open). For p=2, again Nadal wins, with a score of ~13.78 vs ~11.4 for Djokovic and ~11.22 for Federer. But for p=1/2, Djokovic wins with a score of ~17.19, Federer second with ~17.03, and Nadal last with ~16.04. Generally speaking, low p values reward “well-balanced” performance more, while high p values reward extremes. We can actually map the different regions of p parameter that induce a different top player. More than that, we can actually show that:
There is no Lp norm for which Federer is the top player.
In fact, for every p>1 (the “specialized” regime), Nadal is on top, and for every p<1 (the “versatile” regime), Djokovic is on top. Because the proof is involved, we show something more simple: That for p>1, Nadal is always ahead of Federer.
My Latex calculations for Nadal>Federer with p>1 (Image by author)
First, notice that since x^p is monotone in x for any p, comparing norms by the power of p is like comparing the norms themselves. Then, aside from arithmetics, there are two important steps here: First, since x^p is a convex function for p>1, we can use the Jensen inequality, in particular to show that 4^p + 2^p ≥ 2*3^p. More importantly, I don’t know of a general way to solve complicated exponential inequalities of the form
a * b^x + c*d^x — h*t^x ≥ 0
But in this case, we find a nice trick, which is to approximate c and t as exponents of b (to preserve the inequality, we’re looking for some exponent alpha of b with b^(alpha) < c, and exponent beta with b^(beta) > h). Luckily, the the a,c,h coefficients give us enough “wiggle room” that after deriving we can show the derivative is always positive, and thus the function is monotone increasing and also always positive.
To show that for p<1 Djokovic is always on top of Federer, I have to admit I was more lazy, but the WolframAlpha graph is quite convincing:
A WolframAlpha screenshot for the Djokovic > Federer for p<1 case (Image by author)
Sorry, Federer fans. | https://towardsdatascience.com/lp-norms-grand-slams-and-olympic-medals-f005e002ae8e | ['Yotam Gafni'] | 2021-09-10 09:04:03.061000+00:00 | ['Us Open', 'Metrics', 'Statistics', 'Olympics', 'Data Science'] |
Some Snow Came | Some Snow Came
Just a little storm
(Image is author’s)
It snowed today.
The ground has some white on it.
The snow makes the world pretty
for a while until it melts.
It was not a big snow storm,
basically just a dusting,
but we need the water.
No one likes icy roads
which might come with snow,
but snow can be fun for children.
Winter has arrived. | https://medium.com/illumination/some-snow-came-9758dab2c8a0 | ['Floyd Mori'] | 2020-12-12 22:29:49.566000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Water', 'Weather', 'Winter', 'Snow'] |
As Trump’s reign of Clown-terror Fades: A look back at the Greatest Ads that helped Biden Win | As Trump’s reign of Clown-terror Fades: A look back at the Greatest Ads that helped Biden Win Lynxotic Follow Dec 1, 2020 · 2 min read
By Eric Cho
Above: Photo Collage / Lynxotic
Wisconsin & Arizona Certified results while Georgia Republican Governor says he won’t break the law for his “hero”. The cards are stacking up against the criminal grifter in the WH and not in any way that was “rigged” by anyone but him.
We are all still waiting for him to recede from the public discourse (haha not discourse in his case) but in the end it is ok to want to congratulate Biden and all of those that helped him win so we can all be rid of the terrorist clown club.
Read More: Trumps Legacy to the Press: a Rare Gift from an Evil Man
Though there are many who do not look fondly on “never-Trumpers” like The Lincoln Project and plain that they had a self-serving agenda, nonetheless, they were a powerful force in countering the Russian-bot army that would possibly otherwise have made 2020 more like 2016.
And the MeidasTouch, RVAT and others all contributed to the fight with great ads that kept people informed of the dangers of a second term for the maniac, and at the same time used his own words, actions and inactions to prove that he had to go, one way or another.
Read More: Trump Demands “Proof” of votes: Do 80 Million need to Visit Him at his Residence?
We’ve compiled some of the greatest hits here and think we should all give ourselves permission, one last time, to revel in the absurdity that this man was ever “leader of the free world” and how glad we are that ads like these will soon be in the history books (internet archives).
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Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page. | https://medium.com/lynxotic/as-trumps-reign-of-clown-terror-fades-a-look-back-at-the-greatest-ads-that-helped-biden-win-ee02e50d75e6 | [] | 2020-12-02 21:39:50.552000+00:00 | ['Trump Administration', 'Trumpism', 'Trump', '2020', '2020 Presidential Race'] |
A New Year’s Reading of “The Little Match Girl” | As we are coming to the end of the holiday season, the real Danish winter is about to hit us with the cold and dark days. Decorative lights that had given off a sense of celebration and hope will be wrapped up soon, and we are left with the reality of darkness. I don’t know about you, but one of the first things we were taught at school was seasons and how they work. Years and years of experience affirm the facts I learned as well, so I do know that the days have already started to get longer and winter will indeed end up in spring, but this knowledge does little help in facing the cold and the dark. And I have come to appreciate the importance of light further since I’ve been living in Denmark. I remember seeing the animation of “The Little Match Girl” by Odense’s own son, Hans Christian Andersen, as a child, and I wondered why the little girl had stayed out so late in the dark, not knowing that it might have well been three thirty in the afternoon. And though I wasn’t used to the Christmas celebrations shown in the movie, I could imagine the total misery of the little girl being alone and helpless while apparently everyone else around her was safe and happy. The asymmetry of power between a child and a grown up is still a captivating subject, and, even if not best depicted in this story, it is as palpable today as it was when I was a child myself. One is at the mercy of grown-ups at all times; if your favourite toy is on a shelf too high, it is impossible to have it without the help of a grown-up. The world is only as big as the grown-ups allow it; if the candy shop is across the street, it might as well be in France, since only a grown-up can take you there. The convenience of power is easy to observe and understand in that setting, but as the setting changes throughout our lives, the decisiveness of power and those who enjoy it keep us company, dictating options and destinies.
As a child, I didn’t really get the Little Match Girl story. It was, to me, a very sad and gut-wrenching account of helplessness, with no real takeaways, other than, perhaps, to remember to wear my gloves and warm boots when outside. I did like the light, though. The windows, the candles, the trees… all shiny and beautiful. Like a good drawing, one needs the dark for the colours to gain depth and nuance, and being a night owl myself, I have enjoyed witnessing the dance of light and darkness thousands of times over thousands of dawns and dusks. But the Little nameless Match girl didn’t seem to have any chances of witnessing the stunning scenes of light and darkness on her final day out, at the New Year’s Eve. We don’t know much about her ordinary routine, but on this day she is out with a number of match boxes, poorly clothed, trying to make a bit of money by unloading the matches. From a marketing perspective, she’s a promising character to make sales; an innocent blond little girl, a portrait that apparently evokes the likeness of angles to lots of people, especially when it comes to the religious imagery of angels. She evokes pathos, as the pathetic little thing is weak and cold and helpless, scared to go back to her abusive dad, and wronged by the boy who stole her shoe. So how could anyone resist buying a matchbox from her? One could always use the matches, plus one would feel morally superior by helping out some poor little kid. It didn’t work, though. Seems like she was too consumed with the symptoms of the onset of hypothermia that she wasn’t using her disadvantages to her advantage to make a sale. So, if the elicitation of pathos was not meant to garner some sweet money, why else is H. C. Andersen putting us through this despairing story, on the verge of the New Year?
From my childhood memories, I couldn’t remember the fate of the unnamed match salesperson. I knew that she was somewhere in the city, probably begging people to buy from her, and, in my imagination, I had decided that someone, most likely a lovely grandma, had taken her in and served her hot porridge or the like. That must have been some sort of a defence mechanism shielding my childish mind from the tragic ending of the story. The Little Match Girl succumbs to hypothermia and dies, with a smile on her face. Hans Christian, believing himself to be a good friend of God, had furnished the girl with an ending that would not only give her an eternal smile, but also was meant to be something to envy, by the people who found her the next day: the Little Match Girl had gone to God, in heaven, and in the company of the only person who’s ever been kind to her, her dead grandmother. Upon being found, the next morning, by the townspeople, the Little Match Girl has a smile on her frozen face, and all her matches are burnt. Those surrounding her dead body speculate that she’s burnt the matches to keep warm, but we know that she’s been seeing/hallucinating heavenly lights and glorious images of warmth and comfort and kindness, so, perhaps, Hans Christian is suggesting that though she looked poor and cold and even dead, she was better off at the end. Obviously, the religious outlook could offer some justification to this ending, but the reality of such sickly-sweet hope in the near-death hallucinations of a dying child doesn’t sit very well with me.
Mr Andersen himself was a believer in God and he was even convinced that God wanted him to be the best writer in Denmark, if not the whole world. He kept journals in which he wrote his prayers to God, his bargaining, demands, thanks, and complaints. He was pretty sensitive to his critics in Denmark, especially as in contrast, he was known internationally to be a genius and a marvellous writer. In this light, the Little Match Girl could be taken as a representation of Hans Christian, the innocent, beautiful, and underappreciated person he thought himself to be, and her death as a relief with vengeance, where he not only gets promoted to a better world, but also mocks the wealth and power of his countrymen. It is reminiscent of a child’s idea of punishing the parents by giving them a guilt trip. Both the punishment and the reward in this story seem anaemic, however. Yes, it is a relief to know that death can be like a fun drug-induced experience even if one is slowly freezing, but that is not really a reward for being nice and innocent; and on the other side, seeing yet another poor person dying because we’ve been negligent must come easy to lots of us since we are doing it on a daily basis, so, again, not a massive punishment. Even the photo of the Syrian child at the shore was eventually forgotten. There are other things at hand to put the blame on: the inequality in the society, the parents of the little girl, lack of governmental support, etc. In some sense, Hans Christian seems to have forgotten the real pain of being poor, though he came from such background, since for most of his life he enjoyed royal grants, rich patrons, and high society life, be it in Denmark, Europe, or the “Orient”.
The Little Match Girl story is set at the New Year’s Eve, so I am going to end on a high note. Our Little Girl was incredibly unlucky and naive; she didn’t have the proper tools to deal with the cold weather and the frozen hearts. She had already given up when she decided to sit in the snow. I know of a young man from a far away country who, because of his political disagreement with some power-hungry community, was taken in a windowless van in the middle of the night to be dropped off in knee-deep snow, left to his own destiny. Surrounded by predators, he ran as best he could, for hours in the dark, cold night until he finally reached home. Hope is not always a viable solution, as the pursuit of hope got our Little Girl killed. She hoped that the lights would save her, but the lights of love and humanity, from her matches or the windows and trees, were not strong enough to engulf her with the much needed warmth. The cold is the absence of such light and warmth, and that was the end for innocence and naivety. But the realization of this perspective also shows that acceptance, embracing the circumstance, toothy and bitter as it is, can actually set us free. And freedom provides another form of power; not quite comparable to the one that affords influence and privilege, but the kind that offers peace. Perhaps it could be compared to Ibsen’s last line in An Enemy of the People: “The strongest man in the world is the man who stands most alone.” | https://medium.com/@ayeh-soluki/a-new-years-reading-of-the-little-match-girl-5dd64f6754a1 | ['Ayeh Solouki'] | 2020-12-27 17:28:59.079000+00:00 | ['Hope', 'Hans Christian Andersen', 'The Little Match Girl', 'New Year', 'Acceptance'] |
SafeOzone Protocol is a DeFi Token driven with high-yield automated cross-chain platform for… | SafeOzone Protocol is a DeFi Token driven with high-yield automated cross-chain platform for community governance. It is an Ecosystem community-based project aimed at executing financial transactions independent of traditional financial institutions and intermediaries and is conducted over the smart chain network. It aims to remove brokerages, banks and other native intermediaries from the equation while reserving a circulating quota from transactions to protect the ozone layer depletion and hence end global warming.
THE OZONE LAYER STATUS TODAY
Recognition of the harmful effects of CFCs and other ozone-depleting substances led to the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer in 1987, a landmark agreement to phase out those substances that has been ratified by all 197 UN member countries. Without the pact, the U.S. would have seen an additional 280 million cases of skin cancer, 1.5 million skin cancer deaths, and 45 million cataracts — and the world would be at least 25 percent hotter. More than 30 years after the Montreal Protocol, NASA scientists documented the first direct proof that Antarctic ozone is recovering because of the CFC phase-down: Ozone depletion in the region has declined 20 percent since 2005. And at the end of 2018, the United Nations confirmed in a scientific assessment that the ozone layer is recovering, projecting that it would heal completely in the (non-polar) Northern Hemisphere by the 2030s, followed by the Southern Hemisphere in the 2050s and polar regions by 2060. Monitoring of the ozone layer continues, and it’s finding that the recovery may not be as straightforward as hoped. A study in early 2018 found that ozone in the lower stratosphere unexpectedly and inexplicably has dropped since 1998, while another pointed to possible ongoing violations of the Montreal pact. The world is not yet in the clear when it comes to harmful gases from coolants. Some hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), transitional substitutes that are less damaging but still harmful to ozone, are still in use. Developing countries need funding from the Montreal Protocol’s Multilateral Fund to eliminate the most widely used of these, the refrigerant R-22. The next generation of coolants, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), do not deplete ozone, but they are powerful greenhouse gases that trap heat, contributing to climate change.
CRYPTOCURRENCY AND CLIMATE CHANGE
Cryptocurrencies in recent years, have emerged as an innovative means of carrying out online financial transactions, but concerns have been raised among experts about their impact on our environmental. Cryptocurrencies place enormous demand on the energy system, and this increases carbon emissions which sequentially adds up to the overall effects of global warming. However, the technology that powers bitcoin (blockchain) should be considered for future adoption. The environmental hazard regarding cryptocurrency usage stems from the large carbon footprint left by such small share of global cashless transactions, and its potential to be broadly integrated into current technologies. This study examines the impact of cryptocurrency on the environment with its focus on climate change (Global warming). Although the fate of bitcoin is currently unpredictable, it can be projected that if its rate of adoption is accelerated, its electricity demand is capable of producing sufficient emissions to surpass 2°C of global warming in a few decades. The study recommends that further development in cryptocurrencies should analytically aim to reduce power demand so as to avoid the potentially demoralising consequences of 2°C of global warming.
GOVERNANCE The only way to gain representation in the ecosystem will be to hold SafeOzone tokens in the fee pool. Once mature, the network will gradually transition the SafeOzone Protocol and the SafeOzone Smartchain to community governance, allowing the community to decide the future of the protocol. SafeOzone token holders may stake their SafeOzone Token to vote on or propose new ideas to improve SafeOzone Protocol.
The BEP20 Token
SafeOzone Token (OZONE) is SafeOzone Protocol’s native protocol token, currently issued on BSC following BEP-20 standard. The SafeOzone token is a utility token designed to facilitate community governance and incentivise the virtuous circle of Hips SafeOzone Ecosystem.
TOKEN SPECS Token Name SafeOzone Token
Symbol OZONE
Token Network BEP-20
Token Supply 33,000,000
Token Contract 0xd5c3d75340848424e26ceea580aa87407544b375
Token Audited Yes
Token Website https://safeozone.io | https://medium.com/@safeozone-io/safeozone-protocol-is-a-defi-token-driven-with-high-yield-automated-cross-chain-platform-for-2cab6476b270 | [] | 2021-06-22 15:26:01.813000+00:00 | ['Binance', 'Smart Contracts', 'Cryptocurrency'] |
Pengcognito: Oh, well, I guess if I _have_ to… | This week's penguin: Oh, well, I guess if I _have_ to... http://pengcognito.com/index.php?id=literally | https://medium.com/@jenbeaven/pengcognito-oh-well-i-guess-if-i-have-to-5bf6cd51ef8 | ['Jen Beaven'] | 2020-12-18 22:47:14.575000+00:00 | ['Cartoon', 'Pengcognito', 'Housework', 'Penguin'] |
Why you should take notice of SpaceX | I’ve heard of SpaceX and I knew it had something to do with Elon Musk but I didn’t really know much about it at all.
That was until earlier this week when something caught my attention on Twitter. It was a thread about a launch SpaceX was planning on the 10th April.
Interested, I dug a little deeper into the SpaceX account and came across a video of what looked like two rockets LANDING in sequence — “what is this magic?”, I thought. It was like someone had recorded a takeoff and reversed it!
I immediately went to their website and read all about Dragon, Falcon Heavy and Falcon 9 — this stuff is insane!
Man’s mission to space is always fascinating no matter who you are or what interests you have. SpaceX has created something special, something truly interesting.
They have the ability to launch a craft into space and return the thrusters (side boosters) to earth so they can be re-used — can you even begin to imagine the technology and engineering that goes into something like that?
I mean, it doesn’t just land anywhere — it lands on the exact pad they require it to.
I’d recommend taking a look at their website. You read about the craft they’ve built, how it’s engineered and the missions it can serve.
The Dragon can take people or objects (e.g. satellites) into space and it can also dock with the ISS. If carrying people, it would be propelled by the Falcon craft.
The Falcon Heavy fired into Space last night (11th April) to launch the Arabsat-6A satellite, the video is incredible. The design itself is something to behold. It looks so smart but the design makes you wonder how it doesn’t just topple over, how does it stay upright during the initial lift off?
When it reaches a certain altitude the side boosters disconnect and come back to earth, landing in Florida. Then minutes later the main thruster (centre core) disconnects and lands on a boat out at sea (ON A BOAT, AT SEA!).
You can watch the 11th of April launch here. It’s a one hour video of the launch and subsequent proceedings and you can flick through to the points of interest. There’s also a much shorter 45-second version on the BBC website.
Me being me I had questions, and lots of them. I end up reading about things like the Lower Earth Orbit and Geosynchronous Orbit — I’d never heard of them but at least I kinda know how we keep things like satellites in orbit….ish.
Something I did find interesting is that no space shuttle can go vertically into space, despite what we learned from Button Moon back in the 80’s. No, a space shuttle has to go very fast horizontally to get into orbit around the earth.
So, as with other occasions on the Twitters, I’m kinda pleased that tweet appeared when it did. I have no idea why I didn’t connect with the SpaceX story before now but I’m glad I have. I guess it coincides with my interest in astrophotography.
My fascination with space is not new, but I seem to have found my own space (geddit?) to invest some time in observing what’s above us and learning more about it, and I’m glad of that :-) | https://medium.com/@SimonGodfreyUK/why-you-should-take-notice-of-spacex-7368dcf64ba | ['Simon Godfrey'] | 2019-04-12 16:13:15.833000+00:00 | ['Space Travel', 'Spacex', 'Moon', 'Astronomy', 'Space'] |
Finding Duplicate E-Mail Id using Snowflake and py-spark : Leet Code Problem : Category : Easy : Can you do it ? | Finding Duplicate E-Mail Id using Snowflake and py-spark : Leet Code Problem : Category : Easy : Can you do it ? Sanjit Khasnobis 6 days ago·3 min read
Today we are going to try a very simple problem and try to solve it using both snowflake and py spark. Just to mention this is an common problem as described below -
/* Write a SQL query to find all duplicate emails in a table named Person.
+ — — + — — — — -+
| Id | Email |
+ — — + — — — — -+
| 1 | [email protected] |
| 2 | [email protected] |
| 3 | [email protected] |
+ — — + — — — — -+
For example, your query should return the following for the above table:
- — — — -+
| Email |
+ — — — — -+
| [email protected] |
+ — — — — -+
*/
We will first try to solve it using snowflake. First let us load the sample data to snowflake as below -
Data will look like as below -
Duplicate Email Id Data
Now below is the Snowflake Query to find the duplicate Email — Ids
Select mail from
employee_mails
group by mail
Having count(*) > 1
The data will look as below -
So except Samy and Ramy all are having duplicate email Ids
Now we will try the same problem with py-spark
Initiate the sparksession as below-
# importing sparksession
from pyspark.sql import SparkSession
# creating a sparksession object
# and providing appName
spark = SparkSession.builder.appName(“pyspark_findduplicate_function”).getOrCreate()
populate the data in a pyspark data frame as below -
The data will look as below when we print the data frame -
Except Samy and Ramy all Email Ids are duplicates
Now lets try to find out the count of email ids for each employee.
employeeemail_new = employeemail.groupby(“mail_id”).count()
employeeemail_new.show()
So now the new data frame will look like below -
Count of Email Ids
Now let us pull only email Ids which are having count more than 1 to fetch only duplicate Email Ids.
from pyspark.sql.types import IntegerType employeeemail_new.select(“mail_id”).where(employeeemail_new[“count”].cast(IntegerType()) > 1)
Duplicate Email Ids
So we have find the solution using both snowflake and py-spark.
Happy Coding! Happy Reading!! | https://medium.com/@khasnobis.sanjit890/finding-duplicate-e-mail-id-using-snowflake-and-py-spark-leet-code-problem-category-easy-13a93ee79dd7 | ['Sanjit Khasnobis'] | 2021-09-11 10:39:29.111000+00:00 | ['Data Engineering', 'Sql', 'Snowflake', 'Pyspark', 'Duplicate'] |
Adding change management to your DesignOps’ strategy | Adding change management to your DesignOps’ strategy
DesignOps is a transformative function that focuses on the very heart of the teams’ operative system. For this reason, a participative approach to change management is key to ensure success and impact. Yet, the importance of change management as a core skill is still often overlooked. Patrizia Bertini Mar 18·9 min read
A successful DesignOps initiative is a transformational act that delivers value to the teams, the leaders, and the organisation by optimising and improving processes, ways of working, engagement models, and tools ecosystems.
As a process and inward-looking discipline (see here) DesignOps works on the core operational structures that enable relationships, workflows, optimisations, and efficiencies. And to achieve the expected results, DesignOps needs to effectively orchestrate actions across all cross functional and design teams and this is why DesignOps’ success heavily depends on how well the change and the transformation are managed.
Design Thinking as DesignOps’ foundational approach
DesignOps is a discipline that builds and benefits from a solid Design Thinking process to enable operational changes.
DesignOps’ Design Thinking approach is not only a strong and necessary legacy, but it is the most powerful method to fully understand the problem and the users, to explore and experiment with solutions to ensure that there are tangible and measurable improvements and the changes introduced are durable and consistent with the context and processes.
This is the classic double diamond approach that is equally effective both for Design and for DesignOps initiatives:
But when the users are your own teams, Design Thinking’s dynamics and the expected impact change, as the final solution should be a durable change in the existing process and in the current designers’ experience.
Design Thinking is a process for creative problem solving (IDEO), its focus is the final output (the solution), but DesignOps needs to ensure that the solution transforms processes to maximise benefits on the long term.
DesignOps focus is not on the output — the actions needed to deliver results os the final deliverables— but on the the outcome and the impact, the tangible and intangible benefits resulting from the project activities.
This is why while Design Thinking is essential to explore the problem and opportunity space to test and define the most effective option, however DesignThinking by itself cannot deliver durable changes that scale benefits and deliver the business goals and efficiencies on the long term.
Understanding Change management: Lewin’s Model
Organisational change refers to all initiatives that affect any of the organisation’s core operational structures, such as tools, culture, processes, ways of working. Managing this change — change management — is the approach required to ensure that new processes, new ways of working, and new engagement models are actually adopted by the people who are affected to ensure they deliver benefits on the long term (more here and here).
DesignOps operates at the very heart of the design teams’ operative system to deliver value and to bring tangible and quantifiable improvements to both design teams and the organisation.
This is why DesignOps needs to combine a Design Thinking approach with a well defined change management strategy to ensure full buy-in and engagement from all who are affected by the forthcoming transformations.
Although there are many change management models, the original archetype that has given birth to the formalisation of change management as a discipline, is Lewin’s model. This approach was developed in the late ’40s and this 3 steps model is shows the key phases of every change process (more on the model here).
Lewin’s model describes change as a three stage process, made by the following steps:
Lewin’s three steps model on Change Management
Lewin’s model shows the three critical steps and actions required to manage transformative projects and to ensure change is embedded in the organisation and the culture and delivers benefits on the long term.
DesignOps meets Change Management
If DesignOps delivers transformational projects to improve the ways teams engage, operate, spend, and work, then DesignOps does need a strong change management approach.
This why combining Design Thinking with a change management approach is introduces some minor, yet key, modifications to the classic double diamond model:
The graphic above shows the double diamond framework with a tweak at the end and it combines Design Thinking with Lewin’s 3 stages of change.
Lewin’s 3 phases can be aligned with the double diamond model, but being Design Thinking for DesignOps, there are some changes that need to happen to ensure Design Thinking meets change management in a participative way.
In fact the Unfreeze phase corresponds to Design Thinking’s initial problem setting and empathy driven approach to define the user problem and identify opportunities. This is when issues are revealed and by making problems explicit the process creates awareness and enables the need for change.
The Hypothesis and Experimentation phase, when the focus is on the solution and the actions is when Change happens and needs to be driven through influencing and engagement strategies to test and experiment changes. This phase is where action happens and where the planning and design of the transformation happens — a transformation that requires engagement, over-communication, and team empowerment.
The final step, the Freeze stage is where impact is measured and decisions are made. This is where the classic double diamond has a tweak and shows an extra half diamond to ensure the decision is made collectively and change is made sustainable and attainable through trainings and support.
In a participative approach to change management, compared to the classic Design Thinking model, there are 2 opportunities for iteration based on results and feedback, the second of which is strictly connected with the decision to Freeze.
If the experiment does not provide objective satisfactory results, the experiment needs to be redesigned and the process needs to look again at the solution ideation phase. This is the Design Thinking loop, where experiments provide measurable results to decide if the solution is worth progressing.
In a participative approach though, even if the objective results achieved and even if the experiments deliver satisfactory results, if the leaders, teams, stakeholders do not accept to adopt the change in the Decide/Adoption stage, the change is not implemented (frozen) and another iteration of the experiment is required until all those involved in the change agree to adopt the transformation.
For change to be implemented, transformational initiatives need to achieve both positive objective impact and teams’ acceptance. Without acceptance, no change can succeed on the long term.
Bringing participation at the heard of DesignOps’ transformations
For the reason stated above about acceptance, the biggest addition to the classic double diamond is in the highlighted focus on participative elements, formalised in the LISTEN and SHARE activities: ongoing two-ways conversations with design leaders, designers, and cross-functional partners are necessary to ensure DesignOps operates in a transparent and participative manner and all feedbacks and concerns are taken into account in a timely and open way.
The combination of Design Thinking and change management makes DesignOps a participative user centred transformational approach. By putting the users, the designers and stakeholders, at the centre of the process and by ensuring that all involved are engaged and part of the decisions is key to deliver long lasting benefits and value.
A case study
Change requires and takes time, so while the graphic looks straightforward, transformational processes require time and patience. The following example described high-level actions and the rationale of an ongoing experiment.
Step 1: Unfreeze and understand the problem
A survey and interviews were run with the teams to understand their biggest pains and what could improve their experience as designers.
It emerged that one of the top asks was to learn more: more trainings, more opportunities to be inspired from experts outside the organisaton.
Step 2: Share and create the need for change
Learnings form the surveys and interviews were shared with both teams and leaders. Sharing with leaders meant sharing the findings, the analysis, and also providing full transparency and access to the raw data. To establish trust and build the future engagement it is important to act with a full open and transparent policy and provide access to any working material. The ask for raw data generally helps leaders to better understand their teams and it is a way to maximise the impact of any data collection effort.
Sharing with teams is key to ensure they trust the process and they see the impact and value of their feedback. Designers need to acknowledge that they influence and determine their own ways of working: sharing with the teams is a way to empower and engage everyone.
Participative and ongoing sharing is a win-win strategy: nothing creates the urge and need for change more than realising that an individual pain is actually a collective shared one.
Step 3: Change! Making hypotheses and designing experiments.
After learnings have been shared and discussed, DesignOps needs to do its magic and turn a problem into an opportunity by defining what success looks like and creating hypothesis and experiments.
How may we foster a learning culture and bring more training opportunities to scale up designers’ skills?
Again, every solution, idea, option was shared openly: stakeholders needed to commit and agree on the solution, teams had to understand what was happening, and most importantly, why and how they started this transformative initiative with their feedbacks.
Step 4: Share and learn from comments!
The planning approach to define what would become a 6 months’ Academy looked at all aspects: trainers and speakers, times that would work for all, time zones coordination, calendar synchronisation… The participative approach consolidated the first experiment: every week, for 6 months, designers would be invited to 60/90 minutes sessions with external subject matter experts.
Step 5: Testing and measuring
To be able to test impact, it was necessary to clearly identify which behaviours and parameters the experiment needed to affect. What would success look like for an educational experiment? Designers were invited to complete another survey to assess confidence in key areas the Academy would address. These data created the baseline to assess impact and change in an objective way.
Step 6: Shall we Freeze? Evaluate and Decide.
After 6 months, it was time to collect structured feedback. Teams and leaders were shared comments on an ongoing informal base and it became clear after 3/4 months that there was need to improve some aspects of the experiment. But which aspects were relevant to leaders and which were key for designers?
Another survey measured the impact on designers’ skills and explored the overall experience to decide if the experiment was the right change and if it was ready to be consolidated or if we had to go back (more on this experiment, here).
Although the objective impact and the lift in confidence was satisfactory, the feedback from the teams and leaders were against accepting this as a permanent change. This has meant exploiting the elements that have delivered the lift in the objective impact and improving the experiential aspects that made the majority of those involved refuse to adopt the change.
Everything has been constantly up for reviews and conversations making this a fully Bottom-up transformational initiative, where the initial input was originated by teams and the final validation came from them again.
Lesson Learnt
DesignOps is not a top-down approach: delivering transformation requires an approach that is participative in nature, user centred, and inclusive, where everyone’s voice is heard and addressed to ensure transformation is owned by all who are involved.
Success in DesignOps is never immediate as transformational initiatives may require objective results to be fully aligned with user acceptance and adoption.
Operational transformations need to be designed and driven with a clear view and an approach that combines seamlessly both the power of Design Thinking and the transformative impact of participative change management. | https://uxdesign.cc/add-change-management-to-your-designops-strategy-8c9d2dee9108 | ['Patrizia Bertini'] | 2021-03-20 18:57:52.065000+00:00 | ['Designops', 'Design', 'Change Management', 'Change', 'Design Thinking'] |
What To Know Before Playing Octopath Traveler | When you start Octopath Traveler, you’ll have the opportunity to choose a main protagonist. Right from the start, you can choose to begin the game with any of the 8 main characters. However, the character you choose initially will always be the core member of your party — as you explore Orsterra, you’ll come across the other 7 characters, and you’ll be able to add them to your party as well. But you’ll be able to rotate them in and out as you please.
Although each character is fundamentally different in terms of background and story, they can all be roughly broken down into two major archetypes: mage or warrior.
For the record, Alfyn, Cyrus, Ophilia and Primrose are mages. H’aanit, Olberic, Therion and Tressa are warriors. There’s a bit of a grey area here (Alfyn and Tressa straddle the line between mage and warrior), but this is a good rule of thumb to apply when thinking about who you’ll want to start with.
As you might expect, mages are essentially glass cannon type builds and warriors are a little more harder with higher HP, greater defence, and access to stronger armor and weapons. | https://kaykuah.medium.com/what-to-know-before-playing-octopath-traveler-1c4d4882f036 | ['Kaylee Kuah'] | 2019-02-07 17:20:42.995000+00:00 | ['Rpg', 'Nintendo', 'Nintendo Switch', 'Gaming', 'Features'] |
Application Of IoT In Manufacturing | Let’s take an example of a leading elevator manufacturing company which supplies elevators across the globe. The elevators already have some instrumentation built in, like door sensor, a weight sensor which triggers an alert like beep in case of overload, etc., but the elevator company has no visibility on how the elevators are being used across the globe and therefore, raises the following important questions:
Are these elevators working as expected and utilized as per the specification?
Is there a failure condition?
What kind of failure has occurred?
How are failures to be handled?
What is the typical acceptable downtime?
Which agency is handling the failure condition?
How effective is the after-sales service in that region?
Is there a competent expertise available to handle a given failure condition?
Are the spare parts available to quickly start the restoration process?
Proper application of IoT can address the above questions by designing a connected solution that will help capture and analyze the product usage, operational and failure data and ultimately improve the customer satisfaction and services.
IoT can not only transform the end products but the entire manufacturing process right from the start where the elevators are manufactured. The supply chain process and logistics can also be streamlined to enhance operational efficiency and productivity and deliver better financial gains.
IoT is an incremental journey; it’s an evolution, and any manufacturing IoT realization can be broken down into the following five phases:
Monitoring & Utilization
Condition based maintenance
Predictive Maintenance
Optimization
Connecting ‘connected solutions.’
Monitoring & Utilization
Monitoring and utilization are the first steps of an IoT journey. This is an umbrella phase which itself consists of many requirements.
For the large scale manufacturer, to enable seamless monitoring and utilization of their systems, the step usually comprises of:
Asset Management Identifying assets that need to be monitored
Instrumentation
Leveraging existing instrumentation investments (if any)
Adding new hardware capability (new sensors/actuators/microcontrollers) based on the design and requirements of the connected solution.
Handle Connectivity
Adding connectivity to devices as per above points (1) and (2). We would talk about various patterns, the device directly connected to the core platform; intercommunication between devices or a device gateway connected to the core platform which communicates with existing devices using a low level or existing proprietary protocols.
Perform Monitoring
Asset Management
To start with you need to identify the set of physical assets that needs to be monitored. For example, for an elevator manufacturing company an elevator is an asset, which contains various sub-assets like doors, input control buttons (open, close, call, alarm, etc.), elevator telephone, etc. Similarly, for a connected car manufacturer, the car is an asset that contains various sub-assets like engine, brakes, tires, etc. and for any manufacturing plant, machinery equipment, conveyor systems, etc. are examples of assets that needs to be monitored. An asset contains a set of metadata, for example, a car engine can have a manufacturer’s name, capacity, year of manufacturing, etc. Asset management is perceived through asset metadata and its dependencies with other assets. Manufacturers typically have a software platform or an application to manage the lifecycle of its assets. While moving towards implementing IoT, the existing asset management design or application may not be sufficient or good enough for building next generation connected solution. Right from requirements, design to simulation, creating connected products and its lifecycle management, will require a completely new approach and a set of next generation software products to realize a connected solution. We envision a set of new emerging software products to tackle requirements for designing connected solution. For instance, understanding a dependency between a car engine, engine oil, led indicators and brakes through the system’s metadata and making use of analytics platform to perform analysis on the actual sensor data in a connected car solution, could help derive correlations easily and suggest measures to tackle failure condition. The design of connected products is a separate topic in itself and outside the scope of this book.
Instrumentation
In the manufacturing world, some kind of instrumentation is already employed, like the use case of the elevator, which we talked about earlier. The elevators already have built-in sensors, but these sensors are not connected to any platform, (the platform here maps to core platform in our architecture diagram — Refer Chapter 1) so as to enable transfer and analysis of the data. Moreover, the protocol and connectivity (maps to communication layer in our architecture diagram– Refer Chapter 1) for the various hardware components (or devices) in the elevator and their interactions would be very proprietary in nature.
Based on the requirements of the connected product, new hardware components (devices, microcontroller, sensors, etc.) might also be required. For instance, in a connected elevator design, the elevators now have new requirements to maintain an optimum temperature for smooth functioning, taking into account surrounding external factors (external factors may vary in different regions). Now the new design could also break down an operating ambient temperature into multiple levels of degradations, monitor this remotely or via notification and use this information to schedule services. For instance, take the following example where X is the optimum temperature that needs to be maintained and if X is greater than Threshold value, the degradations process starts. Lastly, if no action is taken from the start of degradation beyond Y days, a critical failure alert message is sent to the elevator company.
X being optimum temperature,
X > Threshold Value -> Needs attention within 5 days. The elevator is still functional but with limited load. The load is cut down from 300 kg to 150 kg.
At this stage, details about the suggestive spare part changes, the location of the spare part, suggested service vendor nearest to the current location is also made available by the system. It’s easier for the system to detect the GPS coordinates of the connected system, look at the inventory and service vendors based on the region and scheduled maintenance services. At this stage, the elevator is operational but with reduced load and have controlled the movement of people using the elevator.
X > Threshold Value (Date) — Y Days –> Critical Failure alert. This is final alert to repair the defective part, along with a good time to repair the elevator based on people movement during that week and projections to ensure minimum downtime and least impact on passengers. The above is only one such example. A manufacturer could employ many such requirements, which would require design changes right from microcontrollers to adding new hardware components. Again, this is an incremental effort; one can take gradual steps by identifying and adding new hardware component and then connecting along the way to the core platform for data transmission. The data is then used to correlate and perform analysis at the core platform layer to understand failure conditions and patterns.
Handle Connectivity
There are three general connectivity patterns, which allow devices to communicate to the core platform
Connecting device directly to core platform
Connecting devices to an intelligent system and/or device gateway.
Intercommunication with devices.
Based on the use cases, the connectivity option would differ. If there is a requirement to process the data locally and take action and/or a requirement to map different proprietary protocols to a standardized protocol, a device gateway is generally used which will translate the incoming protocol instructions to that of the target platform. The requirement also depends on the power consumption capacity of the device, and it may not make sense for all devices to connect directly to the core platform.
For the elevator manufacturing use case, the devices (doors, motor temperature, shaft alignment, etc.) is already instrumented and connected to a central device (microcontroller). The central device can be IoT-enabled, or a new device gateway can be installed which talks to the central device. It can be done by installing the required platform libraries and code that connect to the core platform, understands and map the data from the controller into a payload object (like JSON) and submits the payload to the core platform.
Libraries are available which supports making a device IoT-enabled, like the Eclipse-based Paho library (http://www.eclipse.org/paho/) which is an open-source client implementation of MQTT that can be installed on devices supporting C, Java, Android, Python, C++, JavaScript and NET programming model. This is of course with the assumption that the core platform supports the MQTT protocol.
The choice of library depends on the device being IoT-enabled, the programming language supported by the device (C, C++, JavaScript, etc.), the protocols supported by the core platform (MQTT, AMQP, REST, etc.) and the client library available for the device. One can also use REST style invocations to connect to the core platform. Core platform can provide SDKs for various devices that provide APIs to convert the device data into required payload supported by the core platform. For example, open source projects like Connect-The-Dots (https://github.com/Azure/connectthedots) allow devices to connect to Microsoft IoT services.
Not all data from the IoT-enabled device need to be transferred to the core platform. The IoT-enabled device gateway can employ local storage to filter out the data (like start and stop activity on each floor in case of elevators) and transfer only relevant data to the platform. We don’t want to clog the network and the platform with data that is not relevant and at the same time make sure enough data is transmitted from the systems to analyze important indicators, operational activities of various sensors, identify failures and use the historical events and data for future prediction of machines. Identifying and understanding the critical aspect of the data and prioritizing the same should be a key decision factor for building IoT applications.
Edge gateways can also be used which is geographically located closer to the devices or the device gateways, which can normalize the data before moving it to the core platform. For instance, to a global connected car manufacturer, it would make sense to have edge gateways at respective locations which can then streamline data movement to the core platform. We would see a lot of such patterns evolving in future that would enable scalability and connectivity of billion of devices.
As new production ready devices are manufactured for IoT, we envision the required firmware and connectivity code would be part of the device design and shipped with some standardized protocol support. In an ideal world, we should have converged on one standardized protocol for IoT (like the AllJoyn protocol which is gaining momentum) to make connectivity seamless, but in reality, many such standardized protocols would exist, and there would be an integration approach required to make them work seamlessly.
Another example is of water and waste water manufacturing plant which uses SCADA network to gather, monitor and process data. The manufacturing plant already employs sensors and proprietary protocols that monitor temperature, relative humidity, pH, barometric pressure, and various other environmental parameters. To be agile and scalable, traditional manufacturing systems need to adopt technologies to store and aggregate volumes of data from sensors, monitor systems in real-time, analyze the data and give out insights which were not possible earlier and eventually create predictive models to predict equipment failure or a possible outcome.
This is especially true for manufacturing companies, which might have already employed a wide variety of protocols. The ideal approach or pattern would be to install an intelligent system of gateways to convert these protocols and make them communicate securely with the core platform. Manufacturers can incrementally move their legacy devices into the realm of IoT ecosystem by connecting them to the outside world through intelligent gateways. For instance, BACnet is the widely used protocol for smart building and products like Microsoft AllJoyn Device System Bridge, allows existing devices that use BACnet to connect to an AllJoyn network, thereby enabling existing devices to connect with IoT core platform and also with new AllJoyn devices.
In future, we would see the connected product design being a key requirement as part of the manufacturing process.
Perform Monitoring
Once the devices are connected and data from the devices is made available to the core platform, the monitoring part kicks in. The device data is usually stored in a database (possibly a time series database) for further analysis and predictions and at the same time can be acted upon by the system for real-time analysis. The monitoring phase typically involves providing a dashboard to track the devices remotely across the globe and how each device is being utilized as per the specification. The specifications are available as part of the metadata we talked about it earlier in Asset Management section.
For instance, in the case of the r elevator use case, the optimum motor temperature should not be more than 40 degree Celsius or the air condition temperature inside the elevator should be at least 18 degree Celsius at peak load.
Monitoring can also be used to detect if the elevators are installed and functioning as per the specification. For instance, every manufacturer provides a checklist for regular maintenance activity that can be tracked through remote monitoring. The following is a sample checklist, which is provided by the City of Chicago — Department of Buildings for compliance purpose. As you see, most of the test requirements can be handled by adding sensors and monitoring it remotely.
In the future, environmental requirements like energy efficiency, passenger safety, and control compliance can be met through the remote monitoring and used for auditing and inspection eventually.
As the manufacturers start embracing IoT with the concept of connected products in mind, we would see a new class of products in future that will change the complete dynamics of manufacturing process. Imagine a self-test on the elevator which automatically evaluates the compliance parameters and publishes a report as part of the audit and quality procedures in a connected environment. (In short, an elevator would be compliant and secured 24 * 7).
Once the systems and devices are being monitored, next step is to use the information to provide timely maintenance of the assets based on the specification and its operating condition. We refer to it as condition-based maintenance.
Condition Based Maintenance
Condition-based Maintenance (CBM) is about using the actual data gathered from the devices to decide what maintenance activity needs to be performed on the physical assets being monitored.
The connected device provides a set of continuous measurements (temperature, vibrations, air pressure, heat, etc.) for the physical asset. This data along with the required operating specification of the physical assets can be used to create rules for maintenance activities and taking corrective action.
For the elevator use case, we talked about operating temperature requirement earlier as part of the instrumentation design. With the device data being available, the maintenance service can be scheduled whenever the degradation of asset starts.
For example,
X being optimum temperature,
X > Threshold Value –> Alert the service professional. The service professional can inspect the elevator remotely and approve the spare part suggested by the system. The elevators can continue to be functional under limited load, and the load sensor rule now triggers at 150 kg instead of 300 kg. This ensures at any given point; the load does not increase beyond the expected value in case of degradation.
Take another example of a scheduled maintenance service for your automobile. The service schedule is usually specified as part of the manufacturer’s operation manual based on the average operating condition rather than the actual usage and condition of the automobile. Using condition-based maintenance, the service and maintenance activity, like the oil change in your vehicle should be triggered when the service and replacement is needed based on actual, rather than a predetermined schedule.
There are two approaches to arrive at condition-based maintenance:
The first approach is by creating predetermined rules based on the actual value provided by the devices and executing the required action. For example, if the optimum temperature of an elevator is > 40 and load > 150 kg, execute load alert/beep rule and start the elevator only when the load falls below 150 kg.
The rule can be a simple rule or a combination of rules. The rules can be visually modeled using a programming language or a tool supported by the core platform. The rules are created using the parameters or fields of the device payload. In the above example, optimum temperature, elevator load are the fields defined as part of the payload.
The second approach is monitoring the values and detecting an anomaly. The anomaly detection is about identifying the data and events, which do not conform to the expected pattern as compared to other items in the data set. For example, assume you haven’t defined any rules for optimum temperature functionality and data from the devices is being collected every second, say 15, 15, 17, 18 and on the third day you see this pattern 29,.30, 30, 29…, clearly the values read on the first day are less than half of the values read on the third day. This signifies an anomaly in the system, which can trigger an alert for someone to inspect the system. Another example would be in the case of fire, where this might be detected as an anomaly by the system indicating the dramatic rise in the temperature. There could be another case where fire sensors itself could be tracking fire events. These two cases could be combined to derive a correlation and thereby enabling you to make a more precise observation.
All anomalies might not necessarily be real problems, but detecting anomaly should be a key requirement to ensure any susceptive exceptions are being caught by the system. | https://medium.com/@navveenbalani/application-of-iot-in-manufacturing-b54fb7127cc5 | ['Navveen Balani'] | 2019-12-19 06:49:55.011000+00:00 | ['Iot In Manufacturing', 'Internet of Things', 'Connected Elevator', 'Connected Home', 'Connected Car'] |
5 Ways Boomers Can Start a Business on Zoom | Photo by Marcus Aurelius from Pexels
Many people who never knew what Zoom was prior to the pandemic are now on it almost daily. Others have taken a class to be able to connect with friends and family or attend events that went virtual like religious meetings, book clubs, and exercise classes. (If you haven’t and you want to learn more about Zoom sign up for GetSetup’s FREE Zoom class!)
Many workers over 50 are searching for jobs but perhaps it is time to consider creating your own business. Isn’t it time you capitalized on your Zoom skills? We have come up with a few great ideas on how to implement a new side business into your life. While the options are endless here are 5 ways you can make money and use your Zoom skills!
5 Ways to Earn Money on Zoom
Tutor Online — Whether you are doing this to volunteer or to make extra income this is a great way to use Zoom. Students and professionals around the world are looking for tutors on language classes, bookkeeping, math, or science. You can create your own site and advertise through social media if you already have a network or post on tutoring platforms such as Wyzant, Superprof, Tutormatching Service, or your local Nextdoor page. Lead an Exercise Program — Are you an athlete stuck at home? Why not help your fellow sports enthusiasts with online aerobics or yoga classes. You can host these through Zoom. A great way to advertise is through social media, or local organizations or companies to start to get the word out. Share with friends and family to pass on. Plus consider customizing your classes for specific markets like Yoga for Parents while Babies are Napping, or Yoga Stretches to Keep Limber. Consult — If you have a skill that you can share in consulting, consider doing that on Zoom. That could be working to share your business know-how to help a budding new small business get set up or voice-over work that requires some client meetings to get the project off the ground or regular work via Zoom. Places like UpWork and Fivrr allow freelancers to post their skills and rates so interested clients from around the world can find the perfect professional match. Teach a Skill — There are lots of skills that don’t fall into tutoring exactly, but people are searching for someone with the knowledge to teach them. Consider teaching how to knit or sew online, or basic fix it classes, which can have a series of classes. On the other hand, one-off classes like providing quick, easy to make, nutritional recipes for a parent with limited time on their hands can be a fun event with less time commitment. You can do this independently by marketing through your website and social media or by registering on platforms where freelance teachers promote their services like NextDoor or Wyzant. Create a Webinar — Are you an expert in your field? Maybe you already have a course designed that can help people or want to put one together. Perhaps a course on applying to university as an international student or financial budgeting tips and tricks. Creating webinars that you host can be another great way to monetize your Zoom.
There is a good chance there is someone out there looking for your skills and you can help them while making a bit of side income. While there are some sites for posting your Zoom offerings, social media helps to get the word out about your services. It is a great idea to consider creating a website, marketing yourself on Linkedin, and learning how to use social media like Instagram and Facebook to help you market your budding business.
And if you need help in the process and learning more about how to get apps and technology to work for you, GetSetup has a class to help with an expert Guide to assure you have the tools you need to succeed. | https://medium.com/getsetup/how-boomers-can-start-a-business-on-zoom-3fa6704942c | ['Liz Miller'] | 2020-09-09 12:19:03.494000+00:00 | ['Getsetup', 'Zoom', 'Aging In Place', 'Economic Opportunities', 'Remote Work'] |
How I was born 8 times | A True Story
“You that in far-off countries of the sky can dwell secure, look back upon me here; for I am weary of this frail world’s decay.”
― Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji
I gave birth to my death. 8 times. I wait for the day when I am not here to count anymore.
Age 1- A cord wrapped around my throat but the Doctor had proclaimed that the chord would have not killed me. I was born with the fists out. Against. I had announced my birth through a dramatic drop in the stillness of birth of a rustic hospital which had Buffalos swanking its entrances. I do not remember. Mother says- I was playing with my aunt who dropped me from the 3rd floor of a 4 storey house in the evening heat of Gaya’s tranquil days after my birth, exactly a year after, on my birthday.
I hung from a tree branch, I did not smash onto the ground, no bleeding. The branch would have broken if I was 2 or if I was 3. My little body hanging on to dear life was the first time when I knew I was born. My mother’s womb must have felt unadventurous. No scratch. No memory carved on the skin but I think I met death, briefly, for-
Age 2- I have no anamnesis of my friendship with death which met me again, this time I was kicked by a cow, high up in the air. I broke my jaw. I broke my confidence as a child when I was found, 3 hours later, lying in a ditch, strange.
Death must have known me a bit by then.
Age 3- It is hard to fathom how a boiler with boiling oil can almost fall on you but when you are 3- that is not what you had thought if it almost did. I thought of death the very first time then-
Age 4- Father was walking me home, the last of the sun lingered in the sky. An electric pole fell. 2 cms in and we were dead. Were. I was born again, on the road of a village skyline where bodies melt away in ditches if not found.
Age 5- There is a place called Chora Bihar where only dacoits lived. Death must have missed me again on that fateful day when we encountered some Dacoits who let us go without hurting. I persisted in death. An end occurs when those who are meant to peter out have petered out like the scores of vehicles that went ahead of us but were nowhere to be seen now. Their occupants sometimes laid slain on the roads. I saw death closely. Death could not capture me more than the life in me, so I hold this experience closely. I only remember my mother removing her gold jewelry and hiding it in crevices where even we could not see. Where death could not be.
Age 6- I was revisited by death. In its old avatar. Like a task not completed, I was again down 2 storeys, into a ditch, my hand broken. Thrown off by a girl whom I called friend, up till then. Must have been Yama. Fractured hand trying to protect this brain, which had just comprehended the aftermath of not getting killed
Age 7- Dhatura intake can lead to death. I am a Shiv bhakt now because Shiv pardoned me that day when I accidentally ate Dhatura seed and pods. Thinking that I was invincible in my adventure and ignorance. This is how children under 7 die.
Age 8- Imagine getting crushed between two vehicles, none of which were meant to kill me. But they almost did. I saw my father weeping in the middle of the street. The only time he did weep. Giving up was death. Death was giving up. But I was pulled from above, by a man unknown. Must be god, I thought. I don't drive now. I call myself vehicularly handicapped but maybe it is just deja vu of a different kind of death. I don't want to die in a vehicle I had promised myself.
These days I feel like running really fast, leaving behind a cloud of dust and formations as they show in cartoons. Perishable but memorable. I have memorized a lot of references on death as if it is motivational. Sorin Cerin said that to search for the stranger inside you, forgotten even by your death would be it. I have yet to meet this stranger.
They have cut down the tree where I was born the very first time. On every birth day, I sow a tree. I call it Death. Death 1…. Death 2… Death 3…. I could move in with death, this stranger whom I have known all my life. After 8, I was never as close to death as I was when I was 1 maybe. Fear is brave for me. I tried to kill myself but I survived. Being born is not the opposite of death. It is an extension. The charm of death now seems exuberant enough to be appreciated like birth is the manifestation of death.
death is a branch breaking for me. death is a fact for me. death is my story. death is vehicles on the road. death is boiling water. death is dhatura.
I cheated death 8 times I think or did I miss death now because of —
how I know it feels to be born, again and again.
Belladonnaoflavender | https://medium.com/@belladonnaoflavender/how-i-was-born-8-times-7988319633cf | [] | 2021-08-23 08:05:37.350000+00:00 | ['Birth', 'Medium', 'Mwc Death', 'Death And Dying', 'MWC'] |
Dehumidifier Market Size Worth $4.3 Billion By 2025 | The global dehumidifier market size is expected to reach USD 4.3 billion by 2025, according to a new study conducted by Grand View Research, Inc., registering a 6.7% CAGR during the forecast period. Rising demand for dehumidifiers in hotels, restaurants, and cold storages to minimize food wastage caused due to humid air is expected to drive the market.
Increasing awareness among consumers toward health, along with extensive research and development activities carried out by market players, are anticipated to fuel market growth. Dehumidifiers reduce humidity by eliminating water content from the air. They are widely used for comfort or health reasons.
Recent technological developments are focused on energy-efficient dehumidifiers. In addition, introduction of cloud-based technology that allows users to control dehumidifiers through smartphones, tablets, and computers is expected to accelerate market growth. Development of advanced dehumidifiers that automatically calculate humidity level and set the functioning accordingly is also expected to boost the dehumidifier market over the forecast period.
Stringent legal and regulatory standards have compelled manufacturers to develop energy-efficient dehumidifiers. This is further estimated to benefit the global market. Rising demand for portable dehumidifiers in residential and commercial applications is expected to drive growth.
Click the link below:
https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/dehumidifier-market
Further key findings from the study suggest: | https://medium.com/@marketnewsreports/dehumidifier-market-c385b496bbdd | ['Gaurav Shah'] | 2020-12-07 08:09:12.705000+00:00 | ['Hvac', 'Canada', 'Germany', 'China', 'Construction'] |
The Changing Relationship between Trade and America’s Gold Reserves | Throughout most of U.S. history, American currency was tied to the value of gold, requiring the country to maintain large gold reserves to be able to support a gold standard. The figure below estimates total U.S. official gold reserves from 1878 to 2018. We immediately see that there have been some significant changes to U.S. gold holdings over time. U.S. gold reserves doubled from 1900 to 1913, nearly doubled again from 1913 to 1933, quadrupled from 1933 to 1941, and then halved by 1970.
We also plot the U.S. goods trade balance as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) because, under a gold standard, we would expect the U.S. to accumulate gold when it runs trade surpluses and gold to flow out when the U.S. runs trade deficits. In general, we see the U.S. accumulating gold as it ran trade surpluses from 1878 until the early 1920s, but afterward this relationship was tenuous at best as the international payments system experienced heightened uncertainty and significant change.
Countries suspended gold convertibility during World War I, and the gold standard was in a state of flux after the Great War. Then the outbreak of the Great Depression would lead to the complete abandonment of the gold standard. At the end of World War II, the Bretton Woods system was formed in which only the U.S. dollar was directly linked to gold. Finally in the early 1970s, Bretton Woods ended, giving rise to the international system we have today — a system of fiat currencies and floating exchange rates. In this article, we explore this evolution of the international monetary system in more detail, as well as how it ties to U.S. gold holdings.
Pre-World War I: The Classical Gold Standard
The value of gold formed the basis of the international monetary system from around 1870 to the outbreak of World War I, and this period is referred to as the classical gold standard. In the classical gold standard, a nation’s currency can be exchanged at any time for a fixed quantity of gold. For example, one troy ounce of gold was officially worth $20.67 through much of the 19th and early 20th century. Maintaining parity between the currency and the value of gold required a nation to hold large quantities of gold reserves, and monetary policy would then focus on maintaining a ratio of gold reserves to currency notes. For example, if the nation’s gold holdings declined, then that country’s monetary authority could raise short-term interest rates to attract gold because people would be more willing to exchange their gold for currency to lock in a higher nominal return.
Since currencies are tied to gold, this also leads to a system of fixed exchange rates. Furthermore, balance of payments between nations are adjusted by gold flows to maintain these fixed exchange rates. For example, if a nation runs a trade surplus, that nation will then have a net inflow of gold; conversely, a trade deficit leads to a net outflow of gold.
So it generally becomes difficult for a nation to sustain persistent trade deficits, as this leads to persistent net outflows of gold, which would then make it difficult to defend the gold parity. Ultimately, adhering to the gold standard prevents large gyrations in a nation’s balance of payments. In addition, fixed exchange rates make the cost of foreign goods more predictable, which can facilitate international trade.
During this time, the industrialized world experienced unprecedented peace, economic growth and stability, and trade openness, and the gold standard functioned well. However, the subsequent years would test the gold standard’s ability to endure economic crises.
Wartime Disruption
Although functioning well in the previous decades, the gold standard would struggle to last the calamity into which World War I threw the international payments system.¹ When the war started, European countries quickly suspended convertibility to gold so that they could more easily finance the war effort. The war was very costly, and tax revenue could not sufficiently fund the war effort, so nations resorted to inflationary financing of their debt, which could not easily be done when constrained by gold.
After the end of the war, the international payments system was also left in ruins. Especially for Europe, returning to the gold standard presented a formidable task after four years of inflation, price controls and exchange controls. It would require deflation to return to the prewar price level under the old parity.
Also, the exorbitant costs of the war led to huge trade imbalances that then led to large fluctuations in countries’ gold reserves: During World War I, the U.S. ran large trade surpluses and thus accumulated gold reserves, while many European countries ran trade deficits and saw their gold reserves decline. Therefore, a return to the gold standard under the old parity would have also required international adjustments in nations’ gold reserves.
The Roaring ‘20s
After the war, Great Britain was determined to return to the gold standard. But the country had to wait before it allowed the British pound to be freely exchanged for gold because the imbalances could have led to a run on the U.K.’s gold reserves. Since the prewar pound sterling was considered a world reserve currency and essentially as good as gold, many nations waited for the U.K. to return to the gold standard before they followed suit. However, it would not be easy for Great Britain to reestablish the gold standard because it needed to lower the price level, wait for sterling appreciation and attract gold reserves to return to the old parity.
So Great Britain began to raise its Bank rate to as high as 7% by 1920 at the expense of the domestic economy, leading to an economic depression due to shrinking credit. Likewise, the U.S. was in a similar position as Great Britain: The Federal Reserve Banks raised the discount rate to as high as 7% by 1920 to fight mounting inflationary pressures and to defend the gold standard, which also led to an economic depression.
However, the competition between the U.K. and the U.S. to attract gold by raising rates actually made it more difficult to realign world gold reserves and exchange rates. The U.S. was more successful attracting gold reserves in the early 1920s, and this delayed the U.K.’s return to the gold standard until 1925, after the Fed lowered its discount rate and sold the British $200 million worth of gold.²
This episode of the U.K. and the U.S. competing to attract gold reserves also highlights a trade-off that monetary policy must make under a gold standard: Monetary policy can focus on its international responsibilities (i.e., maintaining fixed exchange rates and parity of notes with the value of gold) or focus on the domestic economy — but not both. At that time, both central banks focused on their international responsibilities in hopes of maintaining the gold standard, which was detrimental to their domestic economies.
Raising short-term interest rates shrank credit and resulted in high unemployment at a time when both economies could have greatly benefited from monetary stimulus. But a gold standard shackled policymakers, leading to counterproductive monetary policy.
In addition, the period’s international competition, instead of cooperation, exacerbated matters. Although most of the developed world had returned to the gold standard by the mid-1920s, systemic imbalances still existed; combined with Europe’s need to finance large debt burdens accumulated from the war, the imbalances left the international payments system fragile.
The Great Depression and World War II
The Great Depression³ saw unprecedented international deflation that would finally destroy any remnants of the classical gold standard. In the U.S., wholesale prices fell 37%, and farm prices dropped 65% from October 1929 to March 1933.⁴ Furthermore, deflation raised the real value of debt, making it nearly impossible for European countries to service their large debt loads resulting from the Great War. This spelled doom for the gold standard, and Great Britain abandoned the system in 1931.
This left the U.S. in a predicament similar to what it faced at the end of World War I: Focus on its international standards by tightening credit to demonstrate its commitment to the gold standard, or focus on the domestic economy by expanding credit to combat persistent deflation and high unemployment. Under President Franklin Roosevelt, however, the U.S. prioritized domestic objectives.
In 1933, the U.S. suspended gold convertibility and gold exports. In the following year, the U.S. dollar was devalued when the gold price was fixed at $35 per troy ounce. After the U.S. dollar devaluation, so much gold began to flow into the United States that the country’s gold reserves quadrupled within eight years. Notice that this is several years before the outbreak of World War II and predates a large trade surplus in the late 1940s. ( See figure above.) Furthermore, the average U.S. trade surplus was only 0.6% of GDP during this period, highlighting the complete breakdown of fundamentals of the classical gold standard.
In 1930, the U.S. controlled about 40% of the world’s gold reserves, but by 1950, the U.S. controlled nearly two-thirds of the world’s gold reserves.⁵ The large U.S. gold stockpile would prevent any concern over the country’s ability to meet its commitment to the gold-dollar exchange rate, but this large world imbalance would completely prevent other nations from returning to the gold standard under the old parities.
Conclusion
After World War II,⁶ it became obvious that the world needed a new international payments system that incorporated the lessons learned from the previous three decades, and thus the Bretton Woods system was born. The hope was to still have a system with the discipline of gold built in but not too constraining to induce unnecessary economic hardship that nations experienced trying to salvage the gold standard after World War I. Under Bretton Woods, only the U.S. dollar was tied to gold, while other currencies were tied to the value of the U.S. dollar, thereby creating a system of fixed exchange rates. This gold exchange standard indirectly linked other currencies’ value to gold.
However, eventually fear mounted that the U.S. would not be able to meet its commitment to the gold-dollar exchange rate after persistent balance-of-payments deficits led to too many dollars in circulation, so there was a run on U.S. gold reserves in which they were halved by 1970. From 1957 to 1970, the U.S. actually ran slight trade surpluses (about 0.7% of GDP), yet gold flowed out of the U.S. in droves. Although gold indirectly backed the international payments system during Bretton Woods, the mechanism to balance trade flows through the exchange of gold did not function as we saw under the classical gold standard.
President Richard Nixon ultimately ended gold-dollar convertibility in 1971,⁷ effectively ending the Bretton Woods system; the result was a new system of fiat currency and floating exchange rates. Despite increasing U.S. trade deficits since the end of Bretton Woods, the country’s gold reserves have remained relatively stable ( as seen in the figure above ), underscoring the present weak (and possibly nonexistent) link between gold and trade flows.
Endnotes
World War I was from July 28, 1914, to Nov. 11, 1918. See Crabbe. The Great Depression was from August 1929 to March 1933. See Crabbe. See Green. World War II was from Sept. 1, 1939, to Sept. 2, 1945. See Ghizoni.
References
Ahamed, Liaquat. Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World. New York: Penguin Press, 2009.
Crabbe, Leland. “The International Gold Standard and U.S. Monetary Policy from World War I to the New Deal.” Federal Reserve Bulletin, June 1989.
Ghizoni, Sandra Kollen. “Creation of the Bretton Woods System.” Federal Reserve History, Nov. 22, 2013.
Green, Timothy. “Central Bank Gold Reserves: An Historical Perspective since 1845,” World Gold Council, Research Study №23, November 1999. | https://medium.com/st-louis-fed/the-changing-relationship-between-trade-and-americas-gold-reserves-de7a40f7d438 | ['St. Louis Fed'] | 2020-06-03 15:01:01.211000+00:00 | ['Trade', 'Federal Reserve', 'Gold Standard', 'Gold', 'Bretton Woods'] |
Arc du Pilaf — Foreskin Satellite — Bag Lord | One tuft — a pulmonary puff serving only a cervical surface. Stamped on glass after shed scent is densified into bricks is a sea foam clautch.
Melissa phones her Chad Grandpa on a beige Tuesday. Her finger coils the chord before she bends her knuckle to feel it constrict her flow to Purple tip.
Chad Grandpa picks up his end and announces his presence. Melissa releases her coil into a cup and coaxes the bread into her mouth. Actually, Chad Grandpa seals his crepe with the wax she paid him over coffee this morning.
Caustic Waft splits the Burl ahead of Saving Sister’s “Jonesian” appeal — as if pealing a live fish before your neutered nephew wasn’t a subtle unwinding of his blanket-bro ego show…
As Chad Grandpa’s chode swelled beyond recognition he had to escape to his tent with his coats. Lurching on the floor, he finally forgave himself for tracing over his daughter’s cranberry depiction when he phased trigeminal over Crumpet-Dimple Daniel.
Transaction in the Bay — Arc du Pilaf.
Sac a dupe belote the sand glandpa begining of film partridge forsaker. Vascular Pimp’s tweed can code supplanted the marginal memory of a foreskin satellite. | https://medium.com/mustard-milk/arc-du-pilaf-foreskin-satellite-bag-lord-c32b1f54e1e4 | ['Van Sanders'] | 2017-09-30 06:22:55.458000+00:00 | ['Strange', 'Nonsense', 'Humor', 'Pilaf', 'Whatever'] |
Tragedy of role-based contribution | I am a product builder who specializes in programming. Strongly believe in humanist.
Follow | https://medium.com/chris-dialogue/tragedy-of-role-based-contribution-759ad50e5002 | [] | 2019-09-08 13:01:23.392000+00:00 | ['Life'] |
words of affirmation is my love language: a series | hi :) i write from the heart in words that i can only hope speak to others. thanks for checking me out! | https://medium.com/@absrse/words-of-affirmation-is-my-love-language-a-series-8918696fe49e | [] | 2020-12-19 23:26:09.313000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Affirmation', 'Cookies', 'Series', 'Love'] |
Omnichannel Post-Conversation Survey Using Customer Voice (Forms Pro) | Recently, Microsoft announced its 2020 release wave 2 plan for the upcoming features in Dynamics 365 that will begin releasing from October 2020 through March 2021. Forms Pro is now rebranded as Dynamics 365 Customer Voice, and has more and better features. If you are an existing customer of Forms Pro, don’t worry, for all your Forms Pro surveys will be available as Projects in Customer Voice. For the transition process from Forms Pro to Customer Voice, click here. In this release, Microsoft added a ton of new features in Omnichannel for Customer Service. Click here to view.
Omnichannel uses its pre-chat feature to identify customers for agents based on their name/email address, etc. A new post-chat survey will be able to capture customers’ feedback on recent conversations with agents to improve service in the future.
Enable 2020 Wave 2 for your environment. Go to aka.ms/ppac (Power Platform Admin Center) to enable 2020 wave 2 updates.
3. Install Channels for Omnichannel from aka.ms/ppac.
4. Create a live chat channel record in the Omnichannel Administration app and go to Surveys.
5. Turn on Post-conversation survey to Yes.
6. Create a survey in Forms Pro
7. Refresh the page and you will see your Forms Pro survey in the survey field
If the survey is not available on the list, make sure Omnichannel and Forms Pro survey are in the same environment.
8. Select the survey send option:
Insert survey in conversation -- Insert a survey in an active session, only available for Chat channel.
Send survey link to conversation -- Send survey link to customer in the message box.
9. On ending a conversation, the Forms Pro survey question will be displayed (if you selected “Insert survey in conversation”).
I think the post-conversation survey is a great addition and an eagerly awaited feature in Omnichannel for Customer Service, allowing customers to provide feedback on their experience. I will be sharing more posts on my experience with Omnichannel enhancements. Learn more. | https://medium.com/hitachisolutions-braintrust/omnichannel-post-conversation-survey-using-customer-voice-forms-pro-2c070522aec | ['Ashish Rana'] | 2020-08-27 16:55:29.519000+00:00 | ['Customer Service', 'Feedback', 'Chat', 'Dynamics 365', 'Customer'] |
How to remove items or duplicates from a list in Python. | How to remove items or duplicates from a list in Python. Don't run around in loops to edit lists if there are built-in functions to help you out.
Remove duplicates from a list
Remove elements from a list
Clear a list
Our list:
my_list = [1,1,1,1,2,3,4]
Remove duplicates from a list
Sets quickly kill duplicates. Remember to convert it back to a list.
my_list = list(set(my_list))
Remove elements from a list
remove() or pop() will remove elements from a list. pop() returns the value you remove.
my_list.remove(1) #note that this will only remove the first instance of 1.
use_number_later = my_list.pop() #default removes last item in list. Add index to pop another. (my_list.pop(0))
Clear a list
This is easy as lists in Python come with a method called clear() . | https://medium.com/@martinaaberge/how-to-remove-items-or-duplicates-from-a-list-in-python-81b56baab7d7 | ['Martin Andersson Aaberge'] | 2020-12-16 06:09:02.821000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Python', 'Software Development', 'Lists', 'Data Science'] |
Under a Fig Tree and My Connection with Nature | Under a Fig Tree and My Connection with Nature
A relationship otherwise unknown by many
Source: T. Miranda 2020
Why should I sit on a park bench if I have a tree?
Not a normal tree though. A type of tree that provides free park benches. The ones that once raised from the ground it resembles a curved stonewall, with fissures similar to a badly done plastering job. The kind of bench that kids cannot wait to let go of their parent’s hands to climb on it.
The design looks like a huge octopus overextending its tentacles, with swirling shapes and coarse texture. This natural seat is nothing more than a buttress root. There are several types of buttress roots or root flair (another similar name amongst tree species). But this one is a large fig tree (Ficus macrophylla).
It is so big that if you lie down on the root flair, you cannot even see where the canopy finishes. Humongous. Such a surreal experience when you feel embraced by a big tree, resembling at once your mom’s lap. I cannot even describe in words. That is why you do not need park benches for the most adventurous ones.
As I was seated and appreciating the noises surrounding the park, I could not tell if I were close to the city or not. So close that as soon as you leave the canopy cover where I was standing, cars and trucks take over your ears.
For one minute, I felt contemplated by nature amidst the urban area. Trees are intercalated within a respected distance in this park. Most of them are mature Figs, London planes, Norfolk pines and Eucalyptus. Mature I mean tall and large. The kind of large that even vicious tree huggers would walk away in desolation.
For while, my bum feels like a heavy square plate and the natural becomes unpleasant. A good sign that it is time to move on. Though, as soon as I stood on both feet, a crackling noise of leaf litter called my attention.
Do you know that same feeling stepping on leaves when you were a kid? I am aware that for most of us it is hard to recall, but for those of easy memory, I felt the same thing.
My attention revolved towards the ground.
The Nonstop Moving Sphere
You can tell the stages of the decomposing process whilst looking at green and brown leaves on the floor. Normally, the old ones are underneath where initiates their progression into becoming organic matter. It is worthwhile a quick sweep of the leaves. You can see the wet black soil and notice that is much warmer than at the surface, especially in winter.
Sounds of dropping fruits are a common noise whilst standing under a flowering tree.
Source: T. Miranda 2020
Hence, the wind plays with the tree crown, squeezing through the stems, slapping its leaves and rotating like a tiny windmill. The leaves produce peculiar sounds. It is similar to an African origin instrument, with a sharp progressive noise that sticks in your mind for at least a few minutes.
This sound from flapping leaves due to the wind has an interesting contrast with another company — a bird of a kind. Parrots and honeyeaters are the common visitors, including red wattlebird, lorikeets, rosellas, galahs, cockatoos and much more what South Australia can offer.
Coming back to the ground before I get distracted by the natural symphony above me, I decided to poke my finger into the soil. Amazingly enough, it is more alive than I thought.
With a bit of digging effort, it did not take long to find earthworms — one of the essential decomposers of our ecosystems. I was stunned.
Since I used to play with them when I was a kid, I have not had a close encounter like this one in years. If I put a soil sample under the microscope, I might see millions of other decomposers, such as bacteria and fungi. This is the nature’s interrelationship at your fingertips.
Source: T. Miranda 2020
I think we sort of guess that the only way to understand nature is by delving into a graduation course and become doctors. I believe there are other doors available to be opened by the most ordinary individual.
The only pre-requisite to understand science, or I should say two, are having respect and curiosity. Then questions may arise, but do not be afraid. These questions are your friends, and with them, you might have a deeper exploration of our diverse ecosystems.
Without them, you may feel empty, dubious, solitary and willing to find sense before you fall into frustration. The common end of someone deluded about the unknown is the old “God” search.
A search that not necessary could take you away from nature appreciation but may stop you from being curious and sceptical — the two most important things towards something bigger than us.
No, I am not talking about a deity.
I am talking about the Universe, and its functioning process instead.
Even after reading this text you are still not convinced that you could be a citizen scientist, please bear with me in the next few paragraphs then.
Source: T. Miranda 2020
An Experiment
Walk to your nearest park, find a bench ideally under a tree (or a root flair), bring your lunch and just close your eyes. Notice all the sounds, the different sounds of each bird, wind and the leaves. Feel the wind in your face and listen to the old leaves landing on the floor.
And then, open your eyes again, and invite yourself to join in this conversation without words. But remember that they are talking amongst themselves in a different language.
A language that pushes you to explore by physical signs, which you may identify a certain type of communication. You are just a spectator. That is when you start realising there is much more than a designer, a deity behind the curtains.
This natural exploration is the “drug” that Charles Darwin, Bertrand Russel, Richard Dawkins, Thomas Jefferson, Christopher Hitchens, Stephen Fry, Neil De Grasse Tyson, Carl Sagan and many more have got hooked up for the rest of their lives. You might be the next one, just like me.
This “drug” is the profound accumulation of natural knowledge that forever recedes without a return ticket. I do recommend for once to let it blow your mind. Let humbleness takes over and you will then realise, fellow citizen scientist, that the world is full of surprises. | https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/under-a-fig-tree-and-my-connection-with-nature-95bdfe098cc2 | ['Tiago Miranda'] | 2020-12-17 16:40:44.817000+00:00 | ['Vision', 'Philosophy', 'Nature', 'Science', 'Awareness'] |
Thanks for the info , but I think that you did not give direct answer , which is the target of any… | Thanks for the info , but I think that you did not give direct answer , which is the target of any one read your article .
According to my very humble experience, Scikit learn should be the first step. | https://medium.com/@aalhommada/thanks-for-the-info-but-i-think-that-you-did-not-give-direct-answer-which-is-the-target-of-any-d884f6b3da33 | ['Abdullah Al Hommada'] | 2020-09-24 18:21:38.476000+00:00 | ['Scikit Learn', 'Machine Learning'] |
Probabilistic Forecasts: Pinball Loss Function | Probabilistic Forecasts: Pinball Loss Function
Probabilistic forecasts are essential to optimize supply chains and inventory targets. How can we evaluate the quality of probabilistic forecasts? Nicolas Vandeput Aug 20·6 min read
Self-Assessment Quiz
Let’s start with a few questions. Read them first before going through the article. By the end of your reading, you should be able to answer them. (The answers are provided at the end as well as a Python implementation)
You want to forecast your product’s demand. Specifically, you want to predict a value for which the demand has an 80% probability of being under. What is the worst, over forecasting the actual demand or under forecasting it? You design a forecast model that reduces the absolute error (or MAE). Is your model aiming for the average demand or the median demand? You made a 95% quantile demand forecast, your forecast was 150, and the observed demand is 120. How would you assess the quality of your forecast? You sell high-margin products. What is the worst: overstocking or understocking them? When setting the safety stock target, should you aim for a high or a low demand quantile?
Quantile Forecasts
A quantile forecast is a probabilistic forecast aiming at a specific demand quantile (or percentile).
Definition: Quantile
The quantile α (α is a percentage, 0<α<1) of a random distribution is the value for which the probability for an occurrence of this distribution to be below this value is α.
P(x<=Quantile) = α
In other words, the quantile is the distribution’s cumulative distribution function evaluated at α.
Quantile α = F^{-1}(α)
In simple words, if you do an 80% quantile forecast of tomorrow’s weather, you would say, “There is an 80% probability that the temperature will be 20°C or lower.”
Side note: If you are used to inventory optimization and the usual safety stock formula Ss = z * σ * √(R+L) z is the gaussian alpha quantile z=Φ^(-1) (α). Somehow, you can see the safety stock formula as the α quantile forecast of the demand over the risk-horizon.
PS: Remember to include the review period in this formula.
Asymmetrical Penalties
How can we assess the accuracy of a quantile forecast? Let’s take another look at our above example: you forecast that tomorrow’s 80th temperature quantile is 20°C. The next day, the temperature is 16°C.
How accurate was your forecast?
Before discussing the math, let’s get an intuition on how we should evaluate (or penalize) a quantile forecast. Somehow, when we say, “We forecast the temperature to have 80% of chances to be below 20°C,” we expect the temperature to be lower than 20°C and would be surprised that the temperature would be 25°C.
In other words, this quantile forecast should get a higher penalty if it under forecasted the temperature than if it overpredicted it.
Moreover, as shown in the figure above, the penalty for over forecasting should be even higher for higher quantiles. For example, if your 95% temperature quantile forecast is 20°C, you would be very surprised if the actual temperature was 25°C.
Pinball Loss Function
Let’s formalize this forecasting penalty using the pinball loss function.
The pinball loss function L_α is computed for a quantile α, the quantile forecast f, and the demand d as
L_α (d,f) = (d-f) α if d≥f
(f-d)(1-α) if f>d
This loss function aims to provide a forecast with an α probability of under forecasting the demand and an (α-1) probability of over forecasting the demand.
Intuition and Examples
Let’s see how the pinball function works in practice. In the figure below, you can see an example with d=100 and α=90% (we want to forecast the demand 90th quantile) where the pinball loss function L_α is computed for different values of f.
As you can see, the pinball loss L_α is highly asymmetrical: it doesn’t increase at the same speed if you over forecast (low penalty) or under forecast (high penalty).
Let’s take an example: forecasting 20 units too much will result in a loss of 10%|f-d|=2 (that is to say that over forecasting is not much penalized). But, on the other side, forecasting 20 units too little will result in a loss of 90%|f-d|=18.
Basically, under forecasting is penalized by α|e| (where e is the forecast error), whereas over forecasting is penalized by (1-α)|e|.
Mean Absolute Error
In my forecasting KPIs article, I highlighted that optimizing the forecast mean absolute error (MAE) will ultimately aim at forecasting the median demand.
As you can see in the figure below, the 50% quantile pinball loss function corresponds to the regular absolute error — they are interchangeable. Keep in mind that, by definition, forecasting the 50% demand quantile is the same as predicting the demand median. This is another illustration that optimizing the MAE will result in a forecast aiming at the demand median (and not the demand average).
Self-Assessment Solutions
You want to forecast your product’s demand. Specifically, you want to predict a value for which the demand has an 80% probability of being under. What is the worst, over forecasting the actual demand or under forecasting it?
Underforecasting the demand is the worst. If you want to forecast the 80th quantile, you should aim for a value that is likely to be higher than the observed value.
2. You design a forecast model that reduces the absolute error (or MAE). Is your model aiming for the average demand or the median demand?
Optimizing the Mean Absolute Error will ultimately result in forecasting the expected median demand and not the expected mean demand.
3. You made a 95% quantile demand forecast, your forecast was 150, and the observed demand is 120. How would you assess the quality of your forecast?
You can compute the pinball loss of your quantile forecast. Your forecast has an absolute error of 30 units (=|150–120|), and it is an overprediction, so you pinball loss is 1.5 units (=30*0.05%).
4. You sell high-margin products. What is the worst: overstocking or understocking them? When setting the safety stock target, should you aim for a high or a low demand quantile?
You want to have a lot of stock of high-margin products, so understocking them is a bad decision. Henceforth, when setting the stock target you should aim for a high demand quantile.
🐍 Do It Yourself
You can easily implement the pinball loss function in Python in a single expression (with a few modifications compared to the original equation). | https://towardsdatascience.com/probabilistic-forecasts-pinball-loss-function-baf86a5a14d0 | ['Nicolas Vandeput'] | 2021-08-20 16:02:08.895000+00:00 | ['Probability', 'Demand Forecasting', 'Time Series Analysis', 'Supply Chain', 'Forecasting'] |
The crossroads of technology: chasing technology certifications | Right after I got out of university in 2001, I didn’t know what type of jobs my future will hold. At that time, I had the opportunity to work for a telephone company as a system administrator; this was in the early beginnings of the internet. Soon I realized, that I had spent four years of studies for something that wouldn’t help me get my dream job, and if I landed this sysadmin job was due to the things I learned on my own. I quickly resorted to the alternative of chasing technology certifications instead of continuing with higher education.
Preparing for certifications was hard; it required a lot of personal sacrifices and time. I spend almost two years for each certification doing anything else other than studying, day in and day out. But it was worthy; certifications allowed me to travel and explore the world for the first time. I visited places like San Paulo, Atlanta, New York, Boston, Toronto & Silicon Valley. It also helps me gain a reputation back home; I became one of the two only people in the DR with an expert certification in networks and among a group of only 50 people in Latin America. A few years later, building in that success, I will later land my first job outside my country, and a few years after that, I got my dream job in the same technology company that certified me. Call it irony, destiny, or pure coincidence.
Technology can get outdated pretty quickly, and the same is valid for certifications. I can now see that. One of the drawbacks between certifications and university degrees is that the latter gives you context. That alone won’t give you a job, as I experienced, but it provides you with the building blocks and freedom to do something else in later life.
One of the less obvious advantages of having a formal education, is that creates awareness of a wide range of topics: Economics, Sociology, Philology, Logic , Ethics, Grammar, and even Religion.
Yet, how do technology companies kept me believing I was still worth something, even if what I learned yesterday might not be relevant today? — Well, for a fee, I will end up taking more re-certification exams or, after some time, pay an annual fee that will keep me title valid. After all, why wouldn’t I want to do that? — I spend at least four years of my life preparing for all this; what are 450 dollars to keep the memory of that hard-earned effort and my knowledge alive?.
There was a flaw in the decision I made ten years ago. Still, I couldn’t see it, or maybe I decided to ignore it and covered with the opportunity and success I had in my early career, until, at some point, technology changed, I changed, and my dream changed.
On November 28 this year, it will be that time of the year where I, once again, need to renew my vows to my knowledge and sacrifices. This time, I decided not to do that and effectively-becoming “inactive”, in the end; what are the consequences?.
Instead, I decided to donate my renewal fees to support the Farmworkers in California.
Farmworkers are working twice as hard during the heatwave and fires while getting paid less. They are paid per piece and much of the harvest has been ruined by ash and smoke. When asked what items they need most, their first response was: basic school supplies for their children.
I was very fortunate to have parents who had the modest resources to pay for my education; I now have the choice to go back and scrutinize the intersection between technology and the subjects I have always been passionate about.
If becoming “inactive” means that I could allow a child to put together the building blocks of his/her life and make a choice. That’s an option I’m delighted in supporting. | https://medium.com/@fcoperezespejo/the-crossroads-of-technology-chasing-technology-certifications-1454116908a2 | ['Francisco Perez'] | 2020-10-14 00:52:13.324000+00:00 | ['Career Advice', 'Storytelling', 'Certification', 'Reflections'] |
When and How to Write a Thank-You Letter after Interview? | Sending a thank-you letter after interview can help you land your target job. It isn’t just a way to show appreciation for the opportunity; it’s also a good way to remind the interviewers of your skills and qualifications. Moreover, this could lead them to call you back for the next step of the hiring process.
Is it necessary to send a thank-you letter after a job interview? It’s for you to decide; but first, read on about its importance and when and how to send one.
The Importance of Thank-You Letter After Interview
You can never go wrong with a thank-you letter. A survey says that 1 in 5 hiring managers dismiss a job applicant if they didn’t receive interview thank-you notes. Thus, sending one can help you stand out from other candidates.
A thank-you letter is important because it doesn’t just show politeness; it also goes a long way. Here are the top 3 reasons why you should write a thank-you email.
You can present additional information that you forgot to mention during the interview. It’s a chance for you to answer the interview questions you think you didn’t answer well. You can express your enthusiasm toward the job posting, which could lead you to stand out from other candidates.
When to Send a Thank-You Letter
As mentioned above, it’s beneficial to send a thank-you letter. However, you need to consider when to send one so that it’ll be an advantage and not the opposite.
So, when is the best time? The answer is within 24 hours after the interview. Don’t wait for days before sending one because your interviewer might have forgotten you already.
With this said, though writing a handwritten note and sending it through a snail mail adds your personal touch, many hiring managers prefer to receive a thank-you letter via email. It isn’t just convenient for you; it’s also faster.
Pro Tip: Send your post-interview letter within 24 days, unless it’s the weekend. In that case, send it on the earliest business day.
Guide to Writing a Thank-You letter
Writing a post-interview thank-you letter isn’t complicated. You don’t need to think hard about what to include in your letter. You just need to ensure the tone is polite and sincere. Plus, making it personalized is highly encouraged. Yet, it still needs to be professionally written.
Here are some points to guide you in writing your appreciation note.
Check the details of the recipient of your letter. Is the name and email address correct? Don’t send a copied-pasted letter. Though there are many templates online, make sure that yours is personalized and unique. Address the hiring manager properly. Check if the spelling is correct. Sometimes, it’s better to avoid gendered language. Make it short and direct. Don’t forget to proofread your note before sending it.
What to Include in a Thank-You Letter after an Interview
Writing a thank-you letter after an interview is just like writing other kinds of emails. However, it focuses on sending thanks, showing interest to the job post, and leaving a good mark to the interviewer. To help you, check out these common features of a thank-you letter.
1. Write a direct subject.
Your email subject line is important because it gives the interviewer a glance of what your email is about. Make sure that it’s short and direct. Some common subject line samples are: “Thank you for meeting with me” and “Thank you for the interview.”
2. Start with greetings.
Just like other kinds of letters, you need to start with an impactful salutation. Don’t underestimate this part because this sets the tone of the whole letter. In line with this, know what greetings to avoid. Address the interviewer based on how they prefer to be called.
3. Express gratitude.
As the name suggests, a thank-you letter is about writing appreciate to the interviewer for the opportunity given to you. Express your thanks by mentioning you’re grateful for the interview invite. Additionally, state the job title you applied for to avoid confusion on the part of the interviewer.
4. Reiterate qualifications.
Thank-you letter after interview is your chance to recap why you’re a good match for the job. Use this section to remind the hiring manager of your skills and qualifications. Doing so could give your interviewer a little nudge to hire you.
5. Show interest in taking the next step.
Before you end your letter, don’t forget to show interest in moving further in the hiring process. This gives the recruiter the impression that you’re serious and ready to take on the job.
6. Contact information.
Lastly, provide your contact details. You may place your phone number and email address after your closing remarks. This will make it easier for the hiring manager to call you.
Sample Thank-You Letter after Interview
Now that you know what to include on your thank-you note, let’s take a look at some examples to guide you.
Sample 1:
Subject line: Thank you for the interview. Thank you so much for taking the time to meet with me today. I enjoyed learning more about the team and position. I am grateful for the opportunity of working at ABC Company. I am very much interested to be part of your digital content marketing team and help develop world-class content. I am looking forward to hearing from you. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if there’s anything else you need from me moving forward. Warm regards, Autumn Sanders
Sample 2:
Subject line: Thank you, Peter. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me this morning about the marketing position at XYZ Company. It was a pleasure knowing more about the job post and the core values of the company. The information you’ve shared with me about the expectations you seek for a candidate gives me the confidence that I am fit for the job. I am very much excited to be part of your company. I am eager to hear from you regarding the next steps. Please don’t hesitate to give me a call in any time that’s most convenient for you. Thank you. Have a great day. Scarlet Jones
Skip the Hassle by Hiring a Professional Writer
As previously stated, it’s important to write a thank-you letter in a professional way. Thus, if you want to ensure that your letter is well-written, hiring an expert is encouraged. Also, you can be sure that your thank-you letter will make you stand out among other applicants. Plus, it gives you more time to prepare for the next step of the hiring process.
Good thing, with the help of technology, it’s now easier to hire professional writers who could help you with our job search journey. Hiring and working with a resume writer increases your chance of landing your target job with a job-winning resume and other job search tools. | https://medium.com/@neal-hardy888/when-and-how-to-write-a-thank-you-letter-after-interview-12207bc2da15 | ['Neal Hardy'] | 2021-07-06 07:32:05.263000+00:00 | ['Jobs', 'Careers', 'Personal Development', 'Interview', 'Thank You'] |
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